Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216)

by Logan, Jake

  He kicked open the door and looked around the interior. The Damned Shame was usually smoky inside, with everyone puffing away on a stogie or a hand-rolled cigarette. The two went together with serious drinking. Inside the Lazy Ass, men smoked but the air was clear because of the huge cracks in the walls letting through the wind whipping down off the mountains west of town. There wasn’t anything a decent carpenter or even a handyman with some caulking couldn’t fix, but Randall Cassarian wasn’t inclined to spend one thin dime to improve the lot for his customers.

  The short bar owner wore a heavy coat and gloves with the fingers cut out against the chill.

  The man walked behind the bar on old crates so he would be about level with his customers. Slocum guessed Cassarian might not top out at five feet but he had never seen him outside this saloon and didn’t much care one way or the other. Short or tall, the man was bitter and never had a good word for anyone.

  “What the hell are you doin’ in here, Slocum? Lookin’ fer some high-class company?” Cassarian’s high-pitched voice cut like a knife. Slocum ignored it and went to the bar.

  “Heard tell a customer of yours is owed some money.”

  Cassarian’s eyes narrowed.

  “Whatcha sayin’? If any of the lowlifes what come in here owe you money, that’s their business. Either buy a drink or get out.”

  “I’m delivering some money owed to Herb.”

  “Don’t know anybody named that.”

  “Herb Malcolm.” Slocum took out one of the gold coins Mirabelle had given him and spun it on the bar. It fell to its rim and made a final drop, filling the saloon with the distinctive ring of gold against wood.

  “Somebody owes him that?” Cassarian’s eyes never left the coin.

  “I’m delivering this as a favor. Where is he?”

  “Not here. I’ll give it to him.” The bar owner grabbed for the gold, but Slocum was quicker.

  He drew his six-shooter and slammed the butt down on the back of Cassarian’s hand, making the diminutive barkeep shriek in protest. Slocum kept the pressure of the butt against the hand and added the extra incentive of cocking the Colt. It pointed straight at the man’s face.

  “You ain’t got no call to do that.”

  “Just doing my job. Might be, Herb gets generous to the man delivering so much money. Doubt it, but I’m not passing up the chance.”

  “That’s Malcolm, all right. Cheap ass bastard.”

  “Where can I find him?”

  “Outside of town. A mile or two down the road toward Mount Pleasant and a bit south. Him and that no-account partner of his have a camp there.”

  “You got your wish,” Slocum said, letting up on the man’s hand. Cassarian tried again to grab the gold coin but he wasn’t able to bend his fingers right. Slocum snared the coin and returned it to his vest pocket before slipping his six-gun into its holster.

  “What wish’s that?”

  “You got rid of me. And I got my wish, too.”

  “Findin’ where Malcolm squats?”

  “Not having to look at your ugly face.” With that, Slocum stepped away, made sure Cassarian wouldn’t go for a gun under the bar, then spun and stepped out into the brisk autumn wind.

  He turned up his collar as he returned to the Damned Shame to put in his time. Malcolm and his partner weren’t likely to come back into town for a day or two. They’d want any trouble to blow over and have Madam Madeleine and everyone else thinking about other, more recent things than them trying to rob the whorehouse.

  The rest of his workday and night passed slowly and uneventfully. Slocum didn’t even have the satisfaction of throwing the two arguing men out of the Damned Shame because they’d left before he got back.

  * * *

  Slocum had no trouble finding the camp from Cassarian’s directions. For a while he thought he was heading back to the site where Isaac Comstock and the others were murdered, but the sight of a small fire off to his left convinced him he wasn’t returning to the burial ground. He guided his horse through the darkness and watched attentively for any sign Kel or Malcolm was standing watch for intruders.

  From all he had seen of them, he doubted either had the foresight. Even after their failed robbery, they wouldn’t be that alert. He rode almost into their camp before he spotted two filled bedrolls near the fire. The blankets rose and fell with the rhythmic breathing of men passed out from too much booze.

  Slocum didn’t have to examine them to know that. Two empty quart bottles attested to their bender. He dismounted and walked to pick up the first bottle. The label was peeling and faded. He didn’t recognize the brand and decided they must have bought this from the Lazy Ass.

  “Wha?” The man under the blanket nearest Slocum stirred and sat up. He had a six-shooter in his hand. Slocum took two quick steps forward and swung the empty bottle.

  It smashed against the man’s head and knocked him flat on his back. The sound of the breaking glass woke the other man. Slocum whirled around and kicked. The toe of his boot caught the man’s hand and sent his six-gun spinning into the night.

  “You cain’t rob us! What’ve you done to Kel?”

  Slocum kicked again and caught Herb Malcolm in the chest. Then he stepped down, pinning him to the ground.

  “You must be Herb if that one’s Kel.”

  “Who’re you?” Malcolm squinted, trying to focus his bloodshot eyes.

  To clear up those eyes, he’d have to cut his own throat and drain them like a swamp. Slocum wasn’t about to give him the chance to take any weapon in hand.

  “I’ve been sent for you.”

  “Sent? Somebody wants us?” Then the import of that sank into his besotted brain. “No, you cain’t. You—”

  Slocum applied more weight to his boot. Malcolm grabbed at his leg and tried to force him off, but Slocum maintained the pressure until the man passed out.

  He looked around the camp and decided there wasn’t anything of value—not that he expected there to be with a pair of drifters and sneak thieves. For all their careful planning, they weren’t too smart. But then they’d been drunk the night before and they were drunk now. Slocum doubted they strayed much from this state of intoxication.

  Finding their horses, he lashed their bridles together, then looped the single reins around the saddle horn on his mount. It took him the better part of fifteen minutes to cut ropes to bind the men’s hands. He considered leaving behind their boots, then decided whatever Madam Madeleine intended for these two, he ought to deliver them as intact as possible.

  When they’d both recovered enough, Slocum had them put on their boots, then hoisted them to their feet and ran longer ropes from their bound hands to the saddle horn before mounting.

  “We got a ways to go, so you’d better step lively. If you don’t, you get dragged. I want to be back in Grizzly Flats before sunup.”

  Kel and Malcolm cursed for almost a mile, then he picked up the pace and forced them to half run to keep from being dragged. They realized he wasn’t fooling and would not bother letting them up should they fall. Slocum had set himself a time limit of sunrise to reach town. He bettered that by twenty minutes.

  “You—you cain’t turn us over to that bitch!” Kel protested. “She’ll do us harm!”

  “He’s right,” Malcolm cried. “She’ll murder us!”

  “Is that so, Madeleine?” Slocum asked when the tall woman strutted out onto the back porch. “You intending to kill these two sneak thieves?”

  “Not at all, sir,” she said, grinning from ear to ear. “Why, my girls have nothing but special treatment in store for them.”

  She gestured and four women came from inside the cathouse. Slocum looked them over and decided their employer might be lovely but had lower standards when it came to hiring. Two were fat to the point of waddling. Another
made up for it. Her skeletal frame allowed her clothing to flap about her body. The fourth looked as if she was better suited to work the mines. Slocum vowed never to arm-wrestle her. He would lose.

  “Give our special guests a good bath, ladies,” Madeleine said.

  The powerfully built woman stood, looking up at Slocum, and asked, “What about this one? I could just eat him up.”

  “Now, now, Esther, leave something for me to do,” Madeleine said. She laughed at Slocum’s wry grin.

  The four hookers grabbed the men and shoved them toward a bathhouse. Slocum didn’t see smoke curling up from the stove and asked about that.

  “Hot water for their baths? Don’t be absurd. I’m not going to that much trouble for them.” Barely had Madeleine said this than outraged cries came from the bathhouse. Malcolm and Kel were being scrubbed down with water mixed with ice.

  Slocum dismounted and hitched up the horses to an iron ring set high on the back wall. Customers likely came in this way, not wanting to be seen entering the front door. Madeleine’s four whores came back, pushing the two naked men in front of them.

  “My, my, the cold’s caused something to shrink,” the madam said, looking at two exposed crotches.

  “’Twarn’t so big to start, but they did smallify real quick,” said the scrawny woman.

  “Why don’t you take our freshly scrubbed guests inside? To the cellar.”

  “Please, I cain’t take more o’ this,” Kel said, his teeth chattering. “I’m getting frostbit.”

  “Then you’ll like it when my girls warm you up.”

  Slocum looked sharply at Madeleine, wondering what she had in mind. It wasn’t what Kel and Malcolm thought. Both men still shook from the cold, but smiles lit up their ugly faces.

  “Down to the cellar,” the redhead ordered. A cellar door swung open and the two men were shoved down.

  “You want to watch, Mr. Slocum? It can be instructive.”

  “I’ve seen Apaches torture their captives,” Slocum said.

  “Oh, my, no! We’re not savages. We are . . . ladies.” Madeleine kicked shut the cellar door. “My girls will tie them down, naked of course, then show them how exciting it can be to have a feather drawn all over their bodies. Then they’ll soak their feet in saltwater and let a couple goats lick it off.”

  “After hiking all the way back to town, that sounds a mite painful.”

  “There’s a thin divide between pleasure and pain. Both of them might just die laughing as the goats have their way with them.”

  “Might be the goats know them already,” Slocum said. This produced a genuine peal of laughter from the madam.

  “Do come inside where it’s warm, Mr. Slocum. You have delivered what I asked for. It is up to me to give as good in return.”

  He followed her up the back steps, torn between watching the sway of her bustle and trying to ignore the shrieks of increasingly hysterical laughter coming from the cellar. Somewhere he remembered hearing that this kind of torture had been used by European torturers years back. There were more ways to torment a man than with a branding iron or knife.

  “Don’t go feeling too bad for them,” she said, ushering him into the sitting room. “I am sure they are the ones who peeped through the windows as my girls worked. Once I am sure they spied on me undressing. They are despicable examples of humanity.”

  “And they tried to rob you.”

  “Money is replaceable. A woman’s dignity is more difficult to mend.” She looked at him and shook her head. “You don’t believe soiled doves can have dignity?”

  “Doesn’t seem to go with the job,” he said.

  “We can, we do. Not all of us, but I prefer to run my establishment in that fashion however possible.” She poured more whiskey for him, indicated he should sit in the love seat, and then sank down beside him.

  He was aware of the warmth from her leg pressing into his and the exotic perfume she wore. It wasn’t applied like most whores. It was more subtle, only a drop or two meant to incite his senses. It worked. He took the whiskey and held it up for a toast.

  She clicked glasses with him as he said, “To a job well done.”

  “That is important to you, isn’t it, Mr. Slocum?”

  “A man has to live by something. You want dignity, I want to do the honorable thing.”

  “It no doubt gets you into some real pickles,” she said. She sipped at her drink and looked at him coquettishly over the rim. Then she downed the rest in a gulp and gingerly put the empty glass on a side table. “Your honor requires you to find what I know.”

  Slocum said nothing. He knocked back his whiskey and set the glass on the rug beside his foot so he wouldn’t have to reach past her to the side table.

  “Very well. You wanted information about the treasure up in the hills. Here’s what I know.” Madeleine settled back so she could look at him from an angle. Her leg pressed more firmly into his in this position.

  Slocum felt himself responding to her warmth, her nearness, then forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying.

  “There likely is a considerable amount of gold hidden away in those winding canyons,” she started. “Last year about this time, four men robbed a train up north of a large quantity of gold on its way from the Carson City mint to the bank vaults in San Francisco. I never heard the details of the robbery.” She primly pressed her skirts flat. “That wouldn’t interest you, would it, Mr. Slocum? I am sure you have come up with your own schemes to rob trains successfully.”

  She watched him for a reaction. He tried not to even blink. This was a woman who accumulated all the tiny details of a man in order to manipulate and control him. The less she guessed about Slocum, the better off he would be.

  “A posse immediately formed and chased the robbers into the mountains and all about for some days. Two of the train robbers where killed. The other two were captured some days later, but without the gold.”

  “They hid it?”

  “That is the story. The federal deputy marshal leading the posse had his orders. He strung up the two men.”

  “And one told the deputy where the gold was hidden in exchange for being released?”

  “Astute, but then perhaps you have been in a similar situation. That of the deputy, of course.” She still poked and prodded, watching for any response.

  “The two thieves were duly hanged. Perhaps one told the deputy where the gold was hidden, but the deputy had a streak of larceny in him. To immediately go to the hiding place meant the others in the posse would know it had been recovered. A small reward might have been offered.”

  “But the deputy wouldn’t be able to collect. It was his job to recover the gold.”

  “That is the rumor. The deputy knew but returned with his posse to Sacramento.”

  “And?”

  “And barely had he ridden into town than he was shot from the saddle by a jealous lover. Or perhaps it was a man he had arrested at some earlier time. I prefer the story to include a spurned lover. He was taken to a doctor’s surgery, where he died.”

  “A deathbed confession and he told the doctor where to find the gold?”

  “That would explain how someone in Sacramento came to know the location and relate it to those murdered out in the mountains, including the husband of the woman you share your hotel room with.”

  “She didn’t know any of that.”

  “Indeed? Or perhaps she chose not to tell you. The lure of gold might be more compelling than the life of a husband—or lover.”

  “Who massacred them?”

  “Your Mirabelle’s husband and friends? Why, that I do not know. It likely was someone in Grizzly Flats since everyone here is always on the lookout for gold coins lying around. The lure of thousands of dollars from a train robbery would be irresistible.”

/>   “To you, too?”

  “Why, yes, Mr. Slocum, to me also. I am only human. More than this, I have learned to give in to my weaknesses since they are far more fun than anything from my saintly urgings. However, I value some things more highly than I do gold. My freedom, for instance. The chance to determine my own destiny. As you have discerned, I have an overwhelming need to be in control.”

  “You have any idea who in town might be responsible? For the killings out in the mountains?”

  “I cannot help but think whoever kidnapped you after Eckerly’s funeral and those killers are one and the same.”

  Slocum was disappointed. He had come to the same conclusion, but couldn’t put any names to the masked men responsible for almost killing him.

  “Thanks,” he said, getting up. On impulse he took Madeleine’s hand and kissed the back, then turned it over and kissed her palm.

  “You are a constant source of amazement to me, Mr. Slocum. Do come back when you find the killers—and the gold.”

  “Perhaps I will,” he said.

  He reached the door before she called after him, “If you don’t find either, do think on coming back anyway.”

  He stepped out into the light of a brisk, new day and went back to the hotel where Mirabelle slept peacefully.

  10

  Slocum sat in a chair at the back of the Damned Shame and watched the customers come and go. Tonight was slow, and there wasn’t a lot for him to do other than talk to the men and try to get them to buy just one more drink. This part of his job didn’t appeal to him. Men shouldn’t be enticed into drinking more. Hell, most of them had to be convinced not to drink till they puked their guts up on the sawdust-covered floor. Still, Slocum knew that the better business Malone did, the more likely he was to pay Slocum.

  The autumn weather was turning colder as it edged into outright winter, and Slocum considered staying in Grizzly Flats. If he decided that wasn’t the thing to do, he had to move on soon. He had taken the two gold coins from Mirabelle to find who had murdered her husband, but the trail kept winding around and coming at him from the wrong direction. Whoever had taken him out into the hills and beat on him were tied into the killings. He was sure of that. If for no other reason than to get revenge on the men, staying in Grizzly Flats seemed likely.