Slocum and the Socorro Saloon Sirens

Table of Contents

 

 

Slocum started to turn to face the danger he felt behind him when something hard rammed him in the small of his back.

A thousand thoughts coursed through his brain at that moment with blinding speed and none of them made any sense.

“Mister, you even twitch and I'll blow a hole in you big enough to drive a wagon through.”

Slocum froze and waited for the hammer to drop, for the sound of the explosion that would blot out all his senses and plunge his mortal self into the final everlasting abyss of death . . .

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

 

SLOCUM AND THE SOCORRO SALOON SIRENS

 

A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

 

PRINTING HISTORY

Jove edition / October 2011

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ISBN : 978-1-101-54441-9

 

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The old blind horse followed the man on the black. It dragged one foot on the dusty, rocky road, favored the lame hind leg. Its once-sorrel hide was flecked with gray, and there were leathery sores on its shoulders and back. It wore a hemp halter that was frayed and worn from years of use. Its ribs showed through its withered, moth-eaten hide. It seemed to know by the looks of its skeletal frame and blind white eyes that it was making its last journey. The horse seemed to know that it was soon to die.

When John Slocum left Fort Craig that morning, he headed north toward Albuquerque, another contract in his saddlebags. He had just delivered a dozen horses he'd driven up from Las Cruces three days before, and not only was the Army satisfied with the horses, but they'd asked for a dozen more. And Slocum knew just where to get them, from a rancher he knew who owned a horse ranch in Cedar Crest.

The blind horse, he knew, was called Moses, and like its namesake, it would never see the promised land. John's mind went back to that morning when he was saddling up Ferro to leave the fort. Jimmy Calderon, the sergeant wrangler, had come up to him in the stall.

“John, will you do me a favor?” Jimmy had asked. “A big favor.”

“Depends, Jimmy. Is it legal?”

Jimmy had not laughed.

“It is a serious favor. Did you see that old blind horse out in the corral, standing against the fence?”

“I saw it. It looks like it's on its last legs.”

“I am supposed to kill old Moses, but I can't. That horse is almost fourteen years old and went blind two years ago.”

“Just put it down, Jimmy. One shot to the brain.”

“I cannot do that, John. Moses was with the Seventh Cavalry when Custer was massacred. I think one of Benteen's men rode him. He wound up here at Fort Craig and I took care of him. He had wounds in him from Sioux arrows. He became the mount of a cavalry officer who truly loved the horse. But he was killed by Apaches, and Moses limped back to the post. Just like a faithful old dog.”

“What is it you want from me, Jimmy?”

“I want you to take Moses with you and, well, put him down someplace where he does not know nobody. Someplace quiet where he can hear the doves and maybe hear quail calling in the desert. Put him on a little hill with the yucca and the prickly pear, the nopal and the cholla. He has suffered so much. I can no longer see him to suffer.”

“I don't like to shoot a horse, Jimmy. It's as bad as killing a man.”

“I know. I will pay you five dollars to do this for me.”

Slocum shook his head.

“I wouldn't take money for a thing like that.”

“I will pay for the bullet.”

“No, Jimmy. I can't take blood money. But I will take the horse with me, and when I find a good place for him to die, I'll put him to sleep.”

Calderon did not smile, but he got the old halter out of the tack room and harnessed the old horse. He put his arms around Moses's neck and said good-bye in Spanish. There were tears in Jimmy's eyes when he handed the halter rope to Slocum.

Slocum looked back at the horse. It hurt to look at him with his blind eyes and ravaged hide, the ribs presaging the skeleton he would soon become. He could almost feel the horse's pain, but could not understand the animal's resignation. He had once been a proud horse, a cavalry horse, and he had seen men die and horses flail the air with their hooves when they were shot down by Sioux or Cheyenne.

Now, he rode the ochre road north through a desolate landscape broken only by rocks, cactus, and yucca, as barren, almost, as the
Jornada del Muerte
, the Journey of Death that had claimed so many lives since the white man had ventured westward. And this place, beyond the
Jornada
, was just as bleak and unforgiving as Death Valley in California.

The morning cool dissipated under the yellow glare of the boiling sun. It hung in the sky like a shimmering disk of hammered armor plucked from a cauldron filled with molten gold. Long, thin streamers of clouds floated in white plumes across the blue expanse of the tranquil sky.

Suddenly, Slocum's gaze was broken by the sight of a woman stumbling toward him through islands of stone and prickly pear. Her stringy auburn hair looked damp and her blue eyes were wide with a look that made Slocum think of panic, or fear.

“Mister, mister, can you help me?” the woman sobbed. “My father. He—he's hurt. Hurt bad.”

She stopped short of the road. She wrung her hands. Slocum looked at her smudged face, the dark lines of tears that had loosened the kohl of her eyelashes. Her dress was flocked with dirt as if she had been dragged through the sand and dirt of the desert. It was wrinkled and torn so that patches of her skirt showed through the faded green fabric.

“Where is he?”

“Just up there, under that little knoll,” she said. “Please hurry. Do you have water?”

“Yes,” he said.

She turned and ran back through the cactus as if she were rushing through dandelions, unmindful of the spines on the prickly pear or the delicate razor-sharp lace of the cholla. He turned Ferro and let the horse pick his way through the rocks and the cactus. The young woman was no longer visible, but he heard moaning and her soft soothing voice.

A man lay in a concave depression just below the knoll. He had no hat and his face was burned to a rosy hue by exposure to the sun. His jaw was stenciled with beard stubble, his lips dry and cracked. He looked emaciated in his torn shirt, his filthy denims. His boots were scarred by rocks and thorns, his clothing embedded with desert soil.

Slocum swung down out of the saddle and ground-tied Ferro and Moses to a small creosote bush. He unslung a full canteen from the saddle horn and carried it to the sprawledout man, whose dark eyes were wet and wide with pain.

The man stared up at Slocum with glazed eyes. Slocum uncorked his canteen and put the spout to the man's lips.

“Just a taste,” he said. “You look too dry to take more than a sip.”

Water trickled from the canteen over the man's lips and into his mouth.

The woman gasped and squatted next to Slocum. She touched a hand to her father's feverish face. The man gurgled as some of the water slid down his throat. He coughed and spat out a few droplets. Slocum took the canteen away and corked it.

Then he looked at the man's hands. The fingertips were all blackened and he could see small red rivulets under the skin and nails.