by Logan, Jake
Slocum released Marianne, guilty about holding her the way he had been with two young boys looking on.
“It’s all right. Mr. Slocum saved me from . . . from being robbed of something very valuable.”
“Carstairs,” the taller boy said, almost spitting it out. Slocum sat a little straighter on the bed. Something about his voice reminded him of his brother, Robert.
When the boy stepped into the room and the lamplight caught his face, Slocum almost blurted something better kept penned up. The boy might sound like his brother but he was the spitting image of . . . John Slocum.
“John, this is my son, Randolph.”
“Randolph was my pa’s name,” Slocum said, more to himself than to Marianne.
“I know.”
He looked sharply at her, but she pointedly refused to meet his gaze. Randolph had the same lank dark hair Slocum did, and if he could tell in the dim light, his green eyes matched perfectly.
“How old are you, Randolph?”
“John, don’t—” Marianne was cut off by her son’s reply.
“I’m almost thirteen. Will be in six months, at least. This here’s my best friend, Billy.”
“I should introduce you properly,” Marianne said. “William McCarty, Randolph Lomax, this is my friend from Georgia, Mr. Slocum.”
Randolph fingered a knife he held behind his back, thinking Slocum didn’t see it. From where he stood, the boy had his back to a mirror set into a dresser at the corner of the room that allowed Slocum to see everything. The other boy, Billy, might have a small pistol in his pocket. Slocum couldn’t tell, but the heft and size of the lump was about right for a derringer. They were a dangerous pair, Randolph and Billy.
“Who shot out the window?” Billy asked.
“Bet it was that son of a bitch Carstairs,” Randolph said.
“You go wash your mouth out with soap, Randolph Robert Lomax! You will never use such language in my presence.”
“Aww, Ma.”
Slocum felt as if his guts had been turned inside out and then tied into knots. Randolph had been his pa’s name and Robert was his brother. And how had the boy come to use his ma’s maiden name?
“It’s all right,” Slocum said, “because I’m thinking on what he’s saying. We should get Whitehill on his trail.”
“We’ve been over this, John. He won’t do it.”
“Naw,” Randolph said, “he’s as scared of Carstairs as everyone else is in this town. Everyone except Jack. He ain’t afraid of no man, including the likes of Lester Carstairs.”
“He’s gonna marry Randolph’s ma,” Billy piped up. The boy was slight and pale. His hands moved nervously, but something in his eyes spoke to Slocum. He sounded older than Randolph, although he looked to be the same age or even younger because of his size.
“She told me,” Slocum said. “When’s Jack due back?”
“He’s overdue by a couple days,” Billy said, again assuming the role of spokesman for the Lomax family. “That don’t mean much. He’s a prospector and a damned fine one, too. He promised me a job in a new mine.”
“When? When did he do that?” demanded Randolph. “He never said nuthin’ ’bout a new mine. He—”
“Boys,” Marianne said sharply enough to silence their bickering. “I need to get some sleep. Why don’t you show Mr. Slocum out?”
“Can’t he figure it out on his own?” Randolph looked irritated.
“Your ma wants us to show some manners,” Billy said. “You don’t want to go out through the lobby. Miz Gruhlkey is a stickler for propriety. You’d never answer enough of her questions to keep from her whackin’ you with her broom, the old witch.”
“We can go through the cellar. Then . . .” Randolph and Billy put their heads together, plotting the sneakiest departure.
“You can trust them to get you out past Mrs. Gruhlkey, no matter how sharp her eyes are for such things.”
“What do you want to do about Carstairs?” Slocum asked.
“He won’t dare try anything again.”
“I’ll make sure of that.”
“John, please, don’t get involved.”
He already was. Slocum let the boys lead him down a laundry chute to the cellar, then crawl out a narrow window into the alley where he had pulled down the drainpipe in his climb up to Marianne’s window. The boys disappeared like ghosts, leaving him to stare at the window.
After a few minutes the light went out, but Slocum heard the sobbing for some time. He went to the building immediately behind the hotel, sank down, drew up his knees, and rested his forehead there. He slept fitfully until sunrise, but Carstairs never returned.
And with the rising sun warming his face, Slocum remembered what he had heard Carstairs saying in the room to Marianne.
• • •
“This isn’t something the sheriff’d take care of, Slocum,” Dangerous Dan Tucker said as he sipped a cup of coffee strong enough to clean the gunpowder out of a rifle barrel.
Slocum stared out the café window into Silver City’s main street. Commerce had begun early, and the bustling trade told him how much money there was to be made in a boomtown. The miners would mostly go bust, with a very few hitting it rich. Those who made the real money sold the miners picks and dynamite, wheelbarrows and overalls. Without flour for biscuits and oatmeal and beans, a prospector starved. Slocum had never seen one of them who’d take the time to hunt or forage. That stole away precious time better spent hunting for the elusive precious metal, whether it was gold or silver.
“Carstairs is that important?”
“Don’t know the ins and outs yet of the town, but yeah, I’d say so from what I’ve heard,” Tucker admitted. “The Argent Mine is one of the biggest. Without its metal flowing into the banks, the saloons, and all the rest, Silver City would be a shadow of itself.”
“Where could that silver go, if not here?”
“Shakespeare’s a day or two ride off. You been there with the sheriff?”
“Almost there,” Slocum said.
“The stagecoach route runs through Shakespeare. Put the silver on the stage and it goes to banks in Mesilla or El Paso.”
“I ’spect Whitehill is more worried about Carstairs turning his crew loose on the town.”
“That would be a consideration, too, Slocum.” Tucker drained the coffee. “If I was you, well, you can finish that thought all by your lonesome. Have never taken you for a dull boy.”
Slocum could figure out what the deputy meant with no trouble at all. Dan Tucker might wear a deputy’s badge, but he was more outlaw than lawman at heart. He was saying Slocum should handle the problem with Carstairs rather than waiting for Whitehill to get around to it.
“How pissed will the sheriff be if he finds I’ve left town? He is still sitting on a body I was carting around in a block of ice.”
“About that, Slocum. You know Marianne Lomax real well, from the way you have been goin’ on about her.”
“We both come from the same town in Georgia.”
“I—never mind. Got to go.” Tucker stood and started from the café so fast Slocum thought somebody had lit his ass on fire. He had never seen Tucker so edgy.
The deputy stopped at the doorway but didn’t turn as he said, “You might tell Marianne to go on by the jailhouse to talk to Whitehill. Not sure you want to be with her when she goes.”
“Wait, Dan.” But Slocum spoke to thin air. Tucker almost ran off, leaving Slocum to scratch his head, wondering what it all meant.
He finished his breakfast and was on his way out when he bumped into Marianne, looking radiant in the morning sun.
“I hoped to find you here, John. This is about the only restaurant in Silver City that doesn’t poison its customers and then bury the bodies out back.”
“Good food. The deputy paid for my breakfast.�
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“You’re short on funds,” she said, nodding. He watched her pensive mood turn into something harder, more determined. “Come out to the house with me.”
“The one Carstairs burned?”
“I don’t know if you can find anything that’ll prove he was the culprit, but you know more about what to look for than I do, I’m sure.”
“Because I killed a judge?”
Marianne turned somber.
“Because you have experience far beyond that, unless I miss my guess. What I’ve had to do to stay alive and keep Randolph fed went down a different road.”
“What do you mean by that?”
She looked up at him, her bright blue eyes boring into his soul. Her auburn hair gleamed in the sun, and shadows cast on her cheekbones gave her a gaunt, haunted look.
“You know what I mean.”
And he did. Selling her body to keep food on the table didn’t set well with him, but he had done things more criminal. Killing men was the least of it, though he had never hired out to murder anyone. That didn’t hold down the number of corpses he’d put into early graves, but there were worse things than what Marianne had done.
“This man you’re going to marry, Jack. Doesn’t he—”
“Don’t talk about him, John. Texas Jack is a fine man, but he isn’t above a swindle or two if it suits him. He loves me, and I love him.”
For a moment Slocum missed what she had said. Then it hit him like a ton of bricks falling on his head.
“Texas Jack Bedrich?”
“Why, yes, you’ve heard of him?”
Slocum stared at her, not sure what to say. Marianne started to say something more, then her eyes went wide and she covered her mouth with her hand. Shaking her head, she backed from him. The wildness in her expression came rushing out as she cried, “No, John, don’t say it. Don’t tell me something’s happened to him!”
“He’s dead,” Slocum said. More than once as an officer in the army and after, he had delivered such bad news to wives and lovers, mothers and children. As much as he wanted, there were not words to soften the blow. Easing into the news never worked. Quick, brutal, get it over with. That was for the best.
“You? You killed him?”
“No, but I brought his body in to the sheriff.”
“What happened?” She had gone pale, and her hands shook, but the steely determination he had seen in Marianne before held her together now.
“I don’t know how he died. A bullet. But who killed him?” Slocum shook his head. “I was attacked by road agents and fought off an Apache war party. A man named Frank was—”
“Frank? He killed Jack?”
“Don’t know that, but it’s possible,” he said. No matter how much he, Whitehill, and Tucker hashed out everything that had happened on the trail, Bedrich’s killer could never be determined that way alone. They needed more than palaver. They needed evidence.
“He and Jack had a falling-out months ago.”
“Over you?”
“I don’t think so. Frank fancied himself a ladies’ man, but he hardly gave me a second look when he was with Jack. I heard him muttering about me being a whore and how he’d never sully his organ by—”
“The sheriff thinks they broke off their partnership over a claim.”
“He and Jack had a decent strike. It produces enough for one man to get along, but not two. Jack talked about selling out his share, but then he stopped all mention of it because something else occupied his every thought.”
“Other than you?” Slocum asked.
This brought a tiny smile to her lips that faded quickly.
“He was a driven man, completely consumed by whatever interested him at any given time. Oh, he loved me, but he also loved other things.” Marianne smiled ruefully. “That’s why I thought I’d found a real man. Finding silver was as important to him as I was.”
Slocum heard more in her words that wasn’t stated. He hesitated to ask how Texas Jack and Randolph got along. Marianne doted on her son, but too often stepchildren were ignored when a woman remarried.
“Frank is somewhere in the area,” Slocum said. “He didn’t wait for the sheriff to question him, but I can’t figure how he had a chance to kill Bedrich. Carstairs, though, is another matter.”
“Carstairs,” she said. “I had almost forgotten about him.” She took a step toward the livery stable, then shifted and started in the other direction before turning and stumbling into Slocum. “I’m sorry. I’m so confused, so shocked.” She fixed him with her steady gaze. Tears had welled in her eyes. “The truth, John. Did you kill Jack?”
“No.” He didn’t hesitate, he didn’t waver. “But I’ll find out who did.”
“For me?”
“For justice,” he said. He saw her accept his promise and that he meant he’d find who killed her fiancé or die trying.
10
“He was going to be gone for a week,” Marianne said listlessly. “Only a week. It had been more than two, but Jack never was good at knowing what day it was if the passion caught him.”
Slocum had nothing to say. Marianne rode behind him on the horse, arms circling around his waist, as they both rode bareback out to where the house had been burned to the ground.
“I don’t know what’s going on anymore, John. I don’t. How can I tell Randolph about Jack’s death?”
“Boys take news better than you think. Randolph will, too. How’d he get on with Jack?”
“Not that well. There was an immediate fire between them, but Randolph is like that with everyone. Always locking horns. Just his age.” She paused, then added, “His age and Billy. Billy’s a bad influence, but there aren’t many boys in town around Randolph’s age.”
“He’ll be all right,” Slocum said. “He probably knew before you did that Jack was dead.”
“Or Billy did. I swear, that boy must live with his ear to the ground. He knows everyone and everything that happens in town. He ought to work for the newspaper as a reporter.”
Slocum’s nose wrinkled as he approached the house. The stench of burned wood and belongings would take weeks to disappear. A few good rains might erase the smell, but it had been dry so far this year. He drew rein and looked down at the charred frame, the sofa burned down to its springs, the items that had been Marianne’s world and history.
“That the front door? Or where it used to be?” He pointed to the far side of the ruins.
“I reckon Carstairs came from the trees and heaved the bottle of kerosene in with the burning rag stuffed into it, then hightailed it back to the woods.”
Marianne slid off the back of the horse and walked around. Slocum remained mounted as she began poking through the debris. He urged his horse toward the stand of trees, studying the ground for tracks. It had been too long for him to get any proof anyone had come this way, much less Carstairs. Just thinking on the man brought back the vivid image of Carstairs holding Marianne pinned to the bed, about to rape her.
He sucked in his breath and stared into the undergrowth, not really seeing anything. He heard Carstairs’s words again. He had wanted Marianne to give him something—but had he meant sex? Holding her in such a compromising position had led Slocum to believe Carstairs wanted to rape her, but there might be other explanations.
“‘Give it to me,’” Slocum repeated. Why had Carstairs burned her out and run away when he could have raped her as she fled the house?
“John, can you give me a hand with this? It’s my cedar chest.”
He rode back slowly, then dismounted and went to where Marianne struggled to pull a blackened box from under a mound of cinders. Fumbling around for a moment, he found the handle and tugged. It came off in his hand, forcing him to burrow down farther and get under the chest. A quick heave brought it out.
“I hope nothing inside is too burned.” Marian
ne pried open the lid and smiled almost shyly. “It’s got most of the things I brought from Calhoun,” she said. She dug through the seared clothing as Slocum began searching the house.
“Tell me what happened the night Carstairs burned you out,” he said, standing by the front door. The fire had destroyed the frame entirely, but the door panels were intact. He used one of the fallen panels as a scoop to find the melted bit of glass from the bottle that had ignited the fire.
“Well, it’s a bit embarrassing,” she said, never looking up as she pulled out baby clothing that must have been Randolph’s. Marianne carefully laid it aside and continued her hunt. “I was with, well, I was with Clem, who was going to pay me for my favors. The bank had warned me I couldn’t miss another payment or the house would be taken away.”
“Clem a miner?”
“A moderately successful one, and a nice man.”
“You ever with Carstairs?”
“No! Jack warned me about Carstairs, not that he had to. I saw how Carstairs acted around women and heard how he treated the soiled doves in town.”
Slocum felt a pang that Marianne had been selling herself—that she’d had to.
“Was this the first time he’d barged in? Carstairs?”
“He always circled around like a vulture, but he’d never said more than a dozen words to me. I think he was afraid of what Jack would do if he did.”
“Carstairs is foreman of a big mine. He and Texas Jack have any business dealings?”
“None that I know of. Jack’s only partner was Jim Frank. You know about their falling-out.”
“Jack never gave you any money, to keep the bank from foreclosing on your house?”
“There wasn’t any need. I kept the payments current until Jack went out on business, then he didn’t have any more spare cash than I did.”
Slocum stopped and stared at her.
“You mean the bank told you to pay up or get out after missing only one payment?”
“Two,” she said.
Even in a boomtown, the bank wouldn’t try to foreclose that fast.
“Did Texas Jack piss off the bank president?”