At last he came to the end of he passageway, and he stopped to dismount. There was a natural hiding place there. He walked over to check it out, and he found three spent shells lying in the dirt. It was the place of ambush all right. It was where Dancer had stopped to wait for them. But where had he gone? Slocum had not heard any sound of hoofs coming down the mountain. The passageway was not that far from where they had been hit. He looked around some more. There was a pile of rocks behind him that looked suspicious.

  Climbing up over the rocks, he saw that the trail he had come up continued on the other side. He saw the tracks of a horse and footprints made by a man. How could that be? A horse would not be able to climb over that mess. He studied the rocks some more. At last he decided that Dancer had discovered the trail, gone to the top and found his hiding place, taken his horse on over the top of the trail and then pushed the rocks down to block the trail. When he was ready to make his escape, all he had to do was climb over the pile of rocks and mount his horse. In order to follow him, Slocum would have to move the pile of rocks one at a time.

  Dancer had really slowed him down. Well, hell, he thought, there’s nothing else for it. He picked up a rock and tossed it aside. Then another and another. He had to stop and rest and wipe the sweat from his brow a time or two. At last he reached the trail. It was clear enough to ride through. He sat down for a moment to catch his breath. Then he got up and mounted his Appaloosa. He rode on over the crest of the mountain.

  Dancer’s trail was clear from there. Likely he did not think he would be followed. He thought that either he would have killed them all or that they would not be able to figure out his trick at the top of the mountain. If Slocum was right, then Dancer would be relaxed, unsuspicious. He should be able to slip up on him with some ease. He kept riding down the steep mountain trail. At the bottom of the trail at last, he found himself on a road again. He looked back to see the road curve. He looked up at the mountain trail he had just negotiated.

  Damn, he thought. It looks to me like I’ve just come back down to the same damn road I was on in the first place. Dancer, he figured, was far more sneaky than he had been giving him credit for. Looking down in the road, he checked the tracks once more. They continued in the same direction as they had been going in the first place. He rode on.

  In about a mile, he came to a house by the side of the road, and he stopped. The door opened, and a Mexican man stepped out. Slocum touched the brim of his hat. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

  The man gave a shrug.

  “Oh boy,” said Slocum under his breath. Then out loud, he said “Uh, aqua. Por my caballo?”

  “Oh, sí,” said the man with a smile. He pointed to a trough nearby, and Slocum rode to it and dismounted, allowing the Appaloosa to drink freely.

  “Gracias,” he said.

  “I’m looking for someone,” he said. “Oh, un hombre dressed all in negro. Hombre. Negro.”

  The man smiled again and nodded his head. Slocum took that to mean that Dancer had been by, and the man had seen him. He thought about trying to find out how long ago that had been but despaired of trying it. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a coin which he flipped to the man. “Gracias,” he said. He mounted up and turned back onto the road. Behind him he could hear the little man calling after him, “Gracias, señor. Gracias, señor.”

  Over the next hill, he was astonished to see a city laid out before him. That would make it all the more difficult to locate Dancer, he thought. He cursed and rode on in. As he reached the outskirts, he met a man on horseback.

  “Howdy,” he said.

  “Howdy.”

  “You see a man in black ride by here?”

  “No. Sure ain’t.”

  “Just one more thing, pard,” said Slocum. “Can you tell me where the hell I am?”

  19

  “Why, hell, stranger, you’re in Texas.”

  Slocum pointed toward the city ahead. “And that there—”

  “That there is El Paso.”

  Slocum rode on down into the city and found a saloon. At the bar he bought himself a drink. He had one more, and then he went out to look up a stable for his Appaloosa and a hotel room for himself. No one he spoke to admitted to having seen Dancer. In his room, he poured out all his cash, and he discovered that he did not have much left. He could spend another night or two in the room and eat his meals for those few days, have a few drinks. That would just about take care of it. Now he had to think about finding some work, but if he got himself a job, that would allow Dancer to put that much more distance between them. Well, he’d sleep on it. Maybe in the morning he would wake up with a nice clear head, and the world would look like a totally different place.

  He woke up the next morning with a belly grumbling hunger, and he recalled that he had not had any supper the night before. If his head was any clearer than it had been, it was only because the awful hunger had shoved everything else out. He couldn’t think of anything else. He dressed hurriedly and went downstairs. There was a café in the hotel, and rather than waste time looking for a better place, he went in there. He ordered flapjacks, and bacon, and eggs, and potatoes, and coffee. After he had finished it all, he ordered it all over again.

  At last, with his belly overfull, he got up to pay his bill. The amount astonished him. It took almost all the money he had left. He could not anymore afford even one more night in the hotel. He should have gone out looking for a cheaper place to eat. He thought that he could kick himself in the ass for what he had done, but it was too late to do any good. He had blown away most of his cash. He tried to console himself by thinking about how good it felt to be full, but when he did that, all he could think of was that in a few hours he would be hungry again.

  He went back to his room and packed up what little gear he had in there. Then he checked out of the room and took the gear to the stall where his horse was. He did have enough to pay for the stable. He would have to be careful and hold that much out. He knew that if he stuck around the damn city, he would want another drink or two come evening. Damn it, he thought, he would have to look for work. He had no choice. If Dancer was still running, he would just get farther ahead. That’s all there was for it.

  He decided to stop in the sheriff’s office and ask his questions. He had to do something and do it fast. The sheriff was in. He was a tall, slender man, dressed in a three-piece suit which looked to Slocum to be much too hot for this south Texas country. The man was in his thirties, and he sported a mustache that covered his mouth and chin. He looked up from his paperwork when Slocum walked in.

  “I know you,” he said.

  Slocum was taken aback. He did not recognize the man. As far as he knew, he had never seen him before.

  “Well, you got the advantage of me, mister,” he said.

  “You’re Slocum. John Slocum.”

  “Yeah. I know that.”

  “I’m Harvey Blalock. Sheriff here.”

  They shook hands, and Blalock offered Slocum a chair and a cigar. Slocum took them both and lit the cigar, but he was puzzled. “You, uh, you don’t have any dodgers on me, do you?” Slocum asked.

  Blalock laughed. “No. I got none. Why? Should I have?”

  “Far as I know, I’m not wanted for anything in Texas. Not just now. But how come you to know who I am?”

  Blalock laughed again. “I was in Fort Worth about five, six year ago when you killed those three worthless cowboys from Kansas. I don’t recollect their names. In fact, I probably never heard them in the first place. It was a dazzling display of gunmanship.”

  “I don’t remember you,” Slocum said.

  “No reason you should. I was standing by watching. That’s all. But it made a fine and lasting impression on me. Well, what brings you here?”

  “I’m looking for a man,” said Slocum. “Thought maybe you could help me.”

  “Has he got a name?”

  “Charlie Dancer.”

  “I ran him out of town two days ago,” said Blalock.

  “Which way’d he go?”

  “You mean to join up with him or kill him?”

  Slocum thought long and hard before answering. “I mean to kill him,” he said finally.

  “I can tell you where he went, Slocum, but I ain’t going to. Not just yet.”

  “How come?”

  “I need a favor. If you’ll do a little job for me, I’ll tell you what you want to know. I’ll even pay you for doing the job.” Slocum sat silent, waiting for more. A little cash in his pockets would be all right. “What do you say?” Blalock continued.

  “What’s the chore?” Slocum asked.

  “There’s a man called Jessup that has a place just across the line in Mexico. He’s a white man though. An American. He’s got some stolen horses down there, and I can’t go after them on account of the jurisdictional thing, you know. I can’t go after them, but I want them back in the worst way. They’re the property of a real important fellow here in El Paso. It would be worth, say, a hundred dollars to me to get those horses.”

  “What about Jessup?”

  “I don’t care about him one way or the other. Hell, you could have the job done and the money in your jeans by nightfall if you was to get right after it.”

  “Give me the details,” Slocum said.

  Slocum found Jessup’s place all right. It was a small adobe not far from the river. A corral behind the house held seven fine-looking horses. Slocum studied the layout for a time. If the seven horses all belonged to the man in El Paso, then Jessup wasn’t home. Or he was out for a long walk. This promised to be too easy. Something about it bothered Slocum, but he couldn’t pin it down. He decided to liberate the stolen horses and drive them home.

  The river was behind the adobe, and there was a grove of trees off to the left about a hundred yards. There wasn’t much else. He could see for a long ways. He rode down to the house and called out. No one answered. He dismounted and walked in. There was no one home, just as he figured. He went back out and got back in the saddle. Riding around to the corral, he opened the gate and started the horses along. Then all hell broke loose.

  Where the hell had they come from? It was as if they rose up out of the ground or materialized out of the dry air. There were four of them, but Slocum wasn’t counting. They were on all sides of him, and they were shooting. One bullet knocked the hat from his head, and another tore his left side. He flung himself off his horse, drawing his Colt at the same time. His first bullet found its mark, dropping one of the men in his tracks. Slocum rolled under the feet of the upset horses. He looked in another direction and snapped off a shot that broke the back of a second man. Then he was on his feet, looking over the back of one of the stamping, milling horses for another target. Someone grabbed him around the shoulders from behind.

  “I got him, Carl,” the assailant screamed. “Come on.”

  The one called Carl suddenly materialized in front of Slocum, who was busy trying to shake the other one off his back. When he saw Carl approaching, he stopped struggling and raised up his Colt. He could only raise it as high as his waist, for the man had his arms pinned to his sides from behind. But it was enough. He fired, and Carl jerked and twitched and growled and fell forward on his face.

  Then Slocum spread his feet apart, pointed the Colt between his legs, and shot the final man in the right foot. The man yowled and turned him loose. He hopped around on his good foot screaming and howling until he fell over on his ass. He held the wounded appendage in both hands. Somewhere along the way, he had dropped his weapon. Slocum looked at the wretch and thought about killing him, but there was no sense in it. Instead he found the revolver the man had dropped. He picked it up and tossed it away. He looked around. There were three bodies, and this wounded man. The seven horses had scattered, but he could still see them all. It would just take some time to round them up again.

  Then for the first time, Slocum saw some holes that had been dug in the ground around the corral. So that was the secret of the seeming materialization of these men. They had been hiding in holes in the ground. So once again, if the seven horses indeed belonged to the man in El Paso, then where were the four horses these men had ridden? He looked at the man sitting and sobbing in the dirt in front of him.

  “You blowed my foot off,” the man accused. “You might as well go on ahead and shoot me dead.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Slocum. “Are you Jessup?”

  “Hell, no. He was the first one you kilt.”

  Slocum thought for a minute, and then he remembered something he had seen in the adobe. He walked over to it and went inside. Taking a bottle of tequila off a shelf, he walked back out to the corral. He uncorked the bottle, took a swig, corked it again, and tossed it to the man. “Here,” he said. “Pour some on your foot and drink the rest.”

  He reloaded his six-gun, remounted his horse and set about rounding up the seven animals he had come after. It took a good part of the day, but he got them together again. The man in the yard was still just sitting there, drinking tequila, and now and then shouting obscenities at Slocum. Slocum drove the horses across the river and headed them for the sheriff’s office in El Paso. It was late in the day when he got them delivered, but Blalock was still there. He came out of the office smiling and counting out some bills, which he handed to Slocum. Slocum tucked them in his pocket and dismounted.

  “I see you got them all,” Blalock said.

  Slocum shot out a right that caught Blalock on the jaw and knocked him on his ass right there in the street in front of his office. Blalock sat up astonished and rubbed his jaw.

  “What the hell was that for?” he said.

  “That was for sending me out on a hundred-dollar job to gather a few horses, knowing all along I’d have to kill some men to do it.”

  “You go to stealing a man’s stock,” Blalock said, standing up slowly, “you got to expect some resistance from him.”

  “You don’t expect men to come crawling out of holes in the ground. It was an ambush. Carefully planned. And it was either for you or for the owner of these horses.”

  “And you think I knew about it?”

  “You had a pretty good idea, you son of a bitch,” Slocum said. “And now you still owe me something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where’s Dancer?”

  “Oh yeah. I’ll tell you over a drink.”

  “What about these horses?”

  Blalock waved an arm and called to a man on the sidewalk. “Take care of these horses,” he said. “Will you?” The man agreed. Blalock looked back at Slocum. He pointed toward the nearest saloon. “Over there,” he said. They started to walk toward the saloon together.

  “You’re buying,” said Slocum.

  “Fair enough.”

  Inside the saloon, Blalock got a bottle and two glasses and led the way to an empty table. The two men sat down, and Blalock poured the glasses full. They drank them down, and he refilled them.

  “Well?” said Slocum. “I didn’t come in here just to be sociable with you.”

  “No, you didn’t, did you? Although, I do admire to be sitting here and having a friendly drink with you. You were truly inspirational to me, Slocum. Now you’ve done it again. Killed four men this time.”

  “Three,” Slocum corrected.

  “Just three?”

  “The fourth one’s got a hole in his right foot.”

  “And you left him alive?”

  “Why not?”

  Blalock shrugged. “Well,” he said, “I wish I could tell you that Dancer was still here, but he rode out.”

  “You told me you ran him out of town two days ago,” Slocum said. “All I want to know is which way did he go.”

  “He headed for the Texas Hill Country,” said Blalock. “That’s all I can tell you. San Marcos maybe. Someplace like that.”

  “How’d you come by that information?”

  “He talked loose in the saloon,” Blalock said. “To the gals, even to some of the cowhands. They told me.”

  Slocum downed his drink and started to get up.

  “Hey,” said the sheriff. “What’s your hurry? It’s too late to start out on his trail tonight. We’ve got damn near a whole bottle of whiskey here to finish.”

  “I’ve had all I want,” said Slocum. He walked out of the saloon and got his Appaloosa. He left the horse in the stable and went back to the hotel. He had money again. He checked himself back in and went up to the room to get some sleep. As he lay in bed staring at the ceiling, he could not seem to drop off. He considered the way in which he had been used by Blalock. The son of a bitch had known there would be an ambush, and he had sent Slocum into it without telling him. Of course, he had paid reasonably well for the job, but Slocum would have liked it better had the bastard been straight with him from the beginning.

  Oh, well, what the hell? He had a hundred bucks on him. He was in a nice hotel room. His horse was being looked after, and after they’d both had a good night’s rest, they would be on Dancer’s trail again in the morning. If he could just get to sleep. God damn but it had been a bloody trail. He had met outlaws and lawmen, and damned if some of the outlaws hadn’t been the better men. He got to thinking about Torrino, and then he thought about Vicenti. He hoped that Torrino had gotten the old boy to a doctor in time to do some good.

  When this business was all over with, Slocum resolved, he would go back to Janos and find Vicenti, if he was still alive, and tell him what had happened. Hell, he might even take him Dancer’s head. Maybe his ears at least. He decided that he was thinking morbid thoughts, and he had better put them out of his mind. He’d try to think about women. That should do the trick. But the first one that came into his mind was Annie Talley, and that was more distasteful to him than was the thought about Dancer’s ears. At last, he drifted off to sleep.

  In the morning, he dressed and packed quickly. He wanted to be out of El Paso and on the trail again. He wanted to hurry up and bring this thing to a close. He went downstairs and walked up to the counter.