Slocum and the Comely Corpse Read online

  But Vangie saw Slocum, her shrieks doubling. She gestured wildly, pointing out the fugitive. The bowlegged man finally got the idea, just in time to see Slocum slip beneath the rise, out of sight. The man’s jaw dropped, loosing the cigarette, which struck orange sparks as it fell down his front.

  Slocum started downhill, toward town. He took it easy, trotting along loose-limbed, not going all out. He didn’t know how much he had left, but whatever it was, it wasn’t much, and he didn’t want to use it up too soon.

  The bowlegged man dashed up to the House of Seven Sisters, reeling to a stop in the road in front of it. A gun belt hung low on his hips, almost to the tops of his thighs. He clapped a hand on the butt of a holstered gun. His eyes bulged when he saw Maud Taylor standing on the porch, the front door open behind her. She was in her robe and lingerie, barefoot. An empty gun was in her hand, pointing the way Slocum had gone.

  She said, “He’s a woman-killer! Don’t let him get away!”

  The bowlegged man stood rooted to the spot, staring at her. It wasn’t often that a fellow got a chance to see that much fine high-class womanflesh ... in his case, never.

  Maud had high color, her skin flushed red from scalp to chest. Her eyes glinted. The cold made her nipples stiff, so that they stood out against her silken gown.

  She said, “Don’t just stand there! Get him!”

  He kept goggling. She threw the empty gun at him. She had a good arm, almost hitting him. When the gun went skittering across the dirt, safely missing him, he recoiled, jumping away from it.

  “You crazy, lady?”

  “After him, idiot!”

  He hauled out his gun, a huge hogleg, and lurched off in pursuit.

  Slocum was at the bottom of the hill, crossing the railroad tracks. He was already winded, sucking for breath. He walked stiff-legged across the gravel roadbed, telling himself that if he fell down, he wasn’t sure that he could get back up.

  Behind him, shots banged. He looked back over his shoulder, seeing Bowlegs stand swaying in the center of the road, midway down the slope, popping off shots.

  Slocum was glad it wasn’t Maud. She probably wouldn’t have missed. Bowlegs was drunk, he wasn’t even coming close—

  There was a tug at the bottom of his vest, on the left side, where a fold hung free from his body. The bullet that had nicked it immediately flattened itself into a lead smear on a rock in the road a half-dozen paces ahead.

  Slocum climbed the west slope. Bowlegs stopped shooting and went downhill after him, cursing.

  Slocum topped the rise, entering the east edge of town. The dirt road went through the center of town, continuing onward west into the mountains. Bender was laid out on a tight grid of dirt streets. At the center of the grid, where the main roads crossed, the buildings were thickest and tallest. None were much taller than two stories at the highest, except for the courthouse. It was three stories. It fronted the north side of the town square, two streets south of the road Slocum was now on.

  West, above the town roofline, a church steeple showed. Opposite, on the east side of town, both sides of the road were lined with buildings. They were mostly one-story wooden frame shops, flat-roofed and square-fronted. Feed and grain, hardware, and supply stores, and similar places. They were dark, curtained, and closed for Sunday morning. Later, after church services were over, some stores would be open for afternoon business. Some folks, ranchers and such, only came to town once a week, and it would inconvenience them to have to make a second trip some other day to pick up much-needed supplies.

  In the same spirit, the saloons and gambling halls stayed closed until Sunday noon, and the sporting houses and cribs didn’t open until after dark on Sunday night.

  Now, the stores were all closed. Beyond the first cross street, there were mostly two-story buildings, with shops on the first floors and living quarters on the second. The shops were dark, but a few lights showed in upper-floor windows. Clustered nearby were hotels, rooming houses, and private homes.

  There were men in the road, dead ahead, five of them, charging toward Slocum. Three were in the lead, two others hung back. At point was Deputy Marshal Wessel, sided by his assistant deputies, Stringfellow and Tweed.

  The two stragglers were civilians who liked to hang around the marshal’s office in the jailhouse. One was named Nucky, the other was unknown to Slocum.

  Deputy Dick Wessel was medium-sized, compactly made, clean-shaven, with close-set eyes, a sharp-pinched nose, and a wide thin-lipped mouth. He was carrying a shotgun, and wore a side arm.

  On his right was Stringfellow, tall and angular, with a long bony fish face and a drawn six-gun. On the left, Tweed, stubby-nosed, with a round red face and a drawn gun.

  Wessel swung the shotgun toward Slocum. It was double-barreled. Wessel’s eyes were hot and he grimaced, stretching his wide mouth even tauter. He looked dangerous, lethal.

  Stringfellow and Tweed were covering Slocum too, but their guns paled beside the big-bored scattergun. The trio halted, standing a half-dozen paces away from Slocum. He stopped, holding his hands up and open, showing that he was unarmed.

  Nucky and the other man had been hanging back, out of range. Now, they moved forward, though halting well behind the three lawmen.

  Beyond the cross street, on the northwest corner, stood a small cafe. It was open. Smoke came out of a tubular metal stack on the roof. Some early risers stood out in front of the cafe, on the wooden sidewalk and in the road, forsaking breakfast to see what all the fuss was about.

  In the doorway stood a heavyset man in a white chef’s apron, beefy forearms folded across his chest, watching.

  Wind blew the scent of fresh-brewed coffee in Slocum’s face, making his mouth water. It dried up quick enough at the sight of Dick Wessel’s shotgun.

  Behind him, Slocum could hear Bowlegs struggling up the hill, panting, cursing.

  Wessel knew Slocum in passing, as someone who had done some minor business the day before in the marshal’s office. Recognizing him, he swung the shotgun to one side, so that it was no longer trained directly on Slocum, but could be brought to bear on him in an eye blink.

  Wessel was taut-faced but expressionless. Stringfellow and Tweed looked like they wanted to shoot first and sort it out later.

  “What’s going on here, mister?” Wessel said, spitting out a string of taut clipped words.

  “Thank God you’re here, Deputy! That madman shot up Miz Maud’s house, and now he wants to kill me,” Slocum said, pointing downhill at Bowlegs.

  Either Bowlegs didn’t see the badge-wearing lawmen, or he was too drunk to care. He fired at Slocum, missed. Slocum ducked, the badgemen flinched.

  The next shot hit Stringfellow, the slug drilling into him with a meaty thump! It tagged him in the shoulder, spraying blood droplets and gobs of flesh, knocking him down.

  He lay in the street, moaning. After a pause, Nucky and the other civilian moved forward to help him.

  Wessel couldn’t shoot with Slocum in the line of fire. Wessel impatiently motioned for him to move aside. Slocum didn’t have to be told twice. He angled off to the side, seeking cover.

  Stringfellow lay sprawled in the dirt, moaning, “Help, help . . .”

  “Who did that? Who fired that shot?” Wessel demanded.

  Tweed stepped forward, gun raised, arm extended. He toed the edge of the rise. Below, at the midpoint of the slope, stood Bowlegs, swaying, holding a smoking gun.

  “Why, it’s Rumpot Pete, the crazy drunken bastard!” Tweed said.

  “Damn you, Pete, you just shot one of my men,” Wessel said.

  “Help, help,” Stringfellow said. Nucky and his friend hefted him to his feet. Stringfellow cried out in agony,

  “That’s my bad arm, you dumb sons of bitches!”

  Tweed started down the slope. “You shot a deputy, Pete.”

  Bowlegs/Pete pursed out his lips, thoughtful. “So what?”

  “I’m gonna take you in.”

  Pete laughed, without hum
or. Wessel cautioned, “Easy, Tweed.”

  Tweed made a slighting gesture with his free hand, the one not holding a gun. “Hell, Dick, he’s just a damned drunk.”

  He kept advancing, until only a few paces lay between him and Pete. He said, “Put your gun down, Pete.”

  “Like hell!”

  “I’m not fooling.”

  “Me neither. Tell you what. You put down your gun, and I’ll put down mine.”

  “Like hell. You’re fixing to get yourself killed, Pete—” Pete shot first, taking off the top of Tweed’s head. Tweed’s hat flew straight up in the air. So did most of his skull above the eyebrows. The brows were lifted in surprise as the cranium dissolved into a blood-burst, a red halo.

  “Holy crow,” said Nucky.

  Pete dove into a roadside ditch just as Wessel cut loose with a single-barreled blast. The roar was deafening, a thunderclap.

  Nucky and his friend jumped, but did not let go of Stringfellow. They stood on both sides of him, holding him up.

  Gun smoke hung in the air. The blast echoes faded. The smoke blew away. “That got him,” Nucky said.

  Wessel advanced cautiously, walking as if on eggs, peering for some sign of Pete. From somewhere at the roadside came a shot, clipping Wessel’s hat brim. Wessel retreated, taking cover.

  Nucky and his friend dropped Stringfellow and ran. Up the street, the cafe crowd scattered, taking off like frightened birds.

  Stringfellow used his good arm and legs to crawl to the side of the road.

  Slocum was long gone from the scene. He’d been moving ever since the shooting started. When he’d set the lawmen on Pete, it had been a spur-of-the-moment gambit, a desperate ploy to get him out from under the guns and possibly away in the confusion. He hadn’t dared dream that Pete would cooperate to the extent of shooting at him and hitting a deputy, solid “proof” that not Slocum but he, Pete, was the menace.

  That was a break, but when you have enough drunks with guns, things like that happen. Slocum figured he was overdue for a break, and when one came, he made the most of it.

  Nobody noticed him as he made his way west along the road. He kept to the sides, out of the way of stray bullets. He passed the cafe. That coffee sure smelled good....

  He kept walking. Two townsmen huddled in a recessed doorway. One said, “Where’s Marshal Hix? He should be here, this is what we’re paying him for!”

  “He’s at his ranch, I guess,” said the other.

  “His ranch! What’s he doing there, that’s what I’d like to know!”

  “Well, he doesn’t live here in town.”

  “He should,” the first man said. He saw Slocum passing by, and hailed him. “What’s happening there, do you know?”

  “Terrible brawl,” Slocum said. “Awful.”

  The first man nodded, turning to his companion. “Has Hix been sent for?”

  “Yes, a rider’s gone to get him,” the other said.

  Slocum moved on, not slackening his pace. He walked briskly, not running. The further he got from the shooting, the more running would look like running away. He didn’t want to raise any alarms in this part of town.

  Behind him, guns popped. It sounded like Wessel and Pete were going at it pretty good. The Sunday morning gunfire had roused a fair amount of citizens. There was a Saturday night feeling in the air. Shootings were a Saturday night thing. And all the other days and nights too, but Saturday night was the prime killing time.

  A Sunday morning kill was something different ... unusual. More scandalous, somehow. Titillating. You could see it in the eyes and faces of the growing crowd of onlookers, men, women, and children. It wasn’t so much bloodlust as it was a kind of carnival spirit.

  Wait’ll they find out about the murdered whore, Slocum thought. Then it’ll really be a carnival. Carnival, hell, a circus!

  No hat. Worse, no gun. What he wouldn’t give to have the comfortable weight of a loaded gun hanging from his hip! The only thing he wanted more than a gun was a horse. Then he could put some distance between himself and Bender.

  Between himself and a rope.

  He had a horse, a good one. It was at the livery stable, a few blocks north of the center of town. The stable keeper and his grown son were both hard men, and the sound of shots would have put them on guard. With a gun, it would have been chancy, but without, he wasn’t going to go up against them. Besides, he had other plans....

  On a hill above the west side of the town square stood a barnlike white church with a peaked roof and skinny steeple. It wasn’t much of a hill. A dirt road connected it to the square.

  The church stood alone on the hilltop, fronting east. Fifty yards north of it, a dirt road ran east-west, a continuation of the same road that went through the center of town. A path connected the church with the road.

  From the west came a horse-drawn carriage, a jaunty two-wheeled vehicle, drawn by a single horse. In the seat, handling the traces, sat a lone driver. The cart came down the hill, made a turn to its right, followed the path, and came to a halt in front of the church.

  The two-wheeled carriage was sleek, shiny, and new. Its side panels glistened like lacquered black satin. The driver threw the hand brake and dismounted.

  He wore a dark hat, with a rounded crown and stiff brim. Under it was white hair, pink skin, mild blue eyes. A high turned-around collar identified him as an ecclesiastical person of some kind.

  There was dust on the underside of the carriage. The cleric frowned, pulling from his pocket a handkerchief as big as a hand towel. He used it to wipe away the dust, his frown lessening as the dust dwindled. The sight of mud on the wheel spokes threw him into near-despair. He froze, undecided as to whether to tackle it or not. He resisted the temptation, pocketing the cloth.

  The hill overlooked the town. In the distance, gunfire popped like firecrackers. The cleric took notice of it, for the first time. He squinted at the scene below, pale blue eyes watering.

  “Hmmm, seems to be some kind of a commotion,” he said. From an inside breast pocket, he pulled out a pair of eyeglasses, wire-framed, with round lenses. Behind their thin lenses, his eyes looked pop-eyed.

  Now he could see better. “Fighting! And on the Lord’s day,” he said, tsk-tsking.

  “Morning, Preacher,” a voice said.

  The preacher started, looking around for the source of the voice. It came from behind him. The speaker was a man, a stranger.

  “Where’d you come from?” the preacher said. “Er, that is, I didn’t know anybody else was up here. Your coming up unexpectedly on me like that gave me a bit of a turn!”

  “Sorry if I startled you,” Slocum said. “I saw some kids throwing rocks at the church.”

  “What! When?”

  “Right now, when you were coming up. I chased them, but they got away from me.”

  “Scoundrels! What they need is a good sound thrashing!”

  “Sure. Looks like they broke a couple of windows, Preacher.”

  The preacher sputtered. “Imps of Satan!”

  Slocum gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, indicating the far side of the church. “Back there.”

  Snorting, the preacher set off to inspect the damage. “Looks pretty bad,” Slocum called out after him. The preacher scuttled around a corner, out of sight.

  Slocum patted the horse on the side, speaking softly to it, letting it catch his scent. He stepped up into the cart, pausing to take in the scene in the town below.

  Wessel had reinforcements, but so did Pete. Some of Pete’s cronies had come wandering out of the dive, drawn by gunfire, only to discover one of their own pinned down by townsmen’s guns. They neither knew nor cared if those guns claimed to be on the side of the law. They were plenty drunk too. They hauled out their own guns and started banging. They stood on the east edge of the town, popping away at Wessel and his sidemen on the west. It was too far for any kind of accuracy with a handgun, but after what had happened to Tweed, with him getting the top of his head torn off, no
body on the deputy’s side was in too much of a hurry to stick their necks out.

  Pete’s pals made more noise than damage. They gave him some covering fire, though, preventing the deputy’s crowd from rushing him. Pete was another story. From his ditch, he was deadly. One of Wessel’s men tried to get around behind him, but Pete saw the man and shot him. The man fell down, hidden by weeds, and was not heard from again.

  Wessel got hold of a rifle. A shot cracked, dropping one of Pete’s pals. That sobered up the others some. They took cover and began shooting in earnest.

  Slocum nodded approvingly. It was shaping up to be a nice little gun battle. Too bad he couldn’t stick around to see how it came out, but he had to make a getaway.

  He sat in the driver’s place, took up the traces, and released the hand brake. “Get along, horse.”

  The horse stepped lively, setting out on the path, drawing along the cart. The preacher came into view, returning. He said, “There were no broken windows—hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  He scurried after the cart. There were horses in town, but there were men with guns too. The preacher had no gun. He’d have a brisk walk into town, buying Slocum some more precious time before the alarm was raised and the posses formed.

  Looking back over his shoulder, Slocum called, “The Lord helps those who help themselves, Preacher! That’s why I’m helping myself to your horse cart!”

  The horse picked up the pace, leaving the preacher behind. The preacher’s hat fell off and he shook a fist at his departing property. He shouted something.

  Slocum couldn’t quite make out what it was, but it sure didn’t sound like “Bless you!”

  3

  Slocum drove the stolen rig west over the first ridge, putting it between him and the town. He soon found a covert, a small clearing in the middle of some hillocks, hidden from view of any casual passersby along the road.

  He gave himself a quick going-over, patting his front and sides, feeling his pockets. All his possessions seemed intact. He still had his poke, a small rawhide pouch with a drawstring at the top. It was where he kept it, in an inside pocket of his vest. It had a satisfying weight when he set it on his palm.