Slocum 419 (2 page)

Lou counted out several bills and handed them across the desk to Slocum. The color returned to his cheeks, but now he had a steely glint in his eyes as he looked at Slocum.

“You tell anybody about this, Slocum?”

“I rode straight here. Man's down in a deep gulley and I didn't want to lug him up, tie him on one of the horses, and bring his body into town.”

“You've got to tell the constable. Abner Hellinger. Abner ain't much, but he's all we got. He'll get some men to retrieve Wilbur's body. God, I hate to tell Jasper about this. He doted on his big brother.”

“I'll take care of telling the constable. That was my next stop.”

“I got a room for you at the hotel. Sometimes it gets pretty full. Just sign the register. I got the bill.”

“Thanks, Lou. Buy you a drink later?”

“We'll probably close up early because Jasper's goin' to cave in on me. No shipments today. Not until tomorrow. Saloon okay with you?”

“I know where it is,” Slocum said. “Any idea who might have pushed down on that plunger?”

“I know Wil had him a gal a month or so ago. They broke up, I heard.”

“Know her?”

“Naw. I think her name was Silvia or Sybil. Somethin' like that. She was a hellion, Wil said. Went through men in town like shit through a tin horn.”

Slocum stood up, brushed dust off his black trousers. Squared his hat.

“I'll see you at the saloon, Lou. Thanks for the cash.”

“I knowed that was quite a trip across the mountains to get here. You had your hands full.”

“What with rattlesnakes scaring the horses and bear scat on the road and cougars in the night screaming like banshees, yeah, it was quite a trip, Lou.”

“Those horses will keep me in business for some time.”

“Let me know when you want some more,” Slocum said. He bowed his head slightly and touched a finger to the tip of his hat in farewell.

“See you at the saloon later,” Lou said.

Slocum rode back up the street and stopped at the constable's office. He wrapped his reins around the hitch rail, patted Ferro on the neck, and went inside the small log building.

A short man with smoked eyeglasses looked up. He was trying to thread a needle. A gabardine vest sat on his desk with a loose button next to it.

“Mornin',” Abner Hellinger said as he looked up. “What's on your mind, stranger?”

“I want to report a dead man east of town.”

“Well, set down and tell me about it,” Abner said. He shoved the vest aside and slid a notepad in its place. He grabbed a pencil and adjusted his eyeglasses.

Slocum sat down in a round-backed chair with most of the paint worn off the back and the struts.

Slocum told him about the blast and the name Lou had given him. Abner jotted down certain items on the notepad.

“Hmm,” the constable said. “Wilbur Nichols, eh? You say the killer was a woman?”

“Yes, from what little I saw of her, I'd say it was a woman. Maybe two.”

“Two?”

“I heard another voice in the timber. It sounded female.”

“That's mighty unusual,” Abner said.

“Curious, I'd say,” Slocum said.

“Yeah. Mighty curious. A female murderer. Don't get many of them in my line of work. We've had a few killings here, mostly knives and Messicans, a gunshot or two. But 'twixt two men usually, not wimmin.”

“Women have been known to kill, too,” Slocum said. “What's curious about it is that this woman knew about dynamite and used it to blow a man up in broad daylight.”

“Yeah, that is mighty surprisin',” Abner said. “Ain't no women workin' any of the mines hereabouts, far as I know.”

“This woman had a grudge,” Slocum said.

Abner sat up and laid his pencil down. He looked at Slocum over the top rims of his eyeglasses.

“A grudge? What makes you think that? And say, what's your name anyway?”

“John Slocum. Takes a lot of know-how to plant sticks of dynamite, run the wires to them, and drop them into the mine, then send a jolt of electricity down those wires to explode a cap and set off the explosion.”

“Yes, it does,” Abner admitted. He looked away from Slocum for a minute and tapped his fingers on his notepad. The taps made a faint rustling sound as the paper crinkled slightly.

“Was Wilbur married?” Slocum asked.

“Nope. I was just thinkin'. Sometime back, rumor was that he got in a fight of some sort with a woman. Don't know who the woman was, nor if the rumor was true. Nobody came here and filed a complaint.”

“Who might know about this?” Slocum asked.

“You some kind of detective?” Abner asked.

“No. Just a curious horse trader,” Slocum replied.

“It was just saloon talk, Mr. Slocum. You know how the boys jabber when they're swiggin' down their whiskeys and beers.”

“The town hall,” Slocum said.

Abner smiled. His apple cheeks rose and fell with every facial movement.

“Like the potbellied stove in the mercantile store. Sometimes I think men are worse gossips than the wimmin.”

Slocum chuckled. “But,” he said, “somebody here in town knows something. Something they're keeping secret.”

“That's likely, too,” Abner said. “Miners and prospectors are a closed-mouth bunch. They don't talk about their finds or tell where they're lookin'. Something like this, they might not want to get out. Wilbur was one of 'em and he had more'n one fistfight since he'd been here.”

“What about Jasper? His brother?”

“Oh, Jasper, he's the meek one. Idolizes, I mean idolized, his older brother. Never no trouble with him that I know of.”

“Well, thanks, Constable,” Slocum said. “I'll be in town awhile. Lou got me a room at the hotel. Lou Darvin, I mean.”

“Stay out of trouble. And call me Abner.”

“Abner it is,” Slocum said. He stood up and then left the office.

Abner sat there for a moment, then got up and took his hat off the coat tree. He had a body to pick up and take to the undertaker.

He watched Slocum lead his horse up the street toward the hotel.

The man looked familiar. Not that he had seen him in person before, but he might have seen a drawing of him on a wanted flyer.

He'd look through the stacks when he finished taking care of Wilbur Nichols's body, and taking a look at that plunger up above the Nichols mine.

He walked toward the saloon, where he hoped to find some volunteers to ride with him up the canyon.

It was a hell of a way to start his day.

The girls were still on the balcony when Slocum walked by, leading Ferro. They smiled and giggled, then waved at him again. The two women on the front porch watched him, but did not smile or wave. One of them was very pretty and looked familiar. He felt her eyes on him as he walked past.

One thing was certain, he thought. If he ever saw her again, he would recognize her for sure.

She was the prettiest one in the bunch, with her delicate face, long amber tresses, and a velvet choker around her delicate neck. And her long stockings could not hide those Thoroughbred racehorse legs. Nor could her gingham dress conceal her curvaceous body. He could not detect the color of her eyes at that distance, but her lips were full and luscious under a faint tinge of red lipstick.

He almost saluted her as he passed by, but that was not his style.

Slocum had a policy.

Let the women come to him, he thought as he tied Ferro up at the hitch rail outside the hotel and walked into the lobby.

The desk clerk had him sign the register and handed him a key.

“Down the hall, last door on your left,” the clerk said. “And my name is Harvey Lesser.”

“Thanks,” Slocum said.

He walked down the hall and stopped at the last door on his left. Number 6. The key worked, and he entered the room. He had two windows with plenty of light. One looked out the back onto an alley, and a fenced lot that was empty. The other gave him a view of the building next door, clapboard siding with fading brown paint. There was a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser, a table and two chairs, a slop jar next to the bed, a washbowl, a small bar of soap, and a pitcher of water.

“All the comforts of a shanty,” Slocum said to himself as he closed the door and lugged his saddlebags over to the bed.

He removed a new bottle of Kentucky bourbon from his saddlebags and placed it atop the bureau next to the pitcher and washbowl.

He sat down and moved the ashtray on his table toward him as he reached in his pocket for a cheroot.

He struck a match, lit the end of the cigar, and waved the match out before dropping it in the simple clay ashtray, which looked as if had been made by a child in kindergarten, what the Mexicans called a
cenicero
. He drew smoke and air through the cheroot and blew the smoke back out the side of his mouth as he looked around the sparse room. There were wooden dowels to hang things on and a couple of Currier & Ives prints that looked as if they had been rained on at some point in their existence.

It was not long before he heard a timid tap on his door.

“It's open,” he called out in a loud voice.

The beautiful woman he had seen on the porch opened the door and walked into Slocum's room.

She wore a broad smile on her face.

She was dressed in a tight-fitting dress with a low-cut bodice that revealed her ample bosom. Black net stockings and high-heeled shoes gave a sway to her walk and revealed enough of her legs to catch any man's eye.

“Amy Sullivan,” Slocum said. “From Denver.”

“John,” she cooed. “You remembered me.”

She ambled over to the table, and Slocum motioned for her to take a seat in the other chair. He blew the smoke from his cheroot out the side of his mouth again, away from her.

Amy sat down and crossed her legs. Her skirt slipped up to reveal her garter belt, crimson silk pressing into her soft flesh in a most provocative way.

“Sure, I remember you,” Slocum said. “You owned the bar in the Brown Palace Hotel.”

Amy laughed.

Her black hair shone even in the lampless drab light of the room. It had a sheen to it that caught light and radiated it every time she moved her head.

“And you owned my favorite bed. I can still hear those old springs sing.”

Slocum chuckled at the memory.

“How did you end up in a hellhole like Durango?”

“I go where the money is,” she said. “Durango is a boomtown.”

“It's where the gold is anyway,” he said.

“I've never seen so much gold dust.”

“You work at the saloon?” he asked.

“Honey, I run that saloon. Got me a bevy of gals that can shake the gold dust out of a man's pouch faster than you can say ‘Jack Robinson.'”

“Greed is such an ugly thing,” Slocum said.

“We, the girls, I mean, give fair value for services rendered.”

“‘To render' meaning to tear apart and rip asunder,” he said, a flicker of a smile on his face.

Amy laughed and her laugh was genuine. Her painted lips opened to reveal strong white teeth and the hint of a sensual tongue.

“I can pour you a drink, Amy. Like one?”

She shook her head.

“Pour yourself one if you want.”

“Not yet,” he said as he drew smoke into his mouth from the cheroot. “I just enjoy gazing at your loveliness.”

She patted her hair and smiled.

“Thank you. That reminds me. When we last met in your room at the Brown Palace, we were interrupted. Just as things began to get interesting.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry about that.”

“A gunman knocked open your door and came in on us. I screamed and fell off the bed. You shot him before he could shoot you.”

“I can't forgive him for that.”

“I kept the flyer he had in his pocket.”

“You did?”

“It offered a reward for your capture and your return to Georgia.”

“How much reward?”

“Three hundred dollars.”

Slocum laughed.

“It's gone up since then. It's now five hundred dollars.”

“Ooooh. You've gotten expensive.”

“No, I'm the same price. The reward just went up two hundred greenbacks.”

Amy laughed.

“What's your price, John?”

“A kiss,” he said.

Amy smiled.

“I can afford that. I don't have to be at work for hours. Maybe we can pick up where we left off. I see that you have a bed.”

“And it hasn't been slept in yet. At least by me.”

“Or made love in either, I hope,” she said.

“It's a virgin bed,” Slocum said.

Amy laughed.

“Then it's the only virgin in this room, John.”

“I guess it is.”

She got up and walked over to the bed. She plopped down on it and bounced up and down. The springs groaned softly.

“Not too noisy either,” she said.

“If you say so.”

She spread out her arms in a beckoning gesture.

“Maybe it takes two to make it sing,” she said.

“You want to hear it sing, Amy?”

She patted the coverlet.

“I'll bet we could make those springs sing a merry tune,” she said.

Slocum arose from his chair and walked over to her. He took her hands in his and pulled her off the bed. Then he embraced her in his arms.

They kissed.

The kiss was long and lingering.

He could feel her body ripple under the tight skirt with its slits on both sides. Her kiss was warm and then became wet and hot as they clung to each other.

“Oh, John,” she said, breathing heavily, when she broke the kiss, “I want you so much.”

“I want you, too,” he said hoarsely.

Her hand floated down to his crotch. She squeezed the bulge between his legs. Her touch was gentle as she traced the outlines of his hardening cock balled up in his shorts.

“My,” Amy said in a soft voice, “the mister is almost ready. It would not take much to make him stand up.”

“No, it wouldn't,” Slocum agreed.

She began to unbuckle his gun belt. It dropped to the floor with a thud. Then she attacked his belt buckle, which held up his trousers.

She unbuttoned his pants as the belt sprang free of the buckle. She dipped her hand inside and her fingers roamed his shorts until they touched the flesh of his folded cock.

She pulled it free of his underwear as his pants began to slip from his waist. She squeezed his cock and it unfolded like a switchblade.

Then she dropped to her knees and opened her mouth.

Amy flicked her tongue over the crown of his prick and it hardened even more, the shaft swelling and the veins erupting along its length like blue cords.

She sighed as she took his cock into her mouth. Her tongue flicked and laved the head until it flared with engorged blood. Her head bobbed up and down as she sucked him in and out of her mouth.

Slocum grabbed the back of her head and buried his fingers in her hair. Pleasure shot through him like an electric current as her cheeks became convex and she began to pant as she suckled him to full length.

“You make it hard for a man to resist,” he said.

“That's the idea, John.”

She fondled his balls and drew on his shaft with a force that made his blood run hot into every capillary.

He squeezed her hair in his hands. Pulled her closer until he was deep in her mouth and touching the back of her throat with the tip of his throbbing cock.

It would not take long, he thought, before he ejaculated and spewed his seed inside her mouth.

But Slocum forced himself to wait.