Slocum 329

Uncle Abel must have seen them coming, for he was out in the yard to meet them when they rode in. His hat was pushed back, exposing his balding head, his skinny arms were spread wide, and a grin split his face.

“Slocum!” he cried. “So you’re the surprise that Miranda’s been tauntin’ me with!”

Slocum slid off Cougar and walked forward, his smile almost as big as Abel Cassidy’s. The men embraced briefly, than gleefully pounded each other’s backs and shoulders until Miranda thought they’d kill each other. Or at least loosen a tooth or two.

She took Cougar’s reins and led him and Sundancer over to the barn, where she handed them off to a stable hand, giving quiet instructions that Slocum’s horse was to have the very best of care. She knew how Slocum was about his horses.

When she returned, Uncle Abel and Slocum were still standing and pounding and saying things like “By God!” and “Good to see you!” and “I’ll be double-dogged!”

Marching up to them, she grabbed hold of each of their back-slapping arms and said, “Why don’t we go on up to the house before one of you fools knocks loose the other’s lung?”

Both men laughed. It was good to see Uncle Abel in a happy mood for a change. It seemed he hadn’t smiled in a coon’s age. And she always liked to see Slocum happy. Grinning, she led on.

She landed them on the wide porch and called to Carmelita for a pitcher of lemonade, a flask of bourbon, and three glasses. They’d need something a little stronger than plain lemonade to hash this thing out.

And then she sat down with them, propped her elbows on the table, and listened.

“Can’t talk you out of those damned spotted horses, can I, Slocum?” Abel was saying, shaking his head.

Slocum grinned. “Not till you find me one as mountain-goat nimble on a rocky slope or as puss-cat easy-goin’, Abel.”

He’d had this conversation with Abel more times than he could count. Every meeting between the two of them started with it, and every parting ended on the same note. Truth was, Slocum wouldn’t have taken another breed of horse if it was given to him, tied up in a bow, and strung with twenty-dollar gold pieces.

He had known Abel for—what was it now?—must be over twenty years. They’d met up when Slocum first came west, back in the sixties, after the war, when Abel was part of the Jorge Mondragon gang. Slocum had joined up, and they’d done some damage to the Territory, all right. They called themselves Mondragon’s Dragons. Thought it was kind of funny at the time.

They met Vance Jefferson then, too. Vance was a slick hand with a gun—nearly as good as Slocum himself, which was saying quite a bit.

Later, after Mondragon got himself hanged down in Sonora, the three men had ridden together for a while. But pretty soon Jefferson dropped off to head for California, and Cassidy settled down to raise horses with his brother, Miranda’s father.

They met up again, two at a time, on rare occasions: mostly Slocum and Jefferson, for whom California hadn’t turned out to be the Golden State after all. And on one of those meetings, they’d run into Bob Marcus and Granger Foley. Well, Marcus, really. They always seemed to miss Foley by just minutes.

After all, the Arizona Territory was a sparsely populated chunk of land, even nowadays. Back then, it had been practically desolate. It figured that everybody, especially traveling men, would know just about everybody else in the whole territory.

Slocum had taken a distinct dislike to Foley right off the bat—mostly because he never showed up—and he wasn’t awful crazy about Marcus, either. The two men were thick as thieves even back then, and showed little enthusiasm for stopping the range war they had been hired to stop.

Foley was a hired gun who held up stages in his spare time, and he wasn’t shy talking about it. Marcus was more closemouthed, but Slocum figured his background to be about the same as Foley’s. He was too fast with a gun to be an amateur.

Now, by this time, there had been enough water under the proverbial bridge that Slocum wasn’t the same man he’d been when he first came west. He wasn’t bitter anymore—not about the war, not about his papa’s and brother’s murders or the theft of the family farm.

But it wasn’t anything he couldn’t live with. He’d stopped robbing and killing—except when he was certain he was on the side of right, as in that range war he was trying to break up back then—and was doing his best to live straight.

Still, the pair of them had left a bad taste in his mouth. Just the mention of their names still did.

Abel had about finished the Great Quarter-mile Running Horse vs. Appaloosa debate all on his own, and Slocum decided it was time to broach the subject of the business at hand.

Cassidy’s face screwed up momentarily, and then he said, “Well, sure! Ol’ Mondragon’s gang!”

“He’s dead, Uncle Abel,” said Miranda, and refilled her glass with lemonade.

“Well, of course he is! Got hanged in New Mexico, didn’t he, Slocum?” Cassidy exclaimed, and glared at Miranda as if she were an idiot.

“No, no, Abel,” Slocum said. “Vance Jefferson’s dead. Dave Crone told me that Bob Marcus and Granger Foley were responsible.”

“Dead, you say?” Cassidy railed. “What on earth? Why, he worked on this place for a while, worked right here! And who the hell is Dave Crone?”

Slocum’s brow furrowed. “He’s the man I rode up here with. The man that was murdered on your land just this mornin’.”

Cassidy drew himself up, and Slocum quickly explained the whole deal. When he was done, Cassidy was slumped in his chair and shaking his head. “Damn,” he kept repeating. “Damn! The undertaker was here with a body, but I just thought he was some saddle tramp that got himself killed fallin’ down a cliff! Now, if he’d been ridin’ one of my quarter-mile horses . . .”

“You’ve got to fire Marcus and Foley, Uncle Abel,” said Miranda. “Now.”

“At least I can trust Marcus and Foley to patrol for them. It takes a killer to catch a killer, y’know, and I heard of Marcus and Foley before they ever rode in here!” he added, belatedly.

“Point taken, Abel,” interjected Slocum. “But still, I’d keep a real close eye on those boys. I figure they shot Crone. Don’t know who else’d do it.”

And then he said, “Listen, Abel. I’ll take care of these horse killers for you. You don’t need Marcus and Foley.”

“Be pleased if you’d help, Slocum,” Abel said, “but she’s more’n a one-man job. Hell, they’re cuttin’ ’em up into steak and leavin’ ’em all over the ranch.” Suddenly, he threw both hands into the air. “Some people are just plain lunatic crazy!”

Miranda leapt to her feet, and Slocum quickly poured Abel’s glass half-full of bourbon. Arms around his neck, Miranda calmed her agitated uncle down, and Slocum offered his drink.

“Sorry,” Abel said after a moment had passed and the bourbon had had a chance to take hold. “It just makes me so goddamned mad!”

“I know, dear,” Miranda said soothingly, stroking his arm. “Makes you feel helpless, too, doesn’t it?”

Slocum said, “Well, that’s about to end, ol’ buddy. And I’m stickin’ around until it does.”

Miranda settled Slocum into the guest room, a dark blue- papered affair set all around with dark, heavily carved, ornate furniture.

“Why here?” he asked. They had passed a number of empty rooms on their way down the hall. “I feel like I’m a guest at the undertaker’s place.”

“Because it’s the farthest from Uncle Abel’s,” she said, and smiled at him. And then winked. “When you’re settled, come on out. Carmelita ought to have lunch on the table pretty soon.”

It didn’t take Slocum long to unpack. He simply slung his saddlebags on the bed and shoved his pack roll into the chifforobe.

He removed his hat, quickly ran a comb through his dark and unruly hair, wiped his dusty boots on the skirt of the bedspread—also dark blue—and then pulled the double eagle from his pocket.

Right odd, that anybody would lose one of these and not miss it. It was almost the size of a silver cartwheel and weighty to boot, and a man would know it was gone.

And furthermore, what call would a man have to take it out of his pocket in the middle of nowhere?

Shaking his head, he stuck the coin back where he’d found it and left the room.

Carmelita was, indeed, setting the table when he came out. The smell of enchiladas, which he had noticed on his way through the house before, now filled the air as she set the platter on the table.

He smiled. Judah Cassidy, Miranda’s daddy, had snared himself a good cook, and he—and then his brother—had managed to keep her for almost twenty years. Plates of corn tortillas and flour sat round the table, as did a large bowl of refritos and another of rice. Smaller bowls of guacamole and salsa and cactus jelly filled in the cracks.

Cassidy’s voice came from behind him. “She’s awful good, our Carmelita.”

Miranda poked her head in from the kitchen, looked at the floor, then up at Slocum. “Spurs?”

He sat down in the nearest chair, which just happened to be at the dining room table, and removed them. “When you usually dine on the prairie,” he began, by way of apology, “you sort of lose track—”

“Of the finer things.” Miranda cut in, grinning. “Like civilization and polished wood floors. I know. You’re forgiven. At least you didn’t wear your hat.”

The meal was so good that Slocum didn’t take the time to talk. He just shoveled in that good Mexican cooking and occasionally asked for more lemonade, please. He’d noticed that Abel had planted a whole grove of lemon and lime trees out west of the house and that they were all heavy with spring fruit, so he wasn’t afraid of depleting the supply.

When they were almost finished with the meal and Slocum was happily digging into his flan—which was served with extra caramel sauce—there came a knock at the front door. Miranda excused herself and answered it, and when Slocum saw who it was, he stopped eating.

They stared at Slocum first with surprise and then with bad intentions—and he stared back with worse—until Abel cheerily said, “I believe you fellers know each other!”

Slocum let himself take a breath when Marcus and Foley relaxed. His hand never strayed far from his Colt, though.

“Yeah,” Marcus said, with little enthusiasm, then turned toward Abel. “We got one’a your horse butcherers this morning.”

“You don’t say!” Abel said. “Where? Did you catch him in the act?”

“Not exactly. But he was on your land, and near the canyon,” Marcus said.

“We got his horse, too,” added Foley smugly. “Served the horse-killin’ bastard right!”

“Just thought you’d like to know, Mr. Cassidy,” added Marcus, who then shot a daggered glance at Slocum.

“That was no horse killer, you idiots,” Slocum said, trying his best to keep his tone even, although the thing he wanted most in the world was to take these two outside and pummel them to death with an ax handle.

“You killed Dave Crone, you lunatics!” said Slocum. “Dave Crone. You remember Dave Crone, don’t you, Marcus?”

Marcus had the good sense to appear puzzled. “Sure, but . . . why would Dave Crone be killin’ our horses?”

Slocum was too angry to speak, but Abel quickly said, “I think you made a mistake, boys. Crone was on his way out to the ranch—with Slocum, here—to pay me a visit.”

Marcus growled, “Right sorry about that, Mr. Cassidy. He was pretty far off from us. But you can’t expect that we’d spy a man that close to the canyon and not think he was one’a the ones we’ve been lookin’ for!”

“I suppose not,” Abel admitted. Slocum noticed, however, that at least Abel didn’t invite them to stay for a meal.

Miranda ushered both men back outside, then returned to the table and shook out her napkin.

“That all it means to you, Abel?” Slocum asked, more sternly than he’d intended. “Two men confess in your parlor to a cold-blooded murder, and all you can think about is more flan? Hell! I’m surprised you didn’t ask ’em in to take lunch with us!”

Waving a spoonful of the caramel custard before his face, Abel said, “Couldn’t see that it’d do anybody any good to start a gunfight in the house, Slocum. Things’ll get cleared up in time.”

He slid the spoon and its contents into his mouth, chewed exactly twice, then swallowed. “All in good time.”

Miranda nodded, although somewhat dubiously. “Whatever you say, Uncle Abel.”