Slocum and the Rancher's Daughter Page 12

  “Deputy U.S. marshal,” the man corrected her. “What happened here?”

  “We were holding two rustlers and a deputy sheriff who attacked the drill rig,” said Slocum. “They broke out of here and ran earlier today. Two of our men, Haney and a helper named Zeke, went after them.”

  “Haney went after them?” she asked in disbelief.

  “He was already gone when I got here. Rex, did you—”

  “Before she got there, I tore up a clean sheet, okay?” He showed him the stack of bandages.

  “Sure, fine. I’ll heat this knife on the fire and then we can try to extract the bullet. Hey, save some of that whiskey to disinfect the wound,” he said to Smoothers.

  “Lo! Go get another bottle!” Smoothers shook his head from side to side.

  “Rex, you and the marshal hold him down.”

  “What can I do?” Bob asked.

  “Is there some black powder around?”

  “Flask in my things—” Smoothers said, lying on his back and shading his eyes from the bright sun with his good arm.

  “I’ll get it.” She scrambled for it.

  “Hold him down, boys. I need something for him to bite on so he don’t hurt himself.”

  “There’s a leather strap.” She waved it, bringing it and the flask over.

  When Rex and Williams were ready, Slocum felt with the knife tip in the wound for the bullet. He struck it quickly. It wasn’t buried, but without a forceps, he’d have to dislodge it out of the muscle. That meant cutting some of it until he could pry the slug out. He began to gouge, and Smoothers bit down on the strap stuck in his mouth.

  Slocum’d seen a bullet-extract screw used in such an operation, but didn’t have one now. At least he had the knifepoint to pry with. But the bullet was still lodged.

  He went for a new point to pry from, and this time the bullet gave some and Smoothers cried out behind the strap. Then, with all his might, hoping the jackknife blade didn’t give or break, Slocum forced the bullet up and out. In his bloody fingers, he showed it to Smoothers.

  “We got her.”

  Smoothers nodded and closed his eyes.

  “Bob, while I’m applying the powder to this wound, get a match ready. You think you can start it?”

  On her knees beside him, she swallowed hard. “I think so.”

  “Once you light it, close your eyes, it’ll flash.” He looked at the other two men holding Smoothers’s arms, and they acknowledged his warning.

  He began to pour the flakes of black powder on the bloody wound the size of his thumbnail. With his knife blade to push them in, he filled the wound. Then he reared back and nodded. The other two looked away, and she struck the match.

  The flash made a whooshing sound and Smoothers wiggled in pain; then he fainted. Slocum nodded. “We need to bandage that shoulder. That should sear the bleeding off and disinfect it.”

  Pale-faced, she rose. “Tough treatment, I’d say.”

  “If we saved his life, he won’t complain.”

  “But what if we didn’t?”

  “Then he won’t complain either.”

  She shook her head in disapproval; the other two laughed. Slocum bandaged Smoothers and tied the cloth off.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Someone needs to stay with him. Then we can go find those three.”

  “The cook can watch him,” Rex said, indicating Lo.

  “I guess. We’ll need to be back here later.” Slocum looked around, and at last spotted the cook. “Lo, you watch after him.”

  “Me watch bossy. Him no die?”

  “No, he’ll be fine. Make him comfortable. I’ll check on Dan, too,” he said to the barely coherent Smoothers.

  The man nodded. Bob had gone and brought back Slocum’s horse.

  “When I saw Baldy in the corral at the Harte ranch, I about died,” she said to him, handing over the reins. “I thought you must be dead.”

  “His man Nevada loaned me this big devil. What’s Harte doing?”

  “He and another marshal went after Gantry. There is a special judge coming to hold a grand jury investigation, and Searles should be released in ten days.”

  “Good news.”

  “So much has been happening and I worried so much about you. No way to get you word, so we rode over to see.”

  “Haney is down a hundred feet with the well. He and Zeke had no business going after those killers, but they went before I got back here. Rex’s seen the brands they blotched. So he’ll have some inspectors here at roundup time.”

  “I know, he told me already,” she said.

  In the saddle, they joined the others and rode north. Slocum took the lead on the big bay. The tracks were fresh enough, and soon they were in the juniper country. There was no sighting of Haney and Zeke besides their tracks, but they were ahead somewhere.

  She rode side by side with him. “What I saw of him, Haney sure didn’t look to me like a posse man.”

  “He may surprise you.”

  She smiled over at him. “I will be surprised if he does anything besides get himself hurt.”

  Slocum saw the dust on the horizon and a wagon coming. “That may be Dan. Perhaps he knows something.”

  “There are riders and horses, too,” she pointed out.

  Dan reined the team in, and Haney rode up and took off his hat for her. “Howdy, Miss Bakker, sure glad to see you again. We’ve got Dawson and Manley, but Phelps got away.”

  Slocum nodded, seeing the look of surprise on her face.

  “How did you do it?” she asked as they began to dismount.

  “We found them making camp and me and Zeke snuck up on them. Phelps had already gone somewhere when we got the drop on them.”

  “Where had he gone?” Slocum asked.

  “We think Barlowville. But we figured we had two of them, so we started back and met Dan.”

  “Anyone of you have any idea where he is now? I mean Phelps.” Slocum looked over at the three men. When they shook their heads, he went over to the wagon and looked at the two bound prisoners.

  “Where did Phelps go?”

  “To town, I guess. He said there was an Indian had a gold mine. He planned to track him down and then come back for us,” Dawson said.

  “Joe Black Horse?” Slocum asked.

  “Yeah,” Manley grunted. “That was who it was. Said we’d all be rich.”

  “I bet.” Slocum shook his head. “You boys would have grown whiskers there waiting for Phelps to come back.”

  “What now?” Williams asked.

  “You better take them two back to Antelope Springs,” he said to Williams and Rex. “Haney has a well to drill. I’ll go see if I can find Phelps. He’s got a way of being elusive. If we all go up there, he’ll get spooked and run.”

  When he turned to Bob, she was looking at her dusty boots. “Guess I’ll go along and hold the horses.”

  Slocum nodded and shook hands with Haney and Zeke, congratulating them for their good work. “We’ll be back in a few days if we can’t turn up anything.”

  Dan climbed on the wagon and nodded to him. They were off, leaving Bob and Slocum in the dusty ruts watching them pull away.

  “What now?” she asked him.

  “We’ll go to Barlowville and try to learn where Joe Black Horse is at. He may lead us to Phelps.”

  “But I thought Phelps was going to follow Joe.”

  “Joe’s the bait.”

  “I see.”

  Slocum bounded up onto the saddle and checked the big horse. She swung a chap-clad leg over the saddle and settled in place. “Let’s go. I want that sumbitch.”

  “So do I, girl. So do I.”

  Chapter 13

  A bloody sunset drenched the western sky. Wrapped in the head-high greasewood, Barlowville was about to be swallowed in darkness. Already, long shadows cast by the mountains spread over the sprawling jacales and tin-roofed businesses. Slocum and Bob rode slowly up the gravel ruts. Be a damn good place for an am
bush.

  They found a handwritten note on Rip’s store and post office, which was shuttered and barred. Gone to collect a bad debt. Slocum reined his horse around, disappointed. Rip might have known where Joe was at. They rode on up the dirt street.

  On the right, he nodded toward a crude sign that said CAFE. They dismounted to hitch their horses at the rack. No other horses were around and he could not see anything out of place, but the unusual tall growth of the stiff brush made for poor vision. There were few places where the creosote-smelling brush grew this high. He remembered seeing such a growth east of the Superstitions where he’d evaded an Apache war party in the greasewood.

  “You know this place?” she asked in a whisper.

  He shook his head. “It don’t suit, we’ll go elsewhere.”

  Lights were on inside and they walked into the room.

  “Ah, Señor and Señorita, so nice to have you,” a smiling, ample-bodied woman said with a slight bow.

  “Thank you,” Slocum said. “What’s for supper?”

  “Cabrito. Slow-cooked and very tender.”

  He exchanged a questioning look with Bob, who nodded her approval. “Goat sounds good, and some wine.”

  “The wine is red,” the woman warned, showing them the table.

  “Is there any other color?” he asked. They both laughed.

  An old man came from the back, sat in a chair, and played the guitar while they ate. They were the songs of Mexico—the wild horse, the love gone wrong, the woman who left him. Some miners floured in gray dust came in and stole glances at Bob. They, too, laughed along with the woman.

  She kept the wineglasses full and fluttered over Slocum and Bob. Then one of the miners shouted at the musician to go get his trumpet. He rose and carefully set aside the ancient guitar. Back bent, he waved at their teasing and went to find the horn.

  He returned, and Slocum wondered how so frail-looking a person could even raise a note on the battered brass instrument in his gnarled hands. But raise he did, with the haunting “No Quarter” that Santa Anna played at the Alamo before attacking. His notes even silenced the miners. When he finished, he took a bow and they all applauded him.

  Then he played a polka, and one of the miners danced with the woman, sweeping her around the tables to the hand clapping and shouts of the other men.

  “I’m glad we found this place,” Bob said.

  Slocum nodded.

  When the old man stopped playing, Slocum leaned over and asked the table of miners if they had seen Joe Black Horse that day. They shook their heads.

  “I saw him last night,” one of the men said. “Why?”

  “There is a man who bragged he was going to find Joe’s mine who came up here today. He’s a killer.”

  “What’s he look like?” one of them asked.

  Slocum turned to Bob to describe him.

  “He’s in his thirties, has dark curly hair that’s long, and he looks like a dandy all the time.”

  “I saw him at the mercantile earlier,” one of the men said. “Wasn’t he a deputy?”

  “Yes,” Slocum said. “One of Gantry’s men.”

  “Is he here to kill Joe?”

  Slocum shrugged. “We don’t know. We just heard he was coming up here to steal Joe’s mine.”

  “Let us know if you need any help. We’ll sure cave in his head if he messes with that old Injun.”

  “Yeah, Joe’s the only guy ever buys us free drinks.”

  Slocum paid the woman, tipped the old man, and thanked the miners. Outside in the starlight, they walked to their horses.

  “What now?” she asked.

  “Check the saloons.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Two or three.”

  She hugged her arms and looked about in the darkness. “He could be anywhere around here?”

  “He sure could. The game is cat and mouse.”

  “What’re we?”

  “The cat, I hope.” He reached out and hugged her shoulders before they mounted up. “I don’t think he knows we’re here—yet.”

  “Where will we stay tonight?”

  On his horse, he slapped the bedroll tied on behind. “Here.”

  She laughed. “One thing to look forward to anyway.”

  The first saloon he went in to check was full of Mexicans. The black-mustached bartender had not seen this gringo that Slocum described and Old Joe had not been in there all day. Slocum thanked him and gave him two bits.

  The second saloon was the Red Horse. The smoke inside was thicker than in the first one. More dust-coated miners with haggard looks written on their faces eyed him suspiciously.

  The bartender told him the man he wanted had been in there earlier, but Old Joe had not been in all day. He had not seen Phelps since then either. Slocum tipped him, thanked him, and headed through the smoke for the door.

  “I know where that guy you’re looking for is at,” a miner behind him said.

  Slocum turned, and the short man following him carried a mug of sudsy brew in his hand. “You do?”

  “Worth a few beers?”

  “Sure.” Slocum dug in his vest for two quarters and slapped them on the bar. “Where is he?”

  “Up at Soapy Jones’s place.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Mile up the road, you can’t miss it. Soapy keeps some putas and there’s some no-accounts hang around up there.”

  “Mister—” another miner, well in his cups, put in. “It’s a good place to get your ass robbed.” Then, nodding his head like a loose cannon, he stepped back to his beer at the bar.

  “Either of you seen Old Joe today?” Slocum asked.

  “No, why?”

  “This guy Phelps bragged he’d get Old Joe’s mine.”

  Both of them laughed at the notion. “Been better men have tried,” the sober one said.

  Slocum thanked them and went out to his horse handler.

  “Learn anything?” she asked.

  “They said Phelps is or was at Soapy’s.”

  “Soapy Jones’s house of ill repute?”

  “I guess you know about it?”

  She smiled. “Only what I overheard growing up as a girl in this country.”

  “Must be a tough place. One old drunk in there said they robbed folks.”

  “It has a bad reputation, but it’s the only whorehouse for miles. So I think when men can’t stand it anymore, they take their chances and go there.”

  “And get robbed.”

  “Well—they usually don’t take more money than they need.” She swung on her horse.

  “We better ride up and see if he’s there.”

  “Sure. I can hold the horses.”

  Slocum chuckled. He really was thinking about a night out in the brush with her silky flesh to knead and pound. But his own pleasures had to wait until after he’d checked out all the places where Phelps might be hiding.

  There were a few horses hitched outside Soapy’s. Slocum looked them over trying to see if he recognized any of them. A player piano was going on inside, and the sounds of women’s laughter carried into the night. An occasional male outburst would join them, followed by more put-on laughing. It was all part of the stupid games they played in such dens of sin. “Oh, why are you here tonight?” and “Oh, I never do that.”

  Bob shook her head when they finished looking at the horses. “I don’t know any of these horses,” she said.

  “Me either. Sometimes in a bear’s den you flush out a bear. Be on your guard.”

  “You be careful.” She slapped the .30-caliber on her hip. “I can use it.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and headed for the brightly lit front doorway of the rambling adobe house. He checked the Colt and then reset the holster. No telling what he’d find beyond the threshold.

  For long moment, he stood a few feet from the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the brighter light inside. A blond woman in a billowing nightshirt appeared in the doorway and smiled, showin
g her missing tooth.

  “Come on in here. I thought I heard someone ride up.”

  He nodded and stepped inside the room. Several hard looks were cast his direction from a card game under a wagon-wheel candle lamp. But no one seemed jarred by his appearance and the men turned back to the game.

  “Well?” the woman asked, attached to his left arm. “Poker or poke me?”

  Then she threw back her head and laughed. “Get it? Poker or poke me?”

  He nodded. She must’ve taken a bath in cheap perfume. She reeked of it and her body had a musky smell. Her last bath had not been recent—her hair was oily despite the gold color plastered on her head. She had large boobs that she shoved into his arm, and an obvious pot-belly that she pressed to his side as she guided him toward a bar.

  “Well, darling, who we got here?” the bartender, a gray-whiskered man, asked, setting a bottle of bonded whiskey on the bar.

  “Here’s a bottle of good whiskey. That and her ass’ll cost you three bucks,” the man said. “Want to stay all night and try to wear the hole out, it’ll cost you four bucks.” The man’s blue eyes were as hard as the words that he spoke. He had to be Soapy.

  “What if I don’t like it?”

  “Her or the whiskey?”

  “Either.”

  “I don’t give no gawdamn refunds.”

  “I just asked. Pour me a shot. I’ll try it.”

  Soapy never took his eyes off him and slapped a jigger on the bar. “You’re new around here.”

  “First time.”

  She laughed and rubbed her belly against him. “It’s good stuff.”

  “I never doubted it.” Slocum poured a shot from the bottle. “I’m looking for a deputy sheriff from Saguaro County named Phelps.”

  “This ain’t—”

  “Saguaro County. I know that. He ain’t a deputy there no more.” He tossed down the drink and nodded in approval. It was smooth whiskey.

  “We going upstairs now?” she whined.

  “You seen him today?” he asked Soapy, ignoring her.

  “Maybe.”

  Slocum pushed her hand away from taking the whiskey. “He still here?”

  “Who should I tell him was calling?”

  “I can tell him that myself.”

  Soapy considered the bottle, then Slocum. “You the law?”