Slocum and the Three Fugitives Read Free

that he would be gone a couple weeks.
    Zamora pressed into the wound. It bubbled blood, but the flow grew increasingly sluggish. He reached for a slender metal probe and gently inserted it into the wound. Slocum heard the dull
click
when the tip touched the buried bullet. Zamora drew back and dropped the bloody probe on the table. Before he could say a word, Harris reached up with a surprisingly strong hand and grabbed the doctor’s lapel.
    â€œI can answer what you’re thinking, Doctor,” Harris said. “I’m dying. I feel it inside. Nothing you or anyone who’s not God can do for me.”
    â€œI can try to remove the bullet, but . . .” Zamora’s words trailed off.
    â€œYou just think you’re God,” Harris said. “You’re not.” He closed his eyes and arched his back, crying in pain. As the spasm subsided, he opened his eyes again and looked straight at Slocum. “Thanks, John. You’ve done more for me than I’d expect, even from a best friend.”
    â€œYou said you had family. I’ll go fetch them,” Slocum said.
    â€œNo, wait, wait. I want to give you something.”
    Slocum’s eyes darted to the money.
    â€œYou give that to your family.”
    â€œNot that, not for you.” Harris’s voice faded, then returned a little louder. “As you’re my witness, Dr. Zamora, I’m selling the Black Hole to him. To John Slocum. Write up a bill of sale real quick so I can sign.”
    â€œYou don’t have to give me anything,” Slocum said.
    â€œYou didn’t have to fight off them damned ’shiners tryin’ to k-k-kill me, either.” Harris closed his eyes. For a moment he looked dead, then came back. “Write it up, Doctor. And don’t do it with that hen scratching of yours. Write it all neat and proper.”
    â€œIf you like, Tom.”
    The doctor quickly went over to a rolltop desk in the corner, pulled out a sheet of stationery from one of the built-in shelves, dipped his pen in the inkwell, and wrote something out.
    Slocum watched the life draining from the man. His face turned pale and his eyelids fluttered like tiny bird’s wings, but his hand was steady when Zamora put the pen in it. Harris rolled onto his side and affixed his name to the bottom of the paper, which the doctor held steady for him.
    He looked up at Zamora and tapped the pen against the bill of sale.
    â€œYou witness it.”
    â€œTo be legal, he has to give you something for it,” the doctor said.
    â€œYou got a dollar, John?”
    Slocum fished a silver dollar from his vest pocket and pressed it into Harris’s hand. The man looked at it. A curious smile came to his lips.
    â€œOught to be pennies for my eyes. That’s the way they used to do it. Put pennies on a dead man’s eyes.”
    â€œYou’ll make it,” Slocum said.
    He spoke to a dead man.

2
    â€œHe wasn’t right in his head,” the doctor said.
    Slocum looked at the deed in his hand. His thumb rested on a spot of ink and smeared it. Instinctively, he blew on the signature to dry it, to make it permanent, to give him full title to a saloon he had never even seen. Slocum looked up.
    â€œThe money belongs to his family. So does this. Where can I find them?”
    Dr. Zamora shrugged.
    â€œThere’s only his sister.” The doctor pulled a sheet over Tom Harris and took a deep breath. “I better let the marshal know. Everything that’s happened tells me Tom was held up outside town by road agents and that you had nothing to do with the robbery.”
    â€œI saved him long enough for him to die here.”
    Zamora spun and fixed Slocum with a hard stare.
    â€œNobody could have saved him. The wound was too serious.”
    â€œNobody could have saved him,” Slocum repeated slowly, letting it sink into the doctor’s head. “I tried. You tried. The three men who tried to rob him