Slocum Along Rotten Row Page 3

  The man seemed surprised to see Slocum.

  “Thought you’d be on your way by now,” the lawman said uneasily.

  “You made Tombstone sound too appealing. When does the marshal want me to swear out a complaint against the rustler?” By the deputy’s expression Slocum knew something was wrong.

  “Well, you see, it’s like this. He said there ain’t any evidence. One man’s word against another. The marshal did say that Mr. Childress he wasn’t gonna file false arrest charges against you or nuthin’. That sounded mighty charitable of him, if you ask me.”

  Slocum stared in disbelief. What did it take to put a rustler behind bars in Arizona Territory?

  “You let him go?”

  “No, no, not me,” the deputy said. His eyes darted around like a mouse looking for a woodpile to hide in. “I had nuthin’ to do with it. The marshal, he was the one what let Mr. Childress out. But he didn’t have no other choice.”

  “Why not?”

  “He had a lawyer.” The deputy looked around, and then leaned closer to Slocum. “Tombstone is filthy with them cock-suckers. There’s an entire street filled with their offices. Rotten Row we call it.”

  “Where did Childress go?”

  The deputy shrugged.

  Slocum drained his beer and left the saloon, marching straight for the jailhouse. He reached the small building in time to see Childress shaking hands with a well-dressed man wearing a bowler.

  “Childress!” Slocum roared.

  Childress went for his pistol. Slocum was faster. He had his Colt Navy out and firing before Childress cleared leather. The man in the cutaway coat leaped away, bellowing incoherently. Slocum focused only on the rustler. The outlaw wasn’t much of a gunman, struggling to skin his six-shooter out of his holster.

  “I swear, you’re a dead man if you get your hogleg out,” Slocum shouted. “You’re going back to jail where you belong.”

  Childress looked up to the man in the bowler.

  “Sir, there must be a mistake. My client is—”

  Slocum swung his pistol and caught the man alongside the head, knocking him down. He pointed his six-gun at Childress and said coldly, “Inside the jail. Move!”

  Childress’s hands were shaking and he looked like he was going to cry, but he obeyed. He went inside and headed straight back for the cells. Before Slocum could congratulate him on knowing where he belonged, he heard a whistling sound and then he crashed to the floor, out like a light.

  3

  “You lock him up and keep him locked up!” Childress shook his fist at Slocum’s motionless body. When he went to give him a kick in the ribs, both his lawyer and the marshal stopped him.

  “Don’t do anything that’ll land you back in jail,” Jackson Pine said, putting a restraining hand on his client’s shoulder. Childress tried to pull away, but Pine was stronger. He bore down hard, digging his fingers into a nerve.

  “You let go of me, you damned shyster,” Childress complained. He tried to jerk free, but Pine continued to apply pressure and forced Childress to sit in the straight-backed, rickety wooden chair in front of the marshal’s desk.

  “You be quiet and let me take care of this. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

  “You lock that varmint up, won’t you, Marshal Sosa?” Pine said to the lawman.

  The marshal looked at Slocum and nodded slowly.

  “Don’t have much love for his boss. He works for Conway over at the Circle Bar K Ranch, right?”

  “That’s what I’ve heard. After all, who else would slander my client with such malicious charges? Conway is infamous in this part of Arizona for his vile calumnies of all and sundry.”

  “Save your two-bit words, Counselor,” the marshal said. “You want to help me drag him into a cell?”

  “That’s your job, Marshal,” Pine said. He rubbed his sweaty hands against his trousers, not wanting to touch the dusty cowboy.

  “I will!” Childress started to stand but Pine pushed him back and shot him a disapproving look. Childress subsided.

  “I’ll prefer charges later, if you don’t mind.” The lawyer touched the side of his head and winced at the tender spot under his fingers. The pistol barrel had not broken the skin but had left quite a bruise. Gentle probing made it out to be the size of a silver dollar.

  “You, too?” the marshal asked Childress.

  “Certainly.” Pine spoke up before Childress could speak. “My client is the one who has the civil case against him, as well as a criminal one.”

  “Yeah, right,” Marshal Sosa said. “You two clear out. I don’t want him seein’ the pair of you and goin’ crazy. The cell’ll hold a gorilla, but this one has the look of a man whose anger sorta overflows, if you know what I mean.”

  Pine gingerly touched the bruise on his temple. Nodding hurt like the dickens. He reached down, took Childress by the arm, and pulled him to his feet. Before the man could take a step in the direction of the cell where Slocum was already locked up, Pine shoved and sent his client stumbling out into the hot sun.

  “You don’t have to treat me like that. Touch me again and I’ll rip your damn fool head off.”

  “Mr. Childress, do you understand power?”

  “What are you goin’ on about?”

  “It’s like this,” the lawyer said, taking a deep breath before he continued. “Out on the range you live by your wits. I have no doubt that you were rustling cattle—wait!” Pine held up his hand to forestall the predictable outburst. “I don’t want to know. As your lawyer, I can present a better case in front of a jury, should it come to that, if I have not heard a confession from your lips.”

  “What are you—?”

  “Be quiet and I’ll tell you. On the range, your six-shooter and your wits keep you alive. In Tombstone they mean nothing. Less than nothing since if you tried to use either your three-pound weapon or your pea brain, you’d end up in jail. Or worse.”

  Pine paused. He was heartened when Childress didn’t try to put in his two cents’ worth.

  “I know how to get things done in Tombstone. The courts are more powerful than you can ever imagine. A single piece of paper will put a noose around your neck—or remove the rope. I am in charge of all that.”

  “You’re only one of a couple dozen lawyers in town.”

  “Try not to sound so petulant. You are right. There are more than thirty lawyers for a town of a couple thousand. Not a one of us is starving. What’s that tell you?”

  “You’re all crooked.”

  Pine laughed.

  “We don’t like to think of ourselves that way. Crooked implies we break the law. Rather, we use the law. Bend it, twist it, pervert it on occasion, but it remains the law and it is my servant. I command it to do things you could never dream of doing. And it is all legal, unlike driving off someone else’s cattle in the hope of reaching Mexico before they catch you.”

  “Why’d you get me out of jail? I can’t pay very much.”

  “I see sterling qualities about you that I can use.”

  “Sterling? You mean silver?”

  “Exactly,” Pine said, slapping Childress on the back. “I need an assistant to help me get title to one of the richer silver mines in the area.” He turned down Toughnut Street and pointed. “The mines in town—underneath the town itself—are rich. When Schiefflin made the discovery that brought this filthy little town to prominence, I knew my destiny. Prospectors rushed in and claimed the best spots, but some of those mines weren’t sold to large companies.”

  “There are a passel of leathery old geezers who think they’ll get rich workin’ their own claims,” Childress said, contempt obvious in his tone. Pine knew he could use that arrogance to his own benefit and Childress would never know what was going on.

  “Quite so. And some of them have failed to retain legal representation to secure their claims.”

  “So you’re gonna steal one of them mines using the law?”

  “It won’t be stealing if a judge agrees to my legal brief. One miner in particular has been less than meticulous about filing the necessary deeds to his mine.”

  “I don’t know what you’re sayin’, but I think I’m likin’ it more and more.”

  “I’m sure you are, Mr. Childress, I’m sure you are. Let me buy you a drink while I explain what needs to be done.” Pine started to put his arm around the rustler’s shoulders, then took a half step away. Bugs crawled up and out of the scruffy man’s collar. Pine rubbed his hands against his trouser legs and led the way into the nearest saloon. He didn’t bother to note which it was. At this time of day, the miners weren’t off their shift yet and only a few who were out of work loitered about.

  “I worked up a mighty big thirst, what with Slocum drag-gin’ me halfway across the desert the way he did.”

  Pine motioned to the barkeep for a half bottle and found a table toward the rear of the long, narrow saloon so he could sit with his back in the corner. Childress had no trouble flopping down opposite him, his back exposed to the door. When the bottle came, Pine poured. Before he could get himself a shot of whiskey, Childress had downed his and clicked the glass on the table, demanding another. Pine poured a second, then tended his own drink.

  He sipped and made a face. The bitter taste was hardly disguised by the gunpowder put in to give the raw alcohol color. Trade whiskey would be the death of him unless he got better-paying clients and could drink the good stuff most saloons kept hidden away for special customers.

  “It ain’t Billy Taylor’s Finest but it’ll do,” Childress said, pouring himself a third shot while Pine nursed the first.

  “It can be,” Pine said, his voice low and conspiratorial. He decided this was the proper way to approach Childress for his cooperation. If there appeared to be something illegal about what he suggested, Childress would be more comfortable with that rather than the simple and quite legal act of serving process on Ike Tarkenton. But just because it was legal didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be dangerous. The crazy hard-rock miner was more likely to shoot than to listen, no matter how exquisitely drafted the court papers were.

  Childress was the perfect one to serve him with the court summons.

  “You sayin’ if me and you team up, there’s money in it?” Childress looked sharply at him. Pine nodded. “Might be that’s not such a bad thing. I was gettin’ mighty tired out of stealin’ a couple head of cattle and then gettin’ robbed by them Meskins. A fifty-dollar cow’d only fetch five south of the border. Like as not, they wanted to pay in pesos.”

  “That’s not bad if it is a silver coin,” Pine pointed out.

  Childress snorted.

  “Them ladrones ain’t never seen real specie. All they got’s paper money, and it’s worth even less than greenbacks on this side of the border.”

  “Why deal with them?” Pine bit his lower lip. These weren’t questions he ought to be asking a client who might still end up in front of a jury to be tried for rustling.

  “Ain’t got nuthin’ else to do. None of them fat ass ranchers’ll hire me to do an honest day’s work. So I steal from them. Especially from the Circle Bar K since ain’t nobody in Arizona that likes the owner.”

  “I’ve heard Conway is a man of few words—and those tend to be cuss words.”

  “Damned right, and he don’t make no bones about tellin’ you what he thinks of you. Serves him right gettin’ his beeves stolen.”

  “I need to know that I can trust you to do what you’re told,” Pine said. He peered past Childress at a burly man who had sauntered in. He wore his six-shooter low on his hip and had the look of a gunman.

  “If there’s money in it, I’ll do whatever you ask of me.”

  “Your current legal bill is one hundred dollars.”

  “What! That’s highway robbery! All you done was get me out of jail.”

  “I convinced the marshal to drop rustling charges,” Pine said. “More than this, I took Slocum off the street and got him out of your hair so you’d be free to do whatever you want.” Pine touched the bruise on his temple and winced. If he had the time, he’d make sure Slocum rotted in prison for buffaloing him the way he had. However, there was no reason to let Childress know that. Let him think everything he’d done was for the benefit of the client.

  Pine saw this wouldn’t be too hard. Childress’s only thoughts were of his own well-being. He viewed the world as if it were a brightly reflecting mirror with himself in the center of everything.

  “I won’t pay!”

  “You won’t have to if you’re in my employ,” Pine said. “I’ll forget the hundred dollars if you collect what’s due me from that gent. The one just knocking back a shot of whiskey.”

  Childress swung around in his chair and gave the man a once-over.

  “He’s big. That don’t scare me.”

  “It ought to. He’s very good with his six-shooter. I don’t know if he is a hired killer, but he might be. His name is Simonetti. I never learned his first name.” As he spoke, it occurred to Pine that he didn’t know Childress’s first name either. He shrugged it off. Such details never mattered in the long run. He didn’t intend to have Childress working for him more than a few days. That would be all it took to get Ike Tarkenton to agree to an amicable settlement—even if it took some serious persuasion on Childress’s part to bring it about.

  “What’s your beef with him?”

  “I got him out of jail, much as I did you. The charges against him were more serious and required paperwork signed by a judge. I sprung him, and he refused to pay.”

  “You outta collect before you get him out of jail.”

  “I realize that now. But if I have you doing my . . . collecting . . . that’s a moot point.”

  “Mute? He don’t sound like no mute. He just ordered his-self a whiskey loud enough for me to hear.”

  “Never mind. He owes me five hundred dollars.”

  “A galoot like that ain’t got five hundred of anything,” Childress said.

  “Perhaps not, but it would be interesting to find out.”

  “If he ain’t got it, kin I kill him?”

  Pine was taken aback at such savagery and almost reconsidered putting Childress into his employ. Then he saw the wad of greenbacks Simonetti flashed as he paid for his drink. Pine sat a little straighter, and his inhibitions against violence faded. Simonetti had lied to him and taken advantage of him. Dragging the matter through court would only cause Simonetti to hire another attorney to defend him and burn through that roll of money.

  “He’s got the money, and it’s by rights all mine.”

  Childress started to stand, but Pine reached across the table and pushed him back down. Childress turned angrily on him.

  “Calm down. I want the money. Don’t hurt him, unless it’s necessary.” Pine wondered if this was realistic. Simonetti was twice Childress’s size and probably meaner. He moved like he was always ready to throw down and get his six-gun out and blazing away at anyone foolish enough to call him out. Simonetti was a one-man disaster waiting to happen.

  “Of course it’s gonna be necessary. You want the money or not?”

  Pine leaned back and gestured for Childress to do as he pleased. The lawyer intended to sit here, or maybe go to the bar where others could see him so he couldn’t be blamed for anything that happened. For all he knew, Simonetti would leave Childress dead in the middle of the street.

  He watched Childress push through the swinging doors and go out onto the boardwalk. Several minutes passed, and he began to frown. Childress might have hightailed it to get away from the hundred-dollar charge he had levied against him. The kind of citizens he dealt with were basically crooked. Childress might even think it was funny to run out on a hundred-dollar debt. Pine had come across worse thieves in his work since he’d ridden into Tombstone almost six months ago.

  A young boy ducked into the saloon and looked around. Pine saw the way the boy’s eyes turned wide when he stared at Simonetti. The boy overcame his fear and hurried to where the giant of a man stood drinking. After getting Simonetti’s attention by tugging on his sleeve, the boy spoke rapidly. His voice was too low for Pine to hear what he said, but it galvanized Simonetti. He pushed the youngster out of the way and stormed from the bar.

  For a moment the sudden departure caused a furor among the other patrons. Pine didn’t miss how the boy climbed up on the brass rail, grabbed the mug of beer Simonetti had been working on, and quickly drained it himself. He fell off the brass rail, hiccuped, and then left the saloon. The boy’s gait was already a little tipsy.

  As curious as he was, Pine forced himself to remain at the table. After a few minutes, he grew anxious and called out, “Who wants to get into a poker game?”

  “Lady Jane’s not gonna be in ’til six. You can play faro then.”

  “I want to play now! And it’s got to be poker, not faro.” Pine intended to cause as big a commotion as he could so they all remembered he was inside the saloon, not out taking care of Simonetti.

  Or maybe witnessing Simonetti killing Childress.

  “I’ve got a deck of cards. Who’s got some money?”

  The patrons exchanged glances. One man started to join him but another—a miner from the cut of his clothing—grabbed his arm and whispered urgently. The potential card-player backed off and ordered another beer, pointedly not looking in Pine’s direction.

  What the miner had said didn’t matter to Pine. These men would remember him being in the saloon, and that’s all he wanted. An alibi.

  Less than ten minutes later a commotion outside drew the men. The barkeep went to investigate and ducked back inside, eyes wide.

  “I don’t believe it. Somebody’s gone and shot Simonetti. They plugged him in the back.”

  This caused immediate whispering as the men began speculating on who might be responsible. Pine sat a little straighter when he saw Childress appear in the doorway leading to the back room. While the patrons and barkeep were crowded around the door leading to the street, Childress slipped into the saloon and took his chair across from Pine.

  “Here you are,” Childress said, a sneer curling his lip. “Five hundred.” He tossed a wad of greenbacks large enough to choke a cow onto the table.