Slocum and the Canyon Courtesans Read online

  “No love lost between the two brothers, I gather.”

  “Jesse, they call him ‘Scud,’ he treats Oren like a hired hand, not a brother. No sir, them two don’t get along except Oren’s beholden to Scud for his livelihood and his job.”

  “I see,” Slocum said. “Thanks, Mr. Parsons. I’ll ride on down to the livery.”

  “Good evening, Mr. Wilson,” Parsons said, and sat back down at his desk to bring the figures up to date.

  Slocum found the stables, which were in the next block, right behind the sheriff’s office as Parsons had said. The livery was a large clapboard barn with a hayloft, a tack room, water barrels, and plenty of stalls and feed troughs.

  A young man came out to greet him as he dismounted.

  “Good evening, sir. You want to board your horse? How long?”

  “Just for the night, unless I stay longer,” Slocum said.

  “Be a dollar if I grain him and an extra fifteen cents if you want me to rub him down.”

  “All right, sonny,” Slocum said.

  The young man stiffened.

  “My name ain’t Sonny, it’s Caleb,” the youth said. “Caleb Lindsey.”

  “All right, Caleb,” Slocum said as he handed the reins to the boy. He slipped off his saddlebags and drew his rifle from its sheath. “Thanks.”

  “You pay in advance, mister.” Caleb held out his hand, palm up.

  Slocum dug into his pocket and pulled out some dollar bills. He peeled off two of them and handed them to the young man.

  “Give him plenty of grain and water and you can curry him. Keep the change.”

  Caleb looked at the two one-dollar bills and his eyes went wide.

  “Gawley,” he said. “Thanks, mister. I’ll comb him up real good.”

  “See you in the morning maybe,” Slocum said.

  “Oh, I get off before sunup, sir. But Lew Ralston will be here to take care of you. He’s the day man.”

  Slocum walked back to the hotel carrying his rifle and saddlebags. He climbed the stairs and walked down the long hall to Room 220. The door was locked. He tapped on it and Melissa opened the door.

  “Oh, John, I’m so glad you’re back.”

  She was plainly distraught, and he set his saddlebags down and leaned his rifle against the dresser. She had a lamp burning atop a night table and the bed was turned down. She had opened a window, and a light breeze was blowing the curtains to and fro.

  “Something wrong?” he asked.

  She stumbled into his arms. Her body was shaking. He squeezed her tight, then let her go.

  “He was here,” she said. “He came up here and just walked right in. Him and that other man.”

  “Who was here?” he asked.

  “Sheriff Scudder and his deputy, a man named Barney Fisk.”

  “What did they want?” he asked as he pulled a chair out from the center table and sat down. He sailed his hat across the room and it landed atop his saddlebags.

  “The sheriff offered me a job, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “He said that a pretty girl like me could make a lot of money working at the Desert Rose.”

  “The saloon,” he said.

  “Yes. He said it was a saloon and gaming house. Only he called it a ‘gambling salon’ as if it was real ritzy.”

  “And did he tell you what you would be doing on this job?” Slocum asked.

  “He—he made it sound like something special. He told me that I’d get to wear pretty dresses and that a Mexican woman would do my hair and make me up every night. He said all I had to do was be sociable, serve drinks to the gamblers, and maybe dance with some of the patrons.”

  “And you bought his bill of goods?”

  “Sheriff Scudder said that I would get a regular salary and gratuities. He said that I could earn a lot of money. He also said that I would be furnished room and board.”

  Slocum snorted and fished a cheroot from his pocket. He didn’t light it, but stuck it in his mouth and began to worry it back and forth, nibbling on the tip.

  “What?” she said. “Whatever are you thinking, John Slocum? It sounded like a perfectly good employment offer. Pretty clothes and a hairdresser, gratuities, salary, and free lodging and meals.”

  Slocum jerked the cheroot from his mouth as Melissa sat down in the other chair, a look of perfect innocence on her face.

  “That’s about the same offer you’d get from the warden at Yuma Prison or Huntsville,” he said.

  “Why, whatever do you mean, John?”

  “I mean the sheriff offered you a job as a glitter gal at the saloon. You’d be a soiled dove, a lady of the night. Free bed, yes, with some drunken bastard wallowing all over you every night and leaving you a dollar bill on the nightstand, a gratuity. In other words, Scudder wants his brother to hire you on as a common whore. And you would be an inmate in Scud’s prison.”

  “Why, I never got that impression at all,” she said.

  “From what I found out tonight, Scud practically owns this whole town. And he knew about that wagon you were in and about women being transported to the ends of the earth. He probably set it all up so he could take your friends prisoner, put them to work as prostitutes in his castle to extract money from patrons, and make himself rich. Maybe even richer than he already is.”

  “That’s what you think,” she said as her mouth puckered up into a pout.

  “I’m going up the street to have a look at the Desert Rose. I should be back sometime after midnight. I may be a little drunk, but I’ll give you a full report in the morning.”

  “What do you expect to find out?” she asked.

  “Nothing that I don’t already know, Melissa. You’re an innocent. You do not know the ways of the world. I’m going to give you a preview come morning.”

  He got up from the table, walked to his hat, and picked it up. He put it on his head and started for the door.

  “John,” she said.

  He turned around and looked at her.

  “Yes?”

  “I told the sheriff that I’d take the job. Maybe I’ll find my friends and maybe we’ll all like the job better than marrying some stranger down in Quitaque.”

  Slocum glared at her.

  “You poor innocent soul,” he said. He jammed the cheroot back in his mouth and stormed out the door, slamming it hard behind him.

  10

  Slocum lit his cheroot when he walked out of the hotel. Parsons was nowhere to be seen when he crossed the lobby.

  Probably gave a key to Scudder, he thought, and is hiding.

  He was puffing on the little cigar when he pushed aside the batwing doors of the Desert Rose and squinted to adjust his eyesight to the splash of light and the sparkle of the crystal chandeliers with their yellow candles burning light that was reflected in overhead mirrors.

  He stood there, to one side, until he could glance around the interior, scan the bar. The band was on a break, their instruments silent on wooden stands, the footlight candles blazing in small lanterns with golden glass windows.

  He looked for Sheriff Scudder, but didn’t see him. He walked to the end of the bar closest to the door and looked down at the men crouched over their glasses of beer, their two fingers of whiskey, smoke hanging in a blue pall over them like a thin dry cloud.

  No sign of the sheriff or his deputy. No sign of any man who resembled him.

  There were girls walking among the tables or sitting down at tables, caressing the necks of fat patrons, showing their mesh-stockinged legs and ankles crossed under their short black dresses with silver trim. The women wore bright flowers in their hair, and their hair gleamed with a bright sheen under the overhead lamps.

  One of the two bartenders walked down the long bar and leaned on
the bar top, a towel dripping from his wide yellow sash. His sharkskin trousers were black and fit tightly over his lean frame. His shirt had ruffles on the cuffs and down the strip where the buttons fastened it. He also had a lady’s garter around his arm just above the elbow. The garter was ruffled, too, and was green with black borders.

  “Yes, sir, good evening,” the barkeep said. “What is your pleasure?”

  “Do you have any Kentucky bourbon?” Slocum asked.

  “Why, we shore do. Got a shipment in from Abilene yesterday. Any particular brand suit you?”

  “Old Taylor,” Slocum said.

  The bartender grinned. A flashy smile. Phony as a three-dollar bill, Slocum thought.

  “Comin’ right up,” the barkeep said. He went to the back bar and produced a bottle of Old Taylor and scooped up a shot glass on his way back to where Slocum sat. He set the shot glass down and poured it full.

  “Six bits,” he said. “Water’s ten cents extra.”

  “Thanks. I’ll drink it straight. You can leave the bottle.”

  “Sure. My name’s Jack,” he said. “Jack Akers.”

  “I go by the name of Joe,” Slocum said.

  “Just Joe?”

  “Joe Wilson. Has Sheriff Scudder come in yet?”

  “Nope. You know Oren?”

  “We’ve met.” Slocum picked up his drink and looked around the room. “I was hopin’ to talk to one of the gals,” he said.

  “I’ll give Gloria the high sign,” he said. “She ain’t all that busy. You’ll have to buy her a drink, though.”

  “Sure,” Slocum said. “Tea at a buck a shot.”

  “You got it, Joe,” Akers said, and walked away with a twisted little smirk on his face.

  Slocum counted only three women working the tables. As he watched, one of them wended her way toward him, pausing briefly at a few tables to speak, or to pat a man on the head. She sidled up to Slocum and sat down on a stool next to him.

  “Hello,” she said, “I’m Gloria.”

  “Joe Wilson. You got a last name?”

  “It’s Dugan, why do you ask?”

  “Sometimes a last name can tell you where a person is from, or where her parents or grandparents were born.”

  She laughed.

  “I never heard that before. But now that I think of it, it makes sense. My grandpa was from Ireland, Limerick, Ireland. Wilson. I imagine it’s English, right? From England.”

  “Or Scotland, or Wales,” he said.

  “Now you’ve got me guessing. Buy me a drink?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked at the bartender. Gloria lifted a graceful hand and he poured a drink out of a tall bottle into a tall glass. Slocum laid a five-dollar bill on the bar.

  “Thank you,” Gloria said.

  Slocum looked at her closely as she raised her glass and sipped what he took to be tea, perhaps diluted with enough whiskey to give it a smell and a slight taste were he to question what she had been served.

  The heavy makeup could not completely hide her age, nor the hard years Gloria must have lived. Her hair was dyed blond, but he detected rusty red roots, and her sunken eyes were bordered by worry lines etched beneath the lids and at the sides. Her lips, too, looked shopworn and grooved by dryness and age. Her eyes were a sad blue, full of shadows that flickered like old curtains in a room full of dark secrets.

  “What brings you to Polvo?” she asked, turning to look directly at Slocum.

  “Oh, opportunity, I suppose,” he said.

  “Well, there ain’t much opportunity in this burg, Mr. Wilson. Lessen you want to dig for gold or silver or sell dry goods. We got a bank, but no money to lend nobody, and the only store charges such high prices, you’re better off wearin’ rags.”

  “You didn’t buy your clothes here in town,” he said.

  “Goodness, no. These are my working clothes, and Scud furnishes those. And most everything else around here.”

  She kept her voice low so that the other patrons at the bar and the barkeep couldn’t hear her. She glanced around as if afraid of being overheard.

  “You’re not happy here?” he said.

  “Happy? I ain’t sad, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I think you ask too many questions, Mr. Wilson. I thought you came here to have a good time, forget your troubles, talk to a woman.”

  Slocum reached into his pocket and brought out a roll of greenbacks.

  “How much for a few minutes of your time, Gloria?”

  “You want . . .”

  “Whatever you’re selling,” he said as he noticed her eyes fixed on the roll of bills. He held them close to his pocket, under the bar and out of sight of anyone but her, riffling them so that she could see some of the numbers.

  “I have a room upstairs,” she said. “For a sawbuck you can have an hour with me.”

  “Fair enough. You lead the way.”

  She reached into her bodice and pulled out a small skeleton key. She dangled it in front of Slocum.

  “First, you pay, then you get my key. I’ll join you in about five minutes.”

  Slocum peeled off a ten-dollar bill and slipped it to Gloria.

  She handed him the key, which was on a little silk lanyard.

  “Number 4,” she said. “Lamp is lit. You make yourself comfortable and I’ll see you in five minutes.”

  Slocum tossed down his drink after he took the key and left a couple of bills on the bar. Then he walked back to the stairs. He climbed them and found himself in a dimly lit hallway. The numbers were plain enough. He opened the door to Room 4 and entered.

  There was a large bed at one end of the room, and a table on which sat a bottle of cheap whiskey and two glasses. There was also a small vase with small red and blue flowers in it. There was a wardrobe and a small dresser.

  The room reeked of perfume, lilacs, he thought, or perhaps jasmine. A tall candle stood in a pewter holder on a table next to the bed, which was covered with a thick comforter decorated with flower petals. Two large pillows completed the alluring picture. They bore softer pink covers and lavender ruffles on one end.

  Slocum sat down in the chair. He opened the bottle of whiskey and sniffed the aroma.

  “Rotgut,” he said to himself. “Pure rotgut.” He put the cork back in the bottle, stretched out his legs, and waited.

  Gloria appeared a few minutes later, sliding in through the door as if she were meeting a clandestine lover.

  “Put my key on the table,” she whispered. “Want a drink first?”

  “No. First I just want to talk,” he said.

  “Sure. You got an hour, Joe.”

  She sat down in the other chair and tried to look demure. The lone lamp exaggerated her long face and ruby lips. She was trying to be coquettish, but she looked like what she was, a whore. A cheap one at that.

  “Did you see Scud this afternoon?” he asked.

  “Why, yes, I saw him. Why? Do you know Scud?”

  “Never mind. Did he have some new women with him?”

  Gloria reared back in her chair and fixed Slocum with a piercing look.

  “Just what business is that of yours?” she snapped.

  “I’m looking for those girls, Gloria. They were kidnapped. Two men who were taking them to Quitaque were shot and scalped by Scud and some Kiowas.”

  “I don’t believe that for a damned minute,” Gloria said.

  “What, that Scud kidnapped three women or that he and his Kiowas murdered two men?”

  “Any of it.”

  “Did he bring in three gals on horseback this afternoon?”

  Gloria reached for the whiskey bottle. She pulled the cork and poured a tumbler half full. She drank half of it and her breat
h reeked of cheap whiskey.

  “I could get killed for even talking to you,” she said.

  “I won’t say anything to anyone about our conversation, Gloria. And I’ll protect you. With my life, if necessary.”

  “Mister, you don’t know Scud at all. He’s ruthless. And he has men who will do whatever he wants. No questions asked.”

  “I figured as much,” Slocum said. “Now just answer my question, please.”

  “Y-Yes,” she said. She drank the rest of the whiskey in the glass. “He rode in here with three young women on horseback. The women rode bareback, and looked as if they had been in a bar fight. Their dresses were covered in dirt and torn in places. Their hair was messed up. Scud took them to Mrs. Gonzales and told her to see that they bathed and were given food, but locked in a room he keeps for such purposes.”

  “You mean he’s done this before?”

  “Sure. How do you think I wound up here? I was on a stage to Austin and next thing I knew I was in Scud’s clutches. Anita, Mrs. Gonzales, gave me a bath and I was told I could not leave. Scud told me that I was his bond servant. I believed him. That was two years ago. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “Do you know where I can find those women, Gloria?”

  “I know, but I’m not going to tell you. If I do, you’ll only get killed. Scud has two men outside that room with guns, and one inside with a scattergun. You wouldn’t have a chance.”

  Before Slocum could say anything more, the door to Gloria’s room burst open and Oren Scudder filled the doorway. He held a wanted flyer in his left hand and behind him stood his deputy, a double-barreled shotgun in his hands, their snouts pointed directly at Slocum.

  “Gloria, get your ass out of here,” Scudder barked.

  For a split second time froze.

  Nobody in the room moved a muscle.

  Slocum heard two snicks as the deputy cocked both barrels of the Greener.

  11

  In moments of crisis and extreme peril, time becomes fragmented. Images are disjointed and isolated so that they are seared into the mind like acid portraits on steel. So it was when Deputy Fisk cocked the twin hammers of his double-barreled shotgun.