“I’m going into Del Rio,” Slocum said, after a few moments. “There are things I have to find out, things I need to know.”

  “You should not go there,” she said.

  “I have to, Carmen.”

  “Oh, John, I have fear that I will never see you again. Will you come back here and stay in the little adboe? We will put guards up so that you can sleep safe the next time.”

  “I will come back,” he promised her.

  Slocum got up and walked into the next room where the body of Luis Delgado lay in the open casket. There were women seated all around the room, some squatting on the floor, some in chairs, others on wooden boxes. They were all saying their beads.

  “They are saying a novena for my brother,” Carmen explained.

  Slocum stood before the casket and looked down at the waxen brown face of the dead man. He took off his hat and murmured a short prayer.

  “I will get justice for you, Luis,” he said softly. “Vaya con Dios.”

  “Thank you, John. I know God will hear your prayer.”

  “Good-bye, Carmen. Tell Abeja thanks for me. Tell him not to follow me to town.”

  “I will tell him,” she said.

  Abeja had Slocum’s horse saddled and waiting for him outside the adobe where he had spent the night. The Indian’s burro was there, too.

  “You go to Del Rio?” Abeja said.

  “Yes, but you must stay here.”

  “I have a gun. I have a knife. You will be, how do you say it, out of numbers?”

  “Outnumbered,” Slocum said.

  “Yes, outnumbered. Too many guns in Del Rio. Too many bad men.”

  “Look. Sit tight. I’m going to stay here in Hidalgo. Make it my headquarters. I’ll be back this afternoon or tonight.”

  “Ten cuidado,” Abeja said.

  Slocum rode away from Hidalgo. He knew what Abeja had said to him in Spanish. “Be careful.” “Take care.” He would do that, he promised himself.

  He formed a plan in his mind that would help him find the answers he needed. He knew that once he began asking questions, the danger to him would increase. And it would all boil down to a simple matter. Whom could he trust? Surely, he thought, there must be a few honest men in Del Rio. But how much were they willing to risk when he started digging for the truth?

  Slocum left Ferro at the stables and walked first to the Land Office, where he enquired about the ownership of the one hundred thousand acres. A Mr. Huckabee gave him the information, including directions to the house of the owner.

  “She’s a widder woman, livin’ in that big old house over on Oak Street,” Huckabee said. “She don’t get out much.”

  Slocum knocked on the door of the house owned by Mrs. Wilbur Loomis. The land clerk had said her first name was Belinda. A Mexican woman opened the door.

  “Mrs. Loomis,” Slocum said. “Is she in?”

  “She is in the front room. Follow me.”

  Slocum followed the maid through the foyer and into the front room. An old woman sat in a rocking chair, a blanket over her lap, touching the carpeted floor. She looked up, her eyes rheumy from age, her tousled gray hair framing her small oval face.

  “A man to see you, Belinda,” the maid said and left the room.

  “Sit down,” Belinda said. “My, you are a tall drink of water, feller. What brings you to my humble home? Do you want to buy my land? It’s got a curse on it, you know.”

  Slocum wondered if Belinda Loomis was addled. He sat down in a straight-backed chair with a cushioned seat and backing.

  “Scoot up close,” she said. “My old eyes don’t see too good anymore.”

  “Yes’m.”

  “What’s your name, son?”

  Slocum told her.

  “You from around here?”

  “No’m. I’m just wondering about that land you’re selling.”

  “Mr. Rankins send you?”

  “In a way.”

  “He told me he was selling the land to a man named Grady or Grabby, or something like that.”

  “Mr. Granby died,” Slocum said.

  “Oh my. He did? What a shame. It’s the curse, I reckon.”

  “Yes’m. Can you tell me about the curse?”

  “No, I can’t. It’s a mystery. My husband, rest his soul, was not the first to die, but he was the first to hang. Since then, there’s been many others. All of ’em hanged, or shot.”

  “I don’t understand. What happened to your husband? Why was he hanged?”

  Belinda sighed and lifted the shawl that draped her frail shoulders. In her hand was a small glass filled with amber-colored liquid. She took a sip and the whiskey fumes floated to Slocum’s nostrils. She smacked her lips as her eyes filled with tears. She gave a small cough and then opened her mouth. Her lips started moving, but no sound came out at first. She looked like a fish gasping for oxygen.

  “Poor Wilbur,” she said, her voice suddenly issuing from her scalded throat. “The law said he rustled cattle. They found some Rocking H whitefaces on our property and they took him off. Judge Wyman tried him for rustling and Carlos Fernandez hanged him. Lordy, I never cried so much in my life. I knew Wilbur never stole no cattle. He didn’t even like cattle. He inherited that land from his pappy and wanted to grow tomaters and squash and taters on it.”

  “And since then?” Slocum said. “Others have died, you say?”

  “Oh, a heap of folks,” she said. “That land is cursed. I know it.”

  From Belinda, Slocum learned that others had tried to buy the land or worked on it and all of them had died of unnatural causes.

  “Did you know there was gold buried on your property?” Slocum asked, as Belinda took another sip of her whiskey. He figured she would be drunk by the time her glass was empty.

  “Oh, there’ve been rumors about that for a long while now. The Mexicans say the Spaniards buried gold there and others say bandits came across the border and buried gold all over. There’s no gold there. Just blood. Lots of blood.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Loomis. I’ll leave you now.”

  “Just what was it you wanted, Mr. Slocum?”

  “Just information.”

  “You go to the newspaper. They’ll tell you the names of all those who died over that accursed land. They gave me a list once and asked me to make a statement. I told them it would do no good. I’d like to sell the land, though. I need the money and there’s no one to tend to it.”

  “Yes’m.” Slocum got up and put the chair back where it had been. “Thank you.”

  “I like you, Mr. Slocum. You go see Mr. Rankins about buying that land. Maybe you can take the curse off’n it.”

  She saluted Slocum with her glass and downed the rest of it. Her eyes turned even more bleary and she sank back into her shawl and blanket, a small wizened figure of a woman who had probably been beautiful once. Now, she was a living skeleton who believed in curses and mourned, still, the death of her husband.

  The Mexican maid let Slocum out.

  “She is dying, you know,” the maid said. “She is killing herself every day.”

  “Yes,” Slocum said. “I know. It seems to be going around here in Del Rio.”

  The maid looked at him dumbly and Slocum touched a finger to his hat and walked across the porch and down the steps.

  He felt as if he had just visited a funeral parlor.

  17

  The publisher of the newspaper, the Del Rio Times, was reluctant to talk to Slocum, at first.

  “You say Belinda Loomis sent you over here?” Vernon Cunningham said. He sat like a giant toad on a mushroom, his head wreathed in blue cigar smoke, his pudgy lips almost obscene with saliva. His desk, a large one, seemed small next to Cunningham’s bulk. His bald head glistened with sweat and from the sunlight streaming through the window behind his desk. The desk was strewn with papers, even though there was a two-tiered wooden box that read IN and OUT. These, too, were crammed full of scrawled copy.

  “She suggested I talk to you, Mr. Cunningham. She said you kept a list of those who have been hanged in the past several months. Or years.”

  “I know who you are, Slocum. You were a witness in that Delgado mockery of a trial.”

  “I believe, in fact I know, that Luis Delgado was innocent.”

  “Slocum, you’re a marked man. Those look like fresh bruises on your face. Somebody work you over?”

  “A couple of deputies.”

  “Jones and Smith, likely. They’re thugs. Wonder they didn’t kill you, but they usually stop short of that, far as I can see.”

  “They wanted me to run.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “Cunningham, there’s something rotten here in Del Rio. You know it and I know it. Does it all go back to Judge Wyman?”

  “He’s got a hand in it, certainly. I think someone pays him off. To be unjudiciously judicious, if you know what I mean.”

  “Do you know who that might be?” Slocum asked.

  “I have a strong hunch.”

  “Hardesty?”

  “Ah, you spoke the magic word. Nothing provable, of course. But all roads lead to Rome, they say.”

  “Are you saying you’ve looked into the hangings and found a connection between them and Bill Hardesty?”

  Cunningham spun around in his swivel chair. He looked out the window. He swung back and wore a frown on his face.

  “Look, Slocum, I don’t know some of the things that go on in this town any more than you do, but my hands are tied. The last newspaper guy who tried to print the truth, or speculate, wound up dead, his office burned.”

  “So you, like everybody else in Del Rio, are running scared.”

  “I’ve got a lot of stuff stored away, in a safe place, and I intend to, one day, get a congressman, or a law-maker up in Austin, to take a look at it. But I don’t have much proof. Those men Wyman hanged were all given trials and convicted and he meted out the proper punishment. According to the law. Never mind that the evidence against those men was weak or faulty. In Texas, like everywhere else, the law is the law, and the judge is king of the dadblamed hill.”

  “I have a list of names,” Slocum said. “All hanged by Judge Wyman. All of them had something to do with some land west of town, where supposedly gold is buried.”

  “Supposedly. Yeah, I know the land, owned by Mrs. Loomis. It’s crazy. I’ve never seen any gold that was found there. Rumors. That’s all it is.”

  “What if it isn’t?” Slocum asked.

  “Then there’s blood on it. I know Hardesty wants that land. Tried to buy it. Rankins turned him down.”

  “But now Hardesty seems to have taken Granby’s wife under his wing and he’s going to buy the land. Rankins is going to loan him the money.”

  Cunningham let out a low whistle.

  “That’s worth looking into. I know Granby was set to get a loan when he was killed.”

  “Who do you think killed him?” Slocum asked.

  “I have no idea. You said you saw a woman shoot him.”

  “I’m looking for that woman. Any ideas?”

  Cunningham shrugged.

  “Nope. None. We never had a woman up on murder charges here in Del Rio before.”

  “I have a hunch who that woman is,” Slocum said.

  There was a silence in the room. Cunningham stared at Slocum as if he suspected Slocum might have lost his senses. He puffed on his cigar and spewed out smoke like some potbellied volcano getting ready to erupt.

  “If it’s slander I can’t print it,” Cunningham said. “If it’s libel, I can’t print it. And if it’s anybody prominent, even if I have proof, I can’t print it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to lose either my life or my newspaper.”

  “All right, I’ll keep my hunch to myself for a time.”

  “Might be best. And what might be even better would be for you to forget all about Del Rio and Luis Delgado and just go on back to wherever you came from. Well, let me correct that. I know you can’t go back to Georgia. Sheriff Curt Blandings has already been here with information that leads me to believe you’re still wanted for murder back in Calhoun County.”

  “Word gets around,” Slocum said.

  “It sure as hell does.”

  Slocum could see that he was going to get nowhere with Cunningham. But he already knew that the publisher had a file on the hangings and was hoping one day to go outside Del Rio and ask for a full investigation. That could take months, if not years, when Cunningham decided he had enough evidence to seek help in Austin or Washington, D.C. By that time, all of the criminals would have covered their tracks. It would take years more to find out the truth about the hangings, the hidden gold and the conspiracy involving Bill Hardesty, who seemed to be at the center pole of every lead Slocum was following.

  “Maybe I’ll see you another time, Slocum,” Cunningham said, putting his cigar out in a huge bowl he used for an ashtray. Maybe I should have your obituary written up, just in case.”

  “What would you say about me?” Slocum asked.

  “First off, I’d say you were a damned fool.”

  Slocum smiled.

  “Be sure to put in the next line, if you do,” Slocum said.

  “And what line would that be, Mr. John Slocum?”

  “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, Mr. Cunningham.”

  “Touché.”

  Slocum walked to the Del Rio Bank, which was on Main Street. He didn’t expect to find out much from Rankins, but he had to talk to him. Sometimes a man gave himself away by what he didn’t say. Slocum could often read a man by the look in his eyes or the way he moved his hands and his body.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  Slocum stood in front of a desk, looking around the bank lobby, which was not very large.

  “I’d like to see Frank Rankins.”

  “Do you have an appointment, sir?”

  “No, I don’t,” Slocum said.

  “What’s your name and what business do you have with Mr. Rankins?”

  “John Slocum. Land.”

  “Buying land, are you?”

  “Just give him my name,” Slocum said.

  The clerk got up from his desk and walked through a gate in a wooden railing. He entered a back office with Rankins’s name on the door, signifying he was the president. In a few moments, the man returned.

  “Mr. Rankins will see you for five minutes only. He has a previous appointment.”

  Slocum thanked the clerk and walked back to the office and opened the door.

  Seated at a large oak desk was the man he had last seen in the Del Rio Hotel two nights before. He was dressed in a business suit and now wore spectacles that were horn-rimmed, gave him the look of an owl.

  “Mr. Slocum, have a chair,” Rankins said. “What brings you to my office? I thought you would have left town by now.”

  “Nope. Still here,” Slocum said. He sat down, crossed his legs as if he meant to stay there awhile. Rankins frowned.

  “And you have business with me?”

  “Maybe. I understand you’re going to loan Bill Hardesty money to buy the land owned by Mrs. Wilber Loomis. Belinda.”

  “I don’t divulge private business matters, Mr. Slocum.”

  “I just wondered what changed your mind. You turned him down for a loan before. Before you planned to loan Granby the money he needed to buy that one hundred thousand acres.”

  “Sir, this is simply none of your business. Details of our loans to individuals or businesses are strictly private.”

  “Do you know who that woman was who danced with Luis Delgado the night Granby was killed? You were right there.”

  “Mr. Slocum, this meeting is over. Will you kindly leave?”

  “Not until you answer my question.” Slocum uncrossed his legs and flipped open his frock coat revealing the Colt .45 on his hip, the gun belt rowed with shiny brass cartridges.

  Rankins swallowed something in his throat. His face turned pale as paste.

  “No, I do not know who the woman was. I wasn’t paying attention to those on the dance floor. I was conducting business with the Granbys. Now, please leave.”

  Slocum got up and walked to the front of Rankins’s desk.

  “I feel sorry for you, Mr. Rankins. You’re a little turd floating on top of a cesspool, and you haven’t got the balls to swim out of it.”

  “Sir,” Rankins snapped, but he scooted his chair back a few inches to put distance between him and Slocum. His face was now red as a boiled beet.

  Slocum turned and walked out, slamming the door behind him.

  “Sir, did you find your meeting with Mr. Rankins satisfactory?” the clerk asked.

  “Yes, I did. He’s a mealy-mouthed son of a bitch, but quite pleasant.”

  Slocum smiled as the clerk gaped, his jaw dropping like a window sash.

  Slocum left the bank and headed for the stables, watching the street on both sides. It wasn’t until he reached the stables that he knew something was wrong.

  Ferro was still saddled and tied to a hitching post outside of the barn. Slocum’s rifle wasn’t in its boot.

  Slocum stopped and then circled the livery, coming up on the side where the two doors stood wide open.

  Ferro whickered when he saw Slocum. He pawed the ground with his right foot.

  Slocum listened for any sound. It was very quiet, and he knew that wasn’t natural.

  Then he heard something inside the stables. It was a small sound. A boot scraping on straw, the creak of leather, perhaps.

  He waited. Listened.

  Someone inside the barn cleared his throat.

  Slocum drew his pistol, hearing the metal whisper against the leather. He put his thumb on the hammer of the single-action Colt.

  It seemed an eternity before anything happened.

  And then all hell broke loose.

  18

  Slocum whirled when he heard two hammers cocking. He went into a fighting crouch, thumbed back the hammer of his Colt. The man had sneaked up behind him and was bringing a double-barreled shotgun to his shoulder.

  Slocum pointed the snout of his .45 at the man’s midsection and squeezed the trigger. The pistol bucked in his hand. Once, twice.