Slocum and the Forgetful Felon 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

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  A Hard Lesson for a Hard Case

  Just then, Slocum 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.

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  SLOCUM AND THE FORGETFUL FELON

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  PRINTING HISTORY

  Jove edition / November 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

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  1

  In the spring, Slocum found himself down along the border country, riding a chestnut Appaloosa gelding named Ace, and leading a plain bay mare, upon which rode a bound and gagged Teddy Cutler.

  Teddy was a young fellow of only twenty-four, but he’d managed to get himself in a pile of trouble far beyond his years. Slocum was leading him toward Bisbee, Arizona Territory, where he planned to turn him in for the reward—$7000, which was a nice-sized chunk of change for somebody like Teddy.

  Teddy, who rode with a gag tied around his mouth—the only way Slocum could get any peace—had managed, in his short lifetime, to kill three men, one of which happened to be a U.S. marshal, and stick up four stages. It would have been five, but Teddy’d had the bad luck to try and stick up the stage Slocum was riding on.

  That was before Slocum had bought Ace. His old horse, Yucatan, had been shot from beneath him while he was rounding up the Ames boys, up around Denver. He hoped they all hanged. He pretty much counted on their final destination being hell.

  Young Teddy Cutler wasn’t near so deadly (or deranged) as the Ames boys had been. If he had been, he’d be going into the sheriff’s office dead. Slocum’d be skinned if he’d lose another horse to some stick-up artist.

  Teddy’s gag-muffled mutters of “Mm, mmm mmm mmm!” distracted Slocum from his musings. He looked back. Teddy seemed in obvious distress.

  “You gotta go?” Slocum asked.

  Teddy bobbed his head up and down frantically.

  “All right,” Slocum said grudgingly, halted Ace, and swung down off him. He went back to Teddy, got his hands unhooked from the saddlehorn, and hauled him down off his mare. “Get it all outta your system,” he said as he shoved Teddy toward the weeds. “I wanna get into Bisbee tonight.” Three days on the trail, riding like this, was more than enough for Slocum.

  It appeared to be enough for Teddy, too. Slocum could hear his urine spatting against the brush from over by the horses. He’d bet Teddy’d be glad to get into a nice cell with a nice chamber pot at hand and nice home-cooked meals—and a mattress that wasn’t made up of rocks—just for a change of pace.

  He’d hang. That was a given. You couldn’t go around shooting
U.S. marshals and expect anything else. But in the meantime, Slocum figured Teddy’d appreciate the change in accommodations, if nothing else.

  Slocum, himself, was looking forward to a decent hotel bed and the company of one of Miss Lulu’s gals. Not necessarily in that order.

  The noise from the brush changed. Teddy stumbled back out on the trail—such as it was—still struggling to finish buttoning his pants with his hands bound.

  “Wanta hand?” Slocum asked, even though buttoning another man’s breeches wasn’t exactly what he wanted to do.

  But Teddy shook his head, and finished up himself. Slocum was about to gesture him toward his horse when Teddy tried to say something.

  “What?” Slocum asked at the mumble.

  Teddy pointed both thumbs toward his gag and said, “Mm mmm!”

  “You want the gag off?”

  Teddy nodded. “Mm mmm!”

  Slocum could understand why he wanted the gag off, but he thought it over for a few minutes, then asked, “Can you keep your mouth shut if I do? No jabberin’?”

  Teddy nodded enthusiastically, then turned around so that Slocum could get access to the knot in the bandanna. Slocum slipped it free in a flash, and Teddy sighed, then caught it in his bound hands. “Thanks,” he said, then turned back around to face Slocum. The corners of his mouth were red where the gag had chapped them.

  It was almost enough to make Slocum feel bad about wanting to have a little peace and quiet on the trail. Almost, but not quite. Teddy could be a regular chatterbox when he put his mind to it.

  “C’mon,” Slocum said, and motioned toward Teddy’s bay. Teddy sighed again, but said nothing, just came and stood at the horse’s side and waited. Slocum gave him a boost, retied his hands down to the saddlehorn, picked up his horse’s lead rope, and walked forward to remount Ace. He turned his head. “Ready?”

  “I reckon,” came the reply. It had all the verve and life of a man who knew he was going to hang.

  Slocum and his prisoner arrived in Bisbee right at sunset and Slocum found the sheriff’s office with no trouble.

  As he helped Teddy down from his horse, he said, “I’m right sorry, Teddy. You’re an affable enough feller.”

  “Not as sorry as I am,” Teddy muttered as he hit the ground. Then he turned to his horse’s head and took hold of it the best he could, saying, “Hope somebody nice gets you, baby.” He kissed her muzzle.

  Slocum’s hand clasped his upper arm. “I’ll see she gets settled at the livery and grained.”

  “Thanks.”

  Slocum led him up the steps to the boardwalk and the sheriff’s office, then opened the door. The lanterns were lit, and the sheriff was behind the desk with his feet up on it, dozing. When Slocum shut the door behind him, though, the noise woke the sheriff, who came back to lucidity in a big hurry.

  He looked up, squinting. “Can I help you fellers?” he asked, his voice still thick with sleep.

  “Put on your peepers, Sam,” Slocum said. “It’s me. Got a prisoner for you.”

  “What?” asked the sheriff, feeling for his glasses. When he finally found them, buried in a stack of papers, he put them on and looked again. He broke out in grin. “Well, I’ll be dogged! How the hell are you, Slocum? And Teddy Cutler, too, if I ain’t mistook.” He took in the boy’s bound hands. “Guess I don’t have to ask how you are.” He stood, chuckling, and exited his desk. Grabbing a ring of keys off a nail in the wall, he said, “Come with me, fellers.”

  He led them through a bar-closed door to what he called the “cell block,” and opened the last cell on the left, next to a dozing drunk sprawled over his cot. He said, “Do we need these now, Slocum?” and pointed to the ropes that bound Teddy’s wrists.

  Slocum said, “Nope, you can get rid of ’em anytime. And we had a long ride. He might could do with a cup of coffee and some supper.” He felt himself beginning to feel sorry for young Teddy, but told himself that there was a dead U.S. marshal out there with Teddy’s bullet in his back, and the regret went away fast. Mostly.

  Sheriff Sam—whose last name Slocum could never remember except that it had a lot of C’s and Z’s and Y’s in it—pulled the final knot free at last and closed the cell door. “Guess that’ll do it for now,” he said. “Coffee or water?” he asked Teddy.

  “Coffee,” came the subdued reply.

  Sam exited the cell block and was back with a steaming mug before Slocum got all the way to the main cell door. He was slowed by those thoughts again, thoughts he pushed down as fast as they arose. Trouble was, they just kept pushing back up again.

  Slocum and Sheriff Sam stopped by the saloon after Slocum got the horses put up. The crowd was thin, and Slocum asked Sam where everybody was. When he’d been in before, there had always been a goodly crowd, even on a week-night. But tonight, there were less than a dozen men in the place, including the bartender.

  “Copper’s dryin’ up,” Sam said matter-of-factly as they bellied up to the bar.

  “This much?”

  Sam nodded. “They’re layin’ off miners hand over fist. Don’t know where most of ’em are goin’, ’cept maybe up to Colorado. We lost about thirty percent of the town in just the last month or so.”

  Slocum shook his head. “It’s a cryin’ shame, ain’t it. I hear Tombstone ain’t doin’ so well either.”

  “You heard right,” Sam answered. “Ever since the Earps pulled out, the town ain’t been the same. And on top of that, they got flooding mines.”

  “That’s what I heard,” Slocum said, just as the bartender appeared. “Beer,” he said to the bartender. “Where’s Roy?”

  The bartender said, “Same for you, Sam?” When Sam nodded, he turned back to Slocum. “Roy, he up and took his wife and boys back to Texas after he got canned. Business just ain’t what it was. Old Man Nobby only hired me ’cause I’d work for a room to live in and fifteen bucks a month. He fired the gals, too, so there was plenty’a rooms to pick from.” Slowly, he shook his head. “Helluva thing.” He moved off toward the beer kegs.

  Slocum shook his head. “Helluva thing is right.”

  After spending a too-quiet night at the hotel and arranging for Sam to wire the reward money to his account in the Tombstone bank, Slocum groomed Ace’s hide up to a fairly glittering copper shine, and set out the next morning, heading north. If he was lucky, he thought, he could make Tombstone by nightfall. Maybe there’d be somebody around who remembered him.

  But when he got there, there wasn’t.

  He didn’t spy a blasted soul he recognized. The Earps were gone, having pulled up stakes and headed for California, and even Doc Holliday had disappeared along with his longtime gal, Big Nose Kate. Slocum was beginning to think he was all alone in the world. Hell, he couldn’t even dig up any familiar female companionship, and he had to put his own horse up at the livery!

  He knew he’d been away for a coon’s age, but this was ridiculous.

  When he went by the bank, it was closed, of course, so he thought he’d best come back in the morning. He figured that his money would be safer—all of it—in a bank up in Phoenix. After he took a short walking tour of the town, visiting places that weren’t even places anymore and trying to dig himself up a gal, he finally gave up and went to bed alone with a bottle of halfway decent bourbon and a cheap cigar.

  It was better than nothing.

  2

  Slocum woke early, with thoughts of Teddy Cutler thudding and thrashing around in his brain like a dying steer in the butcher’s shed. It was the last thing he needed. But even after he dressed, went for breakfast, went to the bank, and walked out again—after arranging to transfer his money to the bank in Phoenix and withdrawing $200 for pocket cash—he still stood on the boardwalk, pocketing the bills, and thinking about the kid.

  It wasn’t really fair, was it? Sure, the kid had killed more than his share and had the misfortune of including a U.S. marshal in the mix, but after spending a few days leading him east across hard country, Slocum was convinced
Teddy’d changed. For the better, of course.

  He shook his head. There was nothing more he could do about it. If he hadn’t picked up Teddy, somebody else would have. And they likely wouldn’t have asked him any questions either—just shot him and hauled his carcass in for the cash.

  Slocum started up toward the livery, his long legs making short work of the distance. Well, he thought as he entered the barn, Teddy was nothing if not charming. Mayhap he could talk his way out of it. Slocum silently wished him all the luck in the world, and began tacking up his horse for the long ride to Phoenix.

  Three days later at about eleven in the morning, Slocum rode into Phoenix. First thing, he went to the bank and found they had received Tombstone’s wire about the money, and that his cash would be available to him on the morrow. He said his thanks, then made his way to the livery, where he paid extra to a redheaded kid to have Ace put up right and grained twice daily.

  It had been several years since he’d been through town, and he found it had grown by leaps and spurts, and showed no signs of stopping anytime soon. He supposed it had the right. This year, the territorial capital had been moved down here from Prescott—again—and the whole city had taken on a new sheen. Buildings were going up every which way in town, and the residential area he’d ridden through on his way in was spreading out its tentacles, too.

  Miss Kate’s place was still right where he’d left it, though, and he’d no more than set a foot over her threshold when he was bombarded with unexpected squeals and cries of glee and what, at first, appeared to be a million pair of hands, all reaching to hug him. He recovered quickly, though, backed up, and raised his hand to cover his face while, miraculously, avoiding stepping on any female feet or toes.