Slocum and the Three Fugitives Read Free Page B

touched his coat pocket where the deed to the Black Hole Saloon rested. He didn’t consider this his saloon but finding himself so engrossed with the Harris family put an obligation on his shoulders. He went around, ducked under the end of the bar, and found two clean mugs, filled them, and dropped the two in front of the cowboys.
    â€œNickel each,” he said.
    â€œWell, now, mister, Annabelle, she’s sorta taken a shine to us and lets us run a tab. You just add it to our bill.” The one speaking looked at the other and grinned, showing a broken front tooth.
    Slocum grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and slammed him facedown onto the bar. A second tooth remained embedded in the wood.
    â€œNo tabs,” he said. “You pay cash or you get out. Your choice.”
    â€œNo need to get all huffy, mister. Here.” The second cowboy counted out ten pennies, which Slocum scooped up with a swipe of his hand. In the same motion he dumped the coins into a ceramic pot under the bar.
    â€œHey, barkeep, I’ll have a shot of rotgut, if you promise it’s gonna take the hide off my tongue.”
    Slocum went to the other end of the bar, snaring a bottle of whiskey as he went. He held it up, swirled it around, and saw milky currents in the amber fluid.
    â€œThis tarantula juice’ll have you singing songs and thinking you’re a maestro,” Slocum promised.
    â€œSome of that fer me, too,” called another customer.
    Slocum got into the job, working from one end to the other, joshing with the customers, badgering others, and enjoying himself despite how he had come to be on this side of the bar. He developed quite a thirst, but rather than drinking the profits, even the paltry amount from a beer, he used a dipper to drink some water from a bucket.
    â€œYou know any of them fancy-ass drinks? The ones we hear about from Frisco?”
    Slocum poured from one bottle and another, adding a touch of nitric acid he found in a thick glass bottle, and assured the man this was the only thing the railroad barons drank in the Union Club perched stop San Francisco’s Nob Hill.
    He was fixing a second concoction of his own creation when he saw Annabelle come back in. Her eyes were puffy and red. She had cried herself out from the set to her shoulders, the way she held her chin high, and how she walked with grim determination. Behind her a slender man with thin mustaches waxed to needle points looked around the saloon.
    The man wore a gaudy brocade vest and fancy gray trousers with a thin black ribbon running from waist to cuff on the outside of each pant leg. A gold chain dangled from one pocket to another. With hands so delicate as to be effete, he took out a fancy gold watch, popped it open, and studied it as if the secrets of the universe were written on the face. He made a big show of snapping the lid shut, twirled his mustaches to even thinner tips, and came around the bar.
    â€œYou are relieved of your duty, sir.”
    â€œAnd you are?” Slocum asked.
    â€œThat there’s Frenchy Dupont,” the customer who had downed Slocum’s first potent libation said. His words came out slurred. Slocum had gotten him knee-walking drunk with a single drink.
    â€œMy name is Pierre Dupont, if you please.”
    â€œSuspect it’s Pierre Dupont even if I don’t please,” Slocum said.
    He saw how the thin man’s hand moved to his left cuff. There might be a hideout pistol tucked there, but Slocum guessed a knife sheathed along his forearm was more likely.
    â€œAbout time for me to tend to other business,” Slocum said. He went around the bar and faced Annabelle Harris.
    â€œDr. Zamora said you saved Tom. Out on the road. When he was attacked.” Annabelle looked him squarely in the eye. “Thank you.”
    â€œWish it could have been more.”
    â€œIt was a great deal. The doctor gave me the money Tom took with him. That will go a long way