11
Slocum and Cherrycow took the stairs beside the saddle shop that led to a closed door at the top of the landing. The grit on their soles made a quiet, sanding sound on the already worn boards. At the top, Slocum softly tried the knob—locked. He flattened himself to the wall, away from the door knob, and waved for Cherrycow to get down a few steps. Then he reached over and knocked. Waited, no answer. He shared a nod with his partner. Then he reared back and used his right boot to smash the door open.
Six-gun in his fist, Slocum saw no one in the first room, then stepped inside and waved for his partner to come in. Cherrycow carried his pistol at the ready. There was a messed up, unmade bed in the center of the room, a couple of old stuffed chairs, some empty wine bottles on a table. The two front windows were open, and the dirty lace curtains waved in the breeze. A foul smell pervaded the room despite the open windows.
The place stunk of an unemptied chamber pot. Slocum moved across the bare floor, which creaked under his soles. As he headed for the back door, he tried a side room door. It was locked. Then he walked to the back door at the end of the hall. That door wasn’t locked and he opened it. He nodded to his two men in the alley, who quickly came up the stairs.
“Anyone here?” Obregón asked, looking over everything in the neighborhood as he climbed the stairs.
“No. I can’t tell when they were here last either.”
The pistolero wrinkled his nose at the smell when he reached the entrance. Slocum took the key left in the back door and went down the hall to the locked door. With a turn of the key, the door opened. A small, dirty side window let some light in the room. On the floor was something wrapped in a blanket. Slocum knelt down and began to unroll it, knowing full well the wrap contained a body.
He closed his eyes when he saw the messed hair and bloody face—Nada.
“Is it her?” Obregón asked over his shoulder.
“Yes.” Slocum could hardly swallow. His eyes squeezed shut, he rose, went to the back door and puked over the side of the landing.
“What can we do here?” Jesús asked.
“There must be police in this town,” Slocum said.
They agreed.
“But they might be in with this Cockroach gang too,” Obregón said.
“We have to take a chance that they aren’t. I want you three to go and stay at Don Carlos’s casa. I’ll meet you there later. We will close this place up, and I will go report it to the police.”
They agreed again and shut the front door, and all of them went out the back way. In the alley Slocum told them the directions on how to get to the casa, and they parted. A man in the square directed Slocum to the jail.
A large man wearing a badge, with dusty shoes propped on the desk, and no socks, sat snoring in the chair at the jail.
“Señor.” Slocum waited in the doorway for him to respond. Sometimes lawmen, jarred from sleep, thought they were under attack, drew their gun and shot someone. Slocum was taking no chances on this one.
“Huh?”
“Are you the police?”
The man blinked at him. “Why are you waking me up from my siesta?”
“A woman has been murdered.”
“Who?”
“A woman named Nada. I don’t know her last name.”
“Where is she?”
“In an apartment off the square.”
The man rubbed his unshaven face with his palm. “Who in the fuck are you?”
“A good friend of Don Carlos. My name is Slocum.”
The man sniffed a hmm out his nose, did not offer his own name. Then, waving his right hand with a “come on” sign for Slocum, said, “Why did you kill her?”
“I didn’t kill her. I found her.”
“Was she a puta?”
“What difference does that make? She was a good person. No one had the right to kill her.” His patience had worn thin.
“If you didn’t kill her, who did?” He put both shoes on the floor and made a face like it was all lots of work.
“If I knew that for certain I’d already have killed him. Do you want to see the body?”
“Hell, yes. I am the law here.”
“Good.”
The man strapped on a short-barreled Colt in a gun belt around his flabby waist. Then he jammed the revolver down in his holster like he feared it might fall out. He combed his unkempt black hair back with his fingers and put on a wide black sombrero, making the chin string tight.
“Go on. I will follow.”
By this time, Slocum was fed up with this lackey’s slovenly ways and set out for the square. In half a block the man called him back, out of breath and coughing. “You go too fast.”
“You go too slow,” Slocum replied. The policeman, his elbow leaning on the plaster side of the building, heaved for his breath. Coughed some more. “No rush. She’s dead, isn’t she?”
At this point Slocum didn’t answer. The lawman made two more stops to catch his breath on the way to Salazar’s apartment, then at last he looked up the stairs in disgust. “There better be a body up there.”
“There is.”
“Mother of God, why couldn’t you have waited for me to have my siesta?”
Slocum never answered him.
“Who else was up there?”
“No one but her when I found her.”
“This your place?”
“No. I’ll go up and wait for you.”
“Whose place is this?”
“I think Mendez Salazar’s.”
“No, he is the son of a very rich man. Why would he have such a dump of a place as this?”
“They told me in the cantina he rented this apartment.”
The man waved Slocum’s answer away. “They lied to you, señor. I know this man well.”
“The body is upstairs.” He started up and let the man come up at his own speed. Once up there Slocum sat on a wooden chair, listening to the policeman huff and cough his way up.
“Where is this body?”
“In the back room on the floor.”
“Show me.”
Slocum rose while his companion hacked up more phlegm and spit it on the floor. “Go ahead.”
He opened the door and let the man go inside the room. The lawman knelt down beside Nada’s body and then nodded. “Why did you kill her?”
“Damnit, I found her here thirty minutes ago.”
The man with great effort rose and folded his arms over his chest. “You found her up here and you thought she had fucked someone, so you killed her.”
“Are you deaf? I didn’t kill her. I found her like this thirty minutes ago.”
“You broke down the door when she would not answer and came in here and killed her. Men do it all the time all over Mexico every day. They get angry and then kill the puta for being disloyal.”
“Why would I come and get you if I killed her?”
“Why not? So the town would bury her for you, huh?”
“She’s been dead for hours. I was bringing Don Carlos, who was shot, down from the mountains all last night.”
“Hmm, who shot him?”
“Some of the Cockroach’s men who were robbing the Oro Canyon mine.”
“That is the best story I ever heard in a case like this.”
“Check with Don Carlos.”
“I will. You are under arrest for the murder of this puta—what was her name?”
Slocum jammed his Colt into the man’s belly and took the policeman’s short-barreled pistol away from him. “I don’t have time to mess with you, you son of bitch. Get your hands up. Where are the keys to your handcuffs?”
Hands raised, he said, “I don’t need any keys.”
Slocum found the handcuffs open in the man’s back pocket. He clamped one on the man’s right wrist and the other to the door knob. That would hold him for a while.
“You can’t do this! I am the gawdamn law!”
Before he left the man, Slocum took the short-barreled Colt out of his pocket. He emptied the revolver of the cartridges and wondered where to throw it. “You can have your siesta now.”
“You can’t do this! I am the law.”
“Well, practice it.” Slocum was gone. At the foot of the stairs, he tossed the six-gun in a pile of trash and began to run. He was maybe a half mile from Don Carlos’s casa.
If his friend was sleeping, Donna would know what to do—or he’d simply get out of town. That fat slob wasn’t jailing him for Nada’s murder. A block away, he could still hear the fat man’s faint shouts for help. A woman came by him in a small buggy going down the street.
“Wait. Wait,” he called to her, and to his surprise, she stopped.
Out of breath, he managed, “My good friend Don Carlos was shot last night. I need a ride to his casa right now.”
“I know him well,” the woman said. “Get in. I’ll take you there.”
With a sigh, he sank onto the horsehair-stuffed leather seat beside her. “I’m sure mighty pleased. Thanks a lot.”
“Any friend of Señor Carlos is a friend of mine. My name is Minnie Stallings.”
“Nice to meet you, Señora Stallings. My name is Slocum.” He noticed she was dressed in black. Must be a widow.
She sat on the seat, very straight backed, and from the looks of her clothing, not poor by any means. With the reins, she slapped her fine sorrel buggy horse on the butt, and he set out at a swift trot. Nice rig for a place like this. Skillfully she guided the horse around potholes and watched for the naked children at play who might run out in front of the buggy.
“How is Don Carlos doing? I mean, will he be all right?”
“I think so. But it was a long ride back from where the bandits shot him.”
“Did you bring him back?”
“I was part of that team.”
“I don’t believe I have ever met you before.”
“No, I don’t recall you either. I am usually on the move when I come through here and visit him.”
“Well, perhaps if he runs out of room sometime and you are passing by, you could stop at my casa. I don’t get a chance to speak English with very many people up here, and it is nice to talk with someone in my native language.”
“Yes, ma’am. It is nice to ease back into your first language. Have you lived here long?”
“About five years. My husband, Harold, died two years ago of a heart attack. I had the casa and the money he invested here in the mining business. So I decided I would stay, since we had no children and my parents are deceased.”
“I see.”
“What sort of business are you in, sir?”
“Right now I’m looking for a friend’s wife who was kidnapped. They took her in a raid on his hacienda. Left him without an arm and with several bullets in his body, so I am looking for her.”
“My, my, that is a grim task. Have they asked for a ransom?”
“That is another concern—my knowledge now is they have not.” Ahead he could see several federale soldiers dismounted in the street before Don Carlos’s gate. He reached over and put his hand on her wrist.
“Ma’am, I don’t need to talk to those gentlemen. Let me out here.”
She turned the horse around smartly. “You need a place. You can stay at my casa, and I’ll find out why the military is here.”
“I’m not wanted by the federales, but they can question you for weeks if they incarcerate you. I don’t have that time to waste.”
“I understand perfectly. Get up, Tony. We’re going home, boy.”
Mrs. Minnie Stallings’s dwelling was no simple adobe quarters. They passed through a guarded gate and went up a limestone-paved, twisting driveway lined with flowers to a large stone-and-beam house. A young groom came and politely took the horse. Checking the sun time as they walked under the apple trees, she remarked that they probably needed lunch and invited him inside.
“I didn’t come to impose on you,” he said, giving the girl who greeted them his hat. Slocum had already had a small meal at Don Carlos’s casa, but that was a couple of hours ago now, and he could certainly eat again.
“My dear,” she said to the girl. “Slocum and I will be dining on the patio. See they bring him adequate food, and I will have my usual fruit salad.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The girl curtseyed and left them.
On the patio, Minnie uncorked a bottle of wine and turned to Slocum. “Would you rather have good whiskey?”
“I never turn down good whiskey. There isn’t much of it in Mexico.”
She reached into the cupboard that stood countertop high and brought out a square bottle of whiskey, then set a crystal glass in front of him. “Pour your own poison.”
He did and then he toasted her glass of wine. “Here’s to your hospitality. Gracias.”
“Here’s to your stay as well.”
He considered her slender hips. How old was she? Early forties, perhaps older, he thought. A well-preserved woman, and she wasn’t as haughty and cold as she had first appeared to him in the buggy. They sat on cushioned chairs that one sprawled in, and lunch came on trays the servants set up beside their lounges.
Slocum noted that Minnie’s plate had fresh fruit: sliced peaches, cut up melons, cherries that were pitted and red bananas. His platter bore several pieces of sizzling-hot flank steak with red sweet peppers and onion slices cooked with it, as well as hot pinto beans in a small pot and several freshmade flour tortillas. He nodded his approval to the server.
“Smells delightful,” he said. His mouth flooded with saliva at the prospect of what lay ahead.
She soon shortened the distance between them by moving closer—food and all. Then she began to feed him small pieces of her fruit with her fingers between his own bites with a murmured, “Try this.”
He could hardly believe the transition of her attitude toward him. From aloof buggy driver to generous hostess—he was getting excited about the change in her attitude.
She drew closer and closer, hand-feeding him until he moved her finger aside and kissed her sweetly on the mouth. At that point she scooted over to the very edge of her seat, and when he went to kiss her again she threw her arms around his neck and he tasted an anxious woman’s mouth. Then, without effort, she moved over to share his chair, pressing her hip against him with the crinkling sound of the material in her driving dress.
She pulled her face free, seeking her breath, and slumped in his arms. Then, toying with his neckerchief knot with her fingers, she said, “Some like to take siestas. Others while that time away. But before we get too involved anymore here, get your bottle and I’ll get mine, and we shall retire to my more private quarters.”
“Thank you, ma’am. You lead the way, my lady.”
“Should we send a message to your friend that you are safe?”
He made a face and a head shake that neither was necessary.
Hugging his arm, she wore a victory smile as she led him through the hallways to a palatial room in the rear. She swept back the silk goose down cover and sheets.
He felt the cool chill in the back of the great house where the sun had not yet warmed it. He toed his boots off, removed his gun belt and, after rebuckling it, hung it close by the bed on a high-backed chair. She began unbuttoning her dress. Her fingers shook, making it difficult.
“Is it cold in here?” she asked.
He moved in closer and agreed that it was. Sweeping her up in his arms, he kissed her. His right hand molded her breast. Her eyes squeezed shut, she completed all the buttons that she could reach and shrugged out of the dress. They swept the camisole off over her head, and she shed her slip off over her ankles. Within moments, his shirt was gone, and he shoved the leather britches off his hips. Her slender, snowy hips swaying, she led them to the bed, and once both of them were on the mattress, she swung the goose down comforter over them. She pressed herself against his body, squeezing her hands and shaking from the coolness.
His strong arms hugged her to him. Like a small flame in a stove, the heat from their bodies began to grow in their cocoon. As the minutes passed, Slocum felt confident that they would recover from the chill.
“Oh, how foolish of me,” Minnie said in soft, shaky voice. “I could have let the whole world see me naked over ruining this moment like I did. I never dreamed it would be this cold in the back bedroom.”
“Hell, we’ve got all day.” His finger touched her lip. “No problem. We can do anything we wish. A little delay doesn’t hurt anything.”
She closed her eyes with her arms between them and her hands clasped. “Oh, I wanted it to go so smoothly.”
He rocked her. “It will be. It will be.”
“A crazy old woman . . .”
“You’re lovely.” He began to smother her with kisses. In response, she raised her rump off the sheet and opened her knees. Her eyelashes squeezed tight shut, she froze rigid. When he pushed his stiff dick between her gates, her mouth formed an O, then she relaxed and collapsed with a sigh of relief.
The excitement of their coupling fully aroused her. She began gasping for breath and tossing her head, lost in the fury of their passion. Arching her back to receive all of him, their coarse pubic hair began to rub the skin raw between them. Then he felt a twinge in his scrotum and slammed himself deep in her tight cavern for a big explosion that caused her to faint.
“Oh,” she said dreamily, coming to from her faintness. “I didn’t ruin it after all.”
He kissed her hard. “Not at all.”
Snuggled against him, she laughed. “Who says you can’t have fun?”
“Not me. Not me.”
After darkness fell, Slocum kissed his generous hostess good-bye at the back door and slipped off for Don Carlos’s casa. Using the dark backstreets he made his way quickly through the cool night and let himself in the back gate, which was unlocked. In the kitchen, he asked for Donna, and a young girl went to get her. He refused the offer of food and took a glass of red wine. Donna came running through the door and blinked at him. “First the federales, then the police were here looking for you!”
“I know. Someone murdered Nada, and that worthless policeman accused me of doing it. I found her body in someone’s apartment, and when I took the policeman up there, he wanted to arrest me. So I shucked him.”
“He came here with three officers. I don’t know why he chose us.”
Slocum could see she was upset. “I’m sorry they upset you. How is Don Carlos?”
“I wish he were better.” She stood before him, looking ready to cry.
“What can I do to help you?” He stepped in and hugged her.
“Nothing. He is in God’s hands.” She sobbed on Slocum’s shoulder. “Oh, what will I do if I lose him?”
“He’s tough as an oak. He’ll pull through. Where are my men?” he asked her.
“Here,” Obregón announced, stepping from the doorway into the kitchen. “We have been waiting for you too. Glad you are all right.”
“Any word on this man Mendez Salazar?” Slocum asked him.
“We’ve learned more about how Nada was with him last night and went to his apartment with him.”
“Who told you that?” Slocum asked.
“Two putas we met after we left you. They are afraid they may be his next victims.”
“Where is this Salazar?”
“No one knows. He is a shadow. His father is a very rich man in Mexico City, and his son comes and goes like a ghost.”
“He’s damn sure not a ghost. Nada danced with him the night we came here, and he offered her ten pesos to sleep with him.”
The other two joined him and Obregón. “You two learn anything else about this Salazar?” Slocum asked.
“I think he has a large casa west of town. Perhaps he is hiding out there,” Cherrycow said.
“You mean the Cortez House?” Donna asked.
Jesús agreed. “Sí, it is a big estate.”
“Could it be part of his family’s holdings?” Slocum asked her.
“I never thought about it as some kind of hideout.” She squeezed her chin. “But it always has had a strong presence of armed guards around it. If you have nothing to hide, why have all those armed guards around the place?”
“I agree.” Slocum turned to Cherrycow. “Can you shoot a bow?”
He nodded matter-of-factly.
“Make one and some arrows. You two help him. We’ll need lots of rope and several blasting sticks.”
“Monterrey Mercantile has all that. Don Carlos has an account there,” Donna said.
“Obregón, you go down there. Get two cases of blasting sticks, fuses, cord. Does he need anything special in order to put that on Don Carlos’s bill?”
She shook her head. “I can send a note to them that you are his special agent.”
“I can take that,” Slocum said.
“What about the police?” she asked.
Slocum shook his head. “They are not swift enough to cut our trails.”
Jesús agreed.
After Slocum and his men spent four hours loading blasting sticks, creating some rope scaling ladders and making a bow and some arrows, Slocum’s complete setup for the raid was concealed under some straw in a carrito. Jesús, dressed in peon clothing, drove an old mule they rented to pull the cart to the area of the big estate, while Slocum and the other two scouted around, planning to meet him there later in the night.
Near midnight, after evaluating the guard situation, they crouched on their haunches and discussed their strategy. On a hillside close by the mansion’s stark silhouette, which was outlined by the light of a half moon, they spoke in low voices.
“I think those guards have grown lazy,” Obregón said. “Who would want to raid this estate anyway? There are much easier pickings to be had robbing banks and stagecoaches that carry real money. So why have so many armed men around the place?”
“I figure we will learn the answer once we are inside,” Slocum said.
“I think we can open a door in the back. Screw those guards,” Obregón said, scoffing about the men in uniforms who carried single-shot rifles. Only the captain, who they had seen ride toward town earlier when they were on the road, even had a pistol on him.
“Tell us about this door you saw,” Slocum said to Obregón.
“Every walled hacienda has one. They are escape hatches if it gets too bad inside. This one is old and looks weak. Two or three of us ram it good, and it will crash inside.”
“Everyone carry their weapons and blasting sticks, plus the rope scaling ladders. We may need them to get out of there. Any questions?”
“What are we trying to find out in there?” Jesús asked.
“We first need to know who that building is hiding and why.”
“Sí.” Jesús acted satisfied.
“Can we have the money we find?” Obregón asked.
“If it wasn’t freshly stolen from someone, yes. But don’t forget that Martina McCarty may be in there too. I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“Ah, sí. She is our grand lady too.”
Obregón was right about her.
They soon stood inside the courtyard with the rotten doorway barely hanging on by one rusty hinge. Slocum sent the two pistoleros to the right, while he and Cherrycow went left. They took out a sleepy guard, then bound him hand and foot and jammed his mouth full of a rag to gag him.
Moving on, they let two gossiping women go by them as they hid in the shadows, and when the pair went into a side room, two of his men moved out of the shadows and inside the casa. At the foot of the stairs, the four men gathered.
“See anything?” Obregón hissed.
“Just that one guard we gagged and tied up,” Slocum said. “I’ll go upstairs and check it out.”
Pistol in his fist, Slocum took the steps two at a time. On the second floor, he began to search. The first room he opened was empty. In the next bedroom, there was a woman sleeping in a curled-up fetal position. A small candle lighted the room. Slocum stepped closer to see if he knew who she was. Not Martina. He eased out and quietly shut the door. He kept close to the wall so no one would see him from down on the first floor. The next door was locked.
He went to the third one. The knob twisted and the door barely squeaked as he eased it open.
“Drop the gun, señor.”
A pistol muzzle jammed against his ribs, Slocum let the pistol in his hand fall to the floor with a clunk. A trap. He’d walked into a damn trap. How had they come to expect him? At once he realized that they had killed Nada to draw him to this place. The sonsabitches.
“I have been expecting you, señor. I imagine by now my guards have captured your men downstairs as well.”
“Well, Salazar, what role do you play in this opera?” Slocum asked, recognizing the man.
The man about broke up laughing. “Opera? What opera?”
He went back into his hilarious laughter. “That is—I can’t get my breath—so damn funny.”
“Is Martina here?”
Salazar shook his head. “No, she is not here, nor is her son.”
Slocum about blinked. Her son? They said they had hidden that boy at the hacienda, and they told him the bandits never got him. Had they gone back and kidnapped him too? Damn.
“We have a fine prison in the cellar where you can rot until I figure out what I want do with you. You might be worth some ransom from your amigo McCarty. Get going, and don’t try anything.”
“You taking ransom for his wife?”
“Oh, no. She is so loving and caring and such a damn good piece of ass, I’m not letting him have her back.” He stopped at the head of the stairs, his pistol pointing at the two pistoleros with their hands on their heads, surrounded by Salazar’s guards.
Where was Cherrycow? Had they killed him? Damn, Slocum had slipped up badly, not giving Salazar enough credit. The son of a bitch had murdered Nada so he could catch Slocum. Salazar turned him over to his guards.
“Lock them up. We’ll see if their employer will pay a ransom for them. If not, we can feed them to the hogs.
“Oh, Slocum,” Salazar continued, “when I see Martina again, I will tell her not to worry about you rescuing her.” His laughter echoed down the hallway.
The four guards roughly hustled the three of them down the stone stairs into the dank basement and then shoved them into one of the iron-barred cells. The man with the mustache and big girth laughed when he locked the door. “Sleep tight, you fucking gringo.”
The three of them alone at last, Slocum turned to the pair of pistoleros. “They didn’t get Cherrycow.”
Obregón shook his head. “No, he must have gotten away. He slipped out on them—somehow.”
“He’s still an Apache,” Slocum said. “He may be our best chance to get out of this piss-stinking prison.”
One flickering candle lamp was all they had for light. “Either of you have something I can use to pick the lock?” Slocum asked after searching his own pockets.
Both men shook their heads.
“Salazar told me he had Martina’s son too.”
“No.” Jesús scowled over the information. “There is no way he could have gotten that boy.”
“Damn funny, but the sumbitch said that to me upstairs.”
“Why would he tell you that?” Obregón asked.
“I don’t know, but he sounded to me like he’s screwing the ass off Martina McCarty, and she’s really giving her all.”
“He is a blowhard. Martina McCarty is a lady.” Obregón smashed his fist into his palm. “I will personally castrate that worthless dog when I get out of here.”
“That won’t be easy.” Slocum rattled the barred door. “If we get out of this door, there are two more they closed going out of here.”
“Think of something. You are a smart man,” Jesús said.
“Smart, maybe, but this is serious business, and we’re in up to our necks in this prison.”
Before long, the candle lamp outside the cell burned itself out, and they sat in total darkness—waiting.
Hours later, a bent-over old man brought a pail of beans and some dry corn tortillas. Three guards armed with rifles and carrying lamps accompanied him, and they kept a close eye on everything. It was all tough business. The prisoners were ordered to the back of the cell by the riflemen. Then one of the guards unlocked the door for the old man to set the bucket on the floor along with the tortillas.
“We need some water,” Obregón said.
“Drink your piss,” one guard said, and Slocum had to catch Obregón’s arm to restrain him.
“When we get time we will bring you some,” the guard in charge said.
The door was relocked. They did leave a candle lamp to replace the one that went out, but the light was still dim in the cell.
Slocum listened to them locking the other doors and going upstairs. They had one hope—somehow Cherrycow had gotten away.
“Obregón, you can’t lose your temper with those armed guards. We have no gun, no weapons. Control it and pray for help.”
The man nodded his head.
The three seated themselves on the stone floor around the bucket and fed their faces. The stale tortillas were hard enough to use for scoops, and they dipped out the nearly soured beans with them. Slocum knew that despite the poor quality of the food, they had to eat something until help came. The other two, after complaining, must have accepted it as their fate as they feasted with him.
No telling the time or how long they had been there, but their confinement grew tedious on all three of them—maybe on Slocum the most.