by Jake Logan
He looked like any other gold-panning prospector to Alvin.
“That’s him,” Alvin said. “That’s Dave Sinclair.”
Hiram’s eyes narrowed.
“You’re right, Alvin,” he said. “He don’t look much different from any of those galoots who run off into the hills. That’s what bothers me.”
“What do you mean, Hiram?”
“There’s a book there maybe, but you can’t read it right off. All you see is the cover.”
Alvin’s face fell in puzzlement. He turned away as Slocum sat on a stool at the very end of the bar. From there, he could look over the entire room.
Just like a gunfighter, Alvin thought.
14
Veronica Sweet broke off her conversation with one of her girls when she saw the nondescript man enter the Sawtooth Saloon.
Celeste Dano had been complaining about one of Hiram’s men who had treated her roughly.
“I just don’t want him coming into my room no more, Ronnie,” Celeste said just before the batwings swung open and the man going by the name of Sinclair entered the establishment. “He bit me on the breast and choked me near to death last night. Jerry Bassett is an animal.”
Ronnie raised her hand to halt the conversation when she saw Slocum.
“Hold on a minute, Celeste,” Ronnie said.
Celeste, a strawberry blonde, slender in her costume, puffed her lips in a pout. She saw that Ronnie was gazing beyond her toward the bar. She turned around just as Slocum sat down on a barstool, his back to the bar.
“Humph,” Celeste snorted. “He’s not your type, Ronnie. In fact, he ain’t nobody’s type from the looks of him. Just another grubby old miner.”
“Shut up,” Ronnie said, her gaze still fixed on Slocum.
“I’m not lettin’ Jerry bed me no more.”
“I’ll tell him to leave you alone,” Ronnie said.
Veronica continued to stare at Slocum, much to Celeste’s annoyance.
“There’s something about that man,” Ronnie said.
“What? He’s big, that’s all,” Celeste said.
“No, look. The way he sits at the bar. He is trying to go unnoticed, but a man like that, with a square jaw and broad shoulders, muscles bulging under his shirt. He doesn’t look like any miner I’ve ever seen. More like a lumberjack.”
“So, he’s a lumberjack,” Celeste said.
“No. There’s something about him that reminds me of . . .”
“Of what?” Celeste asked. Her pout returned and sprouted a pair of dimples on either cheek.
“I don’t know. A man I saw once in Denver, or maybe Santa Fe. A tall man dressed in black.”
“This’un ain’t wearing a speck of black,” Celeste said.
“Celeste, how many miners did you see come in here after working their digs with a gun belt strapped around their waist?”
Celeste thought about the question for several seconds.
“Never saw none,” she said. “Never saw any of ’em pack pistols until the day they all lit a shuck out o’ here.”
“So here’s a new one come to town and he walks in here with a pistol on his hip. Mighty peculiar, I think.”
“Well, he’s new,” Celeste said.
“I’m not so sure. He doesn’t look like any prospector I ever saw. Not in town anyways. I know some carry pistols at work, for snakes and such.”
“Like I said, Ronnie, this man is new to town. He don’t know us.”
Ronnie laughed a short, harsh, suspicious hawk full of skepticism.
Just then, the Chinese workers began to come into the saloon, by twos and threes. Celeste looked at them as if she were viewing a circus parade or a freak show.
Ronnie turned to look over at Hiram’s table. Hiram sat there like an emperor on his throne while Alvin had his gaze fixed in her direction. She knew that Alvin had talked to the latest resident of Sawtooth that day, but didn’t know what they talked about.
The Chinese sat at tables and Celeste jumped up from her seat.
“See you later, hon,” she said to Ronnie.
“What a little tart,” Ronnie said to herself.
More Chinese came in and sat at tables. All of Ronnie’s girls were busy taking orders from men who spoke little English and who waved their hands and pointed to convey their wishes. And still, Alvin and Hiram were looking in the direction of the stranger at the bar. Then she saw Alvin rise from his chair and walk toward her, weaving his way through the tables, which were filling up with Chinese men.
“What’s up, Alvin?” she asked as he was about to pass by.
“Boss wants to talk to Sinclair,” he said, pausing for only a moment.
“Oh, is that his name?”
Alvin did not answer, but walked over to where the stranger sat. Joe was just serving him a glass of whiskey from the bar.
She strained to hear what the two men said to each other, but she failed to catch a single word.
A few seconds later, she saw the man named Sinclair pick up his drink and follow Alvin toward Hiram’s table. She looked the man over carefully as he passed. He did not seem to notice her, but she could see the color of his eyes as he approached.
Sinclair’s eyes were green.
She had seen those eyes before, she was almost sure. But where?
Slocum saw the beautiful woman sitting alone at a front table, but deliberately avoided eye contact. He knew she was looking at him and probably wondering if they had ever met before. He had noticed her talking to one of the glitter gals while he was waiting for his Kentucky bourbon, and she had stirred a distant memory just by the way she carried herself and the way her dark black hair framed her lovely face.
A man didn’t forget a woman like that.
And neither did Slocum.
He had seen her once in Kansas City. He had taken a string of horses to a rancher up in that part of the country, two, maybe three years before. After he had gotten paid, he had gone to the Silver Slipper Saloon on the outskirts of town. The woman who sat at that table had been with another man at a dimly lit table near the front window.
Slocum had not been there five minutes before a man came into the saloon and started beating up on another man seated at the bar a few feet from Slocum.
Slocum had called the man out. The man went for his gun and would have shot Slocum on the spot. The man was consumed with a blind rage.
Slocum’s draw was faster.
His .45 barked, and the man doubled up with a slug in his gut. The man who was being beaten up embraced Slocum.
The man Slocum shot died there in a few minutes, his moans of pain cut short by a fountain of blood that gushed from his throat and mouth.
The dead man was a wanted outlaw, and everyone offered to buy Slocum a drink. But he touched a finger to his hat and left the saloon.
The woman had seen the whole thing.
Slocum never knew her name, but he remembered that beautiful face and the luxuriant crown of hair that draped her shoulders. Those sparkling blue eyes. That sensuous mouth. They had made eye contact for just a brief moment before Slocum parted the batwing doors and strode outside into the Kansas night.
He wondered if the woman remembered him. They had never met, but he was sure he had made some kind of impression on her. If she remembered that gunfight in Kansas City, and if she told anyone, especially Bledsoe, then his disguise would no longer work and he’d be facing a town full of gunslingers all out for his blood.
He forgot about the woman as he and Alvin approached the table where he would be under another microscope.
“My boss, Mr. Bledsoe, wants to meet you, Sinclair. Bring your drink and follow me, will you?”
That was what Alvin had said when he came up to the bar.
And now, he was about to meet the man responsible for driving
the miners out of Sawtooth and jumping their claims.
He hoped his disguise would hold.
It wasn’t every day that a mortal man came face to face with the Devil.
He looked at the blurred faces of the Chinese men who were sitting at the tables. They all looked at him as he passed by, as if he were some kind of hero. He saw the look of worship in their rapt expressions and then he focused on the man sitting at the back table.
Hiram Bledsoe.
He knew the name. He knew the man’s reputation, at least among the miners. But the man himself was unknown to him.
Alvin stopped at the edge of Bledsoe’s table.
“Mr. Bledsoe, this is Dave Sinclair. Dave, my boss, Hiram Bledsoe.”
“Have a seat, Mr. Sinclair,” Bledsoe said, indicating the chair at his left.
Alvin sat down at Hiram’s right.
Slocum set his drink down and looked at Bledsoe, feigning curiosity and innocence. A lamb confronting a wolf.
Bledsoe did not extend his hand. Neither did Slocum.
“Alvin tells me you don’t know beans about prospecting, Sinclair,” Bledsoe said. “So what are you doing in Sawtooth?”
Bledsoe’s manner was definitely hostile. But Slocum wasn’t about to walk into that trap. Not yet.
For now, Slocum would be the innocent, dumb, humble greenhorn he was pretending to be.
It was a role he had never played before, but he had met such men since leaving Georgia and he knew how they behaved.
Slocum swallowed hard and his hand trembled slightly as he cupped his drink glass.
He rubbed a hand over the beard stubbled on his face and shrugged like an inferior man facing his superior.
“I heard there was gold to be found here,” he said in a deliberately quavering tone of voice. “And I come to see if I could line my pockets with dust.”
Bledsoe looked at Slocum as if he were something that had crawled out from under a rock.
Alvin shifted in his chair. The legs scraped against the hardwood floor as he moved it an inch or two.
Slocum felt that his fate was hanging suspended just above his head, like a double-bladed ax about to fall on his neck.
There was something in Bledsoe’s eyes that he had seen before, a slight look of madness, a flaring of evil that resided somewhere inside the man.
Superiority, yes, but something else, too. Arrogance and cunning.
Bledsoe would not be fooled easily, Slocum thought in that brief second. While his words hung in the air, his answer weighed on Bledsoe’s mind like wet ink on a dry blotter.
It seemed an eternity before Bledsoe responded.
And in that eternity of timeless vacancy, Slocum’s hands itched and twitched to reach out and grasp Bledsoe by the throat and squeeze the breath out of his lungs until he was dead and breathed no more.
Instead, Bledsoe reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigar. He held it out to Slocum.
Slocum held his breath.
Alvin grinned.
Bledsoe tilted his head downward slightly.
“Have a smoke, Mr. Sinclair,” Bledsoe said, and it was not a question, but a command.
Slocum felt all the tension stream out of his shoulders.
He flashed a sheepish smile and reached for the cigar.
Bledsoe smiled benignly, indulgently.
He held on to the cigar as Slocum tugged on it. For just a split second, but it was enough to tell Slocum that Bledsoe had the upper hand and he meant to keep it.
And for now, Slocum would let Bledsoe have his way.
But just for now.
15
Slocum took the cigar from Bledsoe’s fingers. He did not hurry, nor snatch it, but handled the wrapped tobacco as though it were a gift from a king.
Alvin struck a match.
Slocum bit off the end, plucked the tip from his mouth, and set it in the ashtray.
He leaned toward the lit match and touched the end to flame. His cheeks contracted as he pulled air through the cigar.
“Thanks,” he said to Bledsoe. He drew smoke into his lungs and blew a stream of blue smoke out of the side of his mouth. “Good smoke,” he said.
Bledsoe smiled indulgently.
“You think you can make a living with a pan and a sluice box, Sinclair?” Bledsoe asked.
“I got a little color today. There’s gold here in that valley.”
“Sure, but you don’t look Chinese to me,” Hiram said.
“Huh?” Slocum said, as if he had missed Bledsoe’s point.
Alvin’s face wrinkled as he flashed a broad smile.
“You probably didn’t find ten dollars’ worth of gold in that creek,” Bledsoe said. “So you’ll never get rich breaking your back over a gold pan.”
“Not likely,” Slocum said.
“We got Chinese coolies to do that kind of work.”
“So I see,” Slocum said.
“On the other hand, maybe you could come to work for me.” Bledsoe sipped his drink and watched Slocum’s face for a reaction.
“What would I be doing, Mr. Bledsoe?”
“Can you shoot that pistol you’re packin’?”
“I have shot it a time or two,” Slocum replied.
“Hit anything?” Bledsoe asked.
Slocum uttered a harsh laugh that might have been taken as apologetic. He hoped so.
“I shot me a jack rabbit once,” Slocum said, his features reflecting the shame he was trying to convey.
“Ever shoot a man?” Bledsoe asked.
“Not intentionally,” Slocum lied. He said it with a blank look and a fixed gaze on Bledsoe’s face. “Might have scared one or two what was trespassing on my farm down in Georgia.”
“So you have shot at men before,” Bledsoe said.
“Over their heads, I reckon.”
“You pack a pistol like you mean to use it, Sinclair,” Bledsoe said. “That shows me a man who ain’t afraid to defend hisself.”
“Well, I wouldn’t let nobody shoot me if I had a chance to shoot them first.”
Bledsoe looked over at Alvin.
“What do you think, Alvin? Think I ought to hire Mr. Sinclair, maybe teach him a few things about gunplay?”
“Well, when you took on Cass Hobart, he was as green as a willow shoot. He learned how to protect himself. And your interests, Hiram.”
“That’s right, he did. And somebody shot Cass dead. So I’m short a man all of a sudden.”
Slocum swallowed hard and puffed on the cigar. He wreathed his head in smoke when he exhaled and blew through his open mouth.
“Dave,” Alvin said, “you come to work for Mr. Bledsoe here and you’ll have money in your pocket and join a good group of men.”
“Do I have to shoot anyone right off?” Slocum asked. He was the picture of innocence and gullibility.
“Not right off,” Bledsoe said. “Maybe never. You got a rifle?”
“Nope,” Slocum said. “I sold mine when I went broke on the last dig.”
“But you can shoot one,” Bledsoe said.
“I won me a turkey once’t,” Slocum said. “Targets at a hundred yards.”
“I pay forty a month and found,” Bledsoe said. “To start. Pay can go up. Unlike swishin’ creek water around in a pan.”
“That’s mighty generous,” Slocum said. “Better’n ranch hand wages.”
“And a hell of a lot less work,” Alvin said, a smile on his face.
Bledsoe studied Slocum’s expression to see if he could read anything sinister or deceptive there. He was suspicious of any stranger, especially since all the miners had fled his town. But there was something about this Sinclair that intrigued him. He didn’t seem to be cut from the same cloth as the prospectors and miners who had filed claims, then banded together
to buck him. He felt that not only the town of Sawtooth belonged to him, but all the riches that anyone found within hailing distance. He did not see himself as greedy, but as a businessman with vision who was benevolent at heart.
Slocum surprised Bledsoe, however, with his answer to the job offer.
“I’d like to think it over, Mr. Bledsoe,” Slocum said. “I still think I can make a good living. I know there’s gold here, and I’d hate to walk away from it right off.”
“You’re making a big mistake, Sinclair,” Bledsoe said.
“I just need to think it over for a day or so, Mr. Bledsoe.”
Bledsoe’s face flushed and his neck swelled with the sudden flash of anger that rose up in him. Here was a down-and-out prospector who couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Sinclair, he thought, was no better than a sodbuster who wanted free land and free mules. Sinclair was biting the hand that could feed him. His eyes narrowed and his cheeks puffed out so that he looked like a man about to explode.
“You see all those coolies sittin’ at tables in my saloon, Sinclair?” Bledsoe rasped.
Slocum looked at the Chinese men. They were quiet, talking low in their singsong voices, not bothering any of the others in the saloon.
“I see them,” Slocum said.
“I gave them money when they landed here, even though none of them has earned a nickel in wages. I don’t pay them as much as I’m offering you, and yet they are willing to sweat and break their backs for me. You seem to think I’m cheating you. I got coolies to do the kind of work you want to do for no pay at all.”
“I understand that,” Slocum said. “I appreciate your offer, Mr. Bledsoe. It’s very generous. I just want to see if I can find a good vein or pan enough gold from that creek to make myself a mite more money than you’re offering. Just for a day or so. I got a hunch about this valley.”
Alvin squirmed in his chair. He had never heard anyone buck Bledsoe like Sinclair was. It didn’t make any sense to him and he was sure his boss didn’t like to have his offer turned down.
“Two days, then, Sinclair,” Bledsoe said. “After that, I’ll withdraw my offer and you’ll be shit out of luck for any job in this town. And I don’t grubstake prospectors. Understood?”