Slocum and the Grizzly Flats Killers (9781101619216) (7 page)

“You see four or five men riding around in the last day or two?”

“Ain't budged from the mine. Found a new vein.” The man chuckled. “Might call it a cap-you-lary.”

“What?”

“Them's itty-bitty veins. Read it in a book once while I was laid up at a doctor's office. Ain't big enough to call it a vein. Hardly wider than a knife's blade, but it's gold.”

Slocum saw the change in the miner's demeanor. He lifted the Remington again, making Slocum wonder if it was unloaded as the man had said before.

“You want me to help bury your partner?” Returning to the other miner's death wasn't too smart, but Slocum wanted to distract the man.

“Hell, let him lay wherever you gunned him down. That's Bertram's rifle. I recognize it. Shoulda blowed up in his face, the way he kept it. I told him to oil his rifle, but he never did. I oil all the movin' parts.”

“The hinges on your cabin door.”

“You been pokin' in there?”

“Wanted to get my hands warm,” Slocum lied.

“You don't want my gold?”

Slocum shook his head.

“Why don't you hightail it outta here? I got work to do. I take the night shift and Bertram does the day work.”

Slocum saw that there wasn't much more than single-minded determination to mine gold left in the man. Even acknowledging his partner's death didn't deter him. The isolation had worked its worst and turned the man a touch crazy.

Slocum bade the miner a good evening and started down the hillside, the hairs on his neck bristling until he was sure he was out of range. The only good thing about the night's trek was not having to kill a second loco miner. Somehow, that seemed cold comfort as Slocum mounted and rode back to Mirabelle.

7

It was an hour past noon when Slocum walked into the Damned Shame. The few patrons hardly noticed him, but the barkeep jerked erect as if somebody had stuck him with a pin.

“Slocum, you're here.”

“Missed a day or two. Hope that doesn't make a difference. Any trouble while I was gone?”

Beefsteak Malone started to speak, then clamped his mouth shut, his brow furrowed and his rag working frantically on the glass he cleaned. Slocum had never seen the man so agitated.

“I just figgered you was gone.”

“Didn't hire anyone in my place, did you?”

“What happened to you?” Malone started to say something else, then scowled some more and finally said, “I mean, you all right?”

“Fine as frog's fur,” Slocum said. It was a lie. His side burned as if his wound had been dipped in acid. Riding back with Mirabelle the night before had been something of a chore.

Every hole they hit in the road sent a new pang of discomfort through his body. Riding into the canyon and shooting the miner hadn't done him any good. He wasn't one to cry over spilled milk, but there hadn't been any cause for the miner to shoot at him or for him to kill the man. The miner and his surviving partner had likely both been plumb loco, eking out a living from the played-out gold mine and nothing more. They wanted to be left alone, and when Bertram had come across Slocum and Mirabelle, he had gotten scared.

Slocum only wished his partner had known more about the killers who had slaughtered Isaac Comstock and the others. From the depths of the canyon, he believed the miner when he said that he hadn't heard gunshots, much less the cries of agony as the men were being tortured to death.

“You look a mite peaked,” Malone said, putting down the glass and picking up another.

“You already polished that one,” Slocum said. He thought the bar owner was going to jump out of his skin.

“Yeah, I have. Why waste effort, right? I ain't payin' you for the days you was off, Slocum.”

“Not asking you to,” he replied. “My business was mighty sudden and not likely to happen again.”

“You tell me if you want to go traipsin' off.”

“Any trouble brewing?” Slocum looked around the saloon and saw the regulars already starting to get drunk. Many had come in for the free lunch. One or two might have been so drunk they forgot the food was even there, not that Beefsteak laid out much of a spread.

Slocum helped himself to a couple of the boiled eggs and then took a piece of moldy cheese. He scrapped off the blue fuzz and downed it. He fumbled around and found a nickel for some draft beer. Beefsteak drew it without a word.

Whatever ate at the saloon's owner slowly disappeared by the time the evening crowd filtered in. Slocum thought the man was upset that he had been without a bouncer for a couple nights, though it might have been more than that. Beefsteak didn't strike him as the overly sentimental sort. If Slocum had never been seen again, Malone wouldn't have given him a second thought. As it was, the barkeep kept looking at him out of the corner of his eye in an accusing way.

The piano player showed up and began knocking out songs the best he could on the untuned upright. By the time he had finished his first set, the customers were shoulder to shoulder at the bar, making Beefsteak jump to keep their beer and whiskey glasses filled. He even got a couple cowboys in who demanded mixed drinks, forcing him to show his expertise concocting fizzes and even more exotic libations.

Slocum went to the piano and asked the musician, “How's it been the last couple nights?”

“Nothing special,” the jolly, round-faced man said, mopping at his forehead with a linen handkerchief he claimed to have come all the way from France.

“Any trouble while I was gone?”

“Didn't notice you was gone,” the man said. He took a sip of his tepid beer. Beefsteak allowed him one free drink an hour. “Must have been 'cuz nothing much happened. No fights or even much in the way of arguments, 'cept for . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Two gents got angry over a card game. Couldn't even tell what they was playin'. Think it was five-card stud, not that it matters.”

“Gunplay?”

“One shoved the other. They yelled some shit and then they bought each other drinks until they passed out just before closing 'round four a.m.”

“Not very exciting,” Slocum allowed.

“Tips have been shit, too.” He finished his beer, wiped his lips of foam, and then settled back in front of the piano to begin pounding out “Camptown Races” to get the men het up and drinking.

Slocum drifted around the saloon, listening and talking, mostly finding that Malone was likely the only one who had noticed he'd been gone. Dedicated drinkers, and those not inclined to get into fistfights, concentrated more on the drink in front of them than their surroundings. He doubted any of the men knew anything about him being dry gulched and kidnapped after Rupert Eckerly got himself planted in the cemetery.

He went back to his usual spot at the end of the bar, but Malone still wasn't inclined to talk with him. That suited Slocum. He wanted to watch the crowd for any hint that a customer might be surprised to see him. The gang that had killed Mirabelle's husband and the rest were likely still around—and he thought it had to be them responsible for roughing him up after the funeral.

It was almost midnight when the two men came in, slinking along like weasels. There was a boneless quality to them that caught Slocum's attention almost as much as their secretiveness. They huddled together at a corner table. One drew what looked like a map on the table, only to cover it with his grimy hand if anyone came too close.

They occasionally looked around in such a furtive fashion that he knew they were up to something. Slocum sauntered around, talking to other patrons and moving slowly in their direction. When he got close enough to overhear but not close enough to make them clam up, he took a chair, leaned it against the wall, and sat in it. He tipped back and pulled his hat down as if he was taking a siesta. In the Damned Shame this usually meant a patron had swilled too much of Beefsteak's cheap booze and was sleeping it off.

Slocum strained to hear what the pair whispered. He missed a good deal of what they said, but one spoke louder than the other, and what Slocum overheard sent his pulse racing.

“We kin knock it over, jist like we did them fools outside town.”

He missed the reply but almost threw down on them when he heard the response.

“We don't kill none of them this time. I ain't gonna be responsible for any more blood on my hands.”

“. . . don't worry. This time we'll get the gold and be away 'fore anybody knows it.” The man bent farther over the table and used the finger he dipped in beer foam to sketch out a map.

From his position, with his hat drawn down, Slocum couldn't see the map, but as the two worked on it, they became more excited. One's enthusiasm for the crime fed the other's.

“We go for it now,” one finally said.

“Now? Won't it be better to wait a night or two?”

“Now,” insisted the first man. “You know there's gonna be a guard if we wait till Friday.”

The two argued a few more seconds before the wary one relented. They both stood so fast, they knocked their chairs over. Slocum pushed up his hat in time to see them disappear through the saloon doors. He swung forward and righted his chair, then went to the empty table. Two beer mugs were at one side, but the map sketched in the foam was still visible. It took a bit of squinting and not a little imagination before Slocum decided this was a map of Grizzly Flats to the south, where the hotels and whorehouses lined the streets.

He looked over at the bar. Malone averted his gaze. Slocum decided he would quit early. The two were suspicious as hell, and it had been quiet all night long. Maybe not as quiet as the two nights he had missed, but Beefsteak wasn't going to need him for a while. Slocum intended to find out what the two were up to and if they were the ones who had roughed him up. He expected his captors to recognize him, even if he hadn't any idea who they were, but he hadn't given either of them a chance to see him straight on.

Stepping into the cold night from the hot, smoking interior of the Damned Shame was a punch to his face. He sucked in deep breaths and let the clean mountain air invigorate him. If he interpreted the map right, the two had gone down the main street and then south at the first crossing street.

As he walked, he knew this was the way to his hotel. Mirabelle stayed in his room. He walked faster as he wondered if the two men weren't part of the gang that had killed Terrence and the others and were now on their way to finish off Mirabelle. How they had learned she survived the massacre wasn't something he thought on.

As he reached the front of his hotel, he caught sight of the two men on the far side of the street, keeping to the shadows and whispering back and forth conspiratorially. Wherever they went, it wasn't to his hotel and Mirabelle.

A quarter mile farther, one man grabbed the other's arm and pointed to an isolated two-story house with turrets and a single light burning in an upper window. Slocum edged down the street, watching them. The men ignored anything but the light in the window. They whispered furiously for a moment, then dashed across the street, passing within ten feet of Slocum and never noticing him.

The whiff of booze off the two was almost enough to get Slocum drunk. They crashed into the side of the house, shushed each other, then crept around to the rear of the house. Not sure what to do but curious, Slocum followed. He chanced a quick look around the corner of the house to where the two men stood on the back porch, trying to get into the locked rear door. From the way the house was laid out, Slocum suspected they were breaking into the kitchen.

He doubted they were hungry. Starving men didn't go to such lengths to draw maps in beer foam on a saloon table, then sneak all the way across town to break into a house for a loaf of bread. He hadn't availed himself of the services offered in this house, but Slocum knew it was one of several cathouses.

“Got it!” One man slapped his hand over the other's mouth to silence him. They spent a few seconds quieting each other, then opened the door and crashed into each other tumbling inside.

Slocum doubted they were two of the gang that had tortured him or killed Mirabelle's husband, but they were up to no good.

Slocum slid his six-shooter from its holster and stepped up onto the back porch so he could look through the open door. The two men were trying to walk on cat's feet to the front room and doing a better job of it than he had suspected was possible from their drunken entry.

This wasn't his concern, but he wasn't going to allow sneak thieves to ply their trade in the middle of the night. Using the butt of his pistol, he rapped hard several times against the doorjamb. The echo through the house was loud enough to wake the dead.

Both men froze and looked at each other, then turned and tried to run. They skidded to a halt when they saw Slocum's Colt pointed straight at them.

“You boys just freeze,” Slocum said. “You're not going anywhere.”

A soft rustle drew his attention. A tall, well-built redhead came down the back stairs from the second floor, a derringer in hand.

“What's going on?” She swung the small pistol from the two men to Slocum, then quickly turned to cover the two standing with their hands in the air in the middle of the kitchen.

“Seems you've got an infestation,” Slocum said. “A pair of rats snuck in to nibble at your cheese.”

“Not
my
cheese,” the redhead said, laughing. The sound was melodious. For someone who had almost been robbed, she was cheerful enough about the situation. “I charge for any mouse to nibble there.”

“I saw them over at the Damned Shame acting suspicious. I trailed them. They broke in and—”

“And it was you rapping, rapping, gently tapping at my window,” she said.

“Door,” Slocum said, puzzled.

“Never mind. I heard.” She came all the way down the stairs. She almost matched Slocum's six-foot height and her curves were in proportion. Slocum could tell. She wore nothing but a thin cotton nightgown pressed against her body by the wind whipping through the door at Slocum's back.

“They intended to rob you.”

“My business has been good this week. If they'd waited until Sunday, they might have gotten more from my weekend revenue.”

“You got a guard then,” blurted the fatter of the two men.

“Now that is interesting. A pair of drunk thieves who actually planned the robbery.” She looked at Slocum. “You know my business in this house?”

“Haven't been in town all that long,” Slocum allowed, “but I can figure it out. How many girls you got working here?”

“Four. Five if you count the madam.”

“You?”

The redhead grinned and nodded. Her coppery hair floated around her pale face. Slocum couldn't tell the color of her eyes, but he would have bet his last dollar they were as green as his own.

“What do you want to do with these two?”

“You're the bouncer at Beefsteak Malone's?”

“I am,” Slocum said. “What about them?”

“They should pay for their crime.”

“Hands up!” Two gunshots sounded behind Slocum. He spun, only to wince as a rifle barrel crashed down on his wrist. His six-gun went flying.

He heard a rush of feet as the two crooks reversed their course and ran through the house. The crash of a door slamming open at the front of the house warned him they'd escaped.

“They're getting away,” he said through gritted teeth. He started to turn and was rewarded with the barrel slamming into the side of his head.

Slocum went to his knees, dazed. He heard boots shuffling around and angry voices. He hardly knew what he was doing but instinct took over. He gathered his legs under him, then launched like a Fourth of July skyrocket. His arms circled a waist and drove the man back to the steps. They crashed down, Slocum coming out on top.