Slocum and the Lady Detective Read online

  Slocum went outside and looked around the main street. Already miners were pouring in from their dreary work underground, pushing and shoving to get into the saloons and the Tabor Opera House down the street, where some chanteuse claiming to be from France was ready to warble all night long for the hefty price of admission.

  “You see ’im? Where’d the thievin’, sneaky son of a bitch go?” The waiter pushed Slocum aside and waved around a meat cleaver. “I’ll cut off his hands so he’ll never pass no bogus money in this town again. Leastways, not to me!”

  “There’s something of an epidemic of fake coins,” Slocum said. He could search all night and not find the cowboy, but he stopped and looked hard across the street into the shadows of an alley. “What’s it worth if I get your money?”

  “Free meals for a week, and I’ll be much obliged, Mr.—”

  “Slocum.”

  “I need you to make an example of him, Mr. Slocum. I don’t want any of them damn fool miners thinkin’ they can do the same as he done to me. It’d be worth it if they showed me some respect. I—”

  Slocum left the man grumbling on the doorstep of his restaurant and crossed to the alley. He pressed his back against the wall and listened hard. A smile crept to his lips when he heard, “Double or nothin’, mister.”

  “For a twenty-dollar gold piece? You don’t have that kind of money, kid.”

  “I do!”

  Slocum had found the youngster who had stolen his double eagle earlier. He started to enter the alleyway and confront the sneak thief, then pressed back into the wall and thought on it. Wherever the young man got the coins was the place Slocum wanted. He had a suspicion he would find not only his own coin there but the cowboy from the restaurant and maybe a lot of others intent on switching real coins for their fake ones.

  “Damn, you won,” came an aggrieved complaint. “That ain’t a two-headed coin now, is it, boy?”

  “I won fair and square. See?”

  Slocum imagined the young man holding up his coin as he took the real one and tucked it away. In the dark, it was good enough to pass for real—and it undoubtedly had both a head and a tail. He had been lucky and won this time and didn’t need to waste one of the counterfeit coins on a switch, as he had with Slocum.

  “I’d go you again but all I got’s some scrip,” the victim said.

  “Don’t like paper money. Only specie. Gold coins. Maybe silver. But metal, not paper. Why, anybody could print up a bale of that there paper money and make us think it was worth something.”

  Before his victim could reply, the young thief came bustling out of the alley, arms swinging, chest puffed up, and his head high. He had made another easy twenty dollars. Working in the mine for a month would hardly bring him that much money, and he had snookered the man in the wink of an eye.

  Slocum wondered if he would continue working the street until he’d foisted off all the imitation coins or if he had to return with the gold coins he stole after every sucker. The answer came fast. The young man stopped in the street and waved. Slocum stepped under a broad awning when he saw the man in the second-story window of the hotel. He had found the cowboy from the restaurant and had confirmed to his own satisfaction that a counterfeiting ring was working to fleece the people of Leadville.

  The youngster dashed for the hotel and went inside. Slocum followed more slowly, going through the front door and looking around the hotel parlor to be sure the two crooks weren’t conducting their business in plain sight.

  “You lookin’ fer a room, mister? Got one left. Real busy tonight.”

  “My kid got away from me. I thought he ducked in here. You see him?” Slocum described the scrawny young confidence man.

  “Uh, I dunno.” The clerk obviously had seen the boy but wasn’t looking for trouble in his hotel.

  “He was hunting for his uncle—my brother. He was supposed to get to town today, but I haven’t seen him either.”

  “What’s he look like?” The clerk’s suspicions soared, then abated when Slocum described the cowboy from the restaurant the best he could.

  “Yeah, he’s got a room. Second floor, up front. Looks out over the street, just like he asked. Reckon he wanted to watch for you.”

  “He’s like that, my brother.”

  “Don’t look a thing like you,” the clerk said, again suspicious.

  “Different papas. What was the room number?”

  Before the clerk could reply, the youngster came back down the stairs, stopped, spotted Slocum, and let out a loud cry of warning.

  Slocum raced to the stairs and took them three at a time. The altitude took the energy out of him and left him struggling to breathe. He bent forward, hands on his knees, to take a moment to recover when the door burst open and the cowboy came out, his six-shooter drawn.

  “You ain’t gettin’ a dime outta me.”

  From the back of the hall came the loud cry, “He’s the one I snookered earlier. He knows!” The loud slam of a door told Slocum one of his quarry had hightailed it down the back stairs and into the night. That left him with only the cowboy in the doorway.

  “I want my money back,” Slocum said. “All of it.”

  He tossed his head to one side so the stiff brim of his hat snapped against the wall, sending the Stetson spinning to the floor. The instant of distraction was all Slocum could buy with the tactic. He slapped leather and dragged out his Colt Navy from his cross-draw holster.

  Both his Colt and the cowboy’s black powder Remington discharged at the same instant. The difference came in accuracy. A huge chuck of plaster exploded from the wall to Slocum’s right. His bullet caught the cowboy in the gut and doubled him over. Another shot from the Remington went into the floorboards. As the cowboy fought to straighten and get off a better-aimed shot, Slocum ended the conflict with a bullet to the man’s forehead.

  The cowboy sagged to his knees, then fell face forward onto the floor. His blood oozed out and stained the threadbare carpet.

  Slocum stepped forward, wary although he knew his second shot had been fatal.

  “Drop that gun or, I swear, I’ll cut you in half. I got this here shotgun barrel crammed with carpet tacks and I don’t miss—ever.”

  Slocum looked back over his shoulder down the stairs where a man wearing a marshal’s badge held a ponderous 10-gauge shotgun in rock-steady hands.

  He dropped his Colt and raised his hands. Explaining was better than dying.

  2

  “This yahoo was trying to rob me,” Slocum said, his fingers twitching as he kept them above his head.

  “That remains to be seen.” The marshal shoved him away, down the hall, to better examine the body on the floor. “You shot him twice.”

  “He fired at me twice.” Slocum started to point to the hole in the plaster wall but the marshal poked at him with the shotgun. The lawman hadn’t been fibbing about the tacks in the barrel. A room cleaner like this would hardly leave a bloody smear on the walls as testament to where John Slocum had once stood. With a weapon like this, the marshal could keep control over a bar full of drunken miners—and he’d probably used it more than once from the look of the pitted, scratched bore.

  “That’s not much of a story. This gent waltzes on out of his room as you come by, sticks a gun in your face to rob you, the pair of you shoot it out, and then he’s drawing flies on the floor?”

  Slocum nodded.

  “Clerk tells a different story.”

  “They always do.”

  “He called for me when he saw your interest in this gent and a kid.”

  “You search his room and you’ll find a bag filled with fake coins.”

  “You need to find a story and stick with it. Getting all wild and woolly about your accusations doesn’t do a damned thing to make me believe you. Fact is, the crazier the story you spin, the more likely I am to think you knocked on his door and just gunned him down.”

  “How do you explain that his gun’s been fired? And the hole in the hallway wall
?”

  “I can tell you just blowed into town,” the marshal said, standing and stepping across the body into the sleeping room. “How do I know? Shoot-outs happen in this hotel, sometimes two or three a night when it’s payday at the mines. Other times, it’s real quiet. Won’t be a killing here for two-three days.” He looked around the room to be sure it was empty, then motioned with the shotgun for Slocum to precede him down the stairs.

  All the way down to the lobby Slocum felt an itch along his spine, waiting for the marshal to stumble on the steep staircase and discharge both barrels into him. That was ridiculous, and he knew it. If the lawman shot just one barrel, Slocum would never know it. He’d be a goner before his body could tumble the rest of the way down the stairs.

  “Got a body upstairs, Jethro,” the marshal called. Slocum watched the lawman’s face reflected in a dirty mirror hanging near the door and saw that he never took his attention off his prisoner. “Get the undertaker to drag it over to the parlor. And don’t you go stealing anything from his saddlebags either. I already rummaged through them a mite and know what’s in there.”

  “I’d never do a thing like that, Marshal Atkinson. You know me.”

  “That’s why I’m telling you not to steal anything, Jethro.”

  “He’ll end up with a bag of fake coins,” Slocum said.

  “Now there, I don’t need advice from the likes of you. Turn left and walk down the middle of the street. If I have to shoot you, I don’t want blood spattering all over the boardwalk and walls. The businessmen of this here town get upset when they have to scrub off blood, especially when it’s from some stranger who don’t matter one whit.”

  “I’d think they wouldn’t mind so much as long as it wasn’t their own blood.”

  This produced a chuckle from the marshal.

  Slocum half turned and saw movement in the shadows. The scrawny kid who had fled just before the shooting started faded back into darkness. Slocum thought he heard footfalls on the hotel’s back staircase but couldn’t be sure. If the youngster returned to the room, he’d steal any money there—and any of the counterfeit coins. Something about the way he moved brought a caution from the lawman.

  “You’re thinking. Don’t go doing that. I haven’t killed anybody all day and want to make it to midnight ’fore I do.”

  Slocum glumly walked to the town lockup, a rundown building with a steeply sloped roof to let the heavy winter snowfall slide off easily. He went inside and almost backed out. Only Marshal Atkinson’s shotgun in his back kept him from retreating.

  “Why do you keep it so hot in here?” Slocum asked.

  “Winters are brutal and these old bones prefer warm. I’d be in Mexico sitting in some cantina drinking gut-burning tequila with a pretty señorita on my knee if I had enough money.” He prodded Slocum forward. “That cell. The first one. It’s yours till I figure out what’s going on.”

  The heavy iron bar door clanked shut behind Slocum. He turned and examined the jail for the first time. Sweat beaded his forehead, and all of wasn’t caused by the stove glowing red-hot in the center of the room. The exterior of the jail might be dilapidated, but Atkinson maintained the interior—and the cells—with an eye toward perfection.

  Slocum hunted for a speck of rust. The bars were clean of any spot where he might attack the failing metal with any hope of escaping. The cell was more of a cage with thick iron straps going above and on two sides. He guessed they might run under the dirt floor. The wall with the door in it was secure, and Atkinson had placed his desk far enough away that, even if Slocum grew arms ten feet long, he wasn’t going to snare the keys off the top or from the peg on the wall behind the desk chair. A rack of rifles along the exterior wall was even more distant. A chain ran through the trigger guards and fastened them with a heavy padlock.

  “I got the key right here,” Atkinson said, fishing for a string around his neck. He held out a key that would fit the padlock. “I been at this job for nigh on eight years, and I’ve seen every kind of escape attempt. Men have tried to tunnel out. Can’t do it. Chew through the bars—one gent broke his store-bought teeth trying that. Some had friends who tried to shoot their way in. They didn’t make it, ’cept out to the graveyard. Another tried to use dynamite to blow open the back wall. All he did was blow himself to kingdom come. No, sir, the only way out of that cell is for me to let you out.”

  “You might as well let me out now, then,” Slocum said, “since I haven’t done anything.”

  The marshal pulled Slocum’s six-shooter from his belt and held it up to a coal oil lamp to get a better look.

  “I’ve seen shootists come and go. Most don’t have a pistol this finely balanced. The ebony handle’s worn from use. The whole weapon is well used and even better taken care of. Why, I’ve seen cowboys with lumps of rust in their holsters. But this is a precision six-shooter, and unless I miss my guess, you’re mighty quick with it.”

  Slocum said nothing.

  “It might just turn out to be the way you said, how that gent ended up dead in the hotel corridor. Might be just a spat between the two of you went bad. Or it could be somebody hired himself a professional gunman to kill a rival.”

  Slocum sat on the edge of the bunk. The mattress was thin but not as thin as the blanket. With the way the marshal kept that stove stoked, though, no prisoner would ever need a blanket.

  “Don’t even think on it. It’s been tried and it doesn’t work.”

  “What?” Slocum looked up, startled.

  “Toss the mattress or blanket over the stove and start’em smoking so I’ll open the cell door to let you out before the whole damned place burns down. It won’t happen. I’ll let you choke on the smoke and die inside.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Do. As I said, the only way out of here is if I let you leave.”

  Slocum lay back on the bunk, the garrulous old marshal rattling on about the desperados he’d locked up and how many of them had been sent to prison. Staring overhead didn’t inspire much confidence in his ability to get out of the cell. The inch-wide iron straps were securely riveted into a wicker basket pattern that made any attempt on his part to pry one band free utterly futile.

  “I’ll get one of my deputies to bring back the dead gent’s belongings so I can go through them. Right now, all my deputies are occupied in the saloons. Won’t be long before you have a companion or two for the night. Miners can’t hold their liquor, not that I’ve ever noticed.”

  Slocum considered trying to escape so the marshal would shoot him and put him out of his misery. The heat from the stove was so much that Slocum’s shirt was plastered to his body with sweat. But worst of all was the incessant flood of reminisces and cautions about trying to escape.

  “I hear somebody coming now. Reckon that might be Lem or maybe Sid, my top deputies. I’ll—”

  The marshal stopped his verbal diarrhea and stood. Slocum swung his boots off the bunk and sat up at the vision of loveliness who seemed to float into the jailhouse. She stood about five-foot-five and had a trim waist held in by an expensive dress. Slocum was no expert, but he thought it must have come from back East, with silk ribbons and frilly doodads on it. She stopped just inside the doorway, patted back a strand of auburn hair, then pointedly ignored Slocum as she went to stand in front of the marshal’s desk.

  “Evening, ma’am. You got the right place? This is the town jail.”

  “You must be Marshal Atkinson,” she said, thrusting out a hand clad in a glove trimmed with delicate lace. “I am Miss Elena Warburton of the Chicago Warburtons.”

  “Don’t rightly know what that means, but I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. I’d offer a chair, but the only one I had got busted up last week and I haven’t had time to replace it.”

  “That is quite all right. I shan’t be long. I am here to bail out that gentleman.”

  Marshal Atkinson made a show of looking around, then smirked.

  “Don’t see a gentleman anywhere, leas
tways not that a fine lady like you would appreciate.”

  “How much?”

  “Beg your pardon?”

  “How much is Mr. Slocum’s bail?”

  “Is that the varmint’s name? I hadn’t bothered to ask.”

  Slocum stared hard at the woman, trying to remember where they had met. Anyone this beautiful would have made an impression, and he couldn’t remember ever having seen her before a few minutes ago. But that didn’t make any sense. He had never met her, yet she knew his name—and she wanted to fork over bail money to get him out of jail.

  “How much?” She pulled out a wad of greenbacks big enough to choke a cow. Slocum was positive now that he didn’t know her. Not only was she lovely, she was rich. That combination in such a beautiful woman would have stuck in his memory to his dying day.

  “Whoa, little lady,” Atkinson said. “Put that roll of bills away.” He rubbed his stubbled chin as he looked hard at her. Elena’s brown eyes never wavered under his hard examination. “I haven’t set bail since I don’t know what he’s done.”

  “It was not murder,” she said.

  Slocum was even more intrigued by her. She was a stranger, yet she knew his name and what had happened back at the hotel, at least as far as a man being killed.

  “How’d you know a thing like that?”

  “I saw the entire sordid affair. The other man came from his room, gun drawn. Mr. Slocum was the victim of a failed robbery attempt. Gunshots were exchanged and the robber swallowed a pill he could not digest.”

  “Slocum’s lead pill,” Atkinson said, still rubbing his chin. “How’d you come to see it all?”

  “I had just opened my door to leave my room for a late meal when I saw it all. I wasn’t ten feet away.”

  Slocum knew she was lying. He would have seen her because he had watched the dead man’s scrawny accomplice hightail it down that hall to the back stairs. But he didn’t much care that she claimed to see what she hadn’t because the marshal was buying it.

  “Do tell. That changes everything, doesn’t it? You’re one lucky gent, Slocum, having a fine lady like this stand up for you.”