Slocum 246: Slocum and the Cattle King

Slocum dismounted at her gate. The fat mountain ram he’d shot earlier lay across the seat of his saddle. Its curled horns were not long enough to be a trophy, but its fat condition would make the animal tender to eat. Lupe rushed out to the gate and nodded her approval.

“Have to go far up the mountain to find him?” she asked, and started to get the sheep.

She stepped back and beamed at him. “Take it back to the yard. I will skin it there.”

“John Chisum rode up here to see you on business. He said to tell you he would be at his ranch.”

“I don’t know. He looked pale, like he was sick. Pasty-looking.” She rushed about to find a small singletree to hang the carcass on, and a reata to pull it over one of the log cross members of the shade.

Slocum soon had the ram hanging by his heels under the open shade. She worked a thin knife blade over a stone to sharpen the edge.

He removed his hat and scratched an itch in the center of his scalp. “Wonder what he does want.”

“You will have to go see him, I guess, to find out. He only left an hour ago, so he might still be down the mountain in Arido.”

“Lupe! Lupe!” someone shouted for her from the front of the house. She hurried around with her skirts in her hand. Slocum was right on her heels.

“Coyote and his bunch broke out of jail this morning. They shot two marshals and rode for Mexico,” the excited man on the mule said, nodding hello at Slocum.

“Thank you, Pedro. Send your son Raphel back here in a half hour. I will have some ribs for you to eat,” she said, and waved the man on. He grinned, pleased at the offer, and whipped his animal on. She turned to Slocum. “What now?”

“I better ride to Rio Rita and be sure that Marty and Bailey are all right. They’re right in Coyote’s path to Mexico.”

“First I will grill you some steaks from that sheep. You can’t go off on an empty stomach. You’re so thin now.” She looked at him whimsically. “Besides, I want to talk with you some more.”

“I don’t care. Tell me where you have been before here.” She slipped an arm inside the crook of his and pushed him around the building to the yard.

He laughed. “Why, I was stuck in a cow camp ninety miles from nowhere up there.” He spun her a yarn, part truth, part fiction, of his cattle-herding adventure on the Powder River; she began to skin the ram. Her thin-bladed knife expertly slipped in under the hide and parted it from the bright muscles and white fat that clung to them. Soon she stripped the last of the tan-colored hide off the sheep and grinned at Slocum.

“Good,” he said. The goatskin-like leather would make wonderful soft thin gloves for roping and riding. He would have to plan a trip by there again to collect them. Lupe could do many things. Her craftwork at sewing was as well known as her native doctoring.

In a short while, she had steaks for him sizzling on a grill over the mesquite fire in her pit. Pedro’s boy came for the ribs, and she quickly quartered the sheep.

“Give half these ribs to your Aunt Tosah,” she instructed the boy. “Then stop and tell Diego to come get some meat too.” Then she spoke to Slocum. “It will spoil in a few days in this heat.”

Slocum nodded. His own concerns were on the safety of his friends. Bailey was no fool, but no way he could expect those killers to be out of jail either. Who’d given Coyote a gun? Had his jailers gotten careless and clumsy? Slocum might never know. Such a mad dog on the loose, though, made him uneasy.

“I am making tortillas for you,” Lupe announced, busy washing and drying her hands. “You like the flour ones, don’t you?”

“For you, my Slocum, I will go to much trouble. Someday you will forget this woman and I will get you back in my web.”

“Never—” Then she cupped her mouth with her hand as if she had just discovered something. “I know what is wrong with him.”

“He has the disease where he cannot pee. It is stopped way up inside and hard for him to do it. I have seen men like that before. Pedro’s father, he had it.” She shook her head. “He did not live long.”

“I have some. The plant does not grow here.” Still deep in thought about the man, she took some lard on her fingertips from a can and mixed it into the small hill of flour with her hands. “I have seen it before. The medicine will help.” She shook her head ruefully. “But they all die after while. The medicine doctors say it is cancer.”

“No, he acted sore in the crotch too when he mounted his horse. He looked so gray.”

“No. New Mexico won’t miss him.” She wrinkled her upper lip in distaste. “He has run over my people for his own riches. But always I try to help those who come to me. See, he came to my door. But he did not ask for treatment, or I would have helped even him. I have the powder from the dried sumac berries and leaves. They would have made him better for a while.”

Slocum agreed with a nod. Lupe Valdez was a generous woman to everyone, even her enemies. He hated to have to leave her so soon, but he must. He had outstayed his time already. He needed to go check on Marty, and the word would soon spread to other bounty hunters; they’d come for him.

She served him the steaks on a platter. The ram’s meat tasted rich and tender as he chewed it. He ate slowly. The flavor-filled brown beans on his hot flour tortillas made the saliva rush into his mouth. With a mug of her tea to sip on, he thought with dread about leaving her place and the long ride south.

Once he was satisfied Marty and Bailey would be safe, he needed to ride on. He couldn’t come back and see Lupe again soon, nor Juanita—the memory of her luscious body made his guts roil at the thought of not having her again. Chisum did not deserve such a wonderful mistress.

Lupe made him more snowy tortillas than he could eat. At last he leaned back on the bench, too full to hardly speak. “Enough, girl. I have to ride.”

“Dammit!” she swore, and rushed over to hug his face to her firm breasts. She rocked him back and forth. “Be careful. I will have those gloves made when you come again.”