The Slavers Read online

  We were out in front of the hotel saying a few last words about the old days when Masters grabbed my hand, gave it a quick pump, and said: “I won’t keep you. See you some time.”

  “What in hell is the matter with you?” I was saying. There was no need to finish the question. Three hard-looking characters had stepped down from the sidewalk and were coming across the street.

  Chapter Two

  One of them was a gunman. It was stamped all over him. Not all gunslingers have the same markings like, say, vultures do, but you get to know the signs. Not all gunmen are short, but you meet more short ones than tall ones. Short on inches and muscle, they use a gun the way a tarantula uses his stinger.

  This ugly, slope-shouldered gent had long thin arms with big hands at the end of them. Without the big hands, the Sheriff’s Model Colt .45 on his hip would have been too much gun for such a little man. But I guess he could use it well enough. He had a flat-crowned hat stuck on the back of his narrow skull and his hair, long and greasy and tucked behind his jug ears, was crow black, like an Indian’s.

  “Move on, Carmody,” Masters said.

  “No hurry, Elbert,” I answered.

  They moved slowly across the wide sunny street, the other two men keeping their distance from the little gunman. Big, heavy, slow moving, they looked to me like ex-cavalry troopers not too long out of uniform. Their guns were worn in no special way, and they smelled more of bully than hired gun.

  I knew Elbert, but it wasn’t my business, not yet. Masters wasn’t wearing a gun, but he wasn’t grinning because I was there. He said howdy or morning, something like that.

  They didn’t answer. The little gunman raised a hand, not his gun hand, and pointed a finger at me. “You,” he said in a small raspy voice. “You, cowboy.” I hate to be called you in any kind of voice. “You, cowboy, move on. We got business with this lawyer.”

  “Office hours eight to five,” Masters told them.

  It was hot and quiet on Wallace Street, where we were, and the little killer had dust clouding the bright polish on his boots. He had big hands but his forty-dollar boots could fit a little boy. To me, he looked like the kind of gloomy little bastard that didn’t drink or smoke or bed-wrestle, just sat around cleaning his guns, shining up his boots, getting up now and then to make hard faces in the mirror. Little men like that can be deadly.

  “You deef, friend?” he said to me.

  Even a Quaker would find it hard to love this little man, and I’m no Quaker.

  “You must be deef or stupid,” he informed me. “I just told you to move on. Now why are you still here?” The little man paused, getting set to put the fear of God into me. “Maybe you don’t know who you’re looking at, cowboy?”

  Masters was telling me something I didn’t hear. I told him to shut up. Some days when things are going good I can take a certain amount of bad-mouth talk and still walk away. This wasn’t one of those days. Besides, I had known old Elbert for a dog’s age.

  To the little man I said, “Sure I know who I’m looking at. An ugly little half-breed with ears like a jackass, a face like a pig, and a big gun you stole while your Daddy was in the outhouse. Why don’t you put it back before it’s missed?”

  I half expected the little man to go berserk. Often, the little fellers do that when you tell them all the things they don’t ever want to hear. That’s one reason why they get so good with guns, to keep people from saying things. But this little gent didn’t go wild. He took a big breath and smiled. I suppose you could call it a smile. His thick lips stretched back over rotting teeth like stiff old rubber without much snap left.

  The stiff, rubbery smile stayed in place. A lifetime of feeling like a freak had given him some patience, I figured. “Maybe you better stay after all,” he told me. “A minute ago you could leave. Now you can’t.”

  Masters was getting in my way. I stepped away from him. He sounded peeved when he said, “You don’t have to take up for me.”

  Watching the gunman, I didn’t answer.

  The little man’s finger pointed again, at Masters this time. “You, Mister Lawyer! You were told to get out of Santa Fe or start wearing a gun. Gun or no gun, you get shot if you stay. I’m no lawyer, but this is good advice. Leave town while you still have a chance. The boys here will keep you company the first few miles.”

  Masters didn’t scare, not a bit. “No gun, my friend. No guns now or later. Why don’t you trot on back to your boss? Tell McKim the bluff didn’t work. Where in hell do you think you are? Dodge City twenty years ago? This is 1885 and we got laws now.”

  Elbert seemed to have much faith in the year 1885. Santa Fe was mostways a city now—anyway, a big town with an opera house, piped-in water, a library and two newspapers—but I knew all that was just a thin coat of new paint.

  The two ex-soldiers didn’t look too happy. They stood their ground, thick bodied, thick-headed. Eye gouging, rib cracking and kidney stomping suited them better than gunplay.

  “No bluff, Masters,” the gunman stated. I knew he wasn’t lying.

  “You mentioned the name McKim a minute ago,” the little killer said. “Now me, I never heard of the man.”

  “You ever hear that name?” he asked the two soldier boys.

  One man shook his head and grunted. The other, more talkative, said, “No, sir—never.”

  The little man displayed his rotten teeth again. “See?” he said. “This is all my idea. I like this town, but the town doesn’t like you, so I figure to do something about it. You’re a lawyer and that takes some brains. Be brainy about this—let the boys help you pack.”

  “Not a chance,” Masters said. “Here I am and here I stay.”

  “I want to stay too, Shorty,” I said politely. “Aw, come on, let us stay.”

  The soldier boy with more words blurted out: “You’re fooling with the wrong man, mister. This here is Billy Dancer.”

  “It is? Is that what it is?” I wouldn’t have pushed it so hard if I’d thought there was a chance that Dancer might back off. Billy Dancer was a name I’d heard in saloons the past few years. They said he was as bad as bad could be—and fast. You listen to the stories and yawn. Now, looking at the little man I didn’t know, I guessed the stories were pretty near true.

  So I pushed it. Masters began to say things, his voice getting loud and strained. I thought it was decent of Elbert to worry about me. Nobody had done that for years.

  I smiled at Dancer. “No good, Elbert,” I said. “Billy here called me a dirty name just now. Didn’t you, Billy?”

  “What’s your name?” Dancer wanted to know. He said he liked to know the men he killed. “You and the lawyer go together.”

  “The name is Carmody, little man.”

  Dancer smiled again. “Nice meeting you, Carmody. Even if your mother was a poxed-up border-town whore.”

  I wasn’t insulted, but I did go for my gun. Maybe he didn’t expect that. Maybe he still thought we would back down and beg him to be merciful. In my time, I’ve seen men talk tough, then break down and turn yellow when killing time was near. Lord but he was fast—fast as I was. His hand reached in a flashy draw and the big, short-barreled .45 came out smooth, firing as soon as it cleared the top of the holster. A fast hip shot with no aim, as nice a quick draw as I’ve ever seen. My own draw wasn’t quite as flashy, but that was all right. I wasn’t drawing and shooting to please a crowd in a tent show. Dancer shot for my head, not a good place to try for in a hurry. I shot for the middle of Dancer’s chest and got him close to the heart.

  I said Dancer was a little man, and the way my bullet knocked him into the middle of the street proved it. It was maybe a second and a half from drawing to killing. One of the soldier boys had his gun clear of the holster and was trying to cock it. The other man was still grabbing at his holster. My .44 was cocked and aimed and ready. “Don’t do it, boys,” I said. “Don’t even try.”

  They were smart. They didn’t try. “Good boys,” I complimented them. “Uncinch
those belts and let them drop. That’s the way. See how easy it is.”

  “Fetch the law, Elbert,” I said to Masters, who was staring at the dead gunman.

  “You better get going, Carmody,” he said. “These men work—Dancer worked—for McKim. This is just the start.”

  “Then maybe we’ll finish it. Do what I say, Elbert. Go get the law.”

  Masters took off as fast as his bulk would let him travel. The two soldier boys stayed still, dumb faced and let down. I walked over to the dead man and kicked the .45 out of his hand. For show, I kicked him so hard in the side of the head, my foot hurt. I knew damn well he was dead and I wanted the two soldier boys to know that this here Carmody feller was a vicious son of a bitch.

  “Got to make sure,” I told them easily, a man stating a fact. “Rest easy, boys. The law’ll be along in a jiffy and we’ll get this set-to explained. I ought to take it hard, you crowding my good friend Lawyer Masters like that. Maybe you been fed a bunch of lies about Lawyer Masters. That’s it, by God! Your boss McKim lied about my good friend and you believed him. That’s a question, boys.”

  The .44 was back in my holster, but I gave it a gentle pat to hurry them up.

  “That’s the way it happened,” one of them said.

  “Sure,” the other agreed.

  “Nothing like the truth, boys,” I went on. “Fair play is my motto, and I hope you think the same. One thing I surely hate is a sneak and a liar. A man that lies about me—about my friends—has himself a lifetime enemy. There’s no place he can run, no place he can hide that he’s safe. What I mean is, boys, you will tell the truth and nothing but the truth when the law gets here—or I’ll kill you. Speak up, boys.”

  They spoke up.

  “I know what you’re thinking, boys, but don’t do it. Sure you’re tempted to say this gunman hired by Lawyer Masters picked a fight with poor Billy and shot him in cold blood. That’s what McKim would like you to do, set Masters up for the hangman. Say something, boys.”

  “No, sir.”

  “Dancer started it.”

  I told them to put down their hands. “No reason for us to be bad friends. Just remember—I can still drop you both before the law can move a muscle.”

  Elbert, the City Marshal and two deputies came tearing down the street in a police wagon pulled by two horses. One of the deputies, taking his job seriously, was making the alarm bell clang. Nobody had appeared in the street after the shooting, but now that the law was here, interested citizens came piling out to gape at the dead man.

  I recognized the City Marshal when he lowered his aging bones from the wagon seat. Long John Buckman was a famous town tamer in Texas when I was a boy, and here he was, years later, white haired and wrinkle faced, in a blue uniform with a silver shield pinned on the front of it. The two uniformed deputies wore their guns belted high in flapped holsters. Buckman wasn’t wearing his gun that way, and I guessed it was the same old single-action converted Navy Colt in the same old worn holster. That old changed-over percussion iron had put more than a few men in their graves and it was my opinion that, old or not, John Buckman was still a pretty fair hand with a gun—that gun. I hoped the two soldier boys would get their story straight. I didn’t want to be the one to kill Long John in his years of decline.

  You never know about things like that. When John Buckman got closer I could see that he was even older than I figured. I was wrong, too, about how much he had declined. No doubt about it, he was on a downhill slide—maybe he was on the far side of sixty—but he was fighting every inch of the way. The hands were stringy and liver-spotted, but that didn’t mean so much.

  Long John didn’t want trouble in his town, and I didn’t blame him. One of the deputies, the bell clanger, yanked his gun. Long John cursed him for a fool and told him to put it away. He looked at me, sizing me up.

  Masters was explaining again. Long John told him to button up. Quick hands or not, Buckman was tired.

  Long John put himself in front of me. “You kill this man?” he asked.

  “There he is,” I said. “I killed him. He needed killing.”

  Long John never did have much to say. “Not for you to say,” he said. “Maybe not for me. What happened?”

  I told him.

  Long John knew who Billy Dancer was. “Could be that way,” he said. “A man like that. A man like you. Who are you?”

  “Don’t know you by that name” Long John said. “Nor by sight. But you remind me of people.”

  Long John asked the two ex-soldiers to tell their side of it. One of them nearly got his nerve back, and then he lost it again when he looked at me. Lordy me, he told the truth, and so did the other fellow.

  “World’s full of surprises,” Long John told himself, and the way he said it, I knew which side he was on. He was on his own side, an old man still hard as sheet iron on the outside but wearing thin inside. The town paid his wages, and it would have been convenient, easy if he could have marched me and Masters down to the calabozo to be duly tried and delivered to the hangman. McKim, a man who seemed to carry weight in Santa Fe, would like that. So would Santa Fe, so would Long John Buckman, though, for him, the reasons would be different.

  “What’s your business, Carmody?” Buckman asked me.

  “Carmody broke no law, Marshal,” Elbert Masters put in. “Dancer did that. McKim did that. Go and ask Thatcher McKim. What about these two men—work for McKim?”

  A bargain was a bargain. “These men are all right,” I said. “They didn’t know what Dancer was up to. I say let them go.”

  Long John gave me a wintry smile. “You say?”

  “I won’t press charges,” I said.

  “Listen here, Carmody,” Long John said. “You listen here. You don’t do anything in Santa Fe except listen when I’m telling you something.”

  Listening to this, the two ex-troopers were looking at me. An old-time lawman, Long John felt he had to take somebody to jail. “Go on, take yourself away from here,” he ordered the two soldier boys. “I got you down in my book.”

  Dancer’s body was loaded into the back of the wagon, and the two deputies climbed aboard, waiting for Long John to get finished with us.

  The old Marshal pulled on his tobacco-stained mustache. He shot a gob of brown juice at the place where Dancer’s corpse had been a few minutes before. Long John’s hard gray eyes were set deep in his head, and his bushy eyebrows hung out far like bushes clinging to the top of a cliff.

  “I asked you your business,” he said to me. “Your business in general and your business in Santa Fe.”

  This time, Masters didn’t try to interfere.

  “In general,” I started off. “Anything that comes along. Ranch hand, wagon driver, army scout, buffalo hunter, mine guard. What am I doing in Santa Fe? Passing through on my way to Cripple Creek, Colorado.”

  Everything I said was pretty true. I had worked at all the trades I mentioned—and more, but not lately.

  “Mine guard,” Long John said. “Another word for gunman.”

  “So is marshal,” I said.

  Long John smiled like a fat parson explaining the goodness of God to a starving man. Not a nice smile, to my way of thinking. He jerked his bony chin to one side. “That’s north, Carmody,” he said. “Colorado is that way.”

  I told him I’d manage to find the way when I was ready to go.

  “You’re ready now, pilgrim.”

  I knew that Long John was trying to move me on for the usual town lawman’s reasons, but Masters didn’t see it that way. He began to sputter like a lump of butter dropped in a too-hot skillet. He said a lot of things he shouldn’t have. He finished with: “I didn’t think I’d live to see John Buckman taking orders from a son of a bitch like Thatcher McKim.”

  I didn’t say anything. I figured Masters was in the wrong, accusing the old man of favoring one side against the other, but I wasn’t about to go against my old sidekick.

  Long John put some extra droop on his mustache and looked
from me to Masters. Finally, he said, pretty mild for a man who’d been slapped in the face: “You’re a fool, Masters. A smart man and a damn fool. You’re going to get yourself killed some of these days. I’ll hang the man kills you, but you’ll still be dead.”

  Long John walked over to the wagon. With his back turned, he said to me: “You’d do better in Colorado, Carmody. No threat, just fact. All I want to do is run a quiet town.”

  Long John pulled himself up beside the driver, and they took off with all that was left of Billy Dancer.

  Masters was still red faced and mad. “That stinking hypocrite,” he said. “The dirty old sneaking ...”

  “Maybe not, Elbert. Depend on one thing— John Buckman won’t forget what you said. What happens now, old cellmate? I figure to stay on for a while.”

  Masters scowled at me. “Doing what, Carmody?”

  “I always did want to read law, Elbert. Know any lawyer wants to hire a law clerk, a feller in his thirties with no previous experience? I can cook, too.”

  “Another fool,” Masters said.

  Chapter Three

  Masters’ office was in a narrow street off the central plaza. I guess he liked Santa Fe; on our way to Bedoya Street, where the office was, he pointed out the old Governor’s Palace, the Cathedral of San Francisco.

  “It’s a nice town,” he told me. “We got close to six thousand people. The railroad came through six years ago. Not into Santa Fe itself. Into Lamy, sixteen miles south of here. The climate can’t be beat in the whole world. Chest cases come from all over for the air. We’re seven thousand feet up. Didn’t know that, did you, Carmody?”

  A tour of Santa Fe was the last thing I needed. It was a town. I’ve seen more towns than I can count. “Turn it off, Elbert,” I said. “Do that, then tell me what happens next?”

  “You got no roots, Carmody,” Masters complained. “Worse than no soul.”

  “We can’t have everything. What about it. I mean, what happens to you?”