Slocum and the Canyon Courtesans Read online

  They rode toward Polvo, toward the unknown, as the sun drew long shadows across the land in its descent beyond the rim of their world. There was just a trace of coolness in the breeze that blew out of the west. Ferro whinnied and Slocum knew that he had scented water somewhere ahead of them.

  Dust and water, he thought.

  Not so strange a mixture out here in this desolate land, where they might die of either one if he stayed long enough.

  8

  They rode into the setting sun and into the puddles of their own shadows.

  Presently, they heard a rumbling and then saw, silhouetted against the western sky, a wagon pulled by two horses and carrying two men.

  The driver of the wagon hauled in on the reins and stopped the horses.

  “Howdy,” he said to Slocum and Melissa.

  “Howdy yourself,” Slocum said. “Where you headed?”

  “Back to Amarillo. We make two trips a week to Polvo.”

  “What kind of town is Polvo?” Slocum asked.

  The other man answered the question. He was in his forties and wore a black derby, a string tie, and an armband.

  “New and wide open,” the man said. “I reckon that’s where you two are headed.”

  “What do you mean by ‘wide open’?” Slocum asked, directing his question to the derby-hatted one.

  “If you’re goin’ there, you’ll see. Big saloon, bright new gamblin’ tables, glitter gals. Fact is Scudder just brought in three more pretties he promised to put on display tomorrow night.”

  “Any Kiowa in town?”

  The driver, who wore a battered Montana hat with a high crown and a deep crease, shook his head.

  “No Injuns that I ever saw,” he said. “Well, we got to get crackin’. Scud wants us to haul in more liquor and feed sacks on our next run.”

  “Have a good trip back to Amarillo,” Slocum said, and touched two fingers to the brim of his hat in a farewell salute.

  “Nice hotel there, too,” Derby Hat said, “and they’re puttin’ up another one, even bigger.”

  “What’s the big attraction to Polvo?” Slocum asked as the team started to move off under the snapping of the reins.

  “Scud claims gold and silver in the sand hills,” the man said, his voice trailing off as the wagon rumbled away.

  The two men waved as Melissa and Slocum watched them ride off into the twilight.

  “Gold and silver,” Melissa said.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear,” Slocum said. “But now we know who’s running the saloon, if not the whole town.”

  “Scud,” she said.

  “Short for Scudder, I reckon. That man called him Scudder.”

  “And those three women . . .”

  “Probably your friends,” he said.

  They rode on and came upon another sign. This one said POLVO in block letters. Underneath the name, the sign had originally read, POP. 45, but the number had been crossed out with a slash of paint and replaced by 72, which had also been struck out and still another number had been painted on: 122.

  “The town is growing,” Slocum said.

  “I wonder how often they put up a new number,” Melissa said as they rode on.

  “I don’t know, but it’s still a small town and no good reason to be here.”

  “You think Scud—”

  “Is as crooked as a snake,” Slocum said, finishing her sentence.

  In the dimming light, Slocum noticed that the unshod pony tracks had peeled off and headed south, leaving only the tracks of the shod horses beneath the impressions of the wagon wheels and the team pulling it.

  “It seems the Kiowa didn’t go into town,” Slocum said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just saw sign that the Kiowa had left Scud and his captives.”

  “What do you make of that?” she asked.

  “Like the man said, there aren’t any Kiowa in town. They served their purpose for Scud and he sent them away.”

  “It’s all so very mysterious, John,” she said.

  “White men have been exploiting the red man for a long time, Melissa. They buy the Indians cheap with whiskey or guns, knives, and worthless trinkets. It’s nothing new.”

  “It’s horrible,” she said, and then they both were silent as they saw the graying structures of a town loom up ahead of them.

  They entered the three-street town as the sun was setting. There were no lights on any of the streets, but there was an orange glow coming from two buildings on the main street. The lamps threw a pool of light on a bare street and daubed a few saddle horses and a cart or two with a pale patina of yellowish light.

  Most of the houses they had seen were clapboard structures, but there were a few adobes, and the occasional false front attached to an adobe building.

  “They built this town cheap,” Slocum remarked.

  “There isn’t much to it,” Melissa said as they rode up to the hotel, with its tall false front and a sign proclaiming it as THE EXCELSIOR. Two doors down was a saloon, with its false front and a long adobe building hiding behind the clapboard.

  The saloon was the Desert Rose, and they could hear banjo, guitar, and fiddle music over the sound of a snare and bass drum. Across the street there was a small building tagged as POLVO BANK, and next to that was a clapboard building that bore a painted sign on its door that read: GOLDEN KEY ASSAY OFFICE.

  “Are we going in here?” Melissa asked as Slocum pulled up to the hitch rail. There were three horses tied up there, each bearing the same brand, a Lazy S. One of the brands appeared to have been overlaid on an earlier one with a running iron. The rifle scabbards were empty and none of them had saddlebags or bedrolls.

  “We need sleep and a soft bed,” he said. “I’m going to look around. Maybe they serve grub in here. Are you hungry?”

  “Famished,” she said.

  He untied her carpetbag and the two walked on loose dirt to the entrance and entered the lobby. As soon as they entered, they could smell cooked food—meat and potatoes, vegetables. There was a room off the lobby where they could hear the clinking of glasses, plates, and silverware.

  “I’ll get us a room,” he said.

  “Just one room?”

  “I don’t think your reputation will be damaged if we share a single room,” he said. “Not in this one-horse town.”

  She laughed self-consciously.

  “I—I guess not. After all, I don’t know anyone here and you probably don’t either.”

  “We’ll see who you know,” he said, and walked to the desk, where an aging male clerk stood with a green shade attached to his forehead.

  “Yes, sir, a room for the night? Or will you stay longer? I’m James Parsons, the night clerk. I just came on.”

  “Yes, one night. One soft bed.”

  “First or second floor? We have two stories, you know.”

  “Second floor is fine. Toward the back, if you don’t mind.”

  Parsons turned and looked at the keys dangling from brass hooks on a board.

  “Number 220 is at the back, down at the end of the hall. Not much of a view there.”

  “That’ll be fine,” Slocum said.

  “A dollar fifty,” Parsons said.

  Slocum pulled out two one-dollar bills and laid them on the counter.

  “Keep the change for yourself, Parsons,” he said.

  Parsons grinned and scooped up the bills. He opened a drawer, placed them inside, and extracted a four-bit piece that he put in his pocket. He turned a ledger around and shoved it toward Slocum.

  “If you would, sir, please sign our guest book.”

  Slocum wrote: Mr. & Mrs. Joe Wilson. It seemed as good a name as any, and besides, he was still a wanted man, accuse
d of a murder he didn’t commit in Georgia. He was not free with his name, since wanted dodgers had a way of traveling across country and turning up in small towns. Even new ones.

  Parsons turned back to the key board and took down a large skeleton key with a tag that bore the number 220 written in black ink.

  “Here you are, Mr., ah, Wilson,” Parsons said as he read the register upside down.

  Slocum took the key and pocketed it.

  “I see your wife is waiting for you. The dining room is open until eleven p.m. Enjoy your stay, Mr. Wilson.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Parsons,” Slocum said, and walked toward Melissa, who was staring through the wide doorway into the dining hall.

  They walked in, arm in arm, like a proper married couple. Slocum leaned down to whisper into her ear.

  “Give me a sign if you see Scud in here,” he said. “Or your friends.”

  “I will,” she said.

  A waiter came up to them. He wasn’t wearing fancy clothes, just denim trousers, a small apron, and a white shirt and string tie. His hair was black and heavily pomaded. It glistened in the flickering light from the candle-laden chandeliers. It was not an elegant place, Slocum thought, but it was clean enough, and the smell of food was overpowering.

  “A table for two,” the waiter said. “My name is Horace and I will be taking your order.”

  He led them to a table and pointed to a sign above two batwing doors.

  “That is our bill of fare for this evening,” he said.

  Slocum read the sparse sign as they sat down. Horace pulled out Melissa’s chair and seated her.

  “We’ll have the beefsteak, boiled potatoes, green beans, and biscuits,” he said.

  “We have water and spirits,” Horace said. “Wine and beer that are both room temperature.”

  “I’ll have water,” Melissa said.

  “Beer for me,” Slocum said.

  “I’ll be back with your order shortly,” Horace said.

  Slocum looked around the room. There were two men seated at one table forking up food to their mouths and talking out of the sides of their mouths. A portly man and a woman sat at another table. Three men sat in the center of the room, their faces mottled with dust, their hats tipped back from sweat-laden foreheads. They wore worker’s shirts and dust-clogged trousers, work boots that bore scars and stains. They were not speaking much, but just shoveling food into their maws as if they hadn’t had a hot meal in weeks.

  “Recognize anybody here?” Slocum asked, his voice low and confidential in tone.

  Melissa stared at the other diners quickly then met Slocum’s gaze.

  “No, I’m afraid not,” she said.

  “Didn’t expect we’d find Scud in here treating his captive women to a good meal.”

  “Surely he’ll feed them,” she said.

  “Yeah, I’m sure he will. Gruel or swill, likely.”

  “That’s terrible,” she said.

  “Look, Melissa, Scud and his band of Kiowa killed two men just so he could grab your friends. He would have taken you, too, if he had found you. To me, the man is an animal. Even though I’ve never met Scud, I know what kind of a man he is.”

  “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I just hope he treats my friends halfway decently.”

  “Don’t count on it,” Slocum said.

  One of the men at the far table stood up and walked toward the table where Slocum and Melissa sat. He was wearing a gun belt and the holster was slung low, so that his hand could dangle close to the butt.

  As he approached, Slocum saw that he was wearing a tin star on his vest. As he drew closer, Slocum read the word Sheriff on his badge. He looked ready to fight. He was a man with a ruddy, windblown complexion, a neck that bore streaks of dirt in its folds. He had on worn pinstripe trousers and his shirt was as yellow as butter. He wore a tightly wound bandanna around his neck, as red as a Texas sunset.

  Melissa looked up at the man as he came to a stop a few feet from their table.

  She gasped and brought a hand to her mouth. She looked as if she were in shock.

  “Stranger,” the man said, “don’t I know you from somewhere?”

  The sheriff’s right hand floated above his pistol grip as if he was ready to draw at a moment’s notice.

  Slocum’s eyes narrowed and his jaw tightened as he stared at the man with a penetrating gaze, his hand inching down his side to the butt of his Colt.

  The room seemed to go dead still. There was not a sound from the diners. They all looked over at Slocum’s table as if expecting some unknown event to occur.

  9

  Slocum’s hand opened and closed to grip the butt of his Colt .45. The man with the badge standing next to their table looked dangerous, as if he was spoiling for a gunfight.

  And Melissa had reacted to him in a strange way.

  In a calm voice, Slocum replied to the sheriff’s ques- tion.

  “No, sir, we haven’t met and I have no business with the law in this town. Not yet.”

  The sheriff acted as if Slocum had slapped his face. His jaw line stretched and tautened and his lips curled in an ominous snarl.

  “I’ve seen you somewhere before,” the sheriff said. “Or maybe your picture on a wanted dodger. What’s your name?”

  “Wilson,” Slocum said. His grip tightened on the butt of his pistol, and he pulled it a half inch. His hand was under the table and could not be seen by anyone in the dining room.

  “Wilson, eh? It don’t ring no bell. But you might be using an alias.”

  The accusation hovered between the two men like a black cloud ready to burst into a stabbing flash of lightning.

  “Is this how you treat newcomers to Polvo?” Slocum asked. “And I haven’t heard your name yet, Sheriff.”

  “The name’s Oren Scudder if that’s any business of yours.”

  Slocum heard a soft gasp from Melissa. He did not take his gaze off Sheriff Scudder.

  “It might be,” Slocum said. “If you’re accusing me of anything, I might want to inform a U.S. marshal or a Texas Ranger.”

  “You threatening me?” Scudder said.

  “Take it as advice. We came in here to have supper and you’re holding up our service.”

  “Why, you sonofabitch, I ought to run you into my jail and just check through my wanted posters.”

  “Back off, Scudder,” Slocum said. “I want no trouble, but if you keep pushing me with your threats, I just might call you out.”

  “I’m just doin’ my job, Mr. Wilson. Now I want to know what business you have here in Polvo.”

  Slocum saw that the sheriff’s hand no longer seemed ready to draw down on him. Instead, the sheriff crossed both arms to assume an authoritative position as if he were bossing a chain gang down in Georgia.

  “I’m a horse trader,” Slocum said. “Just scouting the territory.”

  “This is a mining town, Wilson. We got plenty of horses and ain’t sellin’ none of them.”

  “Fine. I’ll look around a few days, then ride on, if that’s all right with you.”

  The sheriff didn’t seem to know that he was being tested. He thrust his jaw out in a belligerent manner as if trying to regain lost ground.

  “Make it a short stay, Wilson. You don’t look like you fit in here.”

  Slocum nodded as if in compliance, but he really wanted the sheriff to leave before one of them opened the ball.

  Scudder harrumphed and turned on his heel, walked back to his table. He and his partner conversed for a few seconds, then both stole glances at Slocum and Melissa.

  Melissa let out a sigh.

  “That wasn’t your Scud,” Slocum said.

  “No, but that man could be his twin. The resemblance is amazing.”

  “Maybe
Sheriff Scudder is Scud’s twin,” Slocum said.

  “Well, they’re brothers. That’s obvious.”

  The waiter brought water and a stein of beer, set them on the table.

  “Your food will be served shortly,” he said.

  “Thank you, Horace,” Slocum said.

  The waiter left and Slocum raised the stein and toasted the sheriff and his companion before he drank. Scudder and his table companion both snorted and turned away as if they had been insulted.

  Slocum sensed that this was not the last time he would hear from Scudder. The man had something stuck in his craw, and there was a good chance that he’d dig through his wanted flyers and find out that there was a reward for one John Slocum. A thousand dollars could be mighty tempting to a man like Scudder, who probably had to rely on graft to supplement his meager income.

  Melissa and Slocum finished their meal. Slocum paid the bill and gave Horace a dollar. In the lobby, Slocum gave Melissa the room key.

  “I’ll get my rifle, saddlebags and such, and join you,” he said.

  “And then what?” she asked as she took the room key from him.

  “I’m going to mosey on down to the saloon and see if I run into Scud or your gal friends.”

  “I should go with you, John.”

  “No, you should not go with me. No telling what I’ll run into. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sheriff Scudder showed up there later on.”

  She frowned and started for the stairs.

  “It’s at the end of the hall,” Slocum called out after her, then went to the desk.

  Parsons arose from his seat at the little desk behind the counter.

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Wilson,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m wondering if you have a livery stable where I could board my horse for the night.”

  “Yes, sir, we sure do. It’s right behind the sheriff’s office down the street. Scudder’s Stables. Should be a stable boy there who can fix you up, store your tack, and grain your horse.”

  “Is the stable owned by Oren Scudder?” Slocum asked.

  Parsons laughed.

  “No, sir. Oren, he don’t own nothin’. His brother, Jesse, owns the stable and most of the town. He even owns this hotel, matter of fact.”