Slocum and the Forgetful Felon

by Jake Logan

  A person would have thought that it’d be the other way around, but the jump in population had brought a jump in whorehouses, too, which meant that whores were currently a dime a dozen. Business had been slow. Katie had even mentioned retiring. Several times.

  At first, he’d thought it was only her “settle down and procreate” impulse. All women had it, he figured. Hell, they wouldn’t be women without it. But now he was seeing that it was something deeper.

  “Left up here,” he said to Teddy.

  “Where we goin’?” Teddy asked. “And besides that, where we goin’ for six goddamn months!”

  “Promised I wouldn’t tell you,” Slocum said as they took the turn. “Made a solemn pledge.”

  “To that marshal? Who’s he to you anyhow?”

  “ ‘That marshal’ is U.S. Marshal Pete Stanford, and he’s the head lawman for the whole of the Territory,” Slocum said as they gained Katie’s porch. “He’s a good man, and he’s got his own good reasons for chuckin’ you into my custody. Now, no more questions. And behave yourself.”

  Slocum opened the front door and ushered Teddy inside. They were met by several of the girls, all of whom were immediately taken with Teddy. And he with them, Slocum noted. Either that, or he had just developed a humdinger of a tumor in his britches.

  He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Take Sally, there, first. It’s on me.”

  The kid made a move toward Sally, a cute little redhead who Slocum himself would have picked for himself if Katie hadn’t been around. But Slocum tugged him back. “Just the first three times. After that, you pay your own freight, you got me?”

  “Gotcha!” Teddy replied, and in an instant, Sally had whisked him up the stairs.

  “So that’s how it stands,” Slocum finished up, and leaned back in his kitchen chair.

  “Sounds to me like you’re both pretty much stuck,” said Katie, sitting opposite him.

  Teddy hadn’t come up for air yet, but Slocum’d had himself a good feed, courtesy of Katie. When I should’a been checkin’ on my next bounty, he thought guiltily. The file lay, untouched, inches from his fingers.

  Despite what he’d told Teddy—and Katie—he was right annoyed with Pete for saddling him with the kid like this. It wasn’t his fault if the man had managed to get himself struck upside the head or something. He had nothing to do with Teddy’s fortunate—or unfortunate—memory loss, and now Pete had stuck him with babysitting Teddy for six months?

  It not only didn’t seem fair, it wasn’t.

  No matter, he thought, growling under his breath. You already gave your word. Sorta. You’re stuck.

  But then, he considered that Pete had given him the file, and didn’t seem to mind if Teddy went in for a little bounty hunting alongside him. He wasn’t so much concerned about Teddy committing another murder, he was just concerned that if he did, it’d be a legal one.

  Beside him, Katie said, “Well, you don’t need to get so mad about it.”

  He’d forgotten she was there. He stuttered, “Huh? What?”

  “Your body was here, but your mind was somewhere in Upper Egypt,” she said, a smile curving her lips.

  He realized that there’d been a good reason he’d gifted her with a globe the last time he was through town. He said, “Sorry. I was thinkin’.”

  She stood up and brushed a kiss over his forehead. “I’ll leave you to it, then.”

  “Thanks, baby,” he said, nodding. As she left the room, he picked up his folder and opened it.

  Session Bonney, wanted for arson.

  Laro Lieberman, wanted for stealing a horse.

  Kirk Caruthers, wanted for petty theft.

  And on and on. Little stuff with little rewards. He kept turning pages.

  At last, he started to get to some high-ticket bad men.

  Crane O’Donnell, wanted for robbery and murder. Ticket price, $2500.

  Donald Krieger, wanted for rustling and murder at $3000.

  Must not’ve been a very big herd, Slocum thought, smiling a little.

  There were rustlers by the dozen, killers by the score. Teddy’s paper was in there, too. But one poster stopped Slocum cold.

  Washington Trumble, it read. Wanted for murder, train robbery, stagecoach robbery, and kidnapping. $7500, dead or alive.

  This looked like something that was more up his alley—and Teddy’s, if he started taking to his old ways again.

  At least they could shoot this one.

  The next morning found them pulling out of Phoenix and heading north, to Ridgeland, where Wash Trumble had been seen last. Four months ago, to be precise. In four months Wash could have gone halfway around the world, but Slocum was hopeful. Most of these boys didn’t have that large a frame of reference. In fact, most of ’em didn’t even think outside two or three contiguous territories or states.

  Additionally, he’d discovered that not only did Teddy know Wash Trumble, but there was bad blood between them. Of course, Teddy wasn’t sure why this should be, but just the mention of Wash’s name had him good and cranky.

  Now, Wash was said to be a big man—over six feet tall, and over two hundred and fifty pounds. He’d had a good education—graduated the eighth grade—and he had a sister up in Flagstaff. These things were both bad and good. The education made him dangerous. The sister made him vulnerable.

  He rode alone, to the best of anyone’s knowledge. He’d ridden with a gang for the train robbery, but it wasn’t his. He’d apparently signed on just long enough for the gang to hold up the Flagstaff Flyer, killing four passengers and three employees in the process of removing over $35,000 from the freight car, along with a number of the passengers’ purses, wallets, and jewelry.

  Everything Slocum had read about Wash Trumble, in fact, made him seem like a very rough customer. He hoped the stories were more legend than truth, as was so often the case.

  In the meantime, Teddy rode quietly along behind him. Almost too quietly, in fact.

  Slocum twisted around in his saddle, fully expecting to find Teddy vanished. “You back there, Teddy?”

  But the boy was, indeed, right where he was supposed to be, although he didn’t look too happy about it.

  “Have you ever done this before?” he asked.

  “Done what?”

  “Kidnappin’ an honest citizen and haulin’ him—against his will—into an encounter with some dangerous outlaw?”

  “Wash Trumble.”

  “All right, Wash Trumble. What in the hell gives you the right—”

  “Plenty,” Slocum said. “And I already told you, you’ll find out when Pete Stanford decides to tell you.”

  “But—”

  “Now, shut up,” Slocum said with finality, and there was no more noise from the peanut gallery.

  For a while anyway.

  6

  That night, they camped in the midlands, where clumps of cholla and prickly pear cactus popped up here in the rolling hills, as might little groves of trees in a milder climate. The next night, they camped higher up. The land that night wasn’t craggy yet, but was looking like it was thinking about it. The third night found them sleeping in the mountains, in the early and lowest peaks of the San Francisco range of the Rockies. They’d ride into Ridgeland in the morning.

  It had been decades since the last time Slocum was in Ridgeland, and it hadn’t been much back then. Just a few houses—more like shacks and lean-tos, really—a mercantile, a sorry excuse for a livery, and a bar. He wondered what it had grown up into. Or grown down into, more like. It looked like most of the silver and gold and copper in the Territory had been mined out. Hell, if Tombstone could die, anything was possible.

  Teddy had been quiet—well, quiet for Teddy—over the last few days. Slocum didn’t question it. He was just grateful. But on this evening, while they were polishing off the last of the coffee, Teddy asked to see the poster of the man they were after.

  Slocum nodded, and without a word reached into his pocket and pulled out the paper o
n Wash Trumble.

  Teddy studied it for some time, his face developing from a placid expression into a sneering growl as he read it, then reread it.

  He handed it back, and said one word. “Trash.”

  “And we’re here to clean it up.”

  Teddy stared into his coffee cup. “Said on there that he’s killed women and kids.”

  Slocum nodded. “That’s true. In the train robbery.”

  Again, there was a long silence. Then, again, “Trash.”

  “Yup,” said Slocum, refolding the paper. He was pleased. Pleased that Teddy hadn’t jumped to Wash Trumble’s defense, pleased that he hadn’t come up with something lame, like, He’s my uncle! Or, But he saved my dog from drowning when I was a kid! Nothing showed on his face but hatred.

  Slocum said, “I take it that you’re up for it.”

  Teddy set his cup down. “Trash like that doesn’t deserve to live. Bad enough, the other stuff he’s done, but killin’ women and kids?” He shook his head. “That’s off the damn scale. Why hasn’t somebody brought him in before this?”

  Slocum shrugged. He’d asked himself that question time and time again over the years about most every man he’d trailed and apprehended. “What goes around comes ’round. And I guess I’m what you see when it comes back ’round at you.”

  Teddy managed a brief smile. “Like you’re the whatyacall, the harbinger of doom?”

  Slocum finished his coffee. “Somethin’ like that, I reckon. At least so far. Been lucky.”

  “So far.”

  Slocum nodded. “You’d best be lucky, too.”

  They rode into Ridgeland the next morning at about nine o’clock. Teddy was swiveling his head like a barn owl, watching for Wash. Slocum was more intent on studying the town itself. It had done some growing since he was through. The shacks and lean-tos were gone, having been replaced by honest-to-God houses, made of adobe or wood, sometimes both. The bar had expanded into a full-grown saloon, and the shabby little mercantile had expanded into a street full of shops.

  The town wasn’t exactly hopping with people, but there were a few folks on the street, going about their business. A wagon was pulled up in front of the new mercantile, and a miner (or so he looked) was loading the wagon’s bed with supplies he’d just bought. A few horses, here and there, were tied along the rail. Mostly in front of the saloon, Slocum noted.

  When they had ridden down the length of the street, Slocum reined in Ace. Teddy stopped, too.

  “What now?”

  Slocum reined his horse around. “We go to the sheriff’s office.” He’d spotted it back up the street. “And then we go to the saloon.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Go to the sheriff’s office. Or the saloon, for that matter?”

  Slocum said as patiently as he could, “We go to the sheriff’s office to check in and ask questions. To the saloon to ask questions and get a damn drink. That all right with you?”

  Teddy pulled his head back as quick as a water turtle. “Sorry I asked!”

  Slocum’s expression softened. “My fault. I keep forget-tin’ this is all new to you.”

  And I hope the damned sheriff don’t up and arrest you, Slocum thought. That’d be all I need right now, for you to remember who you are and what you done. But then, he thought, the town may have grown up some, but that didn’t necessarily mean it had a lawman worth his salt.

  “C’mon,” he said, as if he hadn’t thought about anything at all.

  Everything—at least, everything concerning Teddy—hinged on him not finding out about his own lawless past. For now.

  Slocum had been right about the sheriff. He’d been a frail old man who hadn’t recognized Teddy, and said he’d never heard of this Wash Trumble character. But he wished them luck and dismissed them.

  They rode on up the street and tied their horses outside McBride’s Saloon. It was a sight better than the old bar which, as Slocum recalled, didn’t even have a bar, just a rough plank set up on a barrel at one end and a sawhorse at the other.

  Actually, he sort of missed that old bar. It ran downhill, as he remembered, and if you didn’t watch your drink, it was liable to end up dousing the man at the other end.

  There were only three other men inside the saloon when Slocum and Teddy walked in. Teddy gave each one a hard look. “He’s not in here,” he said to Slocum as they sidled up to the bar.

  “Couple’a beers,” Slocum said to the bartender, and slapped a few coins on the counter. He turned to Teddy. “Did you expect him to be?”

  Teddy’s brow furrowed. “Well, he could’a been.”

  “That’s right, he could’a. But you walked in here eyein’ up these boys like they was all wife scalpers or horse diddlers. That ain’t what I call bein’ invisible.”

  The barkeep settled their beers in front of them. Slocum’s slid a couple of inches downhill before it came to a rest, and he allowed himself a little smile. No matter how much things changed, some stuff stayed the same.

  “Why do I got to be invisible all of a fuckin’ sudden?” Teddy demanded, a little too loudly for Slocum’s taste.

  The barkeep’s, too. From the other end of the bar, he hollered, “A little less racket up there, gents.”

  Slocum tipped his head, indicating that he’d heard. And then he put his face close to Teddy’s and whispered, “I dunno how in the hell you managed to live twenty-four whole years without gettin’ your fool mouth shot off, but unless you don’t wanna live to see twenty-five, you’ll keep it shut now. Jesus!” Shaking his head, he took a long pull on his beer, then signaled the bartender for another one.

  While he waited, Teddy replied in a whisper, “Stop takin’ the Lord’s name in vain!”

  In surprise, Slocum’s brows arched. “What?” he hissed.

  “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain!” Teddy insisted. He looked like a preacher’s kid, who’d just heard it for the first time.

  Come to think of if, Teddy was a preacher’s kid, if he remembered his papers right. Baptist, he thought. He wasn’t sure how this amnesia thing worked, but he hoped to hell that the kid wasn’t going to regress to the diaper stage!

  Slocum shook his head. “You are somethin’ else, Teddy Cutler,” he muttered. He meant it, too.

  Just then, he sensed someone coming up behind him, and he wheeled around—to come nose to nose with Wash Trumble.

  “Heard somebody was lookin’ for me,” he growled. “Heard that somebody was you.”

  He didn’t have his gun drawn. His hands were empty. And he was staring Slocum right in the eye.

  “Guess you heard right,” Slocum said softly, his hand moving, millimeter by millimeter, toward his own holster.

  But suddenly, Wash’s attention strayed to the kid standing behind Slocum. “Teddy!” Wash roared, and quickly skirted Slocum to grab Teddy by the shoulders. “I wondered what become of you, you li’l ol’ scamp!”

  “Get your hands off’a me,” said a scowling Teddy. “Now!”

  Surprised, Wash backed off a foot or two, by which time Slocum had his pistol ready. He buffaloed Wash—banged him over the head with the butt of his gun—and Wash dropped to the floor in a heap.

  When Slocum looked up, Teddy was beaming at him. “That sure worked slick!” the kid exclaimed. “I heard the Earps used to use that head bangin’ thing all’a the time!”

  “You heard right,” Slocum said, and holstered his Colt. “You got a rope?”

  “For tyin’ his hands and such?”

  Slocum nodded.

  “In a second.” Teddy ran outside, to his horse and saddlebags, leaving Slocum—and the saloon’s patrons—alone with the slumbering body.

  One fellow, sitting alone at a back table, thumbed back his hat and said, “Well, I’ll be skinned and hung in the shed for dinner.”

  “Got that right, Earl,” one of the other men said, his head shaking as he spoke. “I never thunk, in a million years, that we’d get shed of Wash Trumble
.”

  “Me neither,” echoed his companion.

  Those two looked alike, sort of, and Slocum figured them for brothers skipping out on a morning’s work.

  Teddy showed up with three short lengths of rope, and Slocum set to work hog-tying the unconscious Wash. Once he had the hands bound, he paused and looked over at the brothers. “You boys knew Wash, here, did you?”

  Both suddenly struck silent, they bobbed their heads in unison. Slocum turned his attention to the man at the back table. “You, Earl? You know him?”

  “I certainly did. And I congratulate you on a fine catch. You know my name, sir. May I have yours?”

  Slocum started to tie Wash’s ankles, but changed his mind. “Slocum’s the name.”

  “Takin’ outlaws’s the game!” Teddy piped up, obviously very full of himself, and proud for rhyming.

  “Oh, shut the hell up,” growled Slocum.

  Teddy clamped his jaws for a half second, then took a long swallow of beer before he said, “What do you fellas do up here anyhow? I mean, what keeps the town runnin’?”

  “The economy in these parts, young man,” said Earl when the brothers froze again, “is based on the mines. Silver and copper, primarily copper, is what’s taken from the earth. And I believe there are two cattle ranches as well. Am I right, Clayton?”

  One of the two at the other table sat up straight at the mention of his name, and said, “Yessir, Mr. Scrivener, sir.”

  “Thank you,” Earl replied. “However, there won’t be two for much longer if the ranch’s owner and ramrod continue to spend all their time in town, guzzling beer.”

  Earl tipped his mug toward Teddy, while, embarrassed, the other two slid money onto the tabletop and quietly departed. Slocum heard their horses gallop away.

  “Want some help haulin’ him up?” asked Teddy.

  “Not yet,” replied Slocum, then motioned to the barkeep. “Whiskey this time. A double.”