Slocum and the Diamond City Affair (9781101612118) (16 page)

“Oh, Carla. Oh, Carla.”

“What's wrong with you girls now—” Her eyes bugged out and, grasping the rail on the second floor, she looked shocked to see him standing there with his big hat in hand. “Slo—cum! You—you're back so soon.” Then she sped down the stairs with her arms out for him, gushing with excitement.

They met about halfway and he swept her up in his arms. The girls applauded and she waved them away before she kissed him.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, breaking away from his mouth.

“Long enough to board my horse and walk over here.” He looked back down to see about his things and set her down.

“They can store them. Come with me.”

With her dragging him inside her bedroom, he noted the afternoon wind had the filmy curtains waving behind the open windows. The wind felt fresh as she turned her back for him to undo the buttons on the back of her dress—small buttons that were in a line and not easy to undo. But he wanted her out of the dress and she wanted out maybe worse than he did.

“I should have taken a bath before I came here,” he said, slipping his hands in under the dress material and cupping both of her breasts. “I probably smell like a horse.”

“I couldn't care less. I've been thinking about you all week long.” Then he let go and she turned to face him. The dress spilled to her waist, exposing her exquisite, pear-shaped breasts. Like a hungry lioness, she hugged him tight, and her tongue sought his tonsils. They finally moved apart and she stepped out of the gown. It was a magnificent departure only a real professional woman could attain. Anyone else would have stumbled around to get free of her slips, but not Carla. Her moves not only attracted him, but the slender turn of her hips and legs made his heart trip a beat under his rib cage. She was a goddess of something.

Sheets thrown aside on the mattress, she eased herself toward the head of the bed. Then in place, she raised her parted knees with her arms held out for him get between them and on top of her natural saddle. Her hand slipped the head of his rising sword in through the lips of her vagina, and she raised her butt in anticipation of his probe coming through her ring of fire. Connection complete, he started the steam-engine piston drive that quickly heightened her breathing. Flying like soaring eagles, they rode the updrafts to new heights and then swooped down to where the splash of the rapids dampened their feathers. The two quickly dried in their own world of seeking success until his efforts culminated in a great explosion inside her. They fell into a pile like discarded beer bottles behind a saloon.

“Oh my God,” she cried out, closing her blue eyes and straining at the hands on her hips. “It was worth waiting for—you devil you. What now?”

He shook his head. “I have no idea. A meal in bed? A bath? A siesta? More of the same?”

They had to twist and squirm around to get together to kiss again. “A siesta first?” he asked.

“Ah,
sí
,” she said and snuggled against him. “When must you leave?”

“Two or three days. I need to find him—this Gorman guy.”

“What if I hire two good detectives and they can find him while you rest with me?”

“I need to find him. I don't want him to run away. I'll find him and you won't hardly miss me.”

She looked at the ceiling for some help, then smiled and shook her head. “It is your business. I just want to keep you.”

He lightly tousled her hair and she closed her eyes in their bed of flesh. They kissed like starving lovers and drew together for more.

Later, after a hot bath, he shaved while she saw about her business downstairs, returning still amazingly fresh-looking. A take-charge woman who could silence a fight between her employees, handle a tough, out-of-hand customer, and keep the peace in the place just by pointing her finger like a sword. The situation amused him: a refined lady as well as one who made love without any social restraints.

They ate supper in her apartment. There was sliced beef roast, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, some hot French bread, a dry wine, and a cinnamon-flavored apple pie. Slocum was in a clean suit of clothing; he left his Mexican clothes to be cleaned by her domestic help and ready for him to change into again when he had to. His cowboy gear was hanging up in Carla's closet.

He slipped out after dark and made a tour of the town. Hamby Cox was closing his café and looked up with a frown until he discovered the man was Slocum. Cox invited him inside and closed the front door, pulling the curtains to secure some privacy for them.

When they were both seated on stools at the counter, Cox began with, “Gorman was seen in Charleston this week. He may think you're dead.”

“Good, so long as he keeps on thinking that. Valdez is where he belongs: in hell. No one else will find out about it, but we know he is not here on the earth any longer.”

“Ike has made some boasts that he had you killed.”

“Whiskey talk. He may be shocked at my reappearance.”

Hamby laughed. “You knew they found the buckboard remains and the guards' bodies. I guess you did that before you went back south of the border.”

Slocum agreed. “So, we don't know if Gorman is still in Charleston, down in Mexico at his own place, or sticking close to the Old Man's place?”

“I also heard he was in on a big stage robbery down in Sonora. Hard to miss a short, fat white guy with a scar over his right eye.”

“Yes and that's good.”

“What will you do next?” Hamby asked, drumming his fingernails on the counter. “And what can I do?”

“Help me find him.”

“I'll try my damnedest.”

They shook hands and Hamby let him out the back door to blend back into the night crowd of miners, cowboys, ranch hands, gamblers, and con men. Slocum found Virgil Earp, the only one of the Earps that Slocum had any truck with, and they spoke softly in a back booth of the Oriental Saloon.

“I haven't seen Gorman in weeks. I guess you sent him into hiding.” A mild smile on Earp's straight lips and a momentary luster in his eyes expressed the stone-faced marshal's pleasure at any discomfort for a member of the Clanton gang.

“I guess you know I want him for his wanton rape of a young woman in Mexico.”

Earp nodded and folded his hands on the table, then undid them when he spoke. “There is a lot more clearing out of the deadwood needed around here. Felons running around scot-free. I can't tell you a thing you probably don't know already. But if I hear anything, I'll find you.”

Slocum thanked him. They shook hands and parted. Slocum checked a few more saloons, but there was no sign or word of Gorman in any of them. From a vantage point, he looked over the drunk Cowboys staying overnight at the O.K. Corral. They were too drunk, and besides puking, they made little sense to him. He went back to Carla's open arms.

“Did you learn anything tonight?” she asked as they undressed in the dimly lit bedroom.

“No. Nothing worth spending four hours away from you for. So I'd just as soon make up for lost time.”

Naked as Eve, she slipped into his arms and sighed. “That sounds wonderful.”

19

In the middle of the night, someone knocked on Carla's door and woke them. She told him to stay, got out of bed, and put on her bathrobe to answer the knock. “Probably for me.”

Still half asleep, he lay back down to await her word. She closed the door and turned to him. He sat up fast at her words. “Cleo says a man downstairs needs to talk to you about Gorman.”

Getting up, he started to put his legs into his pants. “Did he give her his name?”

“She said no.”

“I'll find it out,” he said to dismiss their concerns.

“It could be a trap,” Carla said.

He finished dressing and strapped on his six-gun. He kissed her and swept up his hat. “I'll be back whenever.”

“Oh, you be very careful.”

From the second floor, he looked down at the stranger standing in the living room. His brown hat was unfamiliar from the crown view. Something was wrong. This was no ordinary person standing in Carla's parlor. He was halfway down the flight when the man spun around and his hand went for his gun.

Slocum drew and fired first, and the man was struck in the chest. The percussion of the two pistols going off blew out the lamps, and boiling gun smoke filled the room. The assassin's bullet went into the hardwood floor. A black domestic ran in and, with a pail of water, slushed out any fire the shot might have caused. Coughing hard, she ran back into the kitchen. Slocum was already out the front door, and, seeing a fleeing rider racing off into the night, he decided to hold his shot at him.

“Was there another?” Carla asked from the porch. “Who was he?”

“One holding the horses. Both were damn dumb fools.”

“You didn't know them?”

“Not the one I shot. I couldn't see who the other was.” He felt burnt to a crisp by their intrusion. Whoever sent the man to kill him needed to be killed himself.

“Cleo has gone for the law.”

“Good. None of us will get much sleep tonight,” he said, holstering his Colt and climbing the stairs.

The girls were all talking at once in the parlor. Someone had put a rag rug over the dead gunman's body and removed his spurs so they did not scar the hardwood floor. The dust-free band where the spur straps once shielded the leather of the boots was obvious. Who was he? Someone would know him. What next?

Pretty damn bold to come right into Carla's house and ask for him. No telling what that man had been thinking. Slocum would probably never know who'd hired him. Might have had to get fortified on whiskey. No telling—Marshal White and Virgil Earp came scrambling up the porch steps.

A portly man, White knelt down in the parlor and lifted the rug. “You know him, Virgil?”

The taller man glanced over at the corpse and shook his head. “Never seen him before. He call you out, Slocum?”

“He told the night girl, Cleo, he had a message for me. I was asleep. He was pacing the floor when I came down the stairs and I wondered who was under that hat. Got halfway down and he drew his gun. I figured he wasn't here to cut fish bait unless it was me.”

White's mouth made a sardonic move to one side. He shook his head when Doc Myers came in, bag and all. “You're too late. He's dead.”

“Hell, White, I could have slept.”

“Doc, we'll need a report for a coroner's jury.” White took his hat off when Carla brought them all cups of steaming coffee from the kitchen. White and Earp thanked her.

Slocum and Carla didn't get back to their bed until a rosy pink had dawn climbed up over the Chiricahuas. John Doe was on a slab at Gleason's Funeral Home. Both lawmen had returned to their office and jail.

Slocum yawned, undressed, fell back on the sheet, and tried to sleep some as the town woke up.

When he awoke midmorning, he learned that they had found out the dead man's name was Rod Pearson, formerly of Texas. Carla sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed Slocum's bare back with both hands.

“Who hired him?” she asked, leaning in hard on his back.

“He was a new Cowboy, I reckon. Damn, that feels so good, you could do it for another couple of hours.”

“You want some food?”

“I guess I could use some.”

“I'll go pull a cord and they'll fix you something. I think they're spoiling you anyway.”

“I need to be spoiled.”

She laughed and kissed the side of his face. “All you need is me under you and you'd be set.”

He pushed up on his arms to sit upright. “Maybe. We'll have to try that later.”

“You better, after the mess we had to clean up downstairs.”

“You could've awakened me. I'd have helped you.”

She chuckled and hugged him. “By the time we got started doing that, you were already sawing a log.”

Damn, he had slept hard. “I better get dressed. Anything else happening today?”

She shook her head. “Just another day at the store.”

Damn shame, but he knew the gunman from the night before came from Clanton, even as an unknown. Slocum had been lucky; that bastard could have put him down right there. Hell, there wasn't a safe place in the world anymore for him to hide. How did they know about his arrangement with Carla? Spied on him was the answer.
Well, Old Man Clanton, your days may be numbered too.
But that horse-stealing Ike was the next one needing his ears notched like a hog. Maybe he'd find him in Charleston.

20

In the late afternoon he rode south to Charleston, where they crushed the silver ore from the mines. Ike sometimes hung around there in a Mexican bar. Slocum planned to pin the sumbitch's ears back permanently for the attempt to kill him if he found him.

Slocum stopped first at the Los Olivos Cantina. He hitched his horse in the shade of some cottonwoods on the bank of the San Pedro River. He took off his hat, wiped his gritty forehead on his sleeve, and replaced the Stetson. Then he went inside the cantina to see what he could find out.

“Ah, señor.” A familiar Hispanic man sitting at a table and wearing a big sombrero rose and waved him over.

“So you killed another one of them
bastardos
last night at Carla's house. You must have a lot of enemies.” Henry Castro said, rising to his feet and shaking Slocum's hand. Castro ran cattle on both sides of the border and tangled often with the Clantons, who conveniently gathered a few head of Castro's cattle every time they took a herd across his land to the army or the Indian Agencies. That occurred several times a year.

“Have a seat, my compadre, and tell me about this assassin.” He reached over and turned out a wooden chair for Slocum to use.

Slocum looked around the dimly lit cantina, then sat, satisfied no one in the place looked threatening. He took the chair that put his back to the wall.

“How have you been, Henry?”

“Except for them Cowboys stealing my cattle, I'm fine. Who was this shooter I heard about?”

“Some Texan named Pearson. Five foot six, and he looked like a mad bulldog when he finally faced me, ready to draw. I never saw him before, and his partner outside Carla's place rode off hard into the night. No one saw his face.”

“I wondered if you knew him. They tell me that worthless Valdez is dead.”

“If he owes you money, write him off.”

Castro laughed and sat back to appraise him. “I bet the old man sent him, huh?”

Slocum shook his head. “That was not a hard question.”

“What will you do today?”

With a look around for the barmaid, he reached up with a wave for her and turned back to Castro. “Is Ike in town today?”

The man shook his head.

The brown-skinned teenage girl arrived. “What to you need, señor?”

“Some good whiskey.”

She put her hand on one jaunty hip and shook her head, bending over enough for him to look down her blouse at her small cleavage. “Whiskey? We got mescal.”

“Bring us a bottle of that and two glasses.”

“That will cost you four pesos.”

“Go get it. I have the money.” He shooed her away, not interested in her underdeveloped assets.

Castro laughed after her hip-shaking retreat. “She thinks she's the numero uno
puta
in town.”

Slocum warily shook his head. “Not enough meat on her bones for me.”

“Yes, I agree. So now what do you do?”

“Like you do, stand back and let them go by. Where is this scarred, fat Gorman?”

The man frowned at him. “Why that one?”

“He's the last leg on the three-legged stool that raped a young virgin in the mountains.”

“They did do many bad things. I wondered why you were after him. Good that you already have the other two.”

The barmaid brought the bottle and tumblers, set them on the table, and held out her light-colored palm. “Four pesos for the bottle. One for me makes five.”

“I'll make it four, thanks.” Slocum paid her.

Her dark eyes flashed with anger and she leaned close to inform him, “You don't even know what good ass is, señor.”

“Oh, yes I do. I would not pay over ten centavos for a shot at your ass.”

“You damn sure won't even get to touch it for that.” Nose in the air, she sashayed her hips back to the bar and told the bartender something about “that cheap gringo.”

Slocum and Castro both laughed together over her flaunting ways.

He drank lightly and listened to Castro's problems about his wife and latest girlfriend. Both of them were pregnant and due on the same day and he was upset.

“For even more children, I am going to have to breed them back again on the tenth day, like a mare, to get them to stick, and they are twenty miles apart. I'll have to ride a horse hard to do that to both of them.”

“You have a real problem,” Slocum said. “Will your wife let you touch her?”

“Oh, sure, she loves babies. Mine all have curly hair too.”

And it wasn't funny—Castro was serious.

With no sign of Ike and no word on him coming or being in town, Slocum left Castro and went to find some food. Castro was waiting for his pregnant girlfriend to come get him.

A drunk named Horace Mattes stopped Slocum and begged for a quarter. He needed a drink.

“Tell me where Ike is at.” Slocum held the silver coin out to show the rumpled, bad-smelling derelict that he had one for him.

“Aw, he's in
Messieco.
”

“But where down there?”

“How should I know?” He loudly hiccupped.

Slocum gave him the quarter, shook his head, and went on. No use trying to get anything out of a man that drunk.

Near sundown, he headed back to Tombstone, satisfied that Ike wasn't in Charleston. With King settled in the livery, he walked back to Carla's. When he was upstairs in her apartment at last, the maid Flossie told them that an Indian was downstairs wanting to talk to him.

Since she didn't cater to them, he said he'd go down and see about him. It was the Apache named Benny. He rose from his seat on the swing and nodded. “They tell me you want Gorman.”

“He's one of the men who raped Rosa's cousin Nana on their raid.”

Stone-faced Benny said, “My wife was raped too. I was gone.”

“Nice guys. But Gorman is the only one left.”

“
Sí.
He's hiding in the Bronco Mountains below the border. He thinks you fed Valdez to the red ants.” Benny looked like he wanted to know whether that was true.

“I should have, but I didn't have the time.”

The Apache nodded. “I can go with you in the morning to find him.”

“When do we leave?”

“When the moon comes up.”

Slocum tried to recall the lunar schedule from the evening before. “What time?”

“Around two o'clock in the morning.”

“I'll meet you on the road down there.”

“At Spider Creek?”

“That's the place.”

Benny shook his hand. “Maybe I can find the ants, huh?”

“I'll bring the sorghum. See you then.”

They parted.

Slocum tried to decide if the Apache was serious about putting the outlaw on the red anthill or not. He better bring the syrup along just in case he was. Carla's cook filled a glass jar with sorghum for him.

He and Carla made love in her apartment that evening. At sundown he brought his horse and hitched him behind the whorehouse so he'd be ready for when he must leave to meet Benny. A midnight departure would give him plenty of time to get down there. Carla had a run on customers that evening, so he slept by himself until she came and woke him.

“Time to get up, big man.”

“You sure must have had a helluva night's business down there.”

“And I don't know why.” She turned her palms up and shrugged. “But those girls will all think they slid down a cactus banister tomorrow.”

He hugged her, then kissed her mouth. “I may be a day or so, but I want this bastard and we'll get him if he's down there.”

She nodded and took him downstairs by the back way, the same way that she would take a married man up to some girl's room. Out of sight and mind. Slocum kissed her again and mounted his horse. He rode down the alley, then headed due south through the desert to meet Benny. Twice he stopped in a brushy draw and waited to be certain no one was on his back trail. He made it to the dry Spider Creek and waited for Benny.

Benny arrived when the moon rose and they rode to Mexico. The Apache knew a back way into the Broncos, a low set of hills, and they soon hobbled their horses in a dry wash to go on foot the rest of the way to the place Gorman was supposed to be. Benny told him to stay under some cottonwoods in a wash and he'd go check on the fat man's whereabouts.

In a short while, Benny came back. “He's here. Snoring like a fat hog in a hammock behind a jacal. I should have cut his throat while I was there.”

“I thought you wanted to stake him on an anthill.”

Benny shook his head in wary disgust. “He scared my wife so bad she screamed in the night for months after that. She is a good woman. I hated them for doing that to the women of our town.”

“It was bad.”

“Let's go take him.”

Slocum took his rifle and they went with care. Soon they were near the jacal and Benny stopped him. “He is not snoring.”

“Does he know we are here?” Slocum asked.

“I don't think so, but maybe his balls told him we were here.”

They both chuckled at Benny's joke. Slocum went to the left; Benny took to the right. Closer to the adobe shack, Slocum heard someone out back busting stove wood. It seemed an odd thing to do at night, but it made no difference to Slocum. On soft soles he slipped in through the garden gate.

“Put the axe down,” Slocum ordered from the open gate, watching the man's outline for any charge and holding the .45 in his tight fist.

“Who in the fuck are you?”

“Slocum is my name, and I ca—”

With his axe raised over his head and screaming like a crazy man, he charged Slocum. The short man came like a stampeding bull, aiming to chop Slocum's head off his shoulders. Slocum sidestepped, and a shot from behind him caused everything to vibrate. He turned on his heel and saw Benny standing in the starlight under the gate arch holding a smoking gun.

“Is he dead?” Benny asked when Slocum knelt and felt for his pulse.

Nodding, Slocum rose up. “He's dead.”

“We better go. Be daylight soon.”

They both ran for their horses and rode off. Benny and Slocum parted at Spider Creek. The Apache headed southeast to his place in the mountains, and Slocum went back to Carla, arriving in the early afternoon. With his horse stabled, he came back and took a bath, and she fed him some beef with brown beans. Then they had a session in bed and he slept till seven that night.

News of the outlaw Gorman's death took twenty-four hours to get to Tombstone. Marshal White sent Slocum a note that read:

THE OUTLAW CALLED GORMAN WAS SHOT BY PARTIES UNKNOWN YESTERDAY MORNING IN THE BRONCOS. I KNEW YOU WERE INTERESTED. MARSHAL WHITE.

He read the contents out loud to Carla in bed. When he finished, she reached over and began to jack him off. He looked down at her skilled hand pounding his meat and smiled. Then he moved closer and she did the same until he covered her. In no time she plugged him into her vagina and they went to rocking the bed. Her fine pear-shaped breasts jiggled on her chest under him as he pounded her ass, and the smile she wore was as wide as Texas.

Someone knocked softly on her door.

“Not now, gawdamnit!” she shouted, and the knocking stopped. Her eyes were clouded with anger and her breath rasped deep in her throat as she tried to get back in the rhythm with him. Then he came hard inside her. She sucked in her breath, then followed his course, and her hot gush of cum ran out over his balls as he fired inside her again.

When she was able to stand, she put on a robe and muttered, “Oh, damn. I wonder what they wanted.” She went to the second-story banister and shouted at the parlor room, “Who did you need?”

She came back in the room. “It was for you. His name's O'Riley.”

Slocum began to dress. “Sorry. That would be my fault. I wonder if the Clantons stole another of his horses.”

She brushed her hair with hard strokes, seated at the vanity. “I have no idea.”

“I'll go see what he wants.”

“I sure hope it's important.”

“Then we can do it all over again.”

“Certainly, after I whip me some black girls' asses so they never do that again. Damn, that makes me so mad.”

He buckled on his gun belt and went down to see about O'Riley. Carla still was fried mad, but he tousled her hair as he passed by and kissed her on the cheek. Then he went down to find his man, who was seated in the parlor, moving his stiff new cowboy hat around in a circle in his hands. Obviously not comfortable in the company of the sofa girls in the main room, he jumped up and met Slocum halfway across the room.

“Well, what's wrong? I thought you'd be at the racetracks in Kentucky by now.”

“Can we talk outside?”

“Sure.” Slocum took him out on the porch. He took a seat on the porch banister and showed him the swing. “Now, what do you need?”

“I want my wife back. Bonnie Jean O'Riley. Can you get her back for me?”

“Where is she?” That was the first time O'Riley had ever told him her name. The man must be serious.

“Preskit is what they call it, huh?”

“Is she still with that horse trainer?”

O'Riley nodded. “I think so. I want her back. I'm no gunman, and he would shoot me. You he would run from.”

“O'Riley, what if she won't come back?”

“Tell her I'll fuck her three times a day if she wants me to. Anything. I can't live without her any longer.”

“I want to be paid regardless. There may not be any chance to get her to come back to you. So you will owe me three hundred dollars whether you win or lose.”

“You can convince her better than I ever could. All right, I will pay you the money. When can you go and try to get her back to me?”

“In two days.”

O'Riley drew out his wallet and counted out the money into Slocum's hand.

When he finished, Slocum again told him he could not guarantee her return. O'Riley said he understood that Slocum might fail. And he handed him a well-worn photograph of her.