by Jake Logan
“But you know it was Slocum who killed Ruben?”
“Who else? You sent Loomis to kill Slocum, like you sent Thorson to kill him. Now, both men are dead as doornails and Slocum’s walking around free as a fucking bird.”
“Have a drink, Paddy,” Scroggs said.
“I just might.”
“Morg, you want to wet your whistle?” Scroggs asked. “You ain’t goin’ to find Slocum tonight. Unless you know where he’s cribbed.”
“I don’t know,” Sombra said.
“And I don’t know neither,” Degnan said. “We’ll both have a drink and then I got to get some shut-eye afore mornin’. I’ll get that bastard Slocum.”
Degnan looked at Sombra.
“Or Morgan will. He’s plumb primed to blow a hole in that sonofabitch.
“I don’t believe I’ve met this gentleman,” Degnan said, glancing at Littlepage.
Scroggs introduced Littlepage to Degnan and Sombra.
“I seen this Chinese man here before,” Degnan said.
“Wu Chen,” Scroggs said.
“He don’t say much, do he?” Degnan commented.
“I only speak when it is necessary,” Wu Chen said in his lilting Chinese accent.
“You sell opium to Willie here, I think,” Degnan said.
“When he wishes,” Wu Chen said.
Littlepage stood up.
“Willie, Wu Chen and I have much to do. I’ll see you later.”
Wu Chen also got up. The two left the table and walked through the batwing doors.
“Littlepage,” Degnan said. “Any relation to Linda?”
“He’s her uncle. And no love lost between them, I gather,” Scroggs said.
“Not much resemblance either. I don’t see her nowhere.”
“She left with Slocum and that bastard Obadiah Swain,” Scroggs said.
A waiter stopped by with glasses and a full bottle of whiskey, set them on the table. He drifted away without speaking, and there was once again a wide berth around Scroggs’s table.
“I guess I can check at Linda’s house,” Degnan said. “I know where she lives. Maybe she took Slocum home with her.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Scroggs said.
“I know where she lives, too,” Sombra said. “You want me to check?”
Degnan thought about it for a two-second moment.
“You know his horse, Morg. You can ride by her place and see if it’s tied up there, I reckon.”
“I’ll do that,” Sombra said. “Soon as I finish my drink.”
“You going to shoot him in bed?” Scroggs asked. “You might get two birds with one stone.”
“Makes no difference to me,” Sombra said. “If I have to shoot Slocum through a pretty woman, well, that’s just the way the cards play out.”
“That would be murder,” Scroggs said, still teasing Sombra.
“Not in my book, it wouldn’t,” Degnan said, and poured himself a drink.
Sombra lit a cigarette and drank his whiskey. He was in no hurry. If Slocum was at Linda Littlepage’s, he would be there most of the night.
He didn’t trust Linda any more than he trusted any woman. Especially any woman in Socorro.
Scroggs looked at Sombra. He knew how dangerous a man he was. If anyone could kill Slocum, he would pick Morgan.
Sombra, he thought, was pure killer, through and through. He had no conscience, no morals, no faith in anything but himself. And if he killed a pretty woman in bed with Slocum, he wouldn’t even blink an eye.
Sombra would probably laugh. And gloat.
“Here’s to the death of Slocum,” Scroggs said, raising his glass. He clinked it against those of Degnan and Sombra.
“Here’s to Slocum,” Degnan said. “Soon may he die.”
The three men laughed and the smoke from Sombra’s cigarette swirled over the table like some wraith, twisting in the light from the lamps like a gilded snake.
17
Linda and Slocum met Obie Swain for breakfast in the lobby of the rooming house. The twin doors to the small dining room were open, and the aromas of coffee and food were semaphores to the three, wafting messages to their nostrils and stirring the juices in their stomachs.
“Hungry?” Swain asked.
“Famished,” Linda said.
“I could eat,” Slocum said.
“Well, let’s set down to a table in there,” Swain said. “I could eat the south end of a northbound buffalo.”
They walked into the dining room, where a few early patrons sat at tables covered with red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, forking food into their mouths, drinking water from glasses, and talking in low conversational tones so that the room buzzed with snatches of insect speech pitched too low to comprehend, but amiable and intimate as was appropriate at that early hour.
“My tummy’s growling like a lion,” Linda whispered to Slocum as a waiter showed them to a table by a window that looked out onto the street.
“My lion could eat your lion right now,” he said. “Smells good.”
“Ummm,” she murmured.
“Is this table to your liking?” the white-aproned waiter asked as he pulled out a chair for Linda.
“Perfect,” Swain said, and Slocum let him take the lead.
“Put this on one bill,” Swain told the waiter, a stoopshouldered man in his forties with thin brown hair that held a sheen, white shirt and string tie, neatly pressed dark gabardine trousers, and polished shoes with new leather soles that creaked when he walked. “And give the bill to me.”
“Yes, sir. My name is Corly and here is a menu of this morning’s fare.” He handed Swain a handwritten parchment-like sheet that bore a list of food items with prices in bold, cursive numbers placed at the end of the meal descriptions.
“Well, they got hen fruit and ham, cornmeal mush and flapjacks,” Swain said. “What’s your pleasure?”
Linda scanned the menu. “Eggs and ham will do just fine,” she said.
“Biscuits?” Swain asked.
“Yes, with a little honey, if they have it.”
“I’m going to have me the same, with some of that redeye gravy and flapjacks,” Swain said.
“Sounds good to me,” Slocum said.
Corly returned and took their order. He set glasses on the table and filled them with water.
“I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay long after breakfast, Obie.” Linda said. “I’ve much to do, and a cat and a dog to tend to. But thank you for breakfast.”
“Mighty sorry to hear that, Linda,” Swain said.
“I’ll walk you home,” Slocum said.
“No, please don’t. I don’t live far and I love to walk in the morning. You stay, John. You have things to do. Right, Obie?”
“I’ve already saddled John’s horse,” he said. “And mine. We have some miles to go, I’m afraid.”
“See?” she said to Slocum.
Slocum felt trapped. Obie seemed to be in charge of his life at the moment. He would rather have walked Linda home, sealed a friendship that was already past the budding stage and was about to blossom.
“I guess I’d better ride with Obie,” he said, and tried to avoid the lameness of the statement. But there was defeat in his tone. Linda patted his hand in understanding and he felt better after that. He melted inside under the bright warmth of her smile.
The breakfast arrived, and the two men ate and talked while they forked flapjacks, fried eggs, and ham chunks into their mouths. Linda listened to them, but did not offer any remarks. When she was finished, she arose from her chair.
“I must go,” she said.
She leaned down and kissed Slocum on the forehead.
“Good-bye, John,” she said. “I hope to see you again very soon. Thank you for a wonderful evening.”
“I hate to see you go, Linda. I’m very fond of you.”
“Sorry,” she said.
The two men watched her walk through the dining room and out into the lobby. In moments, she wa
s gone.
“I’m not going to say anything, John,” Swain said.
“Good. Neither am I.”
“I finished my business in town, John,” Swain said. “I got a dozen sticks of DuPont sixty/forty and enough fuses and blasting caps to get the job done.”
“You going to blast a new mine?”
“No, it’s an old one. But I found something the other day and I want to go deeper into the mountain. Might find more of it.”
“What did you find?” Slocum asked.
Swain reached into his pocket and pulled out a dirty green stone, oblong in shape, with a few crevices in its unshined surface. He laid it on the table in front of Slocum. Slocum picked it up.
“That’s turquoise,” Swain said. “There’s more of it. A lot more, I think, but I have a small basket full of stones just like that.”
“What’s it worth?”
“Plenty,” Swain said. “I might make more money from turquoise than I do from the silver I’m mining.”
Slocum put the stone back down and pushed it across the table.
Swain picked it up, put it back in his pocket.
“The name of the stone has something to do with Turkey,” Swain said. “The name means ‘Turkish,’ I think. It’s fairly rare from what I found out at the assay office. At least in these parts.”
“Good luck,” Slocum said. He sipped his coffee, then lit up a cheroot. Swain lit a cigar and the two men smoked as Corly cleared away theirs and Linda’s plates.
“Will there be anything else, gentlemen?” the waiter asked.
“No, just bring me the bill, Corly,” Swain said.
Then he turned to Slocum as the waiter walked away with the tray of dishes.
“Want to ride out to my digs with me, John?”
“Now?”
“That’s where I’m headed after I look in on Jethro and Penny.”
“You trust me that much? Seems to me that Scroggs is determined to find where you live and rob you and your mine.”
“I never return home the same way twice, John. And yeah, I trust you.”
“Do you know what happened last night after Linda and I left the French place?”
“I know someone put Loomis’s lamp out. I figured it was you.”
“It was.”
“Bushwhacked you, did he?”
Slocum nodded and blew smoke into the air.
“Well, Scroggs will send Shadow after you, that’s for damned sure.”
“I’ll keep an eye out.”
“He has another gunslinger who’s just as mean and treacherous as Sombra. I told you about him.”
“The German?”
“Yeah. Gustav Adler. You want to watch out for him, too. He’s just as sneaky as Shadow. And he’s pretty good at back shootin’. Just like Sombra. Willie Scroggs knows how to pick ’em, that’s for damned sure.”
“I reckon they both can stop a bullet same as Loomis and Thorson.”
Swain laughed in his throat, and took another puff from his cigar. Then he poked it into his coffee cup and they both heard it hiss as the tip drowned in the dark liquid.
Corly returned and presented the bill. Swain paid in silver and gave the waiter a modest gratuity.
“Thank you, sir,” Corly said.
“Let’s be off, then, John,” Swain said as he rose from his chair. “Get your gear and I’ll meet you out front. Hotel bill’s paid.”
“Thanks, Obie. Your generosity knows no bounds.”
“Oh, it knows bounds, all right, but I’m grateful to you for saving Jethro’s life and takin’ care of Penny, seein’ them both safely home.”
“What I did for your brother and your niece requires no gratitude on your part, Obie.” He got up from the table. “I’ll see you out front in a few minutes.”
The two men walked to the lobby. Swain went out the back door to the stables, while Slocum went to his room and picked up his belongings.
Swain was waiting for him in front of the rooming house. Ferro was stamping his right foot and pawing the ground. He whinnied when he saw Slocum.
“He’s been grained and brushed,” Swain said. “Curried him some myself early this morning.”
“You’ve got the heart of a saint, Obie,” Slocum said as he tied on his bedroll and set his saddlebags, slid his Winchester into its scabbard.
“Saint, no,” Swain said. “You’ve got a fine horse and I admire good horseflesh.”
Slocum swung himself up in the saddle.
“Lead on, Macduff,” he said.
Swain chuckled.
“You admire Shakespeare, John. Same as I do.”
“I’ve seen some of his plays. The man has a gift for the English tongue.”
“I don’t understand half of it, but it’s sure pretty to listen to.”
The two men rode out of Socorro and took a different route from what Slocum remembered.
The sun’s rim had cleared the horizon and there were opal clouds in the east, at their backs, small cottony puffs that seemed to have been painted in pastels. The bleak and rocky, cactus-strewn landscape stretched out ahead of them, all pink and rosy as one of Homer’s dawns, with a deep stillness except for the muffled sound of the horses’ hooves as they rode at a leisurely pace over unmarked ground.
Slocum finished his cheroot and crushed it out against the sole of his boot before he tossed it to the ground.
“You leave a trail that way,” Swain observed.
“I’ve left many that way.”
“Unlikely anyone out here will read it.”
“Let’s hope,” Slocum said.
“Yeah, let’s do,” Swain said.
He kept looking back as they rode in a wide circle. Slocum was surprised when he spotted Jethro’s and Penny’s adobe home, lying not in front of them, but below them.
Swain reined up and Slocum stopped beside him.
They stayed there for several minutes, then one of the Mexicans stepped from the shadow of the stables and waved.
“We can go down there now,” Swain said. “That was Carlos Jimenez sayin’ all was well.”
“That’s good to know,” Slocum said.
“Juan and Carlos are both reliable men.”
Slocum said nothing. The sun was bright in his eyes and he pulled his hat brim down. He sniffed the morning air and caught his own scent.
He wondered if Penny would be able to smell Linda’s musk all over his body. Or would she just smell the medicine reek in her home?
Funny, he thought, to be worried about what a woman would think about him. But Penny was special, just as Linda was. He was grateful to both and beholden to neither.
18
Gustav Adler wore two pistols, each with ivory grips. He was nearly six feet tall, with flaxen hair and pale blue eyes as cold as glacier ice. He stood there in the basement room with Scroggs, whose expression was one of unbridled delight. Adler’s face was impassive and his cold eyes betrayed nothing of his feelings.
“Well, what do you think, Gus?” Scroggs asked.
Wu Chen was fluffing up a red satin pillow the size of a wagon wheel in one corner of the room. Littlepage sat on a plush chair, legs sprawled out, his hat tilted back on his head. He bore a look of satisfaction on his lean face.
“It looks like a Chink whorehouse,” Adler said.
“A place you ain’t never been, Gus.”
“That is so, Willie, but if I had gone to one, in Frisco, it would look like this, with all them fancy rugs and the burnin’ incense.”
There were brass incense burners placed strategically around the room. There was a small golden glow in each and a plume of smoke emerging from the small holes in the top.
“I didn’t call you down here to scuttle what Wu Chen has done to this hole in the ground, Gus. This room, this den, is going to afford me the chance to finish building my hotel next to the saloon. That incense is soon goin’ to smell just like money.”
“Haw,” Adler snorted. “Ain’t nobody but Chinks goin’ t
o eat your opium, Willie.”
“Not countin’ Wu Chen there, you won’t find a Chink within a thousand miles of Socorro.”
“Yeah. That is what I mean, Willie. White folks ain’t goin’ to chew on opium.”
“They’ll smoke it, Gus. That’s what all them glass bowls with water in ’em and them tubes is for. For smokin’.”
Adler snorted in derision again, which irritated Scroggs. He stabbed Adler with a lancing look that showed his disapproval of the German’s assessment of the basement opium den.
“My opinion, Willie,” Adler said.
“And your damned opinion ain’t worth shit, Gus. I got a job for you.”
“A gun job?”
“Maybe. I want you to ride out to Jethro Swain’s house, you know where he lives, and see if that Slocum feller shows up there.”
“The one whose face is on the dodger?”
“That very one.”
“And if he shows up?”
“Kill him,” Scroggs said.
Adler grinned. There was a salacious sparkle in his eyes as if he had swallowed a tankard of ale laced with rotgut whiskey. He rubbed his hands together and then touched the grips of his pistols.
“Now you’re talkin’, Willie.”
“Slocum has killed two of my men already, Gus. You mind your P’s and Q’s or you’ll decorate a grave of your own.”
“Haw. That ain’t likely.”
“Bring me the bastard’s head, Gus.”
“Hell, I’ll bring you his corpse, Willie. That be good enough?”
“Just so’s it’s full of bullet holes.”
Adler grinned. He turned on his heel and walked up the stairs, the clump of his boots resounding in the hollow confines of the basement.
He rode westward with the dawn, the sun at his back, streaming rivers of light in front of him, gilding the rocks and plants with soft flames that burned up the night dew that sparkled like tiny jewels on cactus flowers and minute grains of sand.
19
Penelope stepped out the back door of the adobe and waved to her uncle and Slocum. She wore a wan smile on her face, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. She looked haggard, as if she had not slept, and if she had, she had slept in her clothes. Her dress was wrinkled and shapeless against the curvaceous shape of her slender body.