Slocum and the runaway b.., p.6
Slocum and the Runaway Bride, page 6
Now, this little occurrence wouldn’t have been bad or good or even worthy of remark, except that sometimes, Harley talked in his sleep.
And today, he was babbling like a lunatic.
“Ten thousand,” Joe had heard him say at least a dozen times.
Usually, at night, he couldn’t make out a word that Harley said, but today, for some reason, he was spewing out crystal-clear sentences. Maybe it had something to do with his upright position. Maybe it was because it was afternoon, not night.
Joe didn’t know about that. He only knew that he was mad, because Joe was sounding awfully proprietary about the whole of that ten thousand Slocum was carrying.
Joe didn’t like that at all.
In fact, Joe was pissed off in the worst possible way.
“Mine, all mine,” mumbled Harley. “Gonna have a ranch. Gonna have horses. Cattle. Set out the corn, Mabel. Save me some’a them peas for the roof.”
“Mabel?” Joe muttered. Who the hell was Mabel? And why the hell would anybody want peas up on a roof?
Well, it was Harley’s dream, he supposed.
“Ten thousand,” Harley mumbled again, his eyes closed, his head lolling, and a big, stupid smile covering his sleeping face. “Shoot that dumb Joe dead as a stump. I’ll have the red ones, Ma.”
“That’s enough,” Joe said, loud enough that it woke poor Harley from his slumber.
And just as Harley turned sleepily toward Joe to see what was going on, Joe shot him through the neck.
Blood spurted bright, and Joe ducked to avoid being splattered by it.
Harley only lived long enough to get out half a strangled scream. He fell off his horse, dead before he hit the ground, and Joe holstered his gun.
He rode on a few feet farther, then dismounted and stripped the tack off Harley’s horse, setting the chestnut free on the open plain. With a little canteen water and a rag, he took a few cursory wipes at the few drops of Harley’s blood that had stained his cuff.
He left Harley’s tack in a pile not far from the body and the pool of blood it lay in, took the saddlebags for himself, and mounted his gray again.
“Greedy trash,” he said as he looked down at Harley for the last time. It had been nice of Harley to let him in on this Slocum thing, but Harley had forgotten one important thing: When you told Joe French it was an even split, it had best be just that.
“Never liked that sonofabitch, anyhow,” he muttered.
He rode off, going on down to the little oasis, which had just come into view, and as he neared it, he began to whistle.
9
By the time Slocum and Beth made it to Cholla, they were both on foot. Beth’s mount had started to limp visibly, and Slocum could see that the hoof was starting to split. Since he didn’t think it would do Panther any good to bear the weight of two riders, he’d walked the rest of the way into town with Beth.
She was getting crazier by the moment, if he was any judge, and he didn’t think it was an act. At one point, she’d sung “Three Cheers for Billy” at the top of her voice (and Slocum had to admit it was a nice one) then laughed and talked about getting away from Bass Tanglewood for once and for all.
And roughly two minutes later, she was berating Slocum for, well, he wasn’t quite sure what it was he’d done to set her off, but it must have been something powerfully bad.
Anyhow, to hear her tell it.
He was damned glad when the town finally came into sight.
But he wasn’t so glad, once he got a little closer.
Cholla had never been much more than a wide spot in the road, but these days it wasn’t even that. It seemed that Slocum had last seen Cholla in its heyday, for now tumbleweeds sat unmolested, waiting for a breeze on Main Street. The livery, the saloon, and the mercantile were deserted.
In fact, the town was totally and completely without population.
“Now what?” Beth demanded.
She appeared tired and dirty. A thick layer of dust rose a good foot up her skirts. And she didn’t look like she was in one of her rare and fleeting good moods.
Slocum tried the pump at the old horse trough in front of the saloon. Fortunately, some thoughtful soul had left a glass canning jar, full of water, tied to the handle with a string, so he had no trouble priming it. After a few dry pumps of the handle, it spewed out brown water, then clear.
“There,” he said. “You keep workin’ that pump till you get yourself enough water, and then you get cleaned up. I’m goin’ back to the livery to see if somebody left his farrier tools around.”
Both her eyebrows hiked up. “Get cleaned up? You expect me to take a bath? Out here?”
“No, I expect you to do whatever you want. But I ain’t haulin’ no water for you.”
She stomped her foot and folded her arms, but she spat, “Fine!” She turned her back on him with a certain degree of finality.
Shrugging, Slocum wandered back down to the livery. Before he went inside, to the horses, he glanced back up the street. There was Beth, working away on that pumping like a madwoman.
But then, she was half loco, wasn’t she?
He shook his head, then went inside.
By the time he finished at the stable, it was nearly dark. He’d been able to scare up enough materials to shoe both horses, but the heat from the forge had about done him in.
Once again, he was awfully glad that he hadn’t taken up the farrier’s trade.
There was hay left in the barn, although not much, but it wasn’t mildewed. He fed that and some of the oats he’d brought along to the horses.
“Sorry, Panther,” he said as he patted the gelding’s neck. “Sorry it ain’t better chuck. But once we get to Phoenix, you’ll eat like a king.”
Panther gave no sign of caring one way or the other, and ground his oats happily.
Slocum had carried buckets of water—both for the shoeing and for the horses’s stalls—from the pump in front of the barn. And then, when everything else was done, he refilled the priming jar, then undressed and lowered himself into the trough. Crazy Beth was nowhere to be seen.
After he got himself good and plain-water washed, he dressed again, then scooped up more water in a bucket for a shave. No use fouling the horses’ drinking water with soap. He shaved himself by the last rays of the sun in the pocket mirror he carried with him.
At least Beth had had sense enough not to toss it on the ground, along with practically everything else he owned.
And then, girding his loins and dreading the worst, he grabbed the saddlebags and struck off for the saloon. He knew they had rooms upstairs since it had served Cholla as both the hotel and whorehouse, once upon a time, and Beth had probably headed inside.
He’d see if she was in a good enough mood to scrape together some dinner for them.
When he pushed through the bat-wing doors of the saloon, however, he got a surprise. Where he had expected cobwebs and dust, as well as vermin, he found a spanking clean saloon. Everything was swept and dusted, the glasses polished, the windows washed, and he smelled the odor—and a good one, at that—of food cooking.
He stood there for a moment, dumbfounded, and finally called, “Beth?”
“Supper will be ready in a minute, Andy,” she called cheerily from the kitchen, back behind the bar. “Just make yourself comfy, and it’ll be right out! There’s whiskey on the bar, if you’re so inclined.”
Slocum took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair before he rubbed hard at his forehead. Who the hell was Andy?
Jesus! What was it with this gal?
“I went to the mercantile,” she continued happily from behind the closed door. “There wasn’t much there, but I found enough to make us a good meal. Dried apples and flour and sugar and lard, and tinned meat and vegetables and such.”
Slocum found the whiskey—a half bottle—and poured himself a shot, which he threw back in one gulp.
“Do you like lima beans?” her disembodied voice continued cheerily. “I do, but some folks don’t. I made pintos and peas in case you don’t. Could you get the door for me?”
Slocum made his feet move toward the door and pushed it inward. There stood Beth, a white apron neatly tied over her dress, with a bowl of beans in one hand, a plate of biscuits in the other, and a big grin on her face.
“Let me help you with that,” he said as he kicked the doorstop into place with the toe of his boot.
She noted the movement and exclaimed, “Oh, how clever of you!”
Slocum just stared at her.
She handed him the beans and biscuits, then daintily turned and picked up two more bowls. The kitchen was as clean as the bar room, Slocum noted. He didn’t comment, though. He wanted to enjoy his meal with no unpleasantness, and the lord knew she could go off at the drop of a hat.
They ate a lingering meal by the light of a kerosene lamp, and he had to admit that she was a pretty fair cook. Considering what she had to work with, that was. He didn’t talk during dinner. She did, though. A lot. He just nodded.
Most of what she had to say was just lunatic fancies, like how they were going to have to get the barn finished before winter. She called him Andy half the time, and he didn’t correct her. He didn’t want to start anything.
She was getting worse, and Slocum was well aware of it. But she had some lucid times, when she knew where she was, and what Slocum had saved her from. And she was grateful.
In fact, they got halfway through dessert—a good, dried-apple pie—before she turned nasty on him.
“I supposed you want me to take your whippin’ now,” she suddenly snarled.
Slocum blinked. He hadn’t said or done a thing to get her going. But finally, he said, “No ma’am, I sure don’t.”
“If you expect me to furnish the handcuffs, you’re sorely mistaken.”
Slocum pushed back his chair. “Look, lady . . .”
“Don’t ‘look, lady’ me! I know your kind! You take a lady out for dinner and then you expect the world in return!”
She stood abruptly, tipping the table over sideways in her haste. Slocum watched his slice of pie sail across the room.
“Stop it!” he shouted, hoping to jar her back to reality.
But it didn’t work. She just shouted, “I will not!” right back in his face, then picked up a bowl from the floor and threw it at him.
He ducked just in time, and it crashed into the wall behind him and shattered.
He figured that the best place to be, right at the moment, was anyplace but here. He grabbed his hat off the chair he’d thrown it on and turned toward the doors.
And then stopped.
London and Rome Granger stood in the doorway. They were smiling smugly, and both had their guns drawn.
They were pointed squarely at him.
10
“My goodness,” Rome said, and he made the word my last a long time. “Lookee here, London. The great and mighty Slocum, runnin’ from a woman.”
“Beats everything, don’t it, Rome?” London drawled, a grin spreading over his face. He turned toward a spittoon, aimed, and hit it.
“Pigs!” Beth shouted, and hurled a platter at them. Both Granger brothers ducked to the side as it smashed against the door’s frame. “What? All three of you, now? You want me to pleasure all three of you, you sonsofbitches?”
Slocum took the opportunity to jump over the bar. He crouched behind it, his Colt drawn and ready. But it didn’t look as if he would get a chance to use it for a while, because Beth was going on a real tear.
Plates crashed, glassware shattered.
“Missus?” London’s voice carried in from the street. Apparently, he’d retreated to the street. “Mrs. Tanglewood?”
Slocum crawled to the far end of the bar.
“Ain’t gonna hurt you, Mrs. Tanglewood,” Rome called. He was outside again, too. “We just wanna—”
“Men!” Beth shouted, and Slocum heard something else break violently. “You go straight to hell, Andy, and take your drunken friends with you!”
“But ma’am—” Rome tried again.
This time she must have thrown the crockery straight through the door because London let out a loud whoop, then a curse word.
And then Rome hissed, “Get out of the line of fire, you fool!”
“I hate you!” Beth railed. “I hate you all!”
It seemed that everybody had forgotten all about him for the moment, and Slocum slipped through the door and into the kitchen without attracting Beth’s attention. She was too busy shouting and picking up broken crockery—for there weren’t any whole pieces left—and hurling the biggest pieces against the wall or out the door.
Slocum moved quietly through the kitchen while Rome and London Granger argued and pleaded with her from out front. He paused, however, by the table. She’d left the pie out, and he cut himself a big slice in a hurry. The way things were going, there was no telling when he’d get homemade apple pie again.
Pie in his left hand, his gun in his right, he soundlessly slipped out the back door and into the darkened alley. And as he worked his way along the back of the building, he ate.
It was damn good pie.
And these were damn strange circumstances.
He figured that, regardless of what plans they had for him, old Rome and London wouldn’t do anything to hurt Beth Tanglewood. They seemed to be going out of their way to kid-glove her back home, to her husband.
Slocum knew who Bass Tanglewood was, all right.
He couldn’t say he’d want to go back to him, either, if he were in Beth’s shoes. Bass Tanglewood was rich, richer than Croesus. He’d made his money mining gold during the rush, then parlayed it into an even vaster fortune. Railroads, beef, shipping, timber: you name it and Bass Tanglewood had his hand in it somewhere.
Slocum only knew Tanglewood through rumors and newspaper articles. The rumors were juicier, mainly because Tanglewood owned most of the newspapers farther west. But they all fit with what Beth had told him, when she was in her right mind. Or minds. Bass Tanglewood had been sick, all right, sick and dying in New Orleans, and then had made a miraculous recovery.
The last he’d heard, Bass Tanglewood had bought some giant old rancho—stole it, more likely—in southern California, just outside Los Angeles, and retired in style. Although he supposed a man like Tanglewood never really retired.
He hadn’t heard that old Tanglewood had a lunatic wife, though.
Or that he was so fond of roughing up women.
Mainly, he’d heard that Bass Tanglewood was a bastard—both literally and figuratively.
So far, Bass’s hirelings and wife hadn’t done anything to change his initial appraisal of the man.
He gulped the last bite of pie, then eased toward the edge of the building closest to the street. There was still a lot of shouting going on, but not so much breakage. She was running out of things—and pieces of things—to hurl at the Grangers.
Rome and London were still trying to sweet-talk her out the front door, though. He figured they probably had more experience with her than he had. They must figure that sooner or later, she’d do one of those mental turnarounds and be easier to handle.
’Course, if it had been him, he just would have gone down to the livery to sleep, and waited her out.
The hell he would!
He’d have thrown his hands in the air and gone to Phoenix, that’s what!
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath.
He supposed he could do just that—sneak down to the livery and saddle up Panther and just take off to the south. It’d serve all three of these jackasses right.
But he knew it would plague him, not knowing what had happened to Beth. No matter what, she didn’t deserve to go back to Bass Tanglewood.
Besides, those two out front of the saloon had bashed him over the head and made off with his horse. There was still a score to settle.
Silently, he blew air out through pursed lips, took careful aim at Rome, who was closest to the light coming through the saloon window, and fired.
Instantaneously, Rome’s gun went flying, Rome screamed and shoved his fingers in his mouth, and London fired wild, missing Slocum by a mile.
Before the Grangers could scramble into the shadows, Slocum called, “Stay right where you are, or the next slug does more than hit your gun!”
“Damn you!” cried Rome around the gag of his hand. He hadn’t moved an inch.
“Drop it, London,” Slocum shouted.
Reluctantly, London eased his grip on his pistol, and it fell to the ground with a soft plop and a small cloud of dust.
“Well?” Beth was shouting from inside, asking a question he hadn’t heard. “Well?” she repeated.
“Beth!” he hollered as he stepped out from behind the building’s corner. “Beth! You all right?”
Not that he expected a civil answer.
And he didn’t get one. In fact, he didn’t get any answer at all.
“Stop pushin’!” London hollered at him as Slocum moved the Granger brothers through the bat-wing saloon doors at gunpoint.
“I ain’t pushin’ you,” Rome growled. “Just shut up and keep movin’.”
To tell the truth, Rome was pretty much amazed that he was still alive, considering that he’d been shot—or rather, that he’d had a gun shot out of his hand—and considering who’d done the shooting. His hand was beginning to swell a little, but he could still move his fingers and had already decided it wasn’t broken. It was just sprained enough to feel like it.
He couldn’t figure out why Slocum had chosen to bounce a slug off his handgun instead of filling his skull with lead. If things had been the other way round, if Rome had been some big-deal gunslinger on the wrong end of a stolen horse, he would have gunned him down in a split second.
“Sit down, the both of you,” Slocum said from behind him.
Rome picked up a chair, righted it, and sat down. London aped him. Mrs. Tanglewood was over by the bar, quiet for once, and just watching them curiously.
