Slocum and the British Bully 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

  Teaser chapter

  Mysterious Foreigner

  “I’m new. Just got in,” came a husky whisper with a trace of an accent.

  “You French?” the guard asked. “You don’t sound like nobody in these parts.”

  “I can be anything you want me to be.”

  “Mac sent you?” The guard sounded dubious. “He don’t cotton much to soiled doves, but they make so much money for him, he rents out his whole upstairs over at the Mountain of Gold.”

  “The saloon?”

  Slocum frowned at the question. It was as if the woman didn’t know who Mac was or that he ran the saloon.

  “Where else?”

  “Go on, get inside,” the woman urged. Her voice slipped through the night like a soft, warm breeze. Slocum would have gotten excited if she had been speaking to him instead of the guard. As it was, he waited for some slip, some opening he could exploit to get away.

  When it came, it came fast.

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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 BRITISH BULLY

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / May 2009

  Copyright © 2009 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  1

  A small pyramid of gold dust on the table in front of John Slocum mesmerized him. He held his cracked, stained cards close to his vest as he forced himself to tear his eyes from the gold and study the others playing poker with him in the Virginia City saloon. Two of the men he discounted right away. They were hard-rock miners out for a night of excitement. They were more interested in knocking back shots of the bitter trade whiskey and getting drunk than they were in winning.

  For Slocum, winning meant surviving another few days. From the look of the fourth man at the table, he held similar beliefs. He drank as heavily as his friends, but something about him turned Slocum cautious. The whiskey took the edge off the aches and pains that grew hour by hour during a day’s hard work in the mines, but this man didn’t have the look of pain from work. Instead, his pain came from something more. When he coughed up a bloody gob and spat it on the floor, Slocum knew the man had consumption.

  He gambled to feel alive for another few hours.

  “You boys plannin’ on walkin’ outta here with my money?” The man across from Slocum spoke to the miners, but stared hard at Slocum.

  “Aw, Renfro, you know we like to win. We like to whore, too. And drink. All of ’em ’bout the same amount.”

  “Might be you’ll fold early then,” Renfro said, “and pursue your other interests, ’cuz I’m winnin’ this here pot.”

  Slocum considered this nothing more than a ploy to steal the pot, but it worked on the two miners because they threw in their cards, took what pitiful few dollars they had remaining of their hard-earned money, and left. They laughed and joshed each other, and then found themselves soiled doves willing to let them fondle their breasts for a dime and maybe do a little more for not much more.

  “Just you and me,” Slocum said. “Of the three things you mentioned, winning is more important to me than women or booze.”

  “Pity ’cuz I’m gonna clean you out. Then I kin get myself both a whore and a bottle, but maybe not in that order.”

  “You have to win first,” Slocum said.

  “Your call,” Renfro said. He hawked another gob in the direction of a cuspidor. His aim was perfect, undoubtedly from long practice. He put his cards facedown on the table and folded his hands atop them. Slocum thought this was a strange gesture.

  “My raise,” Slocum said. He used the ed
ge of his cards to move the pile of gold dust into the center of the table. He kept moving chips and greenbacks until nothing remained in front of him. He had won small pots all evening, but that wasn’t the way to get the money he needed to move on from the Nevada boomtown. Don’t lose much on any hand and move all in for the big one had worked well for him in the past. It would now, too.

  “That’s a mighty bold bet,” Renfro said. He rubbed his sleeve across his stained lips. “So’s this.” He pushed everything in front of him into the pot. “Reckon we’re close enough to even that it don’t matter, one way or the other.”

  “Close enough,” Slocum agreed.

  “Show ’em, mister.”

  Slocum flopped three aces onto the table.

  “What do you have?”

  “Not quite that,” Renfro said. “Only three deuces.” As Slocum reached for the pot, Renfro stopped him. “And a pair of sevens. I got a full house. Beats your aces, though they look mighty fine.”

  Slocum leaned back and watched his night’s work disappear into Renfro’s pockets. The man used the edge of a deuce to scrape up the gold dust and slide it into a small leather bag. Then he tucked away the chips and greenbacks in different pockets and grinned. For the first time Slocum saw the gold tooth in the front of the man’s mouth.

  “Take the rest o’ my bottle. You look like you can use it more ‘n I kin.” Renfro laughed, coughed, and spat more blood.

  Slocum reached over and flipped up the hands of the two miners who had left the table.

  “How do you explain that?” Slocum asked. He pushed back from the table so he could draw the Colt Navy he had slung in a cross-draw holster.

  “Explain what?”

  “You showed a seven of clubs. There’s a seven of clubs in the discard.”

  “What’re you sayin’?”

  “A deck’s not supposed to have two of the same card in it, especially when one of those cards rested in a full house.”

  “I ain’t no cheater.” Renfro kicked back his chair and stood, then doubled over in a coughing fit. Slocum watched warily since the coughing might conceal a move toward a hideout pistol.

  Renfro straightened and put both hands on the table to support himself. He looked at Slocum with hot eyes.

  “I ain’t no card cheat.”

  “Somebody put the spare seven into the deck, and it wasn’t me.” Slocum stood and squared off.

  “Might be one of them miners. They ain’t got the sense God gave a goose. Who’d go puttin’ a low card like a seven into a deck to cheat? You’d put an ace or king.”

  “Not if you didn’t want to arouse suspicion.”

  “I ain’t givin’ ya back any of the money. I won it fair and square.”

  Renfro looked past Slocum. This gave just enough warning for Slocum to drop his shoulder, half turn, and swing his fist in a short, sharp jab that ended in another bar patron’s belly. The air rushed from the man’s lungs and he collapsed, but by the time Slocum twisted back, Renfro had hightailed it.

  “Don’t go startin’ no trouble, mister,” called the barkeep. The mustached man rested a sawed-off shotgun on the bar to steady it. If he fired, Slocum would be cut in half, and would probably take one or two of the other customers with him to the Promised Land.

  “He cheated me.”

  “Renfro’s all right. He wouldn’t cheat nobody,” the barkeep declared. “Come on over and I’ll give you a drink on the house.”

  Slocum considered going after the gambler who had waltzed away with his money. He didn’t know for sure that Renfro had cheated, but it was likely. A less clever card-sharp would slide in a couple aces or kings, as Renfro said, but who would ever question deuces and sevens? The other two who had been in the game were nowhere to be seen, but they had lost most of their poke to Renfro, too. Or to Slocum and then to Renfro. If they had a beef, it would be with Slocum for nibbling away at their stake little by little.

  Renfro had taken his chance and bitten off a mouthful.

  “Keep your drink,” Slocum said. “I got unfinished business to tend to.”

  His way was blocked by the saloon bouncer, who glanced toward the barkeep for instructions. This instant of distraction was all it took for Slocum to draw and swing his six-shooter. The barrel landed alongside the bouncer’s head, just above his ear. He groaned, reached for the gash Slocum had opened on his scalp, and then sank to the sawdust-covered floor, clutching his head and moaning.

  Slocum stepped over him and into the cold night. The stark wind blowing from higher in the Sierra Nevadas chilled him. He turned up the collar on his coat and slowly looked around the town’s main street as his eyes adjusted to the starlight. A few gaslights burned, but mostly the miners couldn’t be bothered with such civic improvements. Across the street, a man and woman walked quickly, pressed together against the wind. Slocum continued hunting for Renfro, but saw no one likely to be the consumptive card cheat. He’d started to return to the saloon to consider other ways of making a few dollars when he heard a scuffle in the alley beside the saloon. The sound of a fist hitting flesh was too distinctive for him to ignore.

  Another man’s fight wasn’t the right place for him to stick his nose, but he went to look, just in case.

  A dark figure stood over a fallen man, beating him mercilessly.

  “He’s had enough. Let him be,” Slocum said.

  The attacker spun. The glint of starlight off blued steel gave Slocum an instant’s warning. He went for his six-gun, drew, and fired at the same instant the night-shrouded man fired. Both missed, but Slocum dived for cover, rolled, and came up at the corner of an apothecary store next to the saloon as the other man fired again. Slocum poked his six-shooter around the corner and looked down the alley.

  All he saw was the victim slumped on the ground. His attacker had fled.

  Slocum stood and stepped into the street to get a better view of the alley. He jerked to the side when a dozen men boiled into the night from the saloon.

  The barkeep swung his sawed-off shotgun all around and demanded, “What’s the shootin’ about?”

  Before Slocum could explain, two of the saloon patrons went into the alley and rolled over the man on the ground so he flopped on his back.

  “It’s Renfro, Mac. That son of a bitch done gunned him down. And Renfro, he ain’t even got a gun!”

  “Been robbed?” the barkeep asked.

  “Pockets are ripped off. Whatever he was carryin’ is all gone.”

  “Gun down an unarmed man and steal his poker winnings,” Mac said. “You’re the lowest of the low. I—”

  The barkeep lifted the shotgun with the intent of squeezing both triggers and emptying the deadly buckshot into Slocum.

  “I didn’t do a thing to that card cheat,” Slocum said hotly. “Somebody was whaling away on him. I stopped him.”

  “Yeah, like we believe you’re a Good Samaritan.”

  “And Renfro’s attacker took a shot at me. I fired back.”

  “Renfro’s got a bullet through the ticker, Mac. Shot at close range. Set fire to his vest and left a powerful lot of gunpowder all around the hole.”

  “You drop that six-gun, mister, or I swear, I’ll do the town the favor of not havin’ to pay fer a hangin’!”

  Slocum saw that the barkeep wasn’t backing down. He considered his chances, and they didn’t look good. In fact, they looked downright terrible. Several of the men behind the barkeep were drawing their six-shooters. If he started shooting, he wouldn’t get away alive. Chances were good he wouldn’t hit more than the barkeep or one of the others in the crowd. The rest would have no trouble emptying their six-guns into him.

  “I didn’t shoot Renfro,” Slocum said, dropping his Colt into its holster and holding up his hands to show he wasn’t going to fight. “I’ll get on out of here and let you figure who did that to him.”

  “I know who upped and killed my brother,” Mac said. “I got my damn shotgun trained on him!”

  This explained a lot, b
ut knowing didn’t help Slocum get out of this jam.

  “Take him to the lockup. See if that worthless marshal of ours is sober enough to throw him in a cell.”

  “Uh, Mac, ain’t you heard?” said a man at the barkeep’s right side.

  “Heard what?” snapped Mac.

  “The marshal, well, he upped and left this mornin’. Said he was on the trail of a renegade Indian. That no-account deputy rode off, too. No one knows where he went. Point is, ain’t got no official law in town.”

  “Then I say string ’im up. Here. Now!”

  “We agreed ’bout lynchin’s, Mac,” pointed out the man who’d given the news about the absent marshal and his deputy. “No takin’ the law into our own hands. We gotta try him. It’s only fair.”

  “We try him, then we hang him. He killed my brother!”

  “Come on, mister,” said the man who had done most of the talking. “You’re gonna need my services.”

  “How’s that?” Slocum started to fight when a quick hand snatched away his six-shooter, but the sight of the twin bores on Mac’s shotgun prevented him from doing anything about it.

  “I’m the only other lawyer in this here town. You want a defense put up at your trial, you gotta hire me.”

  “The other lawyer’s the prosecutor?”

  “You might say that. He’s my brother-in-law.” The lawyer shook his head as they headed toward the end of town where the jailhouse stood dark and cold and lonely. “Never could see what my sister saw in him.”

  “How many times have you gotten your client off?” Slocum asked.

  “There’s no need to get into such things,” the lawyer said hastily, telling Slocum more than he wanted to know. Despite what the man thought about the prosecutor, his brother-in-law prevailed more often than not. Slocum wondered if he could switch lawyers.