by Jake Logan
Slocum introduced himself, and the marshal said, “I’ll see the lady on down the road to Señora Gomez’s house. Stable’s yonder, Slocum.” The marshal pointed. Slocum saw an anvil out front and knew the black smithy was likely in the same barn.
“Come by later, Jo—Mr. Slocum,” Angelina said. “Perhaps Señora Gomez will be able to set another place at the dinner table.”
Slocum looked up and guessed the time was just past noon. Staying for dinner meant spending a night in Hedison when he could put five miles or more behind him before sundown.
“Sounds good.”
“She’s a mighty fine cook. You can tell that by Señor Gomez’s waist size.” Hooker arched back and patted the air a couple feet in front of his own lean, flat belly.
“After eating trail grub, that is mighty enticing,” Slocum said. He tipped his hat as Angelina rode on. He heaved a sigh and walked his horse to a saloon. There was a second one halfway down the street, but Hedison didn’t sport them side by side for a hundred yards along both sides of the main thoroughfare like Abilene. That told him as much about the town as anything. Peaceful. Angelina could do worse than settling here, finding herself a trade and a decent man. A merchant, maybe, could probably give her the kind of quiet life she deserved without gunplay and instant death.
As Slocum stepped up to the swinging doors leading into the saloon, he paused. From the corner of his eye he caught a shadow, moving fast. He spun, hand going to his six-shooter, but nothing was there. He squeezed his eyes shut hard, then opened them slowly. This wasn’t the first time he had seen the specter, and it was beginning to annoy him. The times he had been out in the desert without enough water and hallucinating hadn’t been this unsettling. He knew he wasn’t seeing a mirage now, though. Something was there and always just beyond his ability to focus on it.
It was as if someone quick on his feet wanted to stay hidden from him.
Slocum walked to the side of the saloon and looked around. There might have been footprints in the dust, but it was so dry he couldn’t tell. The scuffs ran toward the rear of the saloon. On impulse, Slocum went and looked around there. A man slept under an empty wagon. Otherwise, there wasn’t anybody in sight. From the snoring, the man had been taking his siesta for quite a while, and Slocum wasn’t going to wake him to find out what he already knew.
The man had seen nothing.
He returned to the front of the saloon and paused again. A curious tension in the air made him slip his six-gun halfway from the holster to reassure himself it could get into his hand fast, if needed.
The street was almost empty. A wagon rattled along to the general store, a farmer looking for supplies from the way the driver was dressed. Two men played mumblety-peg, the thunk of their knife momentarily louder than anything else in Hedison. The sound was quickly smothered when a man and a woman began arguing in front of the bakery.
An ordinary day in Hedison. Slocum spun rapidly, thinking to catch sight of the ghostly shadow, but he saw nothing. He went into the saloon and ordered a beer. Two others were drinking, one whiskey and the other warm beer like he did. Slocum was less interested in whiskey to kill the pain of riding for days than he was in beer to cut his thirst. Each poison had its purpose, and he knew which he needed most now.
“You passing through?” The bartender stroked his long beard, then tossed it over his shoulder as he began washing glasses in a bucket. “Never seen you here before.”
“Passing through,” Slocum allowed. He sipped the beer. Although warm, it wasn’t bitter and went a ways toward quenching his thirst.
“Not many jobs in these parts.”
“Farming?”
“Alfalfa, hay, fodder for the horses on the ranches east of here. Nobody’s getting rich, but nobody’s hurting too bad either.”
Slocum and the barkeep idly passed another half hour. Slocum finished a third beer and decided it was time to see if Angelina had settled in.
“Where’s the Gomez house? A friend of mine’s rooming there.”
“All the way through town, left side of the road. About the best kept of the houses there. Has a broke-down wagon in the front but Elena—that’s the señora—grows herbs under it. Uses it for shade from the summer sun. Hard to miss that.”
Slocum agreed. He ran his finger around the rim of the mug once more and captured the last of the foam, then went to the door and stared out. It was still as bright and cloudless, but the tension he had felt before was so thick it felt as if a blanket had been dropped over the town.
Stepping out, he saw that the two men playing with the knife had brought around horses and left them in front of the bank. He found this passing strange because they stood just outside the door into the bank and whispered between themselves. Then they both pulled up their bandannas and whipped out their six-shooters.
Bumping into each other, they crowded through the door into the bank. Shots rang out.
Slocum drew his Colt Navy and started walking for the bank. The two robbers had to come out this way and would be easily captured. He lifted his pistol when the door exploded outward. He fired, jerking the shot high at the last possible instant.
“Robbery!” the man in the door shouted. “We’re bein’ robbed!”
The two outlaws shoved the man to the ground and grabbed for the reins of their horses.
“Stop!” Slocum fired again, but this time, in spite of aiming for the robbers, he missed.
The two mounted outlaws began firing wildly, sending lead in all directions. Slocum kept walking and firing, but the mounted robbers jerked around so much, every shot missed. Then they were galloping from town, heading west. He planted his feet, took aim, and squeezed off a final shot. He missed.
“Drop that iron, mister, or you’re gonna get cut in half!”
Slocum looked over his shoulder and saw the barkeep with a long-barreled shotgun in his hands. The bores were trained on Slocum and looked big enough to stick his head into.
14
“I’ll kill you where you stand if you don’t drop that gun.”
Slocum listened to the cold steel in the voice and knew there wasn’t any chance to escape. Duck, dodge, it wouldn’t matter to a man with steady nerves and a shotgun used to sweep up an entire saloon room full of drunks.
Slocum dropped his six-shooter.
He flinched when the shotgun roared, but the muzzle was aimed high. The discharge was intended to get people out into the street.
Slocum stood with his hands high in the air as he saw Marshal Hooker running down the street. The small man was sweating, and he waved around his six-gun.
“What’s wrong?” the lawman yelled.
“Caught this one robbin’ the bank, that’s what’s wrong,” the barkeep said.
“He just rode into town with that widow woman,” Hooker said, staring at Slocum. “You got a set of brass balls, using that woman the way you did to get me out of the way so’s you could rob the bank.”
By now employees had come from the bank. Two tellers and a man dressed better than them who had to be the president came out, yelling and waving their arms like they could take wing and fly.
Slocum kept his mouth shut. There wasn’t any reason for him to defend himself right now because he had to look guilty with his hands up in the air and an empty six-gun on the ground at his feet. He wasn’t sure how he could talk his way out of it, but he might have a chance to escape when Hooker took him off to jail and there wasn’t a scattergun aimed at his spine.
“I saw you had a hard look to you, but ridin’ with that lovely woman threw me off. I ignored you and thought on her. I oughta string you up just for that,” Marshal Hooker said.
“String him up all you want, Marshal, but get my money back!” The banker came over and continued to wave his arms around to no good effect.
“Where’s the money?”
“His partners rode off with it. They left him when I came out,” the barkeep said.
“What you got to say for yourself, Sl
ocum? You tell us where those owlhoots are ridin’ and might be I can cut you some slack—and I don’t mean a noose, though you probably deserve it.” The marshal came over and bumped his chest against Slocum’s, looking up into his cold green eyes.
“I didn’t do anything but try to stop the robbery,” Slocum said.
“That’s a likely story,” the lawman scoffed. “Come on and—”
“Hold up there, Marshal. What he’s sayin’ is true. Me and him was talkin’ over at the side of the saloon when them two varmints burst out of the bank. Why, Mr. Slocum here, he tole me he’d been robbed like that once and he wasn’t gonna put up with nobody else bein’ robbed.”
Slocum glanced over his shoulder. He wasn’t sure if he was surprised to see Herk. The man got around for being a gimp.
“That so, Slocum?” Hooker looked skeptical.
“What I said before is the truth. I tried to stop the robbery.”
“No good deed goes unpunished, does it, Marshal?” Herk said, dragging his bad leg around so he stood off to one side. If shooting started, he would be out of the line of fire, from either the marshal’s six-shooter or the bartender’s shotgun.
“You swear to that?”
“Marshal, I protest!” The banker huffed and puffed and waved his arms some more. “That… that man might be part of the gang.” He pointed at Herk.
“Naw, he ain’t part of no gang,” said the barkeep. “He comes and goes all the time and never had a bit of trouble with him.”
“You come and go in Hedison?” Slocum asked. All he got from Herk was a smile that came close to being a smirk.
“Don’t remember seeing him in town before,” Hooker said.
“A week or two back he came through, said he was on his way to Abilene.”
“Why’d you come back?” the marshal asked.
“Abilene’s full of cowboys, and they don’t always treat a man with my disability good, Marshal. Folks in Hedison don’t laugh at me or shoot at my feet and make me dance.”
Slocum heard a note of boredom in Herk’s explanation, as if he spoke those same words repeatedly.
“Can I put my hands down, Marshal?”
Hooker frowned, then holstered his six-shooter and motioned for the barkeep to lower the shotgun.
“Reckon you got a good enough alibi. There’s no way I can believe the like of him’s taking part in a bank robbery,” he said, dismissing Herk out of hand. “Might be the town owes you an apology.”
“He didn’t stop the robbery. Where’s my money?”
“They rode due west,” Slocum said. “The time it’s taking for you to figure out I tried to stop the robbery, they might be in Mexico.”
“Naw, that’s too far,” Herk said. “That direction, they’d like as not go fer some waterin’ hole. Lot of empty countryside that way. You know of a place like that, Marshal? Where they could water their horses?”
“Ten miles down the road,” Hooker said.
“Get a posse out there, you fool! Don’t let them hide my money!”
“Not exactly your money, Turnbull,” the marshal said to the banker. “More like the money of a lot of hardworking men in town.”
“How much did they get?” Herk crowded closer, rubbing his hands as if he got to count the money himself.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to do an audit.”
“How much, Turnbull?” The marshal’s tone indicated he wasn’t taking any guff.
The banker looked at his two tellers, as if warning them to keep quiet. Slocum saw the dollar signs spinning in the banker’s eyes, then fade. He sagged.
“Might have made off with a hundred dollars.”
“Fifty in my till,” one teller said.
“Not even thirty in mine,” said the other.
“So it’s eighty dollars those weasels stole. Hardly seems worth the risk.”
“Especially with a fine, upstandin’ citizen like Mr. Slocum tryin’ to stop ’em,” Herk cut in.
“Get your horses,” Hooker called to no one on particular. “We’re puttin’ together a posse to go after a pair of bank robbers.”
“A ten-dollar reward,” Turnbull said.
“Each?” asked Herk. Before Turnbull could say a word, Herk cried, “Ten dollars on each of their heads!”
“I’ll fetch my horse,” the barkeep said. The tellers whispered to each other, then one indicated that he would go. By this time a dozen of Hedison’s citizens had gathered to see what the ruckus was all about. Two more of them volunteered, the reward being more than they were likely to make doing an honest day’s labor in town.
“You, too, Slocum,” Hooker said.
Slocum stared at him.
“I need you along. To identify the owlhoots.”
“How many men are you likely to find on the road hightailing it for Mexico?” he asked.
“I can identify them,” the teller said. “Well, not their faces, but I remember what they were wearing.”
“And the money’ll be in a Hedison State Bank bag,” Turnbull said. “They made them put the money in one of my moneybags.”
Hooker started to say something. Slocum got the idea that there was no love lost between the marshal and the banker, but Hooker spun and went to get his horse.
Slocum and Herk were left alone in the middle of the street.
“You better get a’ goin’, Mr. Slocum,” Herk said. “You don’t want to fall behind. Ridin’ in this heat’s hard enough without pushin’ that fine gelding of yers.”
“Why’d you lie?”
“You was innocent, weren’t you? I couldn’t let no tin star town marshal lock you up for no reason.”
“I did try to stop the robbery,” Slocum said.
Herk snickered.
“Course you did. What’s the names of them friends of yers?” Herk hobbled off, holding his sides from laughter. Slocum bent, picked up his Colt, and reloaded it, wondering if a single shot to the back of the man’s greasy-haired, balding head would be noticed.
He knew it would, but the urge stuck with him even as he slid his six-shooter back into his holster. The marshal rode up and silently pointed for Slocum to mount up. Without any choice, he did as he was bade.
“You sure they rode west?”
“Along the road, galloping until I lost sight of them,” Slocum said. He might be mistaken since he hadn’t been paying much attention to the robbers after the barkeep had gotten the drop on him.
“There’s a hill a mile along the road where we can spot riders for another two-three miles. They can’t have gotten too far,” the marshal said with more confidence than Slocum felt.
“What if you can’t find them?”
Hooker looked hard at Slocum. The answer was in his eyes. No matter what Herk had said, Slocum was the prime suspect for the robbery. He was sorry his aim hadn’t been better. Leaving two dead men with bandannas over their noses and a sack of money clutched in their cold hands would have gone a long way to proving his innocence.
Now he had to catch the robbers and force them to admit they had acted on their own, that they had never seen him before.
Slocum hadn’t paid much attention to them as they played mumblety-peg across the street from the bank while waiting for the right moment to commit the robbery. Thinking back, he wondered why they hadn’t walked into the bank the first time he had seen them. Why give the residents of the town time to identify them before the robbery? It didn’t make any sense, unless they were waiting for a signal.
Slocum glanced over at the teller, who rode easily. He might have been a cowboy at one time, come to town to find a life not as fraught with danger and hardship. Being a teller in Hedison probably paid as little as a range hand, but without the grub being furnished. That could be a powerful incentive to find a couple drifters willing to make quick money. Split three ways, eighty dollars wasn’t much but more than they had at sunrise—and with little risk if the teller was the inside man giving the signal for the safest moment to start the robbery. Each
would ride away with more than he’d earn in a month of punching cows and all for a few minutes of riskless robbing.
Or it might have been the other teller. Slocum got the feeling Turnbull wasn’t much respected. He certainly wasn’t beloved.
“How long has Turnbull had that one working for him?” Slocum asked as the marshal rode closer.
“How’s that? Slick?”
“Slick? He used to be a card player?”
“Best there was, at least in Hedison. We got so few in town, they stopped wanting to play poker with him, so Turnbull hired him at the bank. I think he has Slick palm money and do all the card tricks with greenbacks that he used to do with cards. Never could prove nuthin’.”
“He rides like a cowboy.”
“He was that, too. Came from Indian Territory, I seem to recall. He’s been in town for eighteen months or thereabouts, but he’s not part of the robbery, if that’s what you’re intimatin’, Slocum. He has a woman he treats right and who does well by him. Rumor has it Turnbull’s fixin’ on makin’ him a partner in the bank.”
“Why’d he do a thing like that?”
Hooker sucked on his teeth, then said, “Most folks don’t notice it, but Turnbull’s getting sicker by the day. He never said, but I suspect he’s got cancer inside him, eatin’ him alive.”
“So Slick would inherit the bank?”
“Turnbull never married and doesn’t have any people in these parts. Leastways none he ever mentioned.”
They topped the rise the marshal had mentioned. Slocum reached around, brought out his field glasses, and carefully studied the road, then passed them to the marshal.
“Either they split up or there’s another party moving away from the road.”
“We do get travelers in these parts, Slocum,” the marshal said. “We aren’t that isolated since we’re on the road to Abilene.” He studied the dust clouds, then handed the glasses back. “My money’s on the pair headin’ south. That’s where the watering hole is. Don’t look like the ones on the road even know there’s water within a hundred miles.”