Slocum and the Three Fugitives Read online

  Slocum knew instinctively that the gossip was less about the saloon owner being shot in the chest and brought to town than it was about the three horses. If he’d dallied, he might have overheard exactly what the people were saying, but getting Harris to the sawbones mattered more.

  He saw the wood sign swinging in the stiff afternoon breeze and tied up the horses at a nearby hitching post. Harris fell from the saddle. Slocum caught him, staggered under the weight, and swung the man around, mostly dragging him into the doctor’s office.

  A man looking older than the hills blinked, adjusted his glasses, and studied Slocum for a moment.

  “What are you bringing me today, young man?”

  “You know him? He was ambushed by road agents outside town.” Slocum swung Harris around and laid him on the table in the center of the room.

  “Tom!” The doctor shot to his feet, crammed his glasses down more firmly on his nose, and pushed Slocum aside. “Let me have some light to see. My God, how are you still alive, Tom?”

  “Tougher than you ever thought, Dr. Zamora. That’s how.”

  “You didn’t shoot him?” Zamora looked up over the tops of his glasses at Slocum. “No, you didn’t. Why bring him in if you had.” Zamora grabbed scissors and snipped away the coat, vest, and shirt matted to Harris’s chest. When he discarded the coat, he hesitated. His nimble fingers pulled out a wallet bulging with greenbacks. “You could have taken his money.”

  “Will he make it, Doc?”

  Slocum hadn’t realized Harris carried so much money though he had mentioned some, but even if he had known, it wouldn’t have changed anything. The wad of bills, easily a thousand dollars, spoke to why the road agents had waylaid him. The three would have been rich and a week on the trail before anyone began to worry about why Harris hadn’t been seen. He had just started on a buying trip to Denver and likely had told everyone in Taos who cared that he would be gone a couple weeks.

  Zamora pressed into the wound. It bubbled blood, but the flow grew increasingly sluggish. He reached for a slender metal probe and gently inserted it into the wound. Slocum heard the dull click when the tip touched the buried bullet. Zamora drew back and dropped the bloody probe on the table. Before he could say a word, Harris reached up with a surprisingly strong hand and grabbed the doctor’s lapel.

  “I can answer what you’re thinking, Doctor,” Harris said. “I’m dying. I feel it inside. Nothing you or anyone who’s not God can do for me.”

  “I can try to remove the bullet, but . . .” Zamora’s words trailed off.

  “You just think you’re God,” Harris said. “You’re not.” He closed his eyes and arched his back, crying in pain. As the spasm subsided, he opened his eyes again and looked straight at Slocum. “Thanks, John. You’ve done more for me than I’d expect, even from a best friend.”

  “You said you had family. I’ll go fetch them,” Slocum said.

  “No, wait, wait. I want to give you something.”

  Slocum’s eyes darted to the money.

  “You give that to your family.”

  “Not that, not for you.” Harris’s voice faded, then returned a little louder. “As you’re my witness, Dr. Zamora, I’m selling the Black Hole to him. To John Slocum. Write up a bill of sale real quick so I can sign.”

  “You don’t have to give me anything,” Slocum said.

  “You didn’t have to fight off them damned ’shiners tryin’ to k-k-kill me, either.” Harris closed his eyes. For a moment he looked dead, then came back. “Write it up, Doctor. And don’t do it with that hen scratching of yours. Write it all neat and proper.”

  “If you like, Tom.”

  The doctor quickly went over to a rolltop desk in the corner, pulled out a sheet of stationery from one of the built-in shelves, dipped his pen in the inkwell, and wrote something out.

  Slocum watched the life draining from the man. His face turned pale and his eyelids fluttered like tiny bird’s wings, but his hand was steady when Zamora put the pen in it. Harris rolled onto his side and affixed his name to the bottom of the paper, which the doctor held steady for him.

  He looked up at Zamora and tapped the pen against the bill of sale.

  “You witness it.”

  “To be legal, he has to give you something for it,” the doctor said.

  “You got a dollar, John?”

  Slocum fished a silver dollar from his vest pocket and pressed it into Harris’s hand. The man looked at it. A curious smile came to his lips.

  “Ought to be pennies for my eyes. That’s the way they used to do it. Put pennies on a dead man’s eyes.”

  “You’ll make it,” Slocum said.

  He spoke to a dead man.

  2

  “He wasn’t right in his head,” the doctor said.

  Slocum looked at the deed in his hand. His thumb rested on a spot of ink and smeared it. Instinctively, he blew on the signature to dry it, to make it permanent, to give him full title to a saloon he had never even seen. Slocum looked up.

  “The money belongs to his family. So does this. Where can I find them?”

  Dr. Zamora shrugged.

  “There’s only his sister.” The doctor pulled a sheet over Tom Harris and took a deep breath. “I better let the marshal know. Everything that’s happened tells me Tom was held up outside town by road agents and that you had nothing to do with the robbery.”

  “I saved him long enough for him to die here.”

  Zamora spun and fixed Slocum with a hard stare.

  “Nobody could have saved him. The wound was too serious.”

  “Nobody could have saved him,” Slocum repeated slowly, letting it sink into the doctor’s head. “I tried. You tried. The three men who tried to rob him killed him. They succeeded where we failed.”

  “Get out of here. Tom was a good man.”

  Slocum folded the deed to the Black Hole Saloon and stepped outside into the crisp air and bright high country sunshine. Zamora blamed him for Harris’s death, as crazy as that might be. He had no doubt Harris would have died out on the road and had his money stolen, to boot, without any help. By bringing him back to Taos, Slocum had saved that bankroll for his family. For his sister, the doctor had said.

  He wandered the winding dirt streets, past markets and through the plaza. He sat and watched the bustle of commerce in the town while he collected his thoughts. When he tired of this, he found a street angling off to the northwest and eventually came on a string of cantinas, one next to another. The Black Hole sat at the end of the street, also a single-story adobe but larger than the rest. Slocum stood in the doorway and inhaled.

  Cigar smoke caused his nostrils to dilate. The thick smoke was cut with stale beer and the stench of unwashed patrons. He went into the dimly lit saloon and let his eyes adjust.

  He decided this was his kind of place. The woman behind the polished bar was about the prettiest thing he had seen in a month of Sundays. She wore her long brunette hair held back with a turquoise ring. An Indian necklace hung around her neck and fell down between her lush breasts, hidden by a canvas apron drawn up to protect a peasant blouse from myriad spills of beer and whiskey.

  Her chocolate eyes fixed on him. She smiled as she came over.

  “You knock off some of that trail dust while I fix you up with a drink. Whiskey? Beer?”

  “Beer,” Slocum said, watching with some appreciation as the woman bent over to draw the beer from a keg behind the bar. He dropped a dime on the bar and quickly got a nickel in change. “I’m looking for Tom Harris’s sister.”

  “Are you now,” the woman asked, her eyes narrowing. “Why might that be?”

  “My name’s John Slocum.”

  “Annabelle,” she said. “So why are you looking for her, John Slocum?”

  Slocum took a deep drink and let the beer wash away some of the dust in his thro
at. He put the mug down on the bar carefully before answering.

  “That’s personal.”

  “She doesn’t know you.”

  “You’re Harris’s sister?”

  “You’re quick to pick up on that,” she said. “Tom’s not here right now. I’m running the place for him until he gets back.”

  “From Denver,” Slocum said. He wished he had ordered a shot of whiskey. Or a bottle. It would take more than a beer to make it palatable telling her the unpleasant news.

  “How do you know that?”

  “Your brother’s at Dr. Zamora’s. He was ambushed outside town.”

  “Tom? He’s hurt? Oh, madre de Dios!” She stripped off the canvas apron and draped it over the bar.

  “No, he’s not hurt,” Slocum said. “He’s dead.”

  She put both hands on the bar to steady herself, then looked at him with a fierceness he hadn’t expected.

  “I’ll cut your heart out with a butter knife if this is a joke.” She shoved back, vaulted the bar, and ran out the door, leaving Slocum staring after her.

  He started to follow. Zamora could explain as well as he could, but he felt that he hadn’t told her of Harris’s death properly. Death came suddenly all around him, and sugarcoating the news never occurred to him. He should have eased her into the realization. He turned to go when two men at the far end of the bar called to him.

  “You done run her off, mister. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “No, reckon not,” Slocum said.

  “We need a couple more beers. You gonna fetch ’em for us or do we have to help ourselves?”

  Slocum almost told the cowboy what he could do with the beer, then touched his coat pocket where the deed to the Black Hole Saloon rested. He didn’t consider this his saloon but finding himself so engrossed with the Harris family put an obligation on his shoulders. He went around, ducked under the end of the bar, and found two clean mugs, filled them, and dropped the two in front of the cowboys.

  “Nickel each,” he said.

  “Well, now, mister, Annabelle, she’s sorta taken a shine to us and lets us run a tab. You just add it to our bill.” The one speaking looked at the other and grinned, showing a broken front tooth.

  Slocum grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and slammed him facedown onto the bar. A second tooth remained embedded in the wood.

  “No tabs,” he said. “You pay cash or you get out. Your choice.”

  “No need to get all huffy, mister. Here.” The second cowboy counted out ten pennies, which Slocum scooped up with a swipe of his hand. In the same motion he dumped the coins into a ceramic pot under the bar.

  “Hey, barkeep, I’ll have a shot of rotgut, if you promise it’s gonna take the hide off my tongue.”

  Slocum went to the other end of the bar, snaring a bottle of whiskey as he went. He held it up, swirled it around, and saw milky currents in the amber fluid.

  “This tarantula juice’ll have you singing songs and thinking you’re a maestro,” Slocum promised.

  “Some of that fer me, too,” called another customer.

  Slocum got into the job, working from one end to the other, joshing with the customers, badgering others, and enjoying himself despite how he had come to be on this side of the bar. He developed quite a thirst, but rather than drinking the profits, even the paltry amount from a beer, he used a dipper to drink some water from a bucket.

  “You know any of them fancy-ass drinks? The ones we hear about from Frisco?”

  Slocum poured from one bottle and another, adding a touch of nitric acid he found in a thick glass bottle, and assured the man this was the only thing the railroad barons drank in the Union Club perched stop San Francisco’s Nob Hill.

  He was fixing a second concoction of his own creation when he saw Annabelle come back in. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had cried herself out from the set to her shoulders, the way she held her chin high, and how she walked with grim determination. Behind her a slender man with thin mustaches waxed to needle points looked around the saloon.

  The man wore a gaudy brocade vest and fancy gray trousers with a thin black ribbon running from waist to cuff on the outside of each pant leg. A gold chain dangled from one pocket to another. With hands so delicate as to be effete, he took out a fancy gold watch, popped it open, and studied it as if the secrets of the universe were written on the face. He made a big show of snapping the lid shut, twirled his mustaches to even thinner tips, and came around the bar.

  “You are relieved of your duty, sir.”

  “And you are?” Slocum asked.

  “That there’s Frenchy Dupont,” the customer who had downed Slocum’s first potent libation said. His words came out slurred. Slocum had gotten him knee-walking drunk with a single drink.

  “My name is Pierre Dupont, if you please.”

  “Suspect it’s Pierre Dupont even if I don’t please,” Slocum said.

  He saw how the thin man’s hand moved to his left cuff. There might be a hideout pistol tucked there, but Slocum guessed a knife sheathed along his forearm was more likely.

  “About time for me to tend to other business,” Slocum said. He went around the bar and faced Annabelle Harris.

  “Dr. Zamora said you saved Tom. Out on the road. When he was attacked.” Annabelle looked him squarely in the eye. “Thank you.”

  “Wish it could have been more.”

  “It was a great deal. The doctor gave me the money Tom took with him. That will go a long way toward . . . toward keeping the bar in business.”

  Slocum touched the deed in his pocket, then decided this wasn’t the time to deal with what the woman would see as an intrusion. He could sign it over to her later when her grief had faded a mite.

  “I have horses with a X Bar X brand. You know of such a ranch in these parts?”

  “That’s the Deutsch spread out west of town, up in the mountains,” Pierre said. “What business do you have with Rory Deutsch?”

  “Reckon that’s my business—and his,” Slocum replied. To Annabelle, he said, “Sorry your brother didn’t make it. He was a brave man, holding off three road agents the way he did.”

  She started to say something but Pierre drew her attention. She smiled weakly, laid her hand on Slocum’s shoulder for a moment, then went to tend to business. Slocum saw how Pierre glared at him and considered telling Annabelle then and there that he owned the Black Hole just to fire the Frenchman. She could rehire him when he deeded the bar back to her, but firing Pierre would give him a moment of enjoyment.

  Slocum said nothing, however, and stepped outside. The three horses sporting the X Bar X brand tugged nervously at their reins. They were a high-strung lot. Slocum wondered if they took that from their owners. He mounted his Appaloosa and led the other horses from Taos, heading west across a scary bridge over a deep gorge with the Rio Grande running loud and fast at the bottom. He kept riding until he found the double-rutted road leading into the hills.

  With tall mountains all around, the sun disappeared fast in front of him. Slocum camped for the night near a stream, washing off the dirt and enjoying the solitude of the high country. An hour after daybreak, he rode under the wrought iron arch proclaiming this to be the X Bar X.

  It took another fifteen minutes before he reached the ranch house. He came to a stop and looked at the fancy two-story dwelling. Deutsch’s prosperity showed at every turn, though it seemed on the wane. The barn needed painting and the house, once well kept, now showed need of minor repairs. A couple dozen yards away a goodly-sized bunkhouse might be home to as many as twenty hands.

  He stopped his appraisal of Rory Deutsch’s wealth when a short, slender man with a rifle came onto the front porch. From the way the rifle pointed in his direction, Slocum knew he hadn’t snuck up on anyone.

  “What do you want?” the resonant voice boomed forth.

>   Slocum rode closer, the three horses trailing him. He stopped a decent distance away. The fine etching on the side of the Henry in the man’s hands told Slocum this wasn’t some rifle grabbed off a gunsmith’s rack for knockabout work on the range. Like everything else around here, it was expensive.

  “Happened on three horses wearing your brand. Thought you might like to get them back.”

  The man stepped out into the sun. He kept the rifle aimed in Slocum’s direction.

  “Where’d you get them?”

  Slocum considered what to say.

  “Well, now, they were running loose on the far side of Taos. I’m passing through and asked around the pueblo. A barkeep told me this is your brand. If you’re Rory Deutsch, that is.”

  “Those horses were stolen from my pasture.”

  “You got them back now.”

  “How do I know you weren’t the one that took them?” Deutsch stepped a little closer and lifted the rifle to his shoulder. The man was weathered like a wrangler’s work glove and had the look in his eye of one mean son of a bitch.

  “You don’t look like a goddamn fool,” Slocum said. The man snugged the rifle stock into his shoulder and drew a bead. “Nobody but a goddamn fool would think the man who stole your horses would come all this way to return them.”

  “You’re not getting a reward.”

  “Never asked for one. Fact is, you don’t likely have enough to pay me for my time. It’s real valuable, my time.” Slocum saw the man’s face turn red with anger under the tan. Pushing him much further would cause lead to fly. Slocum sat with his right hand on his saddle horn, but it was only inches from the butt of his Colt. He wore a cross-draw holster for a reason. He could get his pistol out and firing fast without any fumbling.

  “Go to hell.”

  “These are your nags?”

  “They’re mine. The best in northern New Mexico!”

  “Won’t dispute that,” Slocum said, putting enough sarcasm into his tone to suggest he didn’t believe it and thought anyone who did was touched in the head. “Good day.” Slocum dropped the reins and started to ride away.