Slocum and the Socorro Saloon Sirens (7 page)

“And you think he's behind the kidnapping and torture of your brother?” Slocum said.

“No question about it. Anything illegal in Socorro, you can bet Scroggs is behind it. The man has no scruples, no conscience, and no loyalty to anything except money.”

“He's a dangerous man,” Penny said. “And he surrounds himself with gunslingers, like Shadow and the sheriff.”

Slocum forked some eggs into his mouth. Penny sipped her coffee. She looked pale and wan in the morning light streaming through the window. Her hair shone like spun gold in a single ray of sunshine that streamed through the open window.

“Degnan's the big problem there. His deputies are on every wanted dodger from New Orleans to Bozeman,” Swain said. “Gunslingers, yeah, and, like Shadow and Roger, back shooters, dry gulchers.”

“Why do people stay in Socorro?” Slocum asked. “It doesn't sound like a nice town to live in.”

Penny spoke up between bites of food.

“The town has mostly Mexicans in it, and they're scared of Scroggs and Degnan. The church is powerless. Scroggs pays good wages when he's flush with money, and that gives him power.”

“The few men who have stood up to Scroggs are dead,” Swain said. “He makes sure everybody who lives there knows it.”

“What about the law?” Slocum asked. “Federal marshals? State troopers? The Army, for that matter?”

“The law requires proof, Slocum,” Swain said. “And Scroggs covers his tracks like a fox.”

“He gets away with murder,” Penny said.

“Any questions, Slocum?” Swain asked.

Slocum looked at Penny.

“Yes. Where do you get eggs like these, and the pork?”

Penny laughed.

“Oh, you don't know, do you?” she said. “In back of Uncle Obie's stables, there's a garden and a henhouse that's fenced in with chicken wire.”

“Jethro's got a good twenty acres,” Swain said. “And a couple of springs, good irrigation. I have twice that much land and five times as much fresh water.”

“I'm surprised,” Slocum said.

“The desert is full of surprises,” Penny said. “When you and Uncle Obie come back, I'll make some biscuits and maybe some bear claws.”

“I can't wait,” Slocum said.

As the two men were leaving the adobe house, Penny drew Slocum aside.

“Thank you for last night,” she whispered in a conspiratorial tone of voice.

“Thank you, Penny,” he said, and pecked her on the cheek with an avuncular kiss as fleeting as summer dew on cactus flowers. She squeezed his hand as the horses outside switched their tails and pawed the ground with impatience.

He and Swain left late that same afternoon. Slocum wondered what they were getting into since Obie wasn't exactly a font of information. But he knew the man had something on his mind because he kept looking at Slocum, stealing sidelong glances when he thought Slocum wasn't aware of his scrutiny.

“No use getting to town much before sunset,” Obie said when they were clear of his brother's spread. “Town is dead until after sundown.”

“I don't see much reason for there to be a town there at all,” Slocum said.

“The Mexes take siestas during the heat of the day and don't do much work. Saloon caters to card players and drunks most of the day. At night, the ranchers come in to drink and take their pleasure with the whores. Ebb and flow, Slocum, ebb and flow. Like clockwork.”

“Sounds like most folks around here have a pretty miserable existence.”

“Them what don't have farms or ranches weave blankets and make pottery to sell in Albuquerque, Santa Fe, or Taos. They don't make much money, but they manage to stay alive.”

Swain rode away from the road onto rough ground. His horse stepped around prickly pear, Spanish bayonets, and cholla.

“We don't want to ride the road,” Swain said. “Too much of a target.”

“A hell of a way to live, Obie.”

“Yeah, but you live longer. I don't expect anybody's lookin' for us just yet, but you never know.”

Slocum said nothing. They rode farther away from the road over a desolate landscape. The sun was sliding toward the horizon behind them, and their shadows stretched long and rumpled over the harsh ground. There was something about the way Obie rode that jogged a memory, a distant memory, in John's mind. Obie's back was straight and stiff. He held the reins loosely in his left hand and seemed part of his horse, a sorrel gelding that stood at least fifteen hands tall, with small feet. Slocum thought the horse must be part Arabian, perhaps part Morgan. A fine animal. Then, it struck him. Obie rode like a cavalry officer, and that brought back even more memories. Painful memories.

Swain looked at Slocum and then said something that made Slocum wonder if the man was reading his thoughts.

“I knew your older brother, John,” Swain said. “Robert and I were in the same outfit at Gettysburg. I saw him go down. Couldn't help him.”

“You rode with Pickett?”

“I did,” Swain said. “Old George knew that Lee was wrong, orderin' us across that empty plain straight into the Yankee guns. It was brutal and senseless. Pickett knew it, but he charged up that hill anyway. Robert was brave and he talked about you a lot. He said you were a sharpshooter, made Captain.”

“I found Robert on that battlefield,” Slocum said. “He was already dead. He lay with a bunch of others cut down by grapeshot, like wheat cut with a scythe.”

“Lee thought he would win that day. He truly did.”

“Pickett knew better,” Slocum said.

“George was pretty broken up afterwards. He didn't whine or whimper, but I could see the pain in his eyes. The man was grievin' real bad inside.”

“So were we all,” Slocum said.

“Your brother set great store by you, John.”

“I still think about him a lot, and our pa, William, our ma, Opal. There are some empty places in the world where they were.”

“True. I lost many friends in the war. And I still miss most of 'em.”

The dark western horizon was a funeral bier blazing with the fire from the sun. A jackrabbit jumped from a clump of nopal and hopped in front of them, then froze against a rock, almost invisible in its shadow. In the distance, a quail piped and doves flew through the saguaros like gray darts, their gray wings whistling like tiny flutes, the notes fading as they twisted out of sight.

As they rode into the gathering dusk toward the town of Socorro, Slocum wondered whether Obie's talk of the distant War Between the States was not a warning to him of what might lie ahead, a veiled augur that they were riding to another war, a war where death could come with a single lead bullet from an impregnable fortress, not of rock walls and trees, but from drab adobe walls and incorporeal shadows.

Socorro was an unknown region to Slocum, a place of danger, where sharpshooting skills were useless and a man's back had a bull's-eye painted on it for every wily gunslinger to see.

It was dusk when they entered the town, the sounds of their horses' hooves thudding on dusty streets that crawled with vermicular shadows. The sonorous melodies of a guitar floated on the evening air in a minor key. A hush seemed to envelop the city until they turned down the main street toward the lamplit hulk of the Socorro Saloon, where riderless horses and mules stood at the hitch rails like mourners at a funeral.

Paddy Degnan strode into the hospital room. He carried a package under his arm. He walked to the farthest bed in the room, where a Mexican doctor stood next to Roger Degnan. The doctor, Alonzo Jimenez, was stooped over, his head close to the bandaged wound in Roger's side.

“No sign of blood poisoning,” Jimenez said. “You are lucky. The bullet passed through the flesh and did not strike a vital organ.”

Paddy heard the doctor's words as he stood at the foot of his brother's bed.

“It is good that you have a little fat around your middle,” Jimenez said. “Or that you are the victim of a man who shoots poorly.”

Jimenez, a young man in his mid-thirties, stood up and looked at Paddy.

“So, Roger can come home?” Paddy said.

“He wears stitches in his side. As long as he does not become an acrobat for two or three weeks, his wound will heal very soon.”

Roger flashed a weak grin at his brother. His face was pale, his blue eyes slightly bloodshot.

“Well, Roger, was the man who did this to you a poor shot?”

“He was a quick shot,” Roger said. “He sure buffaloed the hell out of me.” This last sentence was delivered in a wry tone as Roger remembered the incident. “I should have plugged him, but his hand was like lightning.”

Both men had pale orange hair. Roger's hair was wiry, tousled, unruly. Paddy's was pasted down flat with pomade and covered by his Stetson. The two resembled each other, although Paddy's features were scarred and distorted by previous fistfights, while Roger's face was smooth and still bore the copper coinage of freckles, though these were faded and few.

“Roger,” Jimenez said, “you can go home, but you walk very slow, do not ride a horse. You might pull those stitches loose. Keep the wound dry and the nurse will give you some salve to put on it once or twice a day.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Roger said. He looked at his brother. “Will you walk me home, Paddy?”

“I ought to kick your sorry ass home,” Paddy said. “I got something to show you.”

“I'll have the nurse ready for you when you leave,” Jimenez said. He had been educated in the East and his Mexican accent was slight. He was from a privileged family in Mexico City. His mother took him to New York when he was small so that he could learn to speak English and improve his lot in life. But he had encountered prejudice and had come out West, where he could live among his own people and the whites and speak his native language. He wasn't bitter about his rejection at the Eastern hospitals but, under his mother's influence, was practical about it. He was content to practice medicine in this desolate place, which was still more prosperous than most of the small towns in Mexico.

“Is that young nurse, Penelope Swain, on duty?” Paddy asked.

“No, she has taken leave,” the doctor said.

“Leave? You mean she quit?”

“I think only for a week or two. Why? Did you wish to see her?”

“No,” Paddy said. “I just wondered.”

“Well, I must go and put an order in for the medicine your brother must take home with him.”

“See ya, Doc,” Paddy said as Jimenez walked through the room, past beds with aging Mexicans and derelict white patients.

“Paddy, will you get my clothes out of that cabinet by my bed?” Roger asked.

“In a minute, boy. I got something for you.”

Paddy walked around the bed to stand in front of his brother. Roger's scrawny legs dangled over the edge of the bed. He slipped into his white hospital gown to avoid shivering from the cold. He smelled of strong medication, and there was peach fuzz on his chin and jowls. His hair looked like an explosion of copper wire.

“What did you bring me?” Roger asked as he scooted forward an inch or two.

Paddy opened the sack and poured the contents onto Roger's pillow. Roger's eyes grew wide and flickered with a happy light.

“To replace that piece of junk you lost,” Paddy said.

There, on the pillow, was a brand new Colt .45, the latest Peacemaker model, with stag grips, and a box of Winchester cartridges. The pistol gleamed a bright black in the lamplight. Roger picked it up with his right hand and looked at the fine even bluing of the barrel. He thumbed the hammer back to half-cock and spun the cylinder. The pistol gave out a reassuring purr.

“Boy, that's really something, Paddy. Is it mine?”

“All yours, boy. I cleaned it up for you, but it's a virgin. Never been fired.”

“Brand new? Oh, Paddy.”

“You can load it up later and we'll do some plinkin' when you're up to it. I got something else to show you before we leave this place.”

“What's that?” Roger said as he eased the hammer back down. He rubbed his fingerprints from the barrel with the sleeve of his gown and set the pistol next to his bare leg.

Paddy reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He folded it back in half and showed Roger the drawing of a man's face. Above the drawing there was the legend WANTED—REWARD.

“Take a good look, Rog,” Paddy said.

Roger studied the drawing of a man's face on the piece of paper.

“Yeah, that looks like the man who shot me. Only not as old. Who is he?”

Paddy took the paper and unfolded it.

“John Slocum,” Roger said as he scanned the name beneath the crude portrait. “How did you know?”

“Sombra. He told me that he'd seen the man before and that there was a price on his head. Slocum's a wanted man. Killed a judge down in Georgia after the war.”

“One thousand dollars,” Roger said, as that was the legend at the bottom of the sheet of paper: REWARD—$1000.

“It may be a mite more by now. That dodger was in an old stack of them I found in a file cabinet. Left there by the previous sheriff.”

Roger looked at the flyer again.

“Yeah, that's him. I'm sure of it,” he said. “And with a bounty on his head. I'd sure like to get another shot at him.”

“He's wanted alive,” Paddy said. “Not dead.”

“I'd still like to shoot him.”

Paddy folded the paper and put it in his pocket. He patted the outside of his pocket.