by Jake Logan
“What are you getting at?” Slocum met his hard gaze. Sims’s two men came out of the side room. Neither of them looked particularly tough. Juanita crying and pleading in the other room was unnerving. Slocum was waiting on Sims’s answer.
“Let’s go,” Sims said to the pair, and started to leave.
“Sims, you got something to say, say it.”
He cut his brown-eyed glare around to Slocum. “I’s don’t know you business up here. Maybe you’s should find a new country.”
“That a threat?”
Sims shrugged. “You got ears.”
Anger fuming out of Slocum, he watched the big man turn his back to him and then follow the other two out. Slocum followed them to the doorway. They mounted and turned their horses into the dark night without a word.
Juanita’s screams of grief rang in his ears as the three rode away. Had it really been an accident? Manuel’s death? Somehow, he felt that Sims had not expected to find anyone but Juanita at the stage stop. He didn’t bring the corpse back because he was a good guy. The big man had a purpose in all this.
“They say anything else?” Collie Bill asked from behind Slocum as he stood out under the stars watching them ride away.
“No. He told me to leave.”
“Sims?”
“Who else? What can I do?”
“Ride up and get Señora Peralta. Juanita wants her to help make the arrangements.”
“I won’t be back for several hours.” How far it was to the ranch he had no idea, but it wasn’t close by.
Collie Bill nodded. “I can hold things here.”
“I need to ask her some directions.”
Collie Bill agreed, and let him in the side room. On her knees beside the bed, Juanita was clutching her dead husband’s hand and sobbing
“Juanita, I’m sorry, but I need some help on directions to find the señora’s ranch.”
She raised her wet face, nodded, and swallowed. “You follow the creek road. You can’t miss the main headquarters.”
“I’ll be back with her as soon as I can.”
Woodenly, she nodded and turned away as a new flood of tears filled her eyes. Collie Bill thanked Slocum and then knelt beside her to hug her shoulder. “He’ll bring her back here,” he told Juanita.
Slocum left under the stars. The snow had stopped, but fast-passing clouds still cut off the starlight now and then. He short-loped Heck a good ways on the road, which was paved with round creek stones. It was marshy in some places from the melted snow. His sheepskin coat protected him from the cold wind, and he wondered how far away the señora’s place was.
Well past midnight by his calculation, he found the ranch headquarters and several dogs barked. He dismounted at the rack and studied the dark two-story house towering above him. His raps on the door were loud, and echoed beyond the tall double doors. He waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“Who are you?” a voice husky with sleep demanded.
“My name is Slocum. There’s been a death. I must talk to the señora.”
“Go away. The señora’s asleep this time of night. Come back in the morning.”
He drew a deep breath. “Lady, either you open that door or I’m busting in.”
“Who is out there, Anita?” It sounded like Perla.
“He calls himself Slo-cum. He says there has been a death.”
“Open the door.”
“Sí, señora.” And the bolt latch shifted and the door creaked on its hinges, opening cautiously.
“Thank you,” Slocum said, and went under the arch into the main room. In the dim light, he saw her like an angel in a shaft of light halfway down the stairs. Dressed in layers of white lace nightgown, she looked anxiously at him, waiting for him to speak.
Hat in hand, he spoke to her from below. “Manuel was killed today. Juanita, his wife, sent me to get you to come and help her.”
“How did he die?” In the dim light, she looked her usual aloof self.
“They said he was thrown from his horse and broke his neck.”
“Oh, poor Juanita. I will dress and be down. Anita, feed him. He always fed me well.”
He nodded and replaced his hat. In a flurry of lace, she hurried up the wide staircase. Still the same woman he’d first met on the road. She’d never let her guard down, even in times of crisis.
“Señor. Señor.” It was the older woman, Anita, trying to get his attention.
“Sorry,” he said, realizing how engrossed in Perla he had been. He fell in behind the woman, going across the tile floor and under one of the keystone arches that ringed the open two-story center of the house, which surrounded a fountain. He could hear the soft sound of its splashing water.
“She will be ready shortly,” said Anita.
“I know. She is never slow about such things.”
“You know her well then.”
“Has she always been so—reserved?”
Anita lighted the lamp on a table in the dark kitchen that smelled of food and cooking. Her dark brown eyes were like liquid pools of concern. “No, Señor. Once she laughed and would have taken your arm and dragged you in here laughing and teasing you about what she could fix for you.”
“She must have been fun then.”
“Oh, she was. This house danced with excitement and fun. Her laughter was like a silver bell and we all enjoyed our jobs. But the night he killed the patrón brought silence to this casa and the whole ranch.”
“Who killed him?”
“The—the bandits.” She busied herself wrapping some cooked meat into a tortilla.
“No, you said he came and shot her husband.”
She looked away and would not face him.
“I am asking you because you know who shot him.” He moved swiftly around the table and took hold of her shoulders, forcing her to look at him. “You know his name.”
She drew back. “I can’t tell you. I have sworn to never—”
“Tell me who it is. All I’ve heard is vagueness about these bandits. You know who did it. Tell me.” He shook her.
“I can’t. I swore on my life never to tell anyone. We could all be killed.”
“Who was it?”
“Tell him, Anita.”
He whirled, and Perla was standing in the doorway wearing her riding clothing. “This man has had a death wish since I first met him.”
15
Slocum turned back to Anita and released his fierce hold on her arms. She dropped to her knees and, holding her hands clasped in prayer, she began to sob. “But Señor, they will come on us like wolves.”
“Who shot the patrón?” Slocum insisted, looking back and forth at Anita and Perla for an answer.
“Mother of God—” Anita’s voice cracked. “We have no one to protect us. The pistoleros are gone.”
“Tell him,” Perla said softly yet commandingly.
“The mulatto,” spilled off Anita’s trembling lips.
Then Anita fell sobbing on the tile floor. “They will kill us all,” she cried.
He swung on his heel and faced Perla. “He’s the one that raped you?”
Expressionless, she met his gaze. “You once said to shoot, not wait. I was foolish enough to think he would respect who I was.”
“You told the law you didn’t know them.”
Her eyelids narrowed. “The law would not be here when they returned. What should I have told them?”
He nodded. “And they have returned, haven’t they?”
“I never said—”
He shook his head, knowing the real answer. They had returned. Shuddering in fury, he turned to pound his fists on the table. “I asked you to let me—”
“Shall we ride to the stage stop? I am certain Juanita needs me.”
He dropped his chin in defeat. “Let’s go.”
Outside in the cold, starry night, he led Heck with Perla down to the stables, and Diego was up with a lamp to meet them. In minutes, he had the gray stallion saddled. They went
through the darkness without a word, the horses’ hooves crunching the refrozen snow. An occasional snort of their mounts, the jingle of the bits in the horses’ mouths, and the creak of saddle leather rode over the silence between them. The cold still night was illuminated by the ghostly reflection off the white ground cover. He rode not three feet from her and the proud stallion breathing clouds of vapor in the air. Yet she could have been three miles from him, for she neither turned aside nor did she speak as the hours rolled by.
“You can hide behind your silence as long as you want. But someday, it will fester like a boil and explode.”
She turned and looked at him. Her eyes were shaded some by the flat-crowned hat that she wore atop a silk scarf to cover her head from the cold. “You don’t understand. My people and I have to live under their threat. They can come anytime and extract whatever they want from us—we are helpless to resist them and nothing will change that.”
“It could.”
“You do not understand. Tomorrow or the next day you will be gone. We must remain here and answer to what you would do for us.”
Grimly, he nodded in reply. He had no intention of leaving until the matter of the Boosters and Sims was settled. Somehow, he’d settle it. But there was no way he could convince her of anything—she held on to the ranch by a straw. They didn’t rob her. They extracted her money and cattle by simply riding up and demanding it. They had her right where they wanted her—afraid and vulnerable.
“The law. They have never offered you any protection?”
“What law? A sheriff fifty miles away. How much law is that?”
He shook his head. It was long past his bedtime, and arguing was doing no good. If only she’d accept his help—no way that she would—they had her convinced and afraid, perhaps more for her people than even herself. It would be an uphill battle if he even started it, and he had no one but Collie Bill to help him. There were few other men he’d trust backing him like he would Collie Bill, but it wasn’t his war either.
There had to be a way. He glanced over at her and saw her chin raised as she looked ahead. She had nothing to say. The horses’ hooves crushing the frozen crust was the only sound in the cold night. They rode on.
What would it be like to have her in his arms? To hold that lithe body by the waist and raise her up to his face to kiss her mouth with its rose-petal lower lip. Damn, what a shame. She was such a block of ice and there was no heat to melt her down.
A peach tinge painted the eastern sky when they arrived at the stage stop. They dismounted heavily and Slocum hung on to the saddle horn until his sea legs were solid under him.
“I’ll put up the horses,” he said, and she nodded. He watched her bound onto the porch and then disappear inside. Gone again. She’d evaporated like smoke. He shook his head, unhitching the gray and leading the two horses off to the corrals and outbuildings.
Her gray tossed his bit in his teeth, arched his neck, and loudly nickered with authority to the others in the night. Slocum shook his head. Maybe riding a stud was her answer. The gray must be her show of defiance toward the outlaws. He’d take a gelding any day. Mares and studs were unreliable. At last, he had the gray in a box stall. Then Heck was grained and turned out.
“You going to live down here?” Collie Bill asked, coming out in the night looking for him.
“I’m through. How’s Juanita?” He slung an arm over Collie Bill’s shoulder. “She going to make it?”
“She’s tough enough she’ll make it. When the smoke clears, I’m going to offer to stay and help her. Then her and I can see how things work—I mean between us.”
“I understand. You’ve been taken with her from the start, haven’t you?”
Collie Bill nodded. “It might not work out, but I want to see.”
“Good luck. I learned something else up at the Peralta Ranch. It wasn’t some outlaws robbed and raided the ranch, it was Sims and the Booster bunch.”
Collie Bill stopped dead in his tracks, and Slocum disengaged his arm. “I got her to admit it. They live in terror of them coming back. Her, her help, and a few Mexican ranch hands.”
“What else?”
“Sims was one of them that raped her.”
“One of them?”
“She wouldn’t tell me more. I suspect the Booster brothers helped themselves as well.”
After a check around to be certain they were alone, Collie Bill shook his head. “I think the reason Manuel was supposedly gone the other day—he didn’t want to encounter them.”
“Juanita, too?”
Collie Bill nodded. “It ain’t what she’s said, it’s what she hasn’t said. You recall the day you made them pay for lunch?”
“Yes.”
“I saw something like deep fear in her eyes when they first arrived. Just a guess, but I still think there is something there.”
“We better get in there before my knees buckle.”
“Sorry, you’ve been up all night. I caught a little shut-eye. Go get some sleep. I’ll start the grave.”
“Hell, I’d not even thought about that.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t have it all dug by the time you wake up.”
Slocum smiled and they went inside the warm room together. He didn’t see the women. He went straight to the shed on the side, slipped off his boots, undid his holster, hung it with his hat on a peg, and was in the bedroll. When his head hit the pillow, he was fast sleep.
Perla came under the arch toward him, dressed in the layered lace nightgown that glowed in the shaft of moonlight. Her long hair, unbraided, was tied back, and she paused at a distance from him beside the fountain’s knee-high walls.
“You wanted my body?”
“Yes.” There, he’d admitted it.
“You have lusted for my body?” She folded her arms and glared at him.
“You know that?”
A knock on the door made him turn.
“Ignore that. They can stay outside there. I am talking to you.”
“I have been intrigued by you since we first met on the road.”
“Why? You know I am little more than a puta for outlaws.”
“That’s not your will.” The knocking grew louder and made him anxious to answer it with his gun or whatever.
“I do it. I sell my body for my life and the lives of my loyal workers.”
“Perla, let me care for you—”
The door burst open and Sims rushed in. He laughed at seeing Slocum, as if Slocum posed no threat whatsoever, and swept her up in his arms. “Come on, little cunt. We got’s business to do up in your feather bed.”
Slocum’s feet would not move, they were glued to the tile. He drew his gun, aimed it at the laughing bastard’s back going up the staircase with her, and the hammer clicked on empty—
“Wake up. Wake up. You were screaming.”
He blinked, looking into Perla’s concerned brown eyes. She was on her knees beside the bed and when he searched her face, she dropped her chin. “I see you are all right now.”
His hand caught her by the wrist before she could rise. “I was having a nightmare. Do you have nightmares?”
She didn’t struggle, but settled down again beside him. “Yes, I have them often.”
He nodded. “I shared one of yours last night.”
With a nod, she agreed. Then she wet her lips. “I have not been fair to you. But there is no way for me to accept your gallantry. Juanita is asleep. We will have Manuel’s funeral late today.”
“I need to—”
She pushed him back down. “Sleep some more. Others are helping.”
“I can’t—”
“Yes, you can. The dream is over. Get some rest.” She rose, gathering her divided skirt. “Later, we will have a large meal. Do you have a Bible?”
“Yes.”
“The nearest priest is miles away. He can say Mass later. Will you read and pray for Manuel?”
“I’m not Catholic.”
“Neither was Jesus.�
�� She rose, then pulled down the hem of her vest and the armor was in place. “Sleep.”
Wistfully, he watched her swish out of the shed, closed his sore eyes, and fell back asleep.
The dull sun blazed in the western sky. Most of the clouds had gone away, but a bitter cold north wind swept down off the Rockies. With his back to the wind, he read from the pages of Psalms. By his estimation, Manuel was a man of those verses.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of death . . .” Slocum read slowly and loud enough so all could hear him. In the end, when he said amen, they echoed him.
Juanita stood between Collie Bill and Perla. Both women were under black shawls, and they crossed themselves when he finished. Many of the quiet people who had helped dig the grave came by and shook Collie Bill’s hand with a softly spoken “Gracias.”
Three of the younger men were refilling the grave. They waved Slocum and Bill away. “We can do this.”
“Come inside when you finish,” Juanita said to them, and Collie Bill led her away. “We have much food,” she said over her shoulder.
Slocum turned, and was startled when he found Perla standing there waiting. She put her gloved hand in the crook of his arm, and he led her back to the stage stop at the foot of the small hill.
“You did very well back there.” Her voice was soft, like a whisper on the wind. “You are a man of many talents. Why do you have no roots?”
“The war. Other things that I never planned on happening.”
“Life can become hell.”
“But even the devil can be stopped.”
“I have prayed for that, too. Now Manuel is dead. Do you think he really died from his horse throwing him?”
“I have no way to know.”
“I wonder when I will wake up and this nightmare will be over.”
“There are ways, Perla. There are ways to do that.”
She shook her head and released his arm at the front door. “I cannot chance their lives. Thanks again. You are a big man, Slocum. The more I know you, the more I see that. But there are too many of them.”
“I have to go to Española and look for a stage robber. When I return, may I call on you?”
She blinked her eyes. “You are a lawman, too?”