Slocums gold mountain, p.11
Slocum's Gold Mountain, page 11
“Then there’s no harm in anything I intend doing. Who knows? Molly might be a Preston.”
Slocum found himself with an armful of soft, curvy woman. Erin pressed her cheek hard against his chest. He felt wetness spreading as her tears spilled over.
“I’m so glad to have met you, John.”
He wondered what Erin would feel when he helped himself to the gold her beau had helped steal.
“I heard tell of a new hotel opening down the street. It’s actually got rooms for rent.”
“Space is at such a premium in Virginia City,” she said. “Can we really get rooms?”
Slocum heard how she spoke. Rooms. One for each of them. He heaved a sigh. Gold or the girl. He had to choose, and as lovely as Erin Finnigan was, she couldn’t compete with ten wagonloads of gold.
“Let’s go see.”
They went down D Street, turned east and found the small hotel on Union a few doors down from a steepled church. This section of town wasn’t as rowdy as higher on the hillside, with dozens of saloons and cribs filled with ladies of the night.
The carpenters still worked to finish the crude structure. Slocum had seen better. He had also slept in worse.
“Two rooms,” he said.
“We got a waitin’ list, mister,” the room clerk said, but the man was staring at Erin.
“Maybe you could ease us on into the top of the list. For two rooms,” Slocum said. “The lady gets the special one.”
“We can do that,” the clerk said, his eyes never leaving Erin. “But a second room might be a problem.”
“For a member of Engine Company No. 7?”
“You a volunteer?” This broke the clerk’s fascination with Erin and the way her curvaceous body filled out her dress at bosom and backside.
“Ask Sparky. He’s lieutenant of the company. Or Hugh. Or Ed—”
“No need, sir. We’re right proud to have anyone in the company stayin’ here, leastwise for a night or two. Uh, you would work extra hard to save the hotel if there’s a fire, wouldn’t you?”
“That’s the least I could do. I’ll let Sparky know this place is special priority.”
“Thank you, sir!”
Slocum was a bit surprised at how his status had changed so quickly when he invoked the name of the volunteer fire company. The clerk had treated him with a touch of veneration, as if they were fellow Masons and Slocum was a 33rd degree master.
“You go on up and rest,” Slocum suggested. “I need to find a certain young ginger-haired lady.”
Erin looked displeased but said nothing. The clerk hurried around the counter to help her up the steps, cautioning her that several of the planks weren’t nailed into place yet. The majority of buildings in Virginia City looked to be falling down from hard use. This one was being constructed so that it might collapse at any moment, but it was better than sleeping under the stars.
Since Sparky had proven so friendly earlier, Slocum turned toward Firehouse No. 7 for a drink and to talk with his fellow firemen. The minute he entered through the swinging doors, a roar went up.
“There’s our new member. Come on in, Slocum. Pull yourself up to the bar and have a beer.” Sparky hurried over and greeted him. From his breath and the way he staggered a mite, it seemed Sparky had been drinking heavily most of the day.
“You off today?” Slocum asked.
“Spent most of my time in the engine house, polishin’ brass and makin’ sure the pumper works. We got the finest engine in the whole damn territory. And you got to do your turn, Slocum. When you comin’ to the firehouse?”
“I need to wet my whistle first, and find a friend.” Slocum steered Sparky to the bar. The fireman wasn’t averse to letting Slocum buy him another beer.
“You got to wear this here pin.” Sparky handed Slocum a heavy brass medallion the size of four silver dollars glued together, with a fire engine raised in the center and the words “Virginia City Volunteer Fire Engine Company No. 7” curling around the burnished edge. “Wear it on yer hat. Naw, that don’t look right. Your coat’s gotta do. This tells the world you’re a member of the best damned—”
“Engine company in the territory,” Slocum finished for him.
A cheer went up and Slocum found himself buying a round for all his newfound friends. It took him a couple beers to get around to asking Sparky about Molly. He had barely described her when Sparky lit up like a bonfire.
“That’s one sweet-lookin’ filly, yes, sir,” Sparky said, beginning to slur his words from too much alcohol. “I ast after her, when you’d rode out. You said she wasn’t yours and all. Heard tell she was workin’ down the st-street at the Emp-emperor Saloon.”
“Much obliged,” Slocum said, slipping away before Sparky realized his new volunteer had left. Leaving behind the raucous cheers and off-key attempts at singing, Slocum found the Emperor at the edge of town. Like the hotel where he and Erin were staying, this had been built in the last couple days. The smell of sawdust and fresh-cut wood made his nostrils flare as he remembered riding through pine forests that stretched for scores of miles high in the Rockies. The voracious appetite Virginia City had for wood devoured trees all over the Sierras. The few stands of maple and oak he had seen outside Seamus Preston’s claim had somehow escaped the savage saw that furnished endless planking for the town, probably because the veins of ore in Old Glory Canyon had played out quick.
Slocum walked into the Emperor and looked around. The noise was different here than in the Firehouse No. 7. The undercurrents were more dangerous, too. The firemen drank to have fun and break the tension of always being prepared for a fire that they all knew had to come eventually. Here the feel was more dangerous. Four gamblers worked individual poker tables and a scantily clad woman bucked the tiger at the rear of the large room, her faro rig spread out on the table in front of her.
For a moment, Slocum thought the faro dealer was Molly, but a closer look through the swirls of smoke showed him the error of that judgment. She was about the same height and had hair indistinguishable from Molly’s, but she was stockier and had a hard look about her that the miners she bilked at faro never noticed.
“What’s your pleasure?” asked the barkeep.
“A beer,” Slocum said, “and I’m looking for a woman named Molly Preston. I was told she worked here.”
“Molly Preston? Never heard of her,” said the bartender. “If you’re lookin’ for some action, that’s Matilda workin’ the faro table. For the right price, you and her’d have a real good time.”
“Looking for Molly,” Slocum said.
“Can’t help you,” the barkeep said, turning away. His friendliness melted away like icicles on a summer day.
“What’s a matter? Ain’t she good ’nuff for the likes of you?”
For a second Slocum didn’t know the man was talking to him. He did when a heavy hand crushed down on his shoulder and spun him around. Slocum reacted instinctively. As he was being whirled about, he clenched his fist and brought it in a backhand blow against the man’s cheek, sending him staggering to fall across a poker table.
The gamblers jumped back, knocking over their chairs. Slocum heard the rattle as the men went for hideout guns and knives.
“You hit me,” the man said, struggling to sit up on the floor amid a pile of cards and poker chips. “You son of a bitch!”
Slocum pushed his coat back so he could get to his six-shooter. His stance and the expression on his face caused the man to hesitate, but not for long.
“Nobody does that to Big Jack Montrose!”
“Well, Big Jack Montrose,” Slocum said in a cold voice, “you should learn manners. It’s not polite to grab a man like that.”
“A man? You got nerve, mister, callin’ yerself a man. You don’t look like no man to me. You look like a mouse. A tiny, scared little mouse.”
The Emperor Saloon went quiet as a graveyard as Slocum squared off against Big Jack Montrose. Nobody took an insult like that without a fight—or leaving town like a whipped cur.
“How scared?” Slocum’s eyes never wavered. He saw sweat bead on Montrose’s forehead, but the man had backed himself into a corner. He either drew down on Slocum or crawled. It was better to die than to lose face like that.
“You look real scared to me. You shit your pants yet?”
Slocum saw Montrose’s hand twitch and knew the man was making his play. Faster than a striking rattler, Slocum drew his Colt Navy as he stepped forward. With his left hand he brushed Montrose’s six-gun out of the way. With his own six-shooter in his right hand, he swung as hard as he could. A dull crunch of busting bone marked the impact of his barrel against the man’s temple. Big Jack Montrose didn’t look so big in a heap on the floor, a cut on the side of his head gushing blood like an artesian well.
“If Big Jack has any friends,” Slocum said, “maybe they’d better fetch a doctor. He’s going to need it.”
“Never seen a man buffaloed like that before,” the barkeep whispered to a customer at the bar. “The whole damn Montrose clan’s gonna be madder’n wet hens over this. Big Jack was a blowhard, but he didn’t deserve to get his head stove in like that.”
“There are more of those belly-crawling louses?” Slocum asked. The barkeep turned as white as a bleached muslin sheet. His head bobbed up and down like it was on a spring.
“Yes, sir, there’s a whole bunch of ’em. Seven, eight, never knew for sure. You’d better get on out of Virginia City ’cuz Eustace Montrose, he’s not like Big Jack there. He’s downright mean.”
“Killed a man for lookin’ at him funny,” piped up the customer at the bar. “Not that I saw it, mind you. And Big Jack deserved everything you done to him.”
“Think you kilt him dead,” said a gambler, leaning close and looking at the fallen man. “There’s gonna be hell to pay if you did.”
Slocum slid his six-shooter back into its holster and settled his coat on his shoulders.
“I didn’t come in here looking for trouble. I was looking for a woman named Molly. Anyone seen her?” Slocum saw no reason to keep his hunt a secret. He had asked the barkeep, and anything already said would become prime gossip in a heartbeat.
As he scanned the faces looking at him, Slocum didn’t see any that showed even a hint of recognition. He had to believe Sparky had been so drunk he mistook Matilda at the faro table for Molly Preston. There was a slight resemblance, but not enough to make Slocum even want to talk to the faro dealer.
Big Jack Montrose stirred on the floor, then rolled to one side and let out a pitiful moan.
Slocum reached down, grabbed him by the collar and pulled him to his feet. Big Jack wasn’t that tall. With a quick turn, Slocum pinned the wounded man against the bar.
“You think twice before you go insulting anybody,” he told him. “I should have killed you, but I didn’t because of the barkeep.”
“What’s that, mister?” The bartender looked up, startled at being mentioned.
“You offered me a free drink if I promised not to kill this pile of horse flop.”
“Sure thing, mister. Here it is. Billy Taylor’s Finest, straight from Kaintuck.” The man’s hand shook as he poured out a shot of whiskey that had never been within a thousand miles of Kentucky. But Slocum knocked it back, wiped his lips and stepped away. Big Jack Montrose slid to the floor. Hate-filled eyes glared up at Slocum.
“Who was you lookin’ for?”
It took Slocum a second to realize Big Jack was speaking.
“You say you wanted to find Molly Preston?”
Slocum said nothing as he stared at the man struggling to sit up.
“Don’t know her. Don’t know any of the Preston clan.” Big Jack Montrose spat in Slocum’s direction but missed. The spittle, mixed with blood from a cut lip, spread out in a curious pattern on the sawdust and vanished from sight.
Slocum turned and left. He had found one of the other families involved in the robbery with Michael Preston—and it went by the name of Montrose.
12
Slocum backed away from the saloon and decided he wasn’t getting anywhere asking after Molly. The woman wouldn’t be far away, he thought, because he had the map and she knew it. The way she had searched his clothing after the night they’d spent in the line shack told him she was involved in the robbery up to her pretty ears. As he walked back to the hotel at the edge of town, Slocum wondered if it might not have been best if the woman had stolen the map then and there. It would have taken a considerable amount of trouble off his shoulders.
As quickly as the notion crossed his mind, Slocum ejected it. He had been duty bound to deliver the map fragment to Seamus Preston, and he had tried. It wasn’t his fault someone—the Montrose gang?—had killed Seamus. But it was his choice to help Erin Finnigan. He felt she had been dealt a crooked hand. All she wanted was to keep scraping through tailings to scavenge what few flecks of color the original mine owner had missed. It was no fit life for any woman, much less one as pretty as Erin, but it was her choice.
That’s what it all came down to. Choices. Slocum knew Erin wanted nothing to do with the stolen hoard of gold. He did. Hand resting on the pocket where he kept the map, he strayed a ways to the shirt, where the half gold coin rested around his neck on the rawhide thong. He would work a deal with Erin, swapping her half of the coin that Seamus had given her for the title to the worthless mine. It felt like a swindle to him, but if both got what they wanted, who was being rooked?
The clerk had made it plain as day that he would bend all the rules for a five-hundred-dollar bribe. If Erin was right, this would be a drop in the bucket compared with the vast hoard of gold waiting for him somewhere in the mountains.
Almost back to the hotel, Slocum began to get an uneasy feeling. He turned uphill, went to C Street and sauntered past the Firehouse No. 7 Saloon but did not stop. Instead he went to the side of the raucous gin mill and stood in the shadows, waiting and watching. The street was filled with drunk miners, but he ignored them easily enough. Most only sought a new watering hole to keep them supplied with liquor until dawn, when they either returned to work or passed out.
One man wasn’t drunk and he looked angry. Slocum guessed the reason. He had lost Slocum’s trail. Slocum studied the man but did not recognize him. The man began a quick entry into each saloon, only to pop out when he didn’t find his quarry. Slocum opened his coat and reached over to rest his hand on the butt of his six-shooter. He could draw, fire and kill the man and no one would ever notice. The very act of murder might go unnoticed until day-break, and no one would care since Virginia City was still without a marshal. Sheriff George might be interested in hunting for anyone willing to shoot a man from ambush, but Slocum guessed the sheriff’s sights were set on the Montrose gang.
And the ten wagonloads of gold that they, with the Prestons and some other family of outlaws, had made off with.
Slocum waited for his stalker to pass by. Rather than kill him, Slocum wanted information. He might even find who had the other half of the map. He wasn’t going to locate the stolen gold without it, but apparently the Montroses weren’t going to find it without the scrap he had.
The scrap of map and the gold coin.
That thought made Slocum less inclined to capture the man than to get back to the hotel and Erin Finnigan. Seamus had given her the half coin to hold if the Montrose gang caught up with him—as they had. The cache of food and weapons that had saved their lives must have been left by Seamus for the rest of the gang as part of his work as their quartermaster.
But this put Erin in greater danger than ever. When the gang hadn’t found the coin among Seamus’s belongings, they had caught him and tried to torture it out of him. Slocum wondered if Seamus had told them where the coin was before they killed him or if he had died with a tight lip.
Poking his head out to look for his tracker, Slocum waited almost a full minute before deciding the man had vanished. Either he had given up looking for Slocum and returned to report his failure to the rest of the gang, or he hadn’t been tracking Slocum at all. Of the two choices, Slocum reckoned the first was closer to the truth. He had seen the man’s desperation when he thought he had lost his quarry.
Slocum almost went looking for the man, then changed his mind. He kept to shadows, took alleys and eventually came out near his hotel. For several minutes, Slocum patrolled the area as he hunted for anything out of the ordinary. All he found was three miners curled up under sheets of tin, sleeping off their nightly binge.
He went into the hotel to find the clerk with his head lying on crossed arms as he slept on the counter. Slocum went up the stairs to the second floor, stepping gingerly as some of the planks were still loose. He stopped in front of Erin’s room and almost knocked. He wanted to be sure she was all right. But he held back. If she was asleep, he would worry her for no reason.
Slocum went into his room and flopped on the bed. It lacked a mattress but a couple blankets under him on the hard plank was better than sleeping on the ground. He stared at the unfinished ceiling. Lath needed to be applied, then plastered to cover the cracks. If it rained, Slocum would find himself bailing. But that was a distant possibility now with the late autumn storms being snowy rather than rainy.
He hated it that he couldn’t go to sleep and that everything tumbled about until he doubted he would ever sleep. He forced himself to close his eyes. Barely had he done so when he heard a soft tread in the hallway outside his room. Someone trying not to make a sound. Courtesy was a commodity lacking in a boomtown. Slocum reached over and slid his six-gun from its holster.
His door opened a crack. Then a bulky man rushed into the room. In spite of having known this was likely to happen, the sudden attack took Slocum by surprise. He had expected a sneak thief to slip in and begin poking through his belongings. This owlhoot had come to fight.
A heavy fist missed Slocum’s head and landed on his right shoulder, momentarily numbing it. He fought to keep a grip on his six-shooter, but his arm refused to obey. His fingers opened of their own accord and the gun slipped to the bed. Then Slocum found himself fighting for his life. His assailant jumped to the bed, pinned Slocum down and wrapped meaty fingers around his neck.
