Slocum and the Yellowback Trail Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  A Sharp Character

  He came at Slocum again. This time, he made a quick feinting stab to draw Slocum’s arms down before taking a quick swing at shoulder level. The blade sliced through a good section of meat, spraying Slocum’s blood onto the ground. Just as he was recovering from that, Slocum saw the man lunge in for another stab.

  Slocum was barely quick enough to cross his arms at the wrists and drop them down to divert the blade before it was buried hilt-deep into his gut. He then twisted to one side and closed his hands around the man’s wrist like a set of pincers. A sharp twist and forceful grab allowed him to relieve the man of his weapon. Slocum spun around to face him, finding nothing but empty space. Suddenly, an arm snaked around his neck from behind and a fist pounded against his ribs.

  “How do you like that?” the man snarled into Slocum’s ear. “Not so good, is it? Well, it’s about to get a whole lot worse.”

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  SLOCUM AND THE YELLOWBACK TRAIL

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / September 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-1-101-44258-6

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  1

  CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

  The Stamper Theater was in a section of Chicago that still smelled like wood that had been burned during the Great Fire. Chicago already had a very distinctive scent to it, and the scorched remnants of that tragedy didn’t help matters. The fire had been put out long ago, but Chicago wasn’t the sort of place to sit still. There had been plenty more going on since, from labor disputes to common street fights. Somehow the buildings on the corner across from the theater hadn’t been burned in the famous fire at all. There was more than enough friction in Chicago to spark any number of infernos.

  It had been a while since Slocum had visited that town. Most of the time, he preferred more wide open spaces and sweeter scents in the air. Chicago did have a certain appeal which drew all sorts of folks to its streets. There were plenty of exotic foods to eat, goods to buy, and sights to see. That was all well and good, but it took a bit more to bring Slocum all the way into Illinois. To be exact, it took seven hundred and fifty dollars.

  That was the amount of money Terrance Pinder was offering Slocum to deal with a certain infestation plaguing his place of business. Slocum had met Terrance when the Stamper Theater still smelled of freshly cut lumber and wet paint. It had been a chance encounter facilitated by one of the prettiest faces in town. Terrance’s daughter Eve wasn’t as immediately attractive as some of the girls working at the Stamper, but the light inside of her shone brightly enough to make her rise above the rest. Like most every man in town, Slocum had been drawn to her. And, like all those other men, he had been chased off by her father. But while the rest of Eve’s would-be suitors found other pastures to graze in, Slocum remained for a while.

  In all the time that had passed, Slocum nearly forgot about the Stamper Theater. He hadn’t forgotten about Eve, however, and assumed hers was the elegant handwriting on the envelope that had been delivered to him while he was staying in Missouri. It wasn’t. The script was Terrance’s, as was the offer to return to Chicago for what promised to be a very lucrative job. Seven hundred and fifty dollars was just too tempting to pass up, so Slocum bought a train ticket to the Windy City.

  The Stamper Theater was a large box of a building near the corner of Twelfth and Halstead. It was close enough to the tracks to hear trains rattle by, but not so close that the iron horses drowned out the r
ambunctious cries of the theater’s more energetic patrons. There were better places to build a theater, but it seemed the location was the least of its owner’s problems.

  Slocum walked in through a set of double doors which opened into a room that took up most of the building’s first floor. There was a bar to his right, stretching from the front of the room to about a quarter of the way back. To the left of the entrance, several gambling tables were set up against the wall. Games included roulette and faro, but they weren’t the only ones being played. Several of the tables scattered throughout the front half of the room were hosting privately run card games. Most of the back half of the room was taken up by a stage. The velvet curtain had seen better days, but the girls dancing in front of it were in decent enough shape. Before he could get a better look at his surroundings, Slocum was nearly bowled over by a man who reeked of cheap pipe tobacco.

  “John Slocum!” Terrance Pinder said. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to show up.”

  “It’s been less than a week since I got the letter,” Slocum pointed out. “How fast did you expect me to move?”

  Terrance was in his late forties, but he had enough wrinkles to tack on another decade to his appearance, although his blue eyes were bright and alert. His thinning hair was hastily pressed down onto his scalp, making it seem as if all of his effort in grooming had been spent in maintaining the intricate mustache that connected one sideburn to the other. Those sideburns nearly covered his ears and cheeks, but paled in comparison to the trail of whiskers that headed toward the edges of his mouth before veering north to run beneath his nose. Where most men might scratch their head or chin while thinking, he brushed the side of his finger against his mustache and traced it all the way to an overgrown sideburn. “Has it only been a week? Seems like a lot longer than that.”

  “Looks like the theater is doing well. Is Eve still around?”

  “She’s here somewhere. Would you like a drink?”

  “What I’d like is to know what’s so important that you went through the trouble of tracking me down. Come to think of it,” Slocum added, “how’d you manage that?”

  Terrance clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back and forth upon his heels. When he spoke this time, the English accent he’d brought with him from the east end of London was just as fresh as the day he’d stepped off the boat. “It was quite a feat, but I managed it. Of course, as they say, where there’s a will there’s a way.”

  Since he’d been led to the bar, Slocum asked the tender for a whiskey and then shifted his focus back to Terrance. “You still haven’t told me how you tracked me down.”

  “Does it matter?”

  Considering how many dangerous men would like to know where to find him, Slocum had become uneasy with the fact that some theater owner could set his sights on him. “Yeah. It matters.”

  Terrance tugged at his collar and nervously cleared his throat before replying, “I’ve made the acquaintance of several saloon owners in Illinois and Missouri. One of them told me about a man who’d shot the place up after some argument over a card game and your name came up.”

  Some of the uneasiness in Slocum’s belly faded when he heard that. “Ah, yes. That would have been the poker tournament in Jefferson City.”

  “No, it was an all-night game in Hannibal.”

  “I suppose that one did get pretty rough too.”

  “Rough enough for a friend of mine to mention your name when he came to pay me a visit,” Terrance said. “He said you took one of his best dancers along when leaving town, which told me we were discussing the same John Slocum. He knew where you were headed, so I sent you that letter. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Lifting his whiskey glass, Slocum asked, “So what’s the seven-hundred-and-fifty-dollar problem?”

  Terrance turned so he could lean with his back against the bar and then nodded toward the roulette wheel on the opposite side of the room. “See the man spinning that wheel?”

  Picking the fellow out in less than a second, Slocum grunted, “Yeah.”

  “Here’s an advance,” Terrance said as he slapped four hundred dollars onto the bar. “Setting that one up for a fall will be enough to earn that much.”

  2

  Slocum ambled across the room, sipping from his whiskey while weaving between the card tables. It was early enough in the day for him to make the trip without being jostled too often, but there was still enough of a crowd to keep him from sticking out like a sore thumb. Along the way, he watched the small group of men clustered around the wheel. The first thing he noticed was the absence of working girls in that vicinity. Considering how much money was surely being tossed about by the gamblers, that spoke volumes. Working girls made a living by getting close to men who were willing to spend their money. As far as Slocum was concerned, nobody was more willing to spend money than someone who wagered on where a little ball would land in a slotted wheel. Before he even made it to the wheel, he got a real good idea of what kept the theater’s ladies from getting too close.

  “If you want that hand back, mister, I’d suggest you take it away from that cash.”

  The one who made the threat was a tall, skinny fellow who stood behind the wheel. He wore a blue silk shirt with dark sweat stains under both arms and across his chest. Although it was a bit warm for September, this man appeared to be suffering most for it. None of the sweat made it to his face, which was sunken and covered in scars that crossed his cheeks like paths traced on a map.

  Standing across from him at the table was a young man dressed in a stained white shirt. Since some of those stains had the look of dried blood, Slocum guessed the man either got into a lot of fights or worked at one of the nearby slaughterhouses. He stretched one arm out to a stack of cash on the edge of the table closest to the skinny fellow. Even though he glanced back and forth at the men around him, he wasn’t quick to retract his hand. “I won that spin,” he said. “It landed on eight. See for yourself.”

  “I can see just fine,” the skinny man snapped. “That’s how I can see you bet on nine.”

  “I bet on both of ’em.”

  “So you say now that it landed on eight.”

  By now, Slocum was close enough to get a better look at the table itself. Not only was the paint so faded that it was difficult to discern one number from another, but the chips were scattered so haphazardly that they might as well have been thrown down from the ceiling. One or two of the other gamblers at that table must have been friends of the one in the bloody shirt, because he pulled himself up and made another reach for the money. “I set my bet down on the line between eight and nine, so I’m owed some money. Hand it over or I’ll take it.”

  Stretching his neck out like a snake lunging for a carelessly placed foot, the man behind the wheel dropped his left hand down onto the young fellow’s wrist and snarled, “You won’t take nothin’, boy.” His right hand rose up from where it had been tucked beneath the table to reveal a wicked-looking stiletto. “And if you make another move for my money, I’ll add that hand of yours to my collection.”

  “What’s the problem here?” Slocum asked as he shoved between two of the men who watched the brewing fight instead of the dance being performed by the girls on stage.

  Without moving either hand, the man behind the wheel said, “Next spin is comin’. First I gotta teach this here boy some manners.”

  Sure enough, two of the other gamblers were friends of the younger fellow, because they closed ranks around him. Before they could do much to help their companion, they were grabbed by sets of hands that came so quickly from behind that they even took Slocum by surprise. They weren’t stealthy so much as brash enough to storm up and take hold of the gamblers as if they had every right to do so. The men who’d grabbed the gamblers pulled them away like fishermen dragging trout from a stream. Whatever protests the gamblers made were quickly silenced by a few well-placed fists.

  Although Slocum didn’t enjoy watching men get beaten just for com
ing to the aid of a friend, it was a bit late to do anything about it now. The punches stopped as suddenly as they’d started. The stiletto, on the other hand, was still very much in play over the roulette table.

  “All right, Bo,” the young man said. He pulled his hand away from the cash stacked near the wheel, but his eyes remained fixed upon the other man’s knife. “No need to make this worse. You can keep your money.”

  “Really?” Bo sneered in a way that made his sunken face twist into a hungry grin. “How very kind of you.”

  When the young man attempted to move his hand, the stiletto twitched down just far enough to scrape sharpened steel on flesh. “I said keep your damn money!”

  Bo shook his head. “This ain’t about the money no more. It’s about setting an example. Folks need to know they can’t just strut up to my game and do whatever they like.”

  Since the young man’s friends had been dispatched, the two who’d pulled them away stalked toward the table. Any of the others who’d wanted to leave decided to stay put just to keep from being noticed. As Bo raised his stiletto another inch or so while tightening his grip, most of the gamblers within eyeshot watched with morbid fascination, in anticipation of the bloody display that was about to be shown to them.

  Bo watched expectantly also. In addition to the anticipation shared by his audience, his eyes glittered with something else that could only be found in the cruelest of animals. Blood was going to be spilled and he meant to enjoy every last second of it.

  The rest of the theater went about its business, unaware of or just plain accustomed to what was happening at the roulette wheel. When Bo’s arm tensed and he started to lean forward, everyone in the immediate vicinity held his breath.