Slocum and the Socorro Saloon Sirens (6 page)

“Penny's probably still asleep,” Slocum whispered.

“Light one of them lamps,” Swain said.

Slocum's cheroot had gone out. He set the butt in an ashtray and lit one of the lamps on a table near the sofa.

“Where's Jethro? In that little room where Penny keeps all her medicants?”

“Yes,” Slocum said.

“Let's look in on him. Walk easy, Slocum.”

“She gave him laudanum, so he's probably still conked out,” Slocum said.

Swain motioned for him to move, and Slocum walked down the hall to the sick room.

Penny stood next to her father's bed. A lamp glowed with a yellow light and cast her shadow on the wall.

“Uncle Obie,” she said in a calm voice. “I'm glad you came. Pa's just barely awake. Put away that gun, will you?”

“I just ain't sure about Slocum here,” Swain said. “I want to check out his story.”

“Whatever John told you is true,” she said. “He saved our lives.”

“If you say so,” Swain said. He holstered his pistol. Slocum stared at him, then dropped his eyes to his own pistol. Swain handed it over, butt first, and Slocum slipped it back in his holster.

He looked into Swain's eyes. They were blue, like his brother's and his niece's. There were wrinkles at the edges, and Slocum saw the pink of his lips peeking from his full beard. He didn't resemble Jethro, but their faces both had a similar shape, and his dark hair was streaked and peppered with graying strands. His face, the portions that showed, was deeply tanned, as was his wattled neck and hands, his forearms. He was wearing loose clothing that was flaked with reddish and brown dust. He wore work boots that were scuffed and dusty, well worn.

Swain walked over to be closer to Jethro. He gazed down at his brother and took off his battered felt hat, which bore sweat stains around the brim.

He leaned over until his face was inches from Jethro's.

“Brother, can you hear me?” Swain said.

Jethro's eyelids fluttered like tiny wings. His eyes opened and Obadiah recoiled as if shocked at what he saw. Jethro's eyes were wet and red-veined as if they had been boiled and steamed. Shadows flickered in their pale blue depths and fixed on Obadiah's face in a locked stare.

“Obie?” The voice that came out of Jethro's clenched throat was raspy and seemed disembodied as if it had come from a different place.

“Yeah, Jethro, it's me,” Swain said. He put a hand on his brother's, a gentle touch that was meant to comfort the injured man. “You feelin' better now?”

“Where am I? I—I don't remember much. Cigarettes burnin' me. All over.”

Obadiah looked over at Penny, his eyebrows arched like the upper curves of question marks.

“They tortured Pa,” she said.

Obadiah swore under his breath. He patted Jethro's hand and stood up.

“You're safe now, brother. You're home. Penny is takin' care of you.”

Jethro closed his eyes. He seemed to drift off somewhere, his features a blank mass of discolored putty, gray and bluish, purple and brownish. His lips were cracked and there was a line of feverish sweat just above them.

“He needs rest more than anything,” Penny said.

Penny and Obadiah walked from the room. Slocum followed them, the scent of alcohol and medicinal salve strong in his nostrils. The lamp burned on, leaking spiderwebs of smoke through its blackening chimney. He left the door open.

They sat down in the front room.

“You want some coffee, Uncle Obie?” Penny asked. “John?”

“I could use a taste,” Swain said.

Slocum nodded as he studied Swain, who had placed his hat back on his head. He looked a hundred years old in the lamplight, but Slocum saw a wiry, energetic man who wasn't much older than Jethro. No more than a year or two, he figured. Swain leaned back in the overstuffed chair, one that he seemed used to, and stretched out his legs.

“What's that blind horse doin' out there in the stalls?” Swain asked.

“I'm supposed to kill it. I got him in Fort Craig. The liveryman didn't have the heart to shoot it.”

“I saw the Army brand on its hip.”

“That blind horse got us here.”

“You going to shoot it?”

“I haven't decided,” Slocum said. “That horse got us all here.” He looked at Penny, who nodded in agreement.

“If John hadn't helped Pa and me, we'd probably both have been kidnapped or killed. We were followed here and John stood them off.”

“What do you mean?” Obie asked.

Penny told him about Shadow and Roger Degnan.

“That's Roger's pistol over on that table,” she said. “He dropped it when John shot him.”

Swain walked over and picked up the converted Remington.

“That's Roger's pistol all right,” he said. “That kid ain't right in the head. He's plugged a couple of people that I know of. Drunks who couldn't defend themselves. His brother Patrick ain't no better. Worse, maybe.”

Swain set the pistol down and walked over to Slocum, looked down at him.

“Son, looks to me like you stirred up a hornet's nest. The Degnans, Patrick and Roger, are bad enough, but Morgan Sombra, good old Shadow, is one mean sonofabitch. And if you plugged Roger, it's for sure old Paddy Degnan will be on you like a streak of lightning.”

“Roger made the first move,” Slocum said. “If I hadn't shot him, I'd be six feet under by now.”

Swain let out a sighing breath and sat down in his special chair.

He said nothing for a few minutes, then spoke to Penny.

“I brought you and Jethro some silver bars,” he said. “They're out in my saddlebags.”

“That's very kind of you, Uncle Obie.”

He waved a hand in the air.

“That's no nevermind. I wonder if Jethro told that bunch at the saloon where I hang my hat.”

“No, Uncle,” she said. “Pa never told them where you lived.”

“Good,” Swain said, then turned his attention to Slocum.

“If we don't nip this in the bud, that crowd in Socorro won't give up. They'll come after you and me both. There's a big old snake in that saloon. And it's run by a bastard name of Wilbur Scroggs. He's the reason I took to smeltin' my own silver ore. That bastard robbed me once when I come back from Albuquerque with a mule load of silver.”

“And he got away with it?” Slocum fished a cheroot from his pocket, but did not light it.

“I couldn't prove it, but I recognized Willie as one of the men who held me up. Shadow was the other one, and I suspect Paddy Degnan was the third man. I built my own smeltering plant, hired some Mexes, and made a small fort out of my adobe hutch. But they know that by now, and I expect their greed is gnawing at their guts again.”

“Well,” Slocum said as he bit off the end of the cheroot, “I sure wish you luck.”

“Just like that, eh?” Swain said. “You ridin' out?”

“I was on my way to Albuquerque to look over some horseflesh up there.”

“John, you can't leave now,” Penny said, her face blanched to a bloodless frost.

“Why not? Might be better if I rode out today. If your uncle says I'm a target, that's one less thing you have to worry about.”

Penny opened her mouth to say something, but Swain waved a hand to silence her.

“Yeah, Slocum, you can light a shuck, but if you think that's the end of it, you've got another think a-comin'. Roger Degnan is a loose cannon with the brains of a weasel. He's two pints short of a quart and will hunt you down wherever you go. And Sombra, he's a back shooter, a sneaky bushwhacker who'll mark your trail and lie in wait.”

“So, what are you suggesting, Obadiah?” Slocum said.

“Call me Obie, Slocum.”

“Call me John, Obie,” Slocum said in a gesture of friendliness.

“I'm suggesting that you and I ride into Socorro and have a drink at that saloon and see what flies out of the hornet's nest.”

Penny gasped.

“Take the fight to them?” Slocum said. “Two against four or five or more?”

“Might be our best shot,” Swain said. “By now, Roger's bought himself another two-dollar pistol and he'll come gunning for you, sure as I'm sitting here.”

“You're buying into my fight, seems like.”

“Don't forget what those jaspers did to my brother. You weren't the main target, Slocum, but you sure as hell stepped into their sights by shootin' that little bastard Roger.”

Slocum spat the tip of his cheroot into an ashtray and worked a box of matches out of his shirt pocket. He lit the end of the cigar and waved the flame out of the match and set it in the ashtray. He took a deep puff and looked straight at Obie, stared hard into his lamplit eyes.

“You have a point, Obie,” Slocum said. “But to just walk into the lion's den and start the ball doesn't seem the right way to go about it.”

“All right, what do you suggest, then?”

Obie's eyes were narrowed to feral points of light. His beard gave him an animal look, and Slocum decided he might well be a man to ride the river with. There was no yellow stripe down Obie's back.

“We can talk about it on the way to Socorro,” Slocum said. “I'd like to take a look and see just what we're up against.”

“John,” Penny said, “you can't trust anybody in that saloon. They're all in cahoots. Even the women, the loose women, who work there. And there's one you have to look out for especially.”

Obie nodded.

“Yep, she's right,” Swain said. “Littlepage is one dangerous woman. She's as beautiful as all get-out, but I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw that blind horse out in the shed.”

“Who?” Slocum said.

“Linda Littlepage,” Penny said. “She's a witch.”

“Beautiful as all get-out,” Obie said again.

Now that Slocum's curiosity was piqued to a high level, he knew he had to ride with Obie into Socorro and see Linda Littlepage for himself. And, too, he would see who came out of the woodwork at that notorious saloon where evil seemed to lurk.

Swain walked outside and whistled. Juan Gomez appeared a moment later.

“Bring in the silver, Juan,” Swain said. He walked back inside.

“I'll fix us some breakfast,” Penny said when her uncle came back inside. A few moments later, Juan knocked on the door. Swain let him in. He carried two bulging flower sacks.

“Set them on the dining table, Juan,” Swain said.

The sacks made a thunk on the dining table when Juan plopped them down.

“Thank you, Uncle Obie,” Penny said from the kitchen. “I'll put those in our safe.”

“And hide the safe,” Swain said.

“Oh, it's in a good safe place,” she said, and then there was the clatter of pots and pans, the creak of cabinet doors.

“It is quiet,” Juan said.

“That's when you must take a knife and sharpen your eyes, Juan. I'll get you and Carlos some grub pretty soon.”

“My stomach awaits your call, Obie,” Juan said. He grinned as he walked back outside to take up his post.

“Good man,” Swain said.

“You're pretty careful, Obie,” Slocum said.

“If anybody's riding this way, from any direction, I want to know in plenty of time.”

“White men don't like to fight in the dark,” Slocum said. “And few of them come at you when the sun's just coming up.”

“Out here, in the desert, you can never be sure,” Swain said.

Slocum had been aware that Swain had been studying him while giving the impression that he wasn't staring a hole in him. Several times, he would look away from Swain, and when their eyes met, Swain would turn away with a suddenness that exposed his unusual interest.

There was a clatter down the hall and Slocum caught a glimpse of Penny carrying a bedpan out of her father's sick room. He heard kitchen noises as he smoked a cheroot and drank coffee with Swain. Penny had left them two cups and a pot on a woven rope pad so they could get their own refills without having to call on her. Slocum saw her bring back the bedpan, which gleamed dully in the dim light of the hallway. More noises came from the sickroom, along with the soft undertones of her hushed voice.

Then she called them to the breakfast table, and the two men carried their cups with them when they entered the small dining room and sat down opposite each other.

Silently Penny served them
huevos rancheros
,
tortillas
,
frijoles refritos
, and
salchiche
, pork sausages that were fat and hot to the taste with chopped-up hot chili peppers. She served herself and sat down to eat with them, a fresh pot of coffee in the center of the floridly tiled table.

“Penny,” Swain said, “I'm going to leave the boys here to look after you and Jethro. Keep your guns loaded and don't let nobody in while we're gone.”

“You're going into Socorro?” Penny said as she touched a fork to her food.

“This afternoon, yeah. How's that hotel comin'?”

“It's not finished,” she said. “I think he's short of money. He's got adobe bricks stacked all over, but only one floor is finished.”

Swain turned to Slocum as he chewed on a chunk of sausage.

“Willie Scroggs has big ideas. He wants to build a big hotel next to his saloon, with a connecting hallway and a dining room. Three stories.”

“So, he needs more silver,” Slocum said.

“That's hittin' the nail square on the head, Slocum. Willie's got the town in his pocket, but with no population to put profit in that pocket. He's a schemer, that one.”