Slocum and the Canyon Courtesans Read online

  “That’s Darla. Darla Whipple. The other one is Susan Lindale. I don’t know where Fanny is. Darla said she escaped last night.”

  “Had any paying customers yet?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, John.”

  “They give you a crib upstairs?”

  “A small room. We don’t have to take customers up there. Scud said we could use it on our breaks and sleep over if we got too tired. He’s given us a nice little adobe house. Anita Gonzales stays there and that other Mexican gal who works here, Florita. I forget her last name.”

  “You heard what happened to Gloria last night, didn’t you? She worked here, too.”

  “I didn’t know her. Anita said she died.”

  “Scudder’s deputy blew her to pieces with a sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know, Melissa. But I wanted to warn you about what they say about dogs and people.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You lie down with dogs and you get fleas. If you had the chance to get out of town, would you take it?”

  “I’d have to think about it,” she said.

  “You mean you’re willing to be one of Scud’s whores?”

  “I’m not a whore, John. I just serve drinks and talk to the customers, make them feel at home.”

  “That costume you’re wearing says different.”

  “Oh, John, you act like a damned prude. This is fun for me after what I’ve been through. You should be happy for me. I’m going to make a lot of money and meet a nice man who will marry me. That’s just what I came to Texas for.”

  Slocum drank half the beer in his glass. He looked over at Del, who was straining with all his might to hear what Slocum was saying. He turned away as soon as Slocum looked at him.

  “I don’t think you’ll have this job long,” Slocum said.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t think Scud and his crooked brother, the sheriff, are going to be around long enough to pay your salary.”

  “I get tips, too,” she said, and patted her boobies. They crackled with the sound of paper money.

  “Just giving a word to the wise,” Slocum said.

  “You going to shoot Scud and his brother?”

  “If I get the chance.”

  “They’re too smart for you, John. Scud is the toughest man I ever met. I mean, he’s hard inside and out. He owns practically this whole town and men have tried to kill him before. Anita told me that and I believe her. She said Scud was dangerous and that I should not make him angry.”

  “That was probably good advice, Melissa.”

  “But I don’t want you to get hurt either, John. You were nice to me and I’m grateful to you for what you done.”

  Slocum finished his beer, set down the empty glass.

  “I wish you luck, Melissa,” he said. “Don’t end up like Gloria.”

  “I won’t,” she said. “Good-bye, John. I don’t know what you’re up to, but I think you’re in way over your head.”

  “That’s when a man does his best swimming,” he said. “When he’s in over his head.”

  She gave him a pitying look and slid off the bar stool. She assumed an air of friendliness and enthusiasm as she strutted back to the tables, smiling and curtsying at every ogling drinker.

  Slocum nodded to Del and held up two fingers.

  “Two minutes,” he said without voicing the words, and got up from his stool. He walked out the batwing doors and onto the street.

  Two or three minutes later, Del joined him.

  “Is that it, John? What now?”

  “Now, we go out to the diggings.”

  “That was a mighty pretty gal you was talkin’ to in there.”

  “She’s a lost soul, I’m afraid,” Slocum said.

  “I saw two other new gals just as pretty and warn’t none of ’em lookin’ too lost to me.”

  “Scud fed them a pack of lies and they think they’ve found a home in that saloon.”

  “Scud’s that way.”

  “Did he tell you he would put part of your pay into a savings account that you could draw out if you ever wanted to leave?”

  “Why, he shore as hell did. Most of my pay goes into the bank.”

  “Ever try to draw out any of that money, Del?”

  Del scratched his head as he untied his horse.

  “Come to think of it, I never did. But I calculate it’s better’n four hundred dollars by now.”

  “Anybody you know ever try and take out their savings?”

  “Well, Charlie Fields, he did once.”

  “And did he get his money?”

  “I don’t rightly now. Maybe. They said he left town to buy him a ranch or something.”

  “I wonder how far he got,” Slocum said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Charlie’s probably lying in that graveyard outside of town, feeding the worms.”

  “Shit, John, you don’t know that for sure.”

  “No, I don’t, Del. I just know one thing.”

  “What’s that?” Del asked.

  “It seems to me that a lot of people have come to this town, by hook or by crook.”

  “Yeah, probably true,” Del said as he climbed into the saddle. Slocum hauled himself aboard Ferro and looked over at Del.

  “People come here and nobody leaves town alive,” Slocum said as he turned Ferro out into the street.

  Del didn’t answer, but when he rode alongside, Slocum could see that he was thinking about what Slocum had said.

  He was thinking real hard.

  And counting on his fingers. He got all the way to one finger.

  But, Slocum thought, he didn’t seem to be too sure about that piece of arithmetic.

  22

  The town died a few minutes after they rode away from the saloon. The town was dark and lifeless, its streets empty, its buildings silent, as if some plague wave had wafted through it, wiping out all its inhabitants. They rode out onto the desolate starlit plain with its shadowy shapes, its jumble of rocks and grotesque plants that seemed like mutations of animals alien to this planet or any other.

  Del veered off to their left.

  “Best we circle up behind the diggin’s,” he said. “We’ll have a better chance at that dynamite.”

  “Good idea,” Slocum said. “I’ll follow you.”

  They didn’t even see the adobe pueblo but arrived on the far side of the ravine, where Del halted his horse.

  “We’ll just wait here a few minutes to see if we got company,” he whispered.

  Moonlight dusted them as it rose and spread its dim frost on the deserted ravine, the tools and supplies on the other side. The bowels of the ravine were pitch dark and smelled of burnt powder and wet clay, musty broken rocks, and the faint aroma of mule droppings and urine.

  “You think one of those guards might come out this way?” Slocum said sotto voce. Ferro tossed his head and pawed the ground as if wondering why they were not moving and perhaps smelling what scents wafted from that dark hole in the earth a few yards away.

  “If they suspicion anyone’s prowlin’ around out here, they could ride up, I reckon. Don’t expect ’em to.”

  Slocum said nothing. Instead, he scanned the lumpy shadows that were the tools under tarps and the wagons that were standing at various places along the length of the flat above the ravine. A bullbat whispered past them, and in the distance a lone coyote yapped then went silent. They heard no sounds from the adobe village, nor did they hear hoofbeats or the clink of an iron shoe on stone.

  “Pretty quiet,” Del said, his voice barely audible.

  “Do we
ride down there or stay on the plain and go to the other side?”

  “Be quieter if we ride around. Real slow like.”

  “I’ll go as slow as you do,” Slocum said.

  They rode very slowly to the head of the ravine, rounded it, and headed for the place where the dynamite was stored. There they dismounted and tied their reins to a long log used for shoring up a mine shaft.

  Del reached down and pulled back the tarp. He pulled it slowly so that it wouldn’t crackle or make any other noise. There, stacked, were wood boxes of Du Pont 60/40 dynamite. There were smaller boxes of caps and coils of coated fuses.

  Slocum looked over at the nearest wagon and pointed to it.

  Del nodded.

  Slocum picked up a box of dynamite and carried it over to the wagon. He placed it gently on the bed near the front. Del came over with a box of blasting caps and a twenty-five-foot coil of fuse. He laid them next to the box of dynamite.

  “What else?” he asked.

  “That should do it,” Slocum said. “Now do we hook our horses up to the wagon or find us some mules?”

  “The mules are kept in a corral at one end of the ’dobe town,” he said. “Be hard to get ’em with those guards ridin’ back and forth all night.”

  “And if we hook up our horses, we’ll be at a disadvantage when we leave here. The wagon will make a lot of noise. So I have a better idea.”

  Slocum climbed up into the wagon, took his knife out, and slid it under the lid of the dynamite box. He pried the lid off.

  “Look in my saddlebags, Del, and bring me my gloves. I don’t want to handle this stuff without protection.”

  “How come?” Del asked.

  “Those dynamite sticks have some kind of coating on them. You get it on your hands and then rub your head, you’re going to have the worst headache in the world. I mean a real bad headache that might blind you for two or three days.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Del said.

  “Get the gloves.”

  Del rummaged around in both of Slocum’s saddlebags until he found a pair of heavy work gloves. He handed them to Slocum, who put them on.

  “Now bring me my saddlebags,” he said. “Then get yours.”

  “I see what you’re doin’,” Del said. “We don’t need no wagon.”

  “Not now, but if and when we get those guns out of that safe, we might need a wagon to lug them all out to the Mexicans.”

  Del returned with Slocum’s saddlebags, then went to retrieve his own. Slocum picked up three sticks of dynamite and placed them in the bottom of one bag. Then he picked up three more and put them in the other bag.

  He handed Del the box of caps and the coil of fuse.

  “Pack those down tight,” he said. “One of those caps can blow your hand off.”

  “Why did you change your mind about takin’ the wagon?” Del asked.

  “I figured to use the wagon to load up those weapons when we blew the safe. Then I realized that it not only would be unnecessary, but we’d lose the use of our horses. Plus, there are wagons and carts in town. We’re still going to need men to use those rifles and pistols. I’ll need José Delgado to help me with manpower.”

  “Who’s José Delgado?” Del asked.

  “He’s one of the workers. If I can, I’d like to bring him with us.”

  “That might be tough, with those two guards prowling around the ’dobes.”

  “Maybe not,” Slocum said enigmatically.

  “You mean to take ’em out? Tonight?”

  “It’s a matter of chance, Del.”

  “Chance?”

  “If I get the chance, I’ll take one or both guards down and that’s two less of Scud’s men to worry about.”

  Del swore under his breath.

  Slocum added three more sticks of dynamite to each of his bags, then climbed out of the wagon. He put the saddlebags behind his saddle and let out a long breath.

  Del finished with his saddlebags and then both men froze as they heard a sound.

  “Shh,” Slocum warned. He went into a crouch, his gun hand floating just above his pistol. He peered into the darkness.

  Del froze. His face blanched with fear, turned ghostly white in the soft glare of moonlight.

  Crunch, crunch.

  They both heard it. Some animal walking over the rocks. A horse, perhaps.

  Out of the shadows, they saw a looming figure on horseback, the glint of light glancing off a rifle barrel.

  “Who the hell’s out there?” the man on horseback called out.

  “That’s Jubal Gaston,” whispered Del, loud enough for Slocum to hear him. “Look out.”

  Jubal reined up his horse and stared straight at them. Both Slocum and Del were hunched down and the wagon was blocking Jubal’s view. But Slocum knew he could see their horses and that was more than enough for the guard to know something was wrong.

  Slocum held his breath.

  Then he saw the rifle move and heard a click as the rider jacked a cartridge into the firing chamber.

  Jubal raised his rifle to his shoulder, slowly, and then sighted down the barrel. He was deliberate in his actions, sure of himself.

  In that moment, time stretched into an agonizing eternity, as if that single moment would last beyond memory, would remain fixed in Slocum’s mind like some ancient, incomprehensible relic that had been dug up and put on permanent display in a museum.

  He let out his breath very slowly and the sound was like a ghostly whisper from some far-off place outside his own body.

  23

  In that split-second just before Gaston’s rifle butt touched his shoulder, Slocum, almost without thinking, jerked his pistol from its holster.

  His thumb pressed down on the hammer and the hammer clicked back into full cock as he brought the Colt up to fire.

  Slocum knew that darkness distorted a man’s vision, and that if he aimed for a small part of the man, he might miss. He might shoot high or low. So he centered the front sight on the rider’s midsection, the largest part of the man in the saddle.

  He aimed and he fired from both instinct and past experience. Fast as the speed of thought, he squeezed the trigger just as Gaston’s rifle butt settled on the muscle of his shoulder.

  As soon as Slocum fired, he hammered back for a second shot. Again, this was from both instinct and habit.

  Flame, bright orange flame, spurted from the barrel of his pistol. He saw a wispy puff of smoke and then heard the smack of the bullet as it struck flesh. Gaston grunted and his torso twitched as the lead ball slammed him just below his rib cage, square above the belly’s center. The rifle tumbled from his hands and clattered on the ground, unfired.

  Gaston started to topple sideways from his saddle as blood rose up in his throat and spewed from his mouth like a black torrent, a single long gush that erupted from the volcano caused by the expanding lead bullet that smashed portions of his lungs and slammed into his spine with all the force of a sixteen-pound maul. His body contorted and he pitched forward over his saddle, his chest striking the saddle horn and causing his breath to drive more blood from his throat. Then he fell to one side and slipped out of the saddle. Gaston hit the ground with a loud thud and his gasping sounded like a blacksmith’s bellows with a case of bronchitis.

  Del cowered behind his horse for several seconds. Slocum stood up straight and walked over to the fallen man. He squatted down and touched the carotid artery with the tips of two fingers. He felt no pulse and Jubal lay stiff and still where he had fallen.

  “He’s dead, Del,” Slocum said. “Come see for yourself.”

  Del walked over. He was hesitant, faltering in his slow gait. He seemed reluctant to look at the dead man.

  Finally he said, “That’s Jubal, all right. I didn’t think he�
��d be so easy.”

  “It’s never easy to kill a man, Del.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean, one minute he was a big man on a tall horse and now he’s just a bloody bag of bones.”

  “Strip off his gun belt and I’ll get his rifle and any ammunition he has in his saddlebags.”

  “What you aim to do with Jubal’s weapons?”

  “I’m going to give them to José Delgado. Get that ball rolling.”

  “We still got Faron Lawrence to worry about. Likely he heard that shot. Hell, they probably heard it clear over to Polvo.”

  Slocum picked up Jubal’s rifle, while Del unbuckled the gun belt.

  As Slocum was patting the withers of Jubal’s gelding, he grabbed the reins and tied them to a wagon wheel.

  “Likely José could use this horse, too,” Slocum said. “It’s a fine animal.”

  The horse was a sorrel gelding, standing at least fifteen or so hands high, and the saddle was out of Denver, with a roping horn, double-cinched. He rummaged through the saddlebags and came up with a box of .44-caliber pistol ammunition and a box of .30-caliber rifle cartridges. He left them in the saddlebags.

  That was when they heard far-off hoofbeats. Somebody was riding hard down in the adobe barrio, and the sounds grew louder.

  “He’s a-comin’ this way,” Del whispered as he buckled Jubal’s gun belt and slung it over one shoulder.

  “Give me that,” Slocum said.

  Del handed him Jubal’s rig and Slocum hung it from the saddle horn of the dead man’s horse.

  The hoofbeats grew louder.

  “Now what do we do?” Del asked.

  “We wait,” Slocum said. “And listen.”

  They could hear the horse scramble up the slope toward the ravine. The rider was following the same path as Jubal had taken when he rode up on them.

  They waited. And listened.

  As the horse rounded the far end of the ravine and headed their way, Faron let out a shout.

  “That you, Jubal? What’s a-goin’ on?”

  “Yo,” Slocum yelled and then smiled.