Slocum and the Warm Reception Read online

  The lawman may have been younger than his deputy, but the longer Slocum looked at him, the more years he tacked on to his estimate of the sheriff’s age. By the time Marshal let out his next breath, he seemed to be even older. Slocum took that as a good sign. Usually honest lawmen were a lot wearier than crooked ones.

  “Patrick,” Marshal said, “how about you show this man to a place where he can see to his horse and get some water?”

  “Right away, Sheriff.”

  Leveling a stern glare at Slocum, the sheriff added, “Because of the circumstances of your arrival, I’ll have to ask that your guns and that body stay here with me. You can collect them after I sort through what brings you to Davis Junction.”

  “All I’ll want is my guns back,” Slocum said as he handed them over. “You can keep the body.”

  “Strangers bearing gifts,” Marshal sighed. “A fine way to end the day.”

  * * *

  Patrick wasn’t much of a guide, which suited Slocum just fine since he wasn’t in the mood for a proper tour. Even if the deputy was intent on showing him the sights, Davis Junction didn’t have many to offer. After seeing as many little towns as Slocum had throughout his years of riding from one to another, they all started looking alike. It wasn’t until he’d spent some time walking a town’s streets and swapping stories with the folks who lived there that he got a real sense of a place. Until then, every town was just a collection of buildings divided by a street or two.

  There was a general store and a couple smaller places that offered dry goods.

  There was a tailor and a blacksmith.

  There were places to buy a meal.

  Of course there were saloons.

  Scattered here and there were houses as well as other places of business that Slocum didn’t bother studying. Perhaps he saw a dentist’s office situated up on a second floor. One thing that caught his eye was the small group of men clustered around a little telescope set up on a tripod. There was another cluster farther on, both sets of men being within spitting distance of the railroad tracks running through town.

  As soon as Slocum spotted the livery stable close to the end of the street that Patrick had chosen, he didn’t care about much of anything else. The gelding had done well to make it this far and was young enough to keep going without a fuss despite the cuts and scratches he’d collected during the fight. Even so, Slocum wanted to get him into a clean stall where the saddle could be unbuckled from his back. Patrick made small talk with a liveryman as Slocum saw to it that those things were done. Once the gelding had his snout cooling in a trough of water, Slocum patted his side and draped the saddlebags over one shoulder.

  “How much for the stall?” Slocum asked.

  The liveryman was a tall weed of a man with filthy gloves covering his hands and an old smock stained with whatever he’d fallen into while cleaning out his barn. “How long will you be needing it?”

  “Don’t know yet. Probably just a day or two.”

  “My price normally includes a grooming for the horse. Usually a nice brushing and such. You probably saw the sign posted out front.”

  “Yeah,” Slocum said, although he didn’t know what the hell the liveryman was referring to.

  “I do that to stay competitive with the stable down the street, but if you wouldn’t mind forsaking the brushing, I’ll take a piece off the price.” Wiping his hands on the spot of his smock that was the least stained with manure, he added, “I’ve had my fill of cleaning for one day.”

  “I’d be willing to pay a bit more than the daily rate if you tend to those cuts on my horse’s sides. How’s that grab ya?” Slocum asked.

  “I can do that . . . for an extra dollar.”

  “Per day?”

  “Just a one-time fee,” the liveryman said with a shrug.

  “Deal.”

  Both men shook hands and Slocum settled up for the first day’s rate using some coins kept in a pouch strung around his neck. On his way out, he caught sight of a pretty little filly in the stall closest to the door. She was the kind of filly who walked on two legs, had long blond hair that was straight as straw, and wore a white cotton dress that clung to her body thanks to the sweat she’d worked up while fixing a latch on the stall’s door.

  “How’d I miss you?” Slocum asked as he walked by.

  She smiled and turned her head. When she looked back at him, the blond woman showed Slocum a pair of eyes that were the same blue as the sky on the first day of spring. “Keep walking, mister,” she said. “Plenty of work to be done.”

  Slocum meant to have a few more words with her, but was convinced to keep moving by a sharp knock on his back from a bony hand. “You heard the lady, John,” Patrick said. “Keep walking.”

  “Am I under arrest?”

  “No, but she ain’t the only one that’s got a job to do.”

  “Am I still allowed to have some water?” Slocum asked.

  The deputy tipped his hat to the blonde and gave Slocum another shove. “Sure you are. There’s a place on the way back to the sheriff’s office that serves up some mighty fine pie along with that water. I think I’ll join you.”

  Now that he was outside of the stable and the door had been kicked shut, Slocum put his back to the place and started walking. “She a friend of yours?”

  “No. She’s a distraction. You still got some explaining to do to the sheriff and he won’t tolerate distractions.”

  “We have time. I’m not even armed, remember?”

  Patrick nodded halfheartedly.

  “Who is that lady?” Slocum asked. When an answer wasn’t forthcoming, he added, “She your sister?”

  “Not hardly,” the deputy chuckled. “She does tend to turn heads.”

  “I suppose we have that in common.”

  “That you do, friend. That you do.” Patrick stopped and took a quick peek back at the stable before lowering his voice and saying, “You don’t seem like the sort who’s looking to plant any roots in a town like this.”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “It means you’ll be moving on sooner rather than later. That also means it’s in your best interest to steer clear of trouble so as to make your stay here a pleasant one.”

  Slocum grinned. “Sounds like you’ve given that little speech once or twice before.”

  “I give it plenty of times,” Patrick told him. “To damn near every vagrant or wayward miner that wanders in from the desert. It’s good advice.”

  “For a vagrant or a miner perhaps. I ain’t neither.”

  “You seem like a good enough fella, John. Mind if I call you that?”

  “It’s the name I was given.”

  Pointing back toward the stable, Patrick said, “That lady back there is mighty pretty and you ain’t the first to take notice. Plenty of fights been started on her account.”

  “Is she married?”

  “No. Just real pretty and she knows it. Sometimes that’s a lot worse than just being married.”

  “What kind of trouble has been started?” Slocum asked.

  “Fights and such. One man wants to take a run at her and another gets the same idea in his head. Next thing you know, they’re locking horns like a couple of rams in a field.”

  “Doesn’t that sort of thing happen a lot when women are involved? At least, often enough that it’s not a very new predicament.”

  “It ain’t a new predicament,” Patrick snapped. “And this ain’t my first time wearing a tin star. I ain’t no fool. I’ve kept the peace in plenty of towns bigger than this one, and a big part of doing that is knowing where the trouble lays. That little thing back there is trouble. It don’t just follow her. She stirs it up and she enjoys every bit of it.”

  Slocum nodded. “I’ve met a few women like that.”

  “There’s something else a
bout her, though. I think she used to be a whore in California. Some say she cheated some poor soul out of every dime he earned sifting through river dirt in the Rockies.”

  “Doesn’t explain why she’s cleaning horse manure.”

  “Could be she’s laying low,” Patrick explained as he started walking again. Since Slocum was following him, he slipped back into his former easygoing mannerisms. “Could be she’s waiting for some kind of storm to pass. Perhaps she’s biding time before she can get to that money she stole. Who knows? All I do know is that she’s got a wicked glint in her eye that I don’t like.”

  “I’ve met other women with that glint,” Slocum said with a wink. “Wicked women know plenty of things that sweet ones don’t.”

  Patrick leaned over so he could whisper as they passed a long porch in front of a clothing store, where a few elderly women in dreary dresses with high collars watched them. “I ain’t just talking about curling yer toes . . .”

  Despite the deputy’s best efforts to keep his voice down, one of the old ladies must have had ears sharper than an eagle’s eye because she recoiled and grimaced as if Patrick had taken the Lord’s name in vain. After she’d taken the time to lean over and whisper to the old woman beside her, both of them glared at Slocum and Patrick as if they were trying to burn holes through their heads.

  “Ladies,” Patrick said in a futile attempt to win them over. Even his crooked grin and hat tip weren’t enough to remove some of the venom from the women’s eyes. “Come on in here,” he said while leading the way into a general store beneath a sign advertising ointments and other assorted medicinal offerings. There was a large counter along the side wall with a skinny bald man behind it and a row of stools in front of it.

  Following the deputy’s lead, Slocum took a seat. “This where I can have some of that pie you mentioned or did you just duck in here to escape the notice of them crones?”

  “Ain’t escaping from no one,” Patrick grumbled. Having caught the skinny man’s eye, he asked, “What’s Martha cooked up today?”

  The man behind the counter looked at Slocum nervously before replying, “Peach and rhubarb.”

  “I’ll have a slice of the peach!”

  “Fair warning, Pat. Them peaches are canned.”

  “We live in a desert,” Patrick sneered. “You really think you needed to warn me about us not havin’ peach trees?”

  The skinny fellow shrugged and shifted his attention to Slocum. “What can I get for you, mister?”

  “You can get me the name of someone who might know a thing or two about mining claims.” Although he didn’t have a claim in mind or any inquiry regarding one, any man who knew about claims would know someone who bought gold and silver. Seeing as how he was carrying a pouch of the stuff in his saddlebags, Slocum wasn’t exactly comfortable with making that fact known to anyone within earshot. After all that had happened so far on his way to Mescaline, the prospect of selling his dust and nuggets now and heading in another direction was becoming more and more appealing.

  The man behind the counter looked puzzled, but didn’t get a chance to speak before Patrick asked, “You planning on staying around here for a spell?”

  “That depends on what your sheriff has to say about it.”

  “I can’t speak for him, but . . .” Looking at the skinny fellow, the deputy snapped, “Go on and fetch that pie! Bring us over a pitcher of water while you’re at it.”

  The man behind the counter grumbled to himself and shuffled away to fill the order.

  Now, when Patrick lowered his voice, there wasn’t anyone other than Slocum to hear him. A few locals were looking through a pile of blankets on the other side of the room and the young man sitting at the farthest end of the counter was too interested in his own business to bother eavesdropping on someone else’s.

  “That pretty lady cleaning them stalls is trouble,” Patrick said. “It’s my business to handle trouble in this town and I’ve found the best way to do that is to nip it in the bud before it can sprout. Stay away from her, you hear?”

  “Or what?” The question had come more as a knee-jerk response and was out before Slocum could stop it. After so many years of tending to his own affairs, good or bad, he didn’t care to take orders from others. He cared even less for orders nestled within any kind of threat. Even so, he immediately regretted being so cross with the deputy.

  Patrick’s face shifted into a harder expression. “Or . . . if you go sniffing around her and any trouble follows, I can’t just assume she’s the cause of it. You seem like a good fella, John. I’m just warnin’ you is all. The only reason I’ve been pressing the matter so much is because I still got the eyes and every other functioning part of a man and I know the first warning probably fell on deaf ears. Depending on how long you’ve been alone in that desert, the blood may have been rushing so fast that every warnin’ I gave until this very second may not have been heard. So here it is again, watch that lady close.”

  Slocum nodded. “All right. I get the message. What did this woman do that’s worth all these warnings?”

  “Nothing I can prove,” Patrick replied. “I heard some things, though. None of them were good.”

  “That’s not exactly enough to hang your hat on.”

  “When she first came to town, some folks came looking for her in regard to a bit of violence in Montana. Seems the man she was with turned up dead. Another man who shared her company was an unsavory type and he wound up dead, too. Vigilantes strung him up and set him on fire.”

  “That seems awfully harsh,” Slocum said. “Even for vigilantes.”

  “Rumor has it they did the lynching and she lit the match.”

  Slocum let out a low whistle. “These are just rumors?”

  “Yep. There were also rumors that both men had it coming. The second fella was a known killer and the first wasn’t known at all. Because of that, me and the sheriff kept her safe when those men came looking for her. They were armed and looking for blood and she . . . well . . . it just didn’t seem proper to hand her over to men such as them.”

  “Understandable.”

  “Then the next batch came looking,” Patrick continued. “That was just under a year ago. Bunch of wild-eyed owl hoots stinking of whiskey and shooting up the place like a pack of savages. In between all the cussing and yelling, they were asking for her, too. It was the law’s duty to run them out of town no matter what they went on about, but they wanted to see her on account of her setting up a few of their friends to take a fall for something or other. Also said she stole a bundle of money from them.”

  “She didn’t strike me as the rich sort,” Slocum said.

  “Not now, but she had enough to feed herself and buy a little house when she first arrived. She only started doing odd work here and there over the last few months after falling out of favor with some charitable sorts who took her under their wing after all them rough types came storming in looking to harm her.”

  “So she fell out of favor with them, huh?”

  “Sure enough.”

  “Why?”

  Patrick shrugged and leaned back as the man behind the counter approached with the pitcher of water and two cups. “Can’t say for certain,” the deputy replied. “I just know that, proof or not, there seems to be something to what I’ve been telling you other than just rumor.”

  After the man behind the counter went away to cut into the pie that was kept beneath an overturned pot on a table in one corner, Slocum poured himself some water and downed the entire cup in one gulp. The water was soaked into his body quicker than a drip disappeared from the surface of a frying pan. He poured himself another cup and allowed everything he’d heard to soak in along with the water. “I don’t even know her name,” he mused.

  “You don’t need to know much else than what I told you. I already repeated myself more than I like, so I ain’t about to say
anything else on the matter.”

  “Fair enough, I suppose. Think you can answer one question for me, though?”

  “Depends on the question.”

  “If you have such strong suspicions about that woman, why did you bring me directly to that stable to put my horse up?”

  Patrick hung his head as if he’d been expecting that question all this time and had just started to think he might not hear it. After a sigh, he told him, “Last time I checked, she was working at the stable just across the street from the sheriff’s office. I arranged for her to work there so the sheriff and I could keep watch over her.”

  “I didn’t see a stable near the sheriff’s office.”

  “That’s on account of me taking you in the other direction as quick as I could.”

  “Thanks for the warning, Pat. I’ll keep it in mind. Since I don’t intend on staying around town for long, I think I’ll be just fine.”

  “You mentioned a day or two?”

  “How about I leave tomorrow? Would that suit you?”

  “I didn’t mean to run you off,” Patrick said. “Just givin’ some friendly advice.”

  “I’ve got some business to take care of and I’d like to finish it quick.”

  “Business about them claims?” the man behind the counter asked as he shuffled forward with a hearty portion of peach pie on a chipped plate.

  “You know someone who might be able to help in that regard?” Slocum asked.

  “Reid Flanders is the man to talk to if you want to look up the legal right to a claim or buy one outright. He brokers sales for patches of land as well, since there ain’t much mining going on in these parts. Not since the silver and copper was cleaned out a few years back.”

  “Sounds like just the man I need to speak to.”

  “His office is on the corner of Laramie and First. Head out of here and turn right. Can’t miss it.”

  “Much obliged.”

  “Don’t make any appointments yet, though,” Patrick advised. “You got one with Sheriff Marshal if you forgot.”

  “I didn’t forget, but it can wait.”