Slocum and the Lady Detective Read online

  Slocum noticed that the marshal made no move for the key ring dangling on the peg. Something had made the wily lawman suspicious.

  “Tell me, Miss Warburton, why would a perfect stranger like you want to put up bail money for a man like Slocum? You said you didn’t know him.”

  “I told you, sir. I am Elena Warburton of the Chicago Warburtons.”

  “So?” This puzzled the marshal. He wasn’t alone. Slocum wondered how that explained anything.

  “We have devoted a great deal of money and effort to preventing the innocent from suffering. We fund charities for the poor, and my father is an attorney who does a considerable amount of pro bono work. That means he defends men for free.”

  “Reckon I’ve heard the term, though not much of that’s done in a town like Leadville. Either a defendant hires himself a lawyer or does the job on his own. Hard enough to get a lawyer in these parts who’s not entirely interested in feathering his own nest with mining claims and suing over claim jumping.”

  “Then you will release him? He is, on my word, innocent of the crime of murder.”

  “He did shoot down that gent, though?”

  “He did. It was self-defense.”

  “No call to throw anyone in the jug for protecting himself, though Jethro—he’s the room clerk at the hotel—did say Slocum here was acting mighty nervy.”

  “I don’t know about that. I saw what I saw and—”

  “And you’re Miss Elena Warburton of the Chicago Warburtons,” the marshal finished.

  “Do not mock me, sir.”

  “Sorry,” Atkinson said, but Slocum heard no apology in the word. “It’s just that we don’t get much in the way of, well, Warburtons out here.”

  Elena Warburton stood her ground, gaze icy and fixed on the marshal. Slocum saw the slow change come to Atkinson and then the marshal reached over, grabbed the keys, and released Slocum.

  “Don’t go leaving town till I say so, Mr. Slocum,” the lawman said. “When the undertaker’s looked over the body and verified what Miss Warburton says, you can go to hell in your own way. But not till I say so.”

  “Much obliged,” Slocum said, looking at the lovely woman.

  “Just doing my duty,” Atkinson said as if Slocum had addressed him. He handed over Slocum’s gun belt and six-shooter. Slocum had it strapped around his waist before he left the jail.

  Stepping out into the night was like a fist punching him. He turned to ice all over as the cold spring night closed in on his sweat-drenched body.

  “I am glad to get away from that furnace,” Elena said.

  “Why?”

  “Because it is uncomfortable,” the woman said.

  “Why’d you lie to get me out? You didn’t see anything.”

  “How can you know that?” She turned to him. Her brown eyes carried glints of gold. A hint of a smile graced her bow-shaped lips.

  “I don’t miss much, especially when my life’s on the line. I would have seen you, even if you were just peeking out an open door. But you would have had to step into the hall to see since the doors swing the wrong way for you to have seen me at the head of the stairs.”

  “You are more remarkable than I thought,” she said.

  “How do you know my name?”

  “I asked Mr. Grimaldi.” When she saw he had no idea who this was, she explained, “He hired you to wash his dishes and cut his cooking stove’s wood.”

  “Never asked the restaurant owner his name.”

  “But he knew yours, therefore I learned it.” Elena sounded smug.

  “That’s how you got my name but it doesn’t explain anything else.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” She pointed toward the hotel. “Let’s return to the scene of the crime. I am interested in the dead man’s luggage, even if the marshal is not.”

  “The fake coins,” Slocum said. “You’re following a trail of counterfeit coins.” He was moderately pleased to see her jump as if she had been pinched on the butt.

  “You’re more than observant, Mr. Slocum.”

  “John,” he corrected her.

  She nodded. “You put facts together well, John.”

  “Like a detective.” Again he was pleased to see her reaction.

  “Yes, it is so. I am a detective, and I am hunting for the source of the counterfeit coins. Mr. Grimaldi told me of your earlier contretemps with payment for a meal. It came out that you went after the second diner for paying with a newly minted bogus double eagle. That told me you knew something more of the source. Do you?”

  They stopped outside the hotel. The lobby doors stood open, and Slocum saw Jethro inside, arguing with a patron.

  “Let’s use the back stairs,” he suggested. “The room’s going to be rented out, and if you want to look at the dead man’s gear, we’re going to have to hurry.”

  “You didn’t answer,” she said. “I have been entrusted to find the criminal making the illegal coins and arrest him. Or them.”

  “I don’t know as much about this as you do,” Slocum said, holding the door open for her. Elena paused, then brushed past him, the whiff of her perfume causing his nostrils to flare. But the way she pressed against him as she entered the upstairs hallway set his pulse pounding. He followed and then reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder.

  “What?” She half turned and then he spun her around and pulled her into his arms to give her a big kiss. For a moment she tensed, then melted against him and returned the kiss.

  Slocum released her as suddenly as he had grabbed her. She looked flustered but not angry at the kiss.

  “The kid was picking the lock,” Slocum whispered. “I didn’t want him to spot me.”

  “What kid?”

  “The owlhoot who passed the fake coins off onto me. He just broke into the hotel room his partner was using.”

  “His partner? You know Eakin’s partner? I haven’t been able—”

  Slocum whirled her about and drew his six-shooter as he walked on cat’s feet to the now-closed door.

  From inside he heard the sound of the youngster rummaging about, hunting for either his partner’s stash of bogus coins or more likely the real ones.

  “What are you going to do, John?”

  Slocum turned the glass doorknob slowly and tried to open the door a crack. The squeaky hinges warned the boy. Slocum slammed the door wide open and lifted his six-shooter.

  Both of them shot at the same time. The youngster got off both barrels from a derringer, but all Slocum needed was one round from his Colt. The boy staggered back, then smashed the window and tumbled out into the street.

  “You shot him!”

  Slocum ignored Elena and ran to the broken window. There was a commotion in the street, but it wasn’t because of a dead body falling from the second story of the hotel. It was because of the wounded man struggling down the crowded street.

  “Go after him, John. Don’t let him get away! I need to know everything he knows!”

  Slocum looked into Elena’s eyes and saw a glint he normally saw in a sexually aroused woman. The gunfight had excited her, even as it almost left a man dead.

  3

  Slocum holstered his six-gun and looked out the window. It would be a hard drop, but he heard a clamor coming from downstairs. The room clerk had finally decided he had to investigate the shots—or maybe he wouldn’t rent out the room to a prospective customer without a little cleaning up.

  Slocum crossed the room in three strides and slammed the door. He grabbed a chair and shoved it under the doorknob, then said to Elena, “Search the place for whatever you need.”

  “What’re you going to do, John? That man—”

  Elena spoke to thin air. Slocum returned to the window and used the pillow from the bed to sweep away glass shards. He wiggled through the small window, braced on the windowsill for a moment, and then dropped to the street, landing with a grunt. He kept from rolling to absorb the shock since that would have sent him through the now-freezing mud puddles. People st
ared; if he had been coated head to foot in mud, they would have stared even more.

  There were only two directions the young man might have gone. Slocum headed toward the opera house, where the late-night crowd was just now stumbling into the street, laughing and joking at what they had seen inside. Slocum avoided the crush, got to the boardwalk, then jumped onto a rain barrel at the side of the opera house.

  He spotted his quarry instantly. A shock wave of people formed behind the stumbling boy, making it look like a boat rowing through water and leaving behind a trail. Nevertheless, like the waves in a lake, these would quickly disappear and leave no track for Slocum to follow. He swung up, caught at a drain pipe, and pulled himself up to the roof of a two-story building. He dashed across the sloping, slippery expanse, vaulted to the next building, and kept going until he found himself confronted with a three-story bank building. Only then did he drop back to the street.

  The crowd was thinner here, and the stumbling boy was easier to see. He clutched his belly as he made his way toward the southern side of town. Slocum found that he could keep a safe distance between the two of them by walking slowly but steadily. The youngster lurched along, sometimes putting on a burst of speed as his strength waxed and then he almost stopped when the pain doubled him over. Slocum almost went to him.

  Almost. The youth might be only sixteen or seventeen, but Slocum had faced soldiers during the war who were younger. And this sneak thief had not only stolen twenty dollars from him, he had tried to put two bullets in him.

  “Nuggets,” the young man gasped out, leaning against a door to a small house. For a moment Slocum thought the boy was hallucinating from the pain of carrying a bullet in his belly. He rapped again and yelled the word louder. The door opened. He had given a password.

  “What happened to you?”

  “Shot. Shot trying to get Ernie’s coins back. Help me. God, my gut is on fire. Help me.”

  Slocum stepped back into shadow when the man supporting the wounded thief stepped out so he could get a better look around. The man had his hand on a six-gun holstered at his side. Slocum held his breath when the man looked straight at him, but the dark night saved him. The man spun, half lifted the scrawny boy off his feet, and flung him into the house. The door slammed behind them.

  Slocum waited a few seconds, then crossed the street and circled the house, looking for a window. All the rooms save for the kitchen at the rear were dark. He chanced a quick glance through a small window and saw the man he’d shot sprawled on the table. His rescuer stood over him, glaring.

  “You stupid bastard. Your brother gets killed and now you go and take a bullet. You’re just like him. You got a death wish, too.”

  “Please, wasn’t like that. Ernie was taken by surprise. No idea who that gun slick is. Fast. Damned fast. Got me and I had my pistol aimed at him. Drew and shot me ’fore I could even pull the trigger.”

  The boy’s recollection was shaky. Slocum had entered the room with his Colt drawn. He could excuse the mistake since he had taken the thief by surprise.

  “Where are the slugs?”

  “D-Don’t know. Looked but they wasn’t in Ernie’s gear.”

  “You liar!” The man grabbed the bloody shirt front and began shaking so hard that Slocum heard the boy’s teeth clacking together. “Tell me. I got too much ridin’ on this to be done out of it by a pair of two-bit swindlers.”

  “Hurt so bad. Please, get me a doc.”

  “The coins first. Then the doctor.”

  “Don’t know. Ernie . . .” The boy’s voice trailed off.

  Slocum put his hand on his six-shooter and slowly drew it. The time was right to snap the next link in the chain. For all he knew, this was the crook responsible for making the counterfeit coins and sending the likes of Ernie Eakin and his brother out to exchange them for the real McCoy.

  Slocum went to the back door and tried it. The slight rattle warned the man inside he had a visitor. Six slugs ripped through the flimsy wood door, sending splinters flying like tiny bullets.

  Slocum flinched away, then kicked hard and knocked the door inward. He was ready to shoot, but the man was gone.

  As he crossed the tiny kitchen, a feeble hand clutched at his sleeve.

  “Mister, help me. Been shot. Need a doctor.”

  Slocum looked down. The youngster’s eyes were open, but he wasn’t seeing anything. The pain blurred everything so much he didn’t know he appealed to the man who had put that bullet in his gut.

  “Where are the slugs?” he asked, repeating what the other gang member had said.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Who was that?”

  Slocum spoke to a dead man. Unseeing eyes stared up at him, and the hand gripping his sleeve slipped off, leaving bloody fingerprints.

  A thousand things tumbled through Slocum’s head as he considered what he ought to do. The smartest thing would be to mount up and ride on out before Marshal Atkinson got wind of yet another dead man with Slocum’s bullet in him. If this kept up, Slocum would wipe out the entire Eakin family. For all he knew, he already had by shooting both Ernie and his brother, now flopped out on this table.

  Too much swirled around him that he didn’t know—couldn’t know. Where did Elena Warburton fit into all this? She’d been hired by somebody to find the source of the counterfeit coins, but Slocum didn’t think she worked for the government. If she did, she would have shown a badge to the marshal rather than lying to him. Slocum smiled ruefully at the notion of the federal government back in Washington, D.C., ever hiring a woman to investigate such a crime. Elena had to work for someone else.

  Too many questions and not enough in it for Slocum. But he began riffling through the dead man’s pockets to see what he could find. A single twenty-dollar gold piece tumbled into his palm when he tore off a vest pocket. Slocum held it up and tried to decide if it was real. He ran his finger across the milled edge and the ridges didn’t flake off.

  So far, so good. He bit down on the coin and looked at his dental imprint, then stuck the coin into his pocket. He had his twenty dollars back. This was a real coin.

  But he had been duped, he had been used, and he didn’t like any of that. For whatever reason, Elena had gotten him out of jail, and he owed her for that. How much he wasn’t sure, but he owed her. He was a man who always paid his debts.

  Slocum finished searching the corpse and found a scrap of paper, mostly destroyed from being soaked in water and caked with mud. He carefully spread the sheet out against the wall and let the water drip out. Plastered at eye level, the smeary ink lines revealed a map. Slocum turned his head a little to get a better orientation, located Leadville and the road going northward, along the railroad tracks, and then a dotted line diverging and going into a valley. There might have been an X at this spot, but the paper had been torn away so he could only guess at that.

  Tracking the owlhoot who had waited in this house for the Eakin boy would be impossible in the dark. Given the size of the town, melting into the crowd of drunken miners would be easy enough. Or he could have ridden away, out of town, away from Colorado, to leave behind what he had to see as a bloodbath that just might include him if he stayed around much longer. Two of his partners had been cut down in the span of a few hours. Any sensible man would take that as a warning.

  Still, Slocum doubted the unknown man had left. He, like the Eakin brothers, was likely part of a bigger gang. Making the fake coins was beyond the skill of either of the men Slocum had shot. They were confidence men whose job would have been to convert the bogus coins to real ones, either through gambling swindles or purchasing goods and using them or reselling them at a discount to others looking for a bargain and who had legitimate money.

  A last look at the map etched the details into Slocum’s mind. Somewhere along the way he had come to a conclusion. It was probably a dangerous one, but he was curious and wanted answers. He opened the back door and stepped out, then froze. Carried on the cold night air came the sound of ap
proaching horses.

  “I tell you, Marshal, there’s a dead man in the old Fulton house.”

  “Shut up, Lem,” came the voice Slocum had never wanted to hear again. Atkinson and a companion, likely a deputy, had almost caught him.

  Slocum slipped back inside, glanced at the boy’s body, and then went to the front of the house. The door here opened out onto a trail winding away into the dark. Rather than leaving immediately, he chanced a quick look outside and saw two men moving closer. The darkness hid their identity, but they had to be deputies. Atkinson intended to close in from front and back, trapping him inside.

  Did Atkinson know the identity of his quarry? Or was he just playing it safe since his deputy had spotted a body inside? Slocum frowned. How had Lem seen anything inside the house and had time to go fetch the marshal?

  “Now!” The shout from the rear warned Slocum the lawmen were coming in from both sides simultaneously. He swung around behind the front door as it slammed open. The two deputies raced inside, waving their guns around.

  “Back. They’re in the back!” The deputies crossed the small room and burst into the kitchen as Atkinson and Lem came in.

  Slocum helped matters along a mite by drawing his six-shooter and firing into the ceiling.

  Each of the lawmen thought the other had fired. Lead flew like deadly bees throughout the small house, giving Slocum the chance to slip around the door and duck outside. Long strides took him along the rocky trail leading up the hill. Behind him he heard Marshal Atkinson screeching for his men to stop firing.

  A stream of curses followed the order, and finally the echoing gunfire died down as Atkinson regained control of his men. The ambush had been clever, but the deputies had been too keyed up and ready to shoot at anything moving for it to be effective.

  Slocum reached the top of the ridge. He sat on a rock to catch his breath. From the angle where he sat, he saw deep hoofprints in the soft ground. Bending over, he ran his finger around the edge and saw it was still sharp, half-frozen and obviously made recently. Eakin’s partner had ridden this way, as Slocum had thought. The proof wasn’t needed for confirmation, but it made him feel on top of the situation.