Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216)

by Logan, Jake

  Every hole they hit in the road sent a new pang of discomfort through his body. Riding into the canyon and shooting the miner hadn’t done him any good. He wasn’t one to cry over spilled milk, but there hadn’t been any cause for the miner to shoot at him or for him to kill the man. The miner and his surviving partner had likely both been plumb loco, eking out a living from the played-out gold mine and nothing more. They wanted to be left alone, and when Bertram had come across Slocum and Mirabelle, he had gotten scared.

  Slocum only wished his partner had known more about the killers who had slaughtered Isaac Comstock and the others. From the depths of the canyon, he believed the miner when he said that he hadn’t heard gunshots, much less the cries of agony as the men were being tortured to death.

  “You look a mite peaked,” Malone said, putting down the glass and picking up another.

  “You already polished that one,” Slocum said. He thought the bar owner was going to jump out of his skin.

  “Yeah, I have. Why waste effort, right? I ain’t payin’ you for the days you was off, Slocum.”

  “Not asking you to,” he replied. “My business was mighty sudden and not likely to happen again.”

  “You tell me if you want to go traipsin’ off.”

  “Any trouble brewing?” Slocum looked around the saloon and saw the regulars already starting to get drunk. Many had come in for the free lunch. One or two might have been so drunk they forgot the food was even there, not that Beefsteak laid out much of a spread.

  Slocum helped himself to a couple of the boiled eggs and then took a piece of moldy cheese. He scrapped off the blue fuzz and downed it. He fumbled around and found a nickel for some draft beer. Beefsteak drew it without a word.

  Whatever ate at the saloon’s owner slowly disappeared by the time the evening crowd filtered in. Slocum thought the man was upset that he had been without a bouncer for a couple nights, though it might have been more than that. Beefsteak didn’t strike him as the overly sentimental sort. If Slocum had never been seen again, Malone wouldn’t have given him a second thought. As it was, the barkeep kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye in an accusing way.

  The piano player showed up and began knocking out songs the best he could on the untuned upright. By the time he had finished his first set, the customers were shoulder to shoulder at the bar, making Beefsteak jump to keep their beer and whiskey glasses filled. He even got a couple cowboys in who demanded mixed drinks, forcing him to show his expertise concocting fizzes and even more exotic libations.

  Slocum went to the piano and asked the musician, “How’s it been the last couple nights?”

  “Nothing special,” the jolly, round-faced man said, mopping at his forehead with a linen handkerchief he claimed to have come all the way from France.

  “Any trouble while I was gone?”

  “Didn’t notice you was gone,” the man said. He took a sip of his tepid beer. Beefsteak allowed him one free drink an hour. “Must have been ’cuz nothing much happened. No fights or even much in the way of arguments, ’cept for . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “Two gents got angry over a card game. Couldn’t even tell what they was playin’. Think it was five-card stud, not that it matters.”

  “Gunplay?”

  “One shoved the other. They yelled some shit and then they bought each other drinks until they passed out just before closing ’round four a.m.”

  “Not very exciting,” Slocum allowed.

  “Tips have been shit, too.” He finished his beer, wiped his lips of foam, and then settled back in front of the piano to begin pounding out “Camptown Races” to get the men het up and drinking.

  Slocum drifted around the saloon, listening and talking, mostly finding that Malone was likely the only one who had noticed he’d been gone. Dedicated drinkers, and those not inclined to get into fistfights, concentrated more on the drink in front of them than their surroundings. He doubted any of the men knew anything about him being dry gulched and kidnapped after Rupert Eckerly got himself planted in the cemetery.

  He went back to his usual spot at the end of the bar, but Malone still wasn’t inclined to talk with him. That suited Slocum. He wanted to watch the crowd for any hint that a customer might be surprised to see him. The gang that had killed Mirabelle’s husband and the rest were likely still around—and he thought it had to be them responsible for roughing him up after the funeral.

  It was almost midnight when the two men came in, slinking along like weasels. There was a boneless quality to them that caught Slocum’s attention almost as much as their secretiveness. They huddled together at a corner table. One drew what looked like a map on the table, only to cover it with his grimy hand if anyone came too close.

  They occasionally looked around in such a furtive fashion that he knew they were up to something. Slocum sauntered around, talking to other patrons and moving slowly in their direction. When he got close enough to overhear but not close enough to make them clam up, he took a chair, leaned it against the wall, and sat in it. He tipped back and pulled his hat down as if he was taking a siesta. In the Damned Shame this usually meant a patron had swilled too much of Beefsteak’s cheap booze and was sleeping it off.

  Slocum strained to hear what the pair whispered. He missed a good deal of what they said, but one spoke louder than the other, and what Slocum overheard sent his pulse racing.

  “We kin knock it over, jist like we did them fools outside town.”

  He missed the reply but almost threw down on them when he heard the response.

  “We don’t kill none of them this time. I ain’t gonna be responsible for any more blood on my hands.”

  “. . . don’t worry. This time we’ll get the gold and be away ’fore anybody knows it.” The man bent farther over the table and used the finger he dipped in beer foam to sketch out a map.

  From his position, with his hat drawn down, Slocum couldn’t see the map, but as the two worked on it, they became more excited. One’s enthusiasm for the crime fed the other’s.

  “We go for it now,” one finally said.

  “Now? Won’t it be better to wait a night or two?”

  “Now,” insisted the first man. “You know there’s gonna be a guard if we wait till Friday.”

  The two argued a few more seconds before the wary one relented. They both stood so fast, they knocked their chairs over. Slocum pushed up his hat in time to see them disappear through the saloon doors. He swung forward and righted his chair, then went to the empty table. Two beer mugs were at one side, but the map sketched in the foam was still visible. It took a bit of squinting and not a little imagination before Slocum decided this was a map of Grizzly Flats to the south, where the hotels and whorehouses lined the streets.

  He looked over at the bar. Malone averted his gaze. Slocum decided he would quit early. The two were suspicious as hell, and it had been quiet all night long. Maybe not as quiet as the two nights he had missed, but Beefsteak wasn’t going to need him for a while. Slocum intended to find out what the two were up to and if they were the ones who had roughed him up. He expected his captors to recognize him, even if he hadn’t any idea who they were, but he hadn’t given either of them a chance to see him straight on.

  Stepping into the cold night from the hot, smoking interior of the Damned Shame was a punch to his face. He sucked in deep breaths and let the clean mountain air invigorate him. If he interpreted the map right, the two had gone down the main street and then south at the first crossing street.

  As he walked, he knew this was the way to his hotel. Mirabelle stayed in his room. He walked faster as he wondered if the two men weren’t part of the gang that had killed Terrence and the others and were now on their way to finish off Mirabelle. How they had learned she survived the massacre wasn’t something he thought on.

  As he reach
ed the front of his hotel, he caught sight of the two men on the far side of the street, keeping to the shadows and whispering back and forth conspiratorially. Wherever they went, it wasn’t to his hotel and Mirabelle.

  A quarter mile farther, one man grabbed the other’s arm and pointed to an isolated two-story house with turrets and a single light burning in an upper window. Slocum edged down the street, watching them. The men ignored anything but the light in the window. They whispered furiously for a moment, then dashed across the street, passing within ten feet of Slocum and never noticing him.

  The whiff of booze off the two was almost enough to get Slocum drunk. They crashed into the side of the house, shushed each other, then crept around to the rear of the house. Not sure what to do but curious, Slocum followed. He chanced a quick look around the corner of the house to where the two men stood on the back porch, trying to get into the locked rear door. From the way the house was laid out, Slocum suspected they were breaking into the kitchen.

  He doubted they were hungry. Starving men didn’t go to such lengths to draw maps in beer foam on a saloon table, then sneak all the way across town to break into a house for a loaf of bread. He hadn’t availed himself of the services offered in this house, but Slocum knew it was one of several cathouses.

  “Got it!” One man slapped his hand over the other’s mouth to silence him. They spent a few seconds quieting each other, then opened the door and crashed into each other tumbling inside.

  Slocum doubted they were two of the gang that had tortured him or killed Mirabelle’s husband, but they were up to no good.

  Slocum slid his six-shooter from its holster and stepped up onto the back porch so he could look through the open door. The two men were trying to walk on cat’s feet to the front room and doing a better job of it than he had suspected was possible from their drunken entry.

  This wasn’t his concern, but he wasn’t going to allow sneak thieves to ply their trade in the middle of the night. Using the butt of his pistol, he rapped hard several times against the doorjamb. The echo through the house was loud enough to wake the dead.

  Both men froze and looked at each other, then turned and tried to run. They skidded to a halt when they saw Slocum’s Colt pointed straight at them.

  “You boys just freeze,” Slocum said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  A soft rustle drew his attention. A tall, well-built redhead came down the back stairs from the second floor, a derringer in hand.

  “What’s going on?” She swung the small pistol from the two men to Slocum, then quickly turned to cover the two standing with their hands in the air in the middle of the kitchen.

  “Seems you’ve got an infestation,” Slocum said. “A pair of rats snuck in to nibble at your cheese.”

  “Not my cheese,” the redhead said, laughing. The sound was melodious. For someone who had almost been robbed, she was cheerful enough about the situation. “I charge for any mouse to nibble there.”

  “I saw them over at the Damned Shame acting suspicious. I trailed them. They broke in and—”

  “And it was you rapping, rapping, gently tapping at my window,” she said.

  “Door,” Slocum said, puzzled.

  “Never mind. I heard.” She came all the way down the stairs. She almost matched Slocum’s six-foot height and her curves were in proportion. Slocum could tell. She wore nothing but a thin cotton nightgown pressed against her body by the wind whipping through the door at Slocum’s back.

  “They intended to rob you.”

  “My business has been good this week. If they’d waited until Sunday, they might have gotten more from my weekend revenue.”

  “You got a guard then,” blurted the fatter of the two men.

  “Now that is interesting. A pair of drunk thieves who actually planned the robbery.” She looked at Slocum. “You know my business in this house?”

  “Haven’t been in town all that long,” Slocum allowed, “but I can figure it out. How many girls you got working here?”

  “Four. Five if you count the madam.”

  “You?”

  The redhead grinned and nodded. Her coppery hair floated around her pale face. Slocum couldn’t tell the color of her eyes, but he would have bet his last dollar they were as green as his own.

  “What do you want to do with these two?”

  “You’re the bouncer at Beefsteak Malone’s?”

  “I am,” Slocum said. “What about them?”

  “They should pay for their crime.”

  “Hands up!” Two gunshots sounded behind Slocum. He spun, only to wince as a rifle barrel crashed down on his wrist. His six-gun went flying.

  He heard a rush of feet as the two crooks reversed their course and ran through the house. The crash of a door slamming open at the front of the house warned him they’d escaped.

  “They’re getting away,” he said through gritted teeth. He started to turn and was rewarded with the barrel slamming into the side of his head.

  Slocum went to his knees, dazed. He heard boots shuffling around and angry voices. He hardly knew what he was doing but instinct took over. He gathered his legs under him, then launched like a Fourth of July skyrocket. His arms circled a waist and drove the man back to the steps. They crashed down, Slocum coming out on top.

  Shouts went unheeded. He was still operating without knowing he even fought. When the rifle barrel slammed again into his head, he sagged, his body suddenly nerveless.

  “Kill the son of a bitch,” came the angry command.

  He heard muffled argument, then the rifle barrel crunched down on the top of his head. His hat robbed the blow of its full fury, but it was still powerful enough to knock him out.

  8

  The flickering light convinced Slocum he wasn’t blind, but he wished he were dead. His head felt like a stove-in watermelon, and where he was bandaged on the ribs burned like a million ants chewed away at him. He tried to roll over but couldn’t. It was as if his arms were pinned to his sides. He forced his eyes open and saw a kerosene lamp on a table—on the other side of iron bars.

  “You finally back among the land of the livin’? Too damn shame. I hoped you’d up and die on me. There’s a shit hole out in the potter’s field just waitin’ for you.”

  Slocum levered himself up and let the dizziness pass as he took in his surroundings. The jail cell wasn’t the best kept he’d ever seen. Debris on the floor was only part of it. The bars had rusted, and the single blanket covering the straw pallet on the sagging cot had enough moth holes in it to have fed an army of the gnawing pests. Beyond the bars sat Marshal Willingham, feet hiked up on a desk. His bowed legs looked funny with him sitting that way, but what didn’t amuse Slocum was the way the lawman played with his six-shooter.

  The marshal spun the cylinder, then aimed at Slocum and pretended to fire. Then he’d spin the cylinder again and repeat.

  “I got six rounds in the chambers,” Willingham said. “Ain’t no call for you to bet on whether you get plugged.”

  “All I need to worry about is when?” Slocum suggested.

  “You’re a bright guy, Slocum. Too bright. Now, should you be kilt escapin’ or maybe there’s another—” The marshal cut off his planning when the door opened and let in a cold breath of outside. He dropped his feet to the floor and turned Slocum’s six-gun toward Mirabelle Comstock.

  “I came when I heard,” Mirabelle said, looking at Slocum.

  “Now who might you be? You and him, you . . . friendly?” The way Willingham said it made Slocum’s skin crawl.

  “Why are you holding him, Marshal? He’s not done anything.”

  “Now that’s a matter for a judge to decide. Since Grizzly Flats don’t have a full-time judge, we got to wait on the circuit rider to come ’round. Might be a week. Might be two. In this weather, he might decid
e not to come ’til spring.”

  “What are the charges?”

  “Now, missy, I don’t know what your interest in this varmint is, but if you ain’t a lawyer—his lawyer—I don’t have to tell you jackshit.”

  “You can’t go ’n lock a man up without chargin’ him with some crime.”

  “I’m the law in Grizzly Flats, and I do as I damn well please. If you don’t want to end up in a cell next to him, you git the hell out of my office.”

  “Is there a bail set?”

  Slocum knew Mirabelle didn’t have a dime to her name. Or did she? Had Ike found more than the two gold coins and she hadn’t bothered to reveal that?

  “He’s not budgin’ ’til I say so. What’s your name, missy?”

  “I’ll be all right,” Slocum said, getting to his feet. He leaned against the bars for support. His legs still almost gave way beneath him. “The marshal won’t let anything happen to me, will you, Marshal?”

  “Shut up, Slocum.”

  “Do you feed your prisoners? I’ll tell the owner at the restaurant to bring him some breakfast.”

  “Ain’t time yet,” Willingham said. “Lookee here, missy, you get that pretty ass of yours outta my jailhouse.”

  “Tell everyone where I am and how I’m staying put,” Slocum said. He worried that Willingham would shoot him the instant Mirabelle left, claiming he had tried to escape. “After all, a good and honorable lawman like the marshal here’s not going to let any prisoner escape.”

  Mirabelle went pale when he said that. She understood what was likely to happen. Why the marshal had it in for him, Slocum didn’t know, but the murderous intent in the portly man’s eyes was obvious. The more people who knew he was in custody and not likely to try an escape, the safer he was.

  Willingham fumed at how Slocum tried to box him in. What worried Slocum the most was the chance that Willingham would throw Mirabelle in jail, too, then kill them both in a staged escape.