Miriam Hellinger opened the firebox on the iron cookstove and dropped two sticks of kindling into it. Her kitchen was filled with a pleasant steam, the delicious aroma of Arbuckle’s coffee with its cinnamon stick wafting through the small house as it had for the two years she and Abner had been in Durango. She clapped the lid back on the firebox and moved the coffeepot off the hot lid to a space in between and the burbling lessened as the coffee cooled.
Abner sat at the table in the dining room, his suspenders loosened, his bare feet in a warm bowl of water. He had not done so much walking since he was a kid going to school every day, four and a half miles from his house in Illinois.
Miriam had found a box of old flyers he had inherited when he took the job of constable and brought it down for him to look through.
“I knowed I heard that name somewhere,” she called from the kitchen as she set out two heavy tin cups on a beer tray she had bought in New Mexico some years before.
“What name is that?” Abner asked as he set papers in a pile.
“John Slocum. But I didn’t hear it. I saw it when you took this blamed job as constable and toted all them wanted dodgers home from your office.”
“You got a good memory, Miriam,” he said. “Seems like I recollect seein’ his name somewhere, too.”
“I was rummaging up in the loft today while you was out gallivantin’ around town and danged if I didn’t see it in that wooden box. Should be on top, all yellered and stained, smellin’ of mold and such. Bunch of spiders in that box, but I mashed all their eggs and they run off.”
She poured coffee into the two cups and carried the tray to the table where Abner sat.
“I found it,” he said. “Right on top. But I’m just lookin’ at some of the others. Amazin’ how many outlaws are on the run with prices on their heads.”
“And you never caught a one of ’em,” she said, a malicious grin on her chubby face. She sat down and lifted Abner’s cup from the tray.
She had gained weight the past two years. She tried to hide the folds of fat on her body with flouncy dresses and an apron, but she couldn’t deny that she had gotten fat. Only she didn’t use that term. Ever. The word she used was “stout.”
“I’m a mite stout,” she would say when the other women in town chided her about the weight gain.
But Abner liked her that way. Or said he did.
“More of you to love,” he would say when she wallowed in bed at night with his hands roaming over her plump breasts and flabby belly. “I like a woman with some meat on her.”
He always made her laugh when he said that, and she always vowed she’d eat fewer potatoes and pork fat and stop buying candy at the store.
“Why don’t you set that box down, Abner, and drink your coffee? You found what you was lookin’ for. That John Slocum you keep talkin’ about is wanted in Georgia for killin’ a judge. There’s a bounty on his head we could use. Five hunnert dollars.”
Abner put the pile of flyers back in the wooden box and set it on the floor. He wriggled his feet in the warm water with the Epsom salts soothing his tired feet.
He picked up his coffee cup in one hand, the wanted sheet in the other. He blew steam off his cup and sipped.
“Yep, that’s the man,” he said. “Younger when this picture was drawed. And his hair was shorter, too. But it’s definitely him.”
“We could use the reward money, Abner,” she said. She took a sip from her cup and it burned her tongue.
“This is an old dodger,” he said. “And he wasn’t tried and convicted for no murder back in Calhoun County, Georgia. Just says he’s wanted as a suspect in a judge’s murder.”
“So what difference does that make?” she asked.
“Law says a man is innocent until proved guilty.”
“Oh, pshaw, Abner, the man is wanted by the law and you ought to collect that reward.”
He looked at Miriam as he set the flyer aside and picked up his cup. He sloshed his feet gently in the warm water and salts. Soothing.
“Georgia’s a fur piece. I’d have to haul him back there to collect the reward.”
“Or turn him over to the U.S. marshal,” she said.
“And wait for the money. Maybe years.”
Abner shook his head and drank more coffee. He could taste the cinnamon, and the coffee was strong.
He and Craig had arrested two more of Wolf’s men after putting Loomis in jail. Billy Joe Vernon and Gabe Tolliver. Caught them red-handed at Wilbur Nichols’s cabin, prying open the dead man’s strongbox and filling up a sack with Wilbur’s possessions. Common thieves, but part of Wolf’s claim-jumping gang. He and Craig had walked in with guns drawn and put the handcuffs on them after pulling their pistols from their holsters. One of them, Billy Joe, had a knot on his head from when Craig thunked him with the butt of his pistol. Abner had added resisting arrest to the charges of robbery and accomplice to murder.
Now he had three men stewing in his small jail and his feet were swollen from walking on gravel and rocks.
And from all accounts, Slocum was chasing after Wolf Steiner and the rest of his bunch. A man like that was worth more than five hundred dollars, he thought.
“Well, Miriam, the wheels of justice move slow,” he said as he leaned back in his chair, sniffing the scent of the Arbuckle’s.
“What’s that mean, Abner?” she asked. Her small mouth was even smaller with the round plumpness of her oval face. Her nose smaller, too. Her hazel eyes sparkled in the lamplight with yellows and greens and a spot or two of russet.
“It means that Slocum has done this town a service.”
“A service? What service?”
“He uncovered a murderous gang of claim jumpers, for one thing. He shot the men who killed poor Jasper Nichols, a boy who never hurt a flea. He’s got Wolf Steiner on the run, along with maybe a couple more of them cutthroat backshooters.”
“That’s justice?” Miriam asked as she raised her cup once again to her tiny little lips.
“Frontier justice, maybe.”
“I don’t know what that is, Abner. Frontier justice. Pshaw.”
“It means when the law is slack, a man who gives a damn can be the law hisself.”
“Well, I never heard of such a thing,” she said with a huff of breath.
“Slocum didn’t have to do what he did. He brought some horses here for Lou Darvin. His business was finished. But he saw a man get blowed out of his mine and he took it on hisself to see that Wilbur and Jasper Nichols got some justice. And he probably saved Lou’s life to boot.”
“That makes him a lawman?”
“No, I’m not sayin’ that. But it puts him on the side of the law, and that’s worth something. I’m just one man here and I got a deputy who don’t have the brains of a pissant, and we’re supposed to keep the peace in a town that’s just one hair away from lawlessness. When you got gold in the ground, you got greed. And greed makes some men cross over the line and take up the criminal life.”
“Maybe you ought to have a little greed for yourself, Abner,” she said as her coffee cooled and she could drink it without blowing on it.
“Greed is an ugly thing, Miriam. I want no part of it. You shouldn’t either.”
“I just want what I have comin’ to me,” she said with a trace of defiance in her voice. “That’s all.”
“Where do you draw the line?” Abner asked.
Miriam gave him a blank look.
He looked at her and thought about Slocum. The man might have a price on his head, but he was no common criminal. Maybe he killed a judge in Georgia, and maybe he didn’t. It wasn’t the constable’s job to be judge, jury, and executioner. Hellinger had Durango to take care of, and that was enough for him.
“What’re you going to do, Abner?” she asked as he set his cup down and stood up.
“I’ve got one more man to shackle,” he said. “A crook who deserves time in jail. I’m going to serve him with a search warrant in the morning and haul him off to the hoosegow.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Abel Fogarty. He’s as crooked as a snake and we don’t need his kind in this town.”
“Is Elmer goin’ with you?”
“Yep. First thing in the morning.”
“What about Slocum? What are you going to do about him and the reward?”
“Ah, Slocum. I’m going to do nothin’. If he comes back with Wolf and the rest of his gang, I’ll shake his hand and maybe pat him on the back.”
“And then, just let him go?”
“Yep. Just let him go, Miriam. That’s the right thing to do.”
“Abner, you’re a fool. A damned ignorant fool.”
“I’m going to get some shut-eye, Miriam. You can use that flyer there on the table to light your breakfast fire in the morning. I’m goin’ to bed.”
He sopped across the floor with bare wet feet and walked to their bedroom. He was tired and there was so much to do early in the morning.
“Good night, Abner,” Miriam called as he left the hallway.
“Good night, Miriam.”
He hoped he would see Slocum again. There was something about the man that he admired. No matter what his past was, Slocum was a man to ride the river with and didn’t deserve to rot away in some Georgia prison.
That’s what Abner would call justice, not the label society put on a man. Slocum was a free man and he deserved to stay that way.
One thing was for sure, Abner vowed.
Slocum would never spend a minute in the Durango jail.