Slocum and the Meddler Read online

  As he stalked back to the hotel, he kept a sharp eye out for anyone inclined to challenge him. He was in no mood to bandy words. Lead would fly instead. But he reached the hotel and went up the steep stairs to the second floor. Where the room clerk had gotten off to, since he wasn’t at the desk, Slocum couldn’t say, but the door hung on one hinge. He grabbed his gear and left. The smell of gunpowder still hung in the air.

  Rather than go back to the lobby, Slocum went down the long narrow corridor thinking how much it looked like a cattle chute in a slaughterhouse. He found the door leading to the back stairway ajar. That meant nothing since the lock was broken. Peering closely at it, he saw this was recent damage. But he still didn’t know anything he hadn’t guessed. The gunman could have come here, waited, and then shot Macauley as he stood in the doorway of Slocum’s room. If the cowboy had turned slightly and presented his back, that would explain the direction of the entry wound.

  Slocum went back down the corridor to the lobby and spun the ledger around. Everyone who had signed into the hotel had put a hometown next to their name. They might have lied, but they all seemed to be traveling through on their way elsewhere. None was a likely suspect to be cheating with the cowboy’s wife, not from New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and a couple small towns in the East Texas piney woods.

  He knew this didn’t mean much. Macauley’s missus might have carried on with her lover and then moved away—or the lover might have been returning after a trip. Slocum would have to do some serious asking to get answers to his questions. Unless he wanted to kick in doors the way the cowboy had, now wasn’t the time. His nose wrinkled as he caught the effluvia from his long johns. He wasn’t going to get anyone to talk to him stinking to high heaven.

  As he turned to go, the clerk came in from the street. The young man froze in his tracks, eyes wide.

  “Never said you did, mister. Really. He just took it into his head to—”

  “The others upstairs. Did Macauley know any of them? Were they family friends? Of him or his wife?”

  “His wife? Can’t rightly say, but the other guests are all strangers. Never seen ’em before today.”

  “You lived in Abilene long?”

  “Most all my life. Like Mac and his missus. She’s ugly as a mud fence, but one of the nicest ladies you’d ever want to meet. Real religious, too.”

  “You never saw any of the men staying here before?”

  “Not even you, mister. My pa owned the hotel ’fore me, so I seen folks come and go all the time for nigh on fifteen years. We come here ’fore Abilene was much more than a widening in the road.”

  “And you’ve never seen any of the others staying here tonight?”

  “Never have. Said that.”

  This didn’t prove Macauley or his wife didn’t know the travelers, but it made the mystery even deeper. Slocum nodded once, saw how the clerk hastily made way to let him leave, then stepped into the street. Hot dry air blew from West Texas and caused him to stink even more. He decided on first things first and headed for the barbershop.

  It was hardly four in the morning, and the barbershop was closed. Slocum didn’t care since his need was so great. He rattled the latch until it finally fell open. Inside, he went directly to the rear of the shop and found the large galvanized tub behind a drawn curtain. After firing up the stove and boiling water for the bath, he stripped off his filthy long johns and dropped into the hot water.

  He submerged until he couldn’t hold his breath any longer and then lounged back to let the hot water lap around him. As he reached for a brush and soap, he saw a dark, indistinct figure looking through the front window at him. Then the shadow disappeared fast, making Slocum wonder if he had seen anything at all. At the moment he had more important things to do than worry someone was going to tell Marshal Wilson he had busted into the barbershop. After all, he’d left money on the counter to pay for his bath.

  He almost wished the marshal would come running. He needed someone to scrub his back.

  Slocum began the tedious task of bathing. Once clean, he could find out what had sent Macauley on the wild-goose chase that had ended with him getting murdered.

  2

  Slocum’s clothes hung wet and limp on him as he stepped out into the morning sun. Its heat felt good against his face. Just being on the right side of jail bars felt even better. But what rankled and turned his gut was a series of questions left unanswered from the night before. Why had the cowboy decided to pick that particular room to kick in the door and declare his eternal hatred for being cuckolded? Slocum had taken a long while to think on the matter as he soaked off the stink in the bath.

  It was pure happenstance that Slocum was in the room. Macauley might have been told to go there, but it was all a ruse to gun him down. In spite of what everyone said, Macauley had a powerful enemy willing to set him up for the ambush. If Slocum hadn’t cut him down, then the cowardly bullet from the end of the corridor would do the trick.

  As he walked, the hot dry Texas wind sucked up the water from his body and clothing until they were plastered and baked on his hide. He ignored that. More times than not, his clothes were filthy. Now he had rinsed them out in the used bath water and had added a drop or two of violet from the barber’s station. Slocum rubbed his hand over his stubbly chin and knew he needed a shave, too. That could wait. If he figured out who had murdered Macauley, he would treat himself to a shave so he would look presentable at the hanging.

  By the time he reached the first saloon, Slocum was less sure of what his intentions were. He had been used and that rankled, but the smart thing to do was get on his horse and ride. There were a half-dozen ranches in the area where he could get a job as a cowboy, though not likely to be the one where Macauley had worked. That trail crew sounded as if they were a tight outfit and wouldn’t take kindly to anyone having anything to do with their friend’s death.

  “Mister, mister, buy me a drink.” A hunched-over man waved to Slocum. “I got a powerful thirst.”

  “Mighty early in the morning,” Slocum said.

  “What else I got to do?” The man held out a bent, broken right leg. “Yeah, I got stomped on by a horse. I kin face a man and kick him in the ass, ’cept I kin hardly pick up the leg with both hands.” He demonstrated. Using both hands to grip his jeans, he tugged. The foot barely scooted along the boardwalk. A slight stumble and he had to brace himself against the saloon wall. Slocum wasn’t sure which was more likely to fall down. The man was wobbly, but the saloon wall sorely needed repair. A dozen bullet holes had weakened the structure.

  “There must be plenty of work in a town like Abilene,” Slocum said. “You can push a broom.”

  “Merchants don’t like me none. They think I’d steal ’cuz I look like this.”

  From the way he cocked his head to one side and looked suddenly crafty, Slocum knew he was lying. And that bothered him. The man was obviously lying and making certain Slocum realized it.

  “Nobody gets anything for free in this world,” Slocum said.

  “Wait, mister, wait. Might be I got somethin’ to trade fer a shot or two of whiskey. Even the rotgut this son-of-a-bitch bartender calls whiskey is better ’n nuthin’.”

  “What?”

  “You mean what would a cripple like old Herk have in his possession to trade with a fine, strapping young buck like you?”

  Slocum started to walk away. He wanted none of the man’s self-loathing or crude soft-soaping.

  “I know who’s responsible,” Herk called.

  Slocum stopped and looked over his shoulder. Herk seemed a tad desperate now. He rubbed his lips with a dirty sleeve as his eyes darted about like a trapped rat.

  “Well?”

  “Well, mister, come on into the saloon and buy me that drink and I’ll tell you who sent Macauley to your room last night.”

  “Tell me now. Without the drink,” Slocum said, reversing his course and standing next to Herk. The man cowered. Even with a good leg, he wouldn’t have matched Slocum
’s six-foot height by close to eight inches. Bent over, he scarcely topped five feet. From where Slocum stood, he looked down on the man’s bald spot. The shirt showed that Herk carried a pack or something else slung over both shoulders. Slocum had an instant vision of Herk struggling along, a knapsack loaded with his worldly belongings, walking about town. And for some reason he had fresh black ink smeared on his hands and sleeves as if he had rested his forearms on a newspaper fresh off the printing press.

  Slocum still didn’t feel sorry for him to the extent of buying a drink.

  “Tell me,” he repeated in a lower tone with a steel edge to it now.

  “You don’t mess around, do you? You rip a man’s soul out and stomp on it.”

  “I can always ask real nice or not.” Slocum slammed the palm of his left hand against the wall beside Herk’s head so hard that nails popped free and rattled onto the boardwalk. The man’s head lurched backward, and he almost toppled over.

  “It was that tall drink of water, Jerome Finch. He was bangin’ Mac’s wife, and asked Mac to give her up. That set him off. Mac, I mean.”

  “How’d Macauley end up at my hotel door?”

  Herk looked around furtively, then said, “They got friends what don’t want to see nuthin’ go awry ’tween the men. Rather ’n tell Mac where Finch was sittin’ ’round playin’ faro at a gambling emporium across town, they sent him over to your hotel.”

  “Why my room?”

  Herk shrugged, and it was an ungainly movement that showed more than his leg was busted up.

  “Who can say? Might have been the first number that came to mind.”

  “He was shot by someone hiding down the hall.”

  “They didn’t reckon on that,” Herk said. “Might be they thought nuthin’ would happen. Mac would blow off some steam when he found it was the wrong guy or maybe the marshal would have locked him up ’til his hurt was past.”

  “Who’d gun him down?”

  Herk looked even more uneasy. He shook his head, the bald pate catching sunlight now like a pink mirror.

  “Finch?”

  “I never said that! He knowed Mac was huntin’ him, but he wouldn’t kill another wrangler. Not like that. They wasn’t partners but—”

  “But Finch wanted Mac’s wife bad enough to come sniffing around when he wasn’t home. Might be Finch and the missus decided it was time to end one marriage and get on with their lives.”

  “Mister, you got an imagination, I’ll hand you that. I never said none of that… no matter how close to the truth it might be.”

  “You reckon Finch heard that Macauley was heading to the hotel to have it out with him?”

  “Abilene’s a boomtown. We got cowboys comin’ out the ass. Nuthin’ gets said that isn’t repeated a dozen times in the next five minutes.”

  Slocum knew how that worked. News was always at a premium. A newspaper brought in on the stage was read a dozen times over. A town like Abilene was likely to have a couple local newspapers, all feeding the citizens what they wanted to read most. Gossip served to keep cowboys interested between the times when there wasn’t newsprint. He had worked for enough ranchers to understand how hard they worked to keep down the rumors and put their men to serious work so they wouldn’t gossip like old hens at a quilting circle.

  “So Macauley knew Finch was likely to take a shot at him?”

  Herk shrugged his curious gesture.

  “Who sent Macauley to the hotel?”

  “I know what you’re thinkin’, mister. You see how it might work out if somebody sends Mac to the hotel, then tells Finch.”

  “Anybody else sniffing around Miz Macauley?”

  “Most of them fellers would be, Mr. Slocum. She’s a looker. Or so I’m told.”

  This didn’t jibe with what he had heard from the hotel clerk about her being a homely woman. Still, many a man on the frontier found just about any woman attractive if she batted her eyelashes at him.

  “She interested in more than one man in her bed?”

  “At a time? Who’s to say?” Herk laughed, then coughed up a black gob. He peered sideways at Slocum. “Please, I done tole you what I can. Buy me a drink. To make the pain go away fer a while.”

  Slocum tossed him a nickel.

  “Get a beer. Whiskey will tear up your gut worse.”

  “Thanks,” Herk said in a caustic tone.

  Slocum felt a bit unclean at having even talked with the man. The gossipmongers among cowboys were bad for company morale, but those cadging drinks in exchange for bad news and rumors were worse.

  He headed toward the marshal’s office to see what more Wilson might add to the story Herk had related. Jerome Finch might have pulled the trigger and killed his fellow wrangler, but somebody had told Finch where his romantic opponent would be—and set up the entire ambush.

  “Him!”

  Slocum stopped and looked around to see what the furor was, then saw a half-dozen men pointing in his direction. A redheaded man pushed his dusty Stetson back on his head. The day wasn’t too hot yet but sweat beaded his brow. As he pointed at Slocum, his hand shook. The words coming from his lips told the reason.

  “Hang the varmint. He killed Mac!”

  It was a terrible thing to lead a lynch mob—and even more terrible because Slocum knew who the red-haired cowboy was without ever having seen him before.

  “You calling me out, Finch?”

  Slocum turned, squared off, and pulled his coat back from the ebony butt of his Colt Navy. He stood perfectly still, but the sound of his own heart hammered in his ears. Eight men in the mob exceeded his best effort to shoot them all without reloading. That wasn’t likely to be possible from the expressions on their faces. They were all het up and looking for blood.

  For revenge.

  “You know my name?”

  “Jerome Finch. You’re the man who wants Macauley’s wife.”

  “What!” Finch spun and looked at the men in the mob on either side of him. He grabbed a noose and held it high so Slocum could see. “I don’t know what your beef is, mister, but you stuck your nose where it don’t belong. We’re gonna do what the marshal oughta have done.”

  “You shot Macauley, not me. My pistol hadn’t been fired. Can you say the same about yours, Finch?”

  “How’s he know who you are, Jerome?”

  “He guessed!”

  “I didn’t have to guess. You’re not denying you and Macauley’s woman are—”

  “You shut up. You shut that dirty mouth of yours. Martha’s a God-fearing woman, and she’d never cheat on Mac, not with nobody.”

  “Except you, Finch. You and her can be together now that you murdered her husband.”

  “You lyin’ skunk!” Finch roared and charged, swinging the noose in a figure-eight pattern in front of him.

  Slocum had plenty of time to draw, but his aim was off as the rope snaked out of the cowboy’s hand and rapped him on the knuckles of his gun hand. The shot went off target but still drew blood. Finch let out a roar and kept coming. A second shot hit the enraged cowboy in the leg, causing him to flop facedown in the dirt.

  But the damage had been done. Slocum had taken too long stopping Finch. The other cowboys rushed forward and tackled him. Slocum fought, kicking out and raking one cowboy in the face with his spurs, but the human tide finally drowned him. One man sitting on each of his arms and another holding his legs forced him to subside and conserve his strength.

  “You kilt Mac. We’re gonna stretch yer neck good.”

  The sentiment was shared by the others, especially Jerome Finch as he limped up, clutching his leg. Slocum had only grazed the cowboy’s arm with his first shot but the second in the thigh was more serious.

  Slocum wanted him to bleed to death fast.

  “String ’im up,” Finch said, his voice coming in harsh pants. “Mac was my best friend. I won’t tolerate the way he talked lies about him.”

  “And about Martha and you,” said another.

  Slocum saw
how slow Finch was to respond. That told him something was going on between the dead man’s wife and this cowpuncher.

  “He don’t have no call bad-mouthin’ her like he did.”

  Then Slocum wasn’t so sure. The expression on Finch’s face was hurt and anger, not guilt. He grabbed the lapels of Slocum’s coat and pulled him to his feet. With a powerful tug, Finch brought their faces to within inches.

  “The marshal don’t have good sense at times. Him gettin’ the shit kicked out of him by a cow done that to him when he was workin’ with us, but he forgot how good Mac was to him after the accident. I’m not forgettin’.”

  “You didn’t shoot Macauley, did you?”

  Again Slocum was taken aback by Finch’s expression. A guilty man would have given himself away, but Finch’s anger looked righteous. He shook Slocum hard.

  “I’d give my life for that man. He was like a brother to me—more. I hate my real brother. Mac was a good man, and you took him away with your cowardly bullet.”

  Seeing no reason to argue when the mood of the crowd was against him, Slocum let them shove him back and forth to vent some of their anger. Then they lashed his hands in front of him and steered him toward the edge of town.

  “Git his horse. I won’t want trash like him settin’ on a good horse.”

  As his horse was brought from the stables, the rest of the lynch mob took Slocum to a cottonwood towering at the edge of the road leading into town.

  “You have anything to say ’fore we end your miserable life?” Finch asked.

  “There’s more to this than either of us knows,” Slocum said.

  “Damn right,” called the man bringing Slocum’s horse. “I let ever’one in town know there’s gonna be a hangin’.”

  Dozens of people flocked to see the execution. Slocum grunted as they hoisted him into the saddle. He winced as they dropped the rough hemp rope around his neck and cinched it down tightly.

  “Not that way,” Finch said, pushing away the man with the rope. “You want his damned neck to break, not for him to strangle to death.”