by Logan, Jake
Willing hands whipped a couple sweaty, dirty bandannas around the miner’s eyes. Marianne waved her hand in front of Hal’s face to be sure he couldn’t see, then she stepped back.
“All right, everyone, you watch real close. And watch him so he can’t see how I’m fixing the drinks.”
She rattled bottles, clinked shot glasses together, and ended up pouring two shots of whiskey from the same bottle. The notion that a fancy drink would be served like a shot worried her, so she rattled more glassware, found a pair of champagne glasses, and poured the shots into them. With a dramatic clink, she touched the two rims together.
Many of the miners laughed themselves sick, holding their bellies and whispering among themselves, but they were in on the joke. The two closest to Hal shouted at him and shoved him back and forth to keep him from overhearing.
“The two drinks are in front of you. Pick the Silver Salud and you don’t pay.”
“Them varmints know which is which?”
Marianne didn’t have to answer. The roar of assent went up and rattled the vigas in the adobe bar’s ceiling.
“All right. Stand back and let a master do his work.” Marianne reached down and guided Hal’s hand to the first champagne glass. She ran her fingers up and down his wrist just enough to encourage him, then held up her hand for silence.
“Got to be fair. Nobody give him any hints,” she called. Marianne smiled as the miner tentatively sniffed at the drink, then flicked out his tongue to taste it.
“Got a kick to it,” he said, “jist like a real Silver Salud.”
“You have to try the other one, remember. You have to decide between the pair of them.
“Both might be Silver Saluds,” Marianne said, egging them all on. This produced a round of new jokes. “Let me put the other one in your hand, Hal.” Again she took his brawny wrist and stroked over it as he slid the stemware crystal glass between his fingers.
He repeated the same ceremony he had before. Then Hal went to sipping first one, then the other, until both were drained. He finally held one glass high above his head.
“This is the Silver Salud. This is it!”
Marianne thought the roof would come off from the laughter.
“You danged fool,” someone called out. “Them’s both nuthin’ but whiskey.”
“Good whiskey, though,” Marianne said. “The best you’ll find anywhere in Silver City. Which of you boys wants a ‘Silver Salud’? Or should I say, ‘Hal’s Silver Salud’?” She held up the bottle of trade whiskey to a roar of approval.
Three bottles later, most of the customers were either passed out or moaning about getting back to their claims. Hal clung to the bar to remain upright. After he’d bought a round for everyone, he found the tide of tarantula juice flowing like a river back in his direction. He hadn’t paid for a drink afterward.
“Gotta ask,” Hal said, leaning forward as if to share a confidence with her. He didn’t quite shout. “What the hell’s a Silver Salud? I heard of ’em in a dive along the Barbary Coast o’er in Frisco.”
Marianne fished about under the bar and dropped a copy of The Yorkshire Bar Guide in front of the miner.
“Look it up.”
“I cain’t read too good. Need my readin’ glasses, you know.”
Marianne flipped through the book. Most of the pages were stuck together or so faded from having liquor and beer spilled on them that they were unreadable. She pressed the book flat and pointed.
“You got a good memory, Hal. This is what goes into a Silver Salud. Equal parts of schnapps, nitric acid, beer, and apple brandy.”
“Sounds tasty,” he said. “You mix me up one of ’em next time I’m in?”
“Sure thing, partner,” she said. “Right now, I got to close the cantina.” She looked to the door where Tom Gallifrey, the owner, stood surveying the interior.
He came over, looking like he had eaten something that didn’t agree with him.
“How’d it go?”
“Good,” Marianne told him. “I don’t have much experience, but I’d say real good.” She pushed the cash box across to him.
His eyes widened at little at the stacks of silver coins mingled with a few gold disks and the piles of greenbacks.
“I did all right for myself, too,” she said, patting her skirt pocket.
“How’s that? You took money? That’s skimming, cheating! Gimme.”
“They were tips. For me,” she said.
“I don’t allow no such thing. All the money’s mine. You get a salary at the end of the month, nothing more.”
Marianne began to fume, then pulled out the wad of money and laid it on the bar as she decided what to do or say. This was hers!
“You be back tomorrow night?” Hal asked.
“Don’t think so,” she said. Tom looked at her.
“You fixing to quit already?” the Lonely Cuss’s owner asked.
“You’re firing me. This is all mine. The customers gave it to me.” She scooped up the money—pretty near ten dollars—and stuffed it back into her pocket.
“Firin’ her? You can’t do that, Tom. Tonight’s the most fun any of us from out at Chloride Flats have had in a month o’ Sundays.”
“Might be the fun can continue in some other saloon,” she said, watching Gallifrey closely. “I’m sure I can get a job building Silver Saluds for you elsewhere.”
“That there’s ‘Hal’s Silver Salud,’” the miner said, grinning from ear to ear.
“Never heard of such a thing,” Gallifrey said.
“She has, and that’s what matters to me and my boys. No reason to come to the Lonely Cuss if Marianne’s workin’ somewhere else in town.”
“Might be there was a misunderstanding,” Gallifrey said, his eyes going back to the cash box filled with the evening’s revenue. “Might be you can keep whatever tips you’re paid if you keep deliverin’ like this.” He tapped the metal box with his forefinger.
“Can’t promise that, but I can promise to try.”
“I’ll buy another round for the house if you stay, Marianne,” Hal said.
“Old-timer, go home. Come back tomorrow when there’re customers in the Lonely Cuss and make the offer then.” She reached across the bar and patted his shoulder. Again she received the broken-toothed smile.
“See ya then, Marianne. G’nite, Tom, you clenched-up asshole, you!” Laughing, Hal barely made it through the door. Outside he began serenading the night.
“You made a friend there,” Gallifrey said uneasily. “He’s foreman at the Work Whistle Mine. Got a dozen men beholden to him.”
“Do tell,” she said, slipping her shawl around her shoulders. “If you don’t mind, I want to get some sleep. This about wore me out.”
Tom Gallifrey looked down into the cash box again and nodded his head once. Feeling vindicated, Marianne followed Hal into the cold New Mexico night. Thin clouds worked their way across the face of an almost full moon casting light as silver as the metal pulled from the ground. The cold mountain air invigorated her. Step quick and stride long, she headed toward the hotel down the street.
Halfway there she got the uneasy feeling of someone watching her. Marianne looked over her shoulder, then started to run. A shadowy figure bolted into the street and chased after her.
She reached the hotel steps, tripped, and fell. Pushing herself up off the steps only got her in more trouble. She slid into her pursuer’s arms. Like bands of steel, he circled her waist with one arm and clamped a callused hand over her mouth. He spun her around so her feet left the ground, robbing her of any leverage at all. In his grip she was helpless.
“You got the pistol we stole?” came a child’s voice.
“I want to shoot him. You promised.”
“You can cut him up. You got a knife.”
The curious argument caused Mar
ianne’s captor to spin back around so she faced the hotel. At the top of the steps stood Randolph and Billy McCarty. Randolph had his knife out. In the bright moonlight the blade glinted like pure silver. He slashed at the air, causing it to turn to liquid and leave deadly trails behind. Billy held something small and dark in his hand.
“Dang it, I can’t get this thumb buster cocked!”
“I’ll stab him then!” Randolph took a step forward as a metallic click cut through the stillness of the night.
Marianne watched in horror as Billy stepped out beside her son and aimed whatever he held in his hand.
As suddenly as she had been seized, she was dropped. Marianne sat heavily in the street, gasping for breath. She looked up and called to Billy, “Give me that gun! I’ll shoot him!”
The boys laughed.
“Did you see the way he lit out like a scalded dog!” Randolph laughed even harder.
“He surely did run like a dog with his tail ’tween his legs,” Billy said. “What a lily-livered coward!”
“Give me the gun!” She fought to her feet and grabbed for the gun, only to find herself holding a kitchen knife wrapped in black paper. He had struck the blade with a small rock to produce the clicking sound that had run off her attacker.
“We don’t have a gun,” Billy said. “We bluffed him!”
“You could have been killed. I could have been killed.” The impact of what she said hit her. Marianne sat on the hotel steps, too shocked to cry or say another word. She had been rescued from robbery and probably worse by two young boys carrying out a bluff.
6
It was past sunup when Slocum tugged back on the reins and stopped the Indian pony. The horse nickered, glad to stand rather than walk with its double load. Down below the rise spread Silver City in a broad, shallow bowl, tents scattered willy-nilly amid dozens of more permanent buildings. The sound of hammers driving nails came to him, giving the impression of a growing town.
Slocum put his hand on the middle of Frank’s back to keep the man from sliding off the horse again. How he had stayed alive gave Slocum pause, but this wasn’t anything he wanted to dwell on. Frank either lived or died. If the long miles to Silver City hadn’t killed him, chances were good the town’s doctor would. Finding a vet might be better, but Slocum didn’t care. Frank had put himself in the line of fire for no good reason.
“Giddyup,” Slocum said, tapping his heels against the pony’s flanks. The horse hesitated, then finally agreed to enter the white man’s town. Its reluctance told Slocum it hadn’t been stolen from some rancher. It was an Apache horse born and bred.
He attracted scant attention as he rode with Frank slung in front of him. The inhabitants of Silver City likely saw more curious things in the course of their day. This was a boomtown and drew men both outrageous and dangerous. Slocum and Frank were neither.
“Where can I find the doctor?” Slocum called to a man struggling to load a sack of flour into a buggy parked in front of the general store.
“All the way across town, over near the sheriff’s office.”
“I’ll need to talk to him, too,” Slocum said.
“You a bounty hunter? Got yourself a desperado?”
“Nothing like it,” Slocum answered. “Highwaymen bushwhacked us.”
“That there’s an Indian horse.”
“So it is,” Slocum said, urging the horse into motion. “Much obliged.”
He rode past several saloons, his thirst increasing with every scent of beer wafting out into the street. There’d be time to wet his whistle when he dropped off Frank and talked some with the law. The goal came into view as Dr. Fuller’s shingle swayed in the morning wind as if beckoning him onward.
“We’re almost there,” Slocum said. Whether he directed the words to the horse or Frank didn’t matter. Neither was likely to understand.
Slocum swung his leg up and over the moaning body and dropped to the ground in time to catch Frank as he slid down, too. Grunting, Slocum got the man over his shoulder and stumbled the few steps to the doctor’s door. He kicked at it with his boot until a youngish blond man with muttonchops and pince-nez glasses opened it.
“You don’t have to kick it down,” the man said irritably. He adjusted the glasses, squinted, and then motioned Slocum inside.
Slocum dropped Frank onto an examining table.
“So what happened? You a bounty hunter?”
“That seems a popular question. Nope, he got shot by road agents.”
“Not you? No, you’d have no reason to bring him in if you shot him. What are you to him?”
“We might work for the same man up in Santa Fe.”
“That’s a strange way to say it,” the doctor said, slipping into a white linen coat. “Do you or don’t you work for the same man?”
“I was driving a wagon to Tombstone from Santa Fe and this one, name of Frank he says, overtook me west of town and said Holst sent him along to keep me company.”
“So this Holst didn’t send him?”
Slocum shrugged. He had no evidence other than what Frank said about that.
“You paying for his care? He’s not shot up too badly, but getting bounced around did more to lay him up than anything else.”
“Contact Holst, New Mexico Ice and Coal Company up in Santa Fe.”
“Yeah, as if anyone out of my sight will pay a dime, even if this gent does work for the company.” The doctor rummaged through Frank’s pockets. His eyebrows rose when he discovered a few greenbacks.
“I’m not a thief,” Slocum said. “I’ll be over at the marshal’s office.”
“Sheriff Whitehill. This is the county seat of Grant County.”
“Thanks,” Slocum said, slipping out into the dusty air that settled on Silver City. Inside the office the doctor’s antiseptic made his nose twitch. Out here the pollution was more in keeping with what he accepted as normal. The smell of horse dung in the streets, outhouses, and rotting garbage all assailed him along with the purity of the sky and the gentle wind keeping the smells from becoming overwhelming.
He walked a dozen yards over to the jailhouse, hesitated a moment, then lifted the latch and entered. It had been a spell since he’d had a run-in with a federal judge back in Calhoun, Georgia, that hadn’t ended well—for the carpetbagger judge. Slocum had been gutshot by Bloody Bill Anderson on William Quantrill’s orders for protesting the guerrilla raid on Lawrence, Kansas. By the time he had recuperated, the war was over and Reconstruction in full bloom.
The judge had forged documents saying taxes had gone unpaid on Slocum’s Stand and had ridden out with a hired gunman to seize the property. He had won the property, but not the way he expected. Slocum had buried him and his henchman by the springhouse and had ridden west, never looking back. For this, wanted posters dogged his steps and made him leery of dealing with any lawman. All it took was one who spent too much time pawing through musty piles of old wanted posters to ruin his day.
A whippet of a man looked up. He pushed back from his desk where a newspaper had been spread open. From the ink smudges on his fingers, he had been reading it running his finger along under each line.
“What can I do for you?”
Slocum closed the door behind him and looked around. The three cells were simple and likely hard to get out of unless you had a key. Iron bars had been well tended, and the dirt floor in each cell might be harder than the adobe in the foot-thick walls. Slocum vowed to stay out of those cells, but from the sheriff’s cordial greeting and the lack of wanted posters put up anywhere around the small building, there shouldn’t be a reason to worry.
“I work as a teamster for an ice company up in Santa Fe,” he said.
“Holst? I know the varmint.” The sheriff tipped back in his chair, hooked his thumbs in the armholes of his brocade vest, and fixed Slocum with a steely look.
�
�Hope he didn’t rook you,” Slocum said, “because I need a lawman to help recover the wagon I was driving.” He explained what had happened. The longer he talked, the more the sheriff scowled.
“You got a name?” the lawman finally asked.
“Slocum.”
“I’ll get a telegram off to Holst about this. I’m Harvey Whitehill.”
Slocum had never heard Holst mention him. He took that as a good thing since Holst could go on about his political and business rivals until a man’s ears fell off.
“Will the man over at Doc Fuller back up what you said?”
“Don’t know if he’s in any shape to. The doctor thought the trip here took more out of him than getting shot.”
“Three outlaws, eh? And Apaches? Them I heard about. A courier from over at Fort Bayard brought around the news a small band of Warm Springs Apaches had left the reservation. Thought they might end up annoyin’ us here in Silver City since this was one of their old campgrounds.”
“I’d heard that,” Slocum said. “But the Indians attacked the road agents more to get the mules hitched to the wagon than what was in it.”
“Only ice?” Sheriff Whitehill shook his head. “Can’t say I wouldn’t mind a chip or two of ice in my whiskey, but these gents were mighty insistent on stealin’ the whole danged block. You got to wonder on that. Where’d they sell it?”
“That thought occurred to me, too,” Slocum said. “It’s likely too late to salvage the ice, but Holst wouldn’t mind seeing the wagon and mules back.”
“Can’t blame him overmuch,” Whitehill said. “Let’s you and me go for a ride.”
“You know the road agents?”
“Can’t say I do, but from where you said they robbed you, there’re only a couple places they could drive a wagon.”
“Along the road over to Tombstone,” Slocum said, “where I was headed.”
“No point in them showing up with the ice if you’d ever challenge them. Might be the only place they could sell the ice, but more ’n likely, they went here.” Whitehill unrolled a map and stabbed down on it. “That’s not more ’n a couple miles south of here.”