“Because,” Slocum said, “if Rankins will loan her the money for that land, then Granby’s wife is in danger.”

  Lorelei’s face went white as all the color drained from it.

  Hardesty scowled and cleared his throat.

  Slocum stared at the rancher, wondering what was going on in his mind.

  One thing was sure, Slocum thought, Hardesty wasn’t telling him all that he knew about Granby’s murder. The man was holding back and guarding a damned big secret.

  Slocum meant to find out what that secret was if it was the last thing he ever did.

  6

  When Slocum went to the jail the next morning, he was told that he could not visit the prisoner held there for murder. Nor would they give Slocum the name of the man they were holding in a cell.

  “You can see him in court,” the jailer said. “Court’s at nine o’clock. Hanging’s at noon.”

  Slocum felt a cold chill run up and down his spine.

  “So, that’s the way it is,” Slocum said.

  “That’s the way it is, mister.”

  The courtroom was not crowded. It was crudely furnished, except for the imposing judge’s bench, which loomed over the seats that looked as if they had once been pews in an old southern church. They had been sanded and polished and painted, but he could tell that the wood was old and had been weathered before being placed in the Del Rio courtroom.

  Slocum sat down and watched as the bailiff came in and out, placing papers on the judge’s raised cherry wood desk. Attorneys, dressed in morning coats and ties, came and went, spoke in whispers at their respective counsel ors’ tables. A young woman, pretty, dark-skinned, dark-eyed, dark-haired, came in and sat down near Slocum in one of the back rows. She wore a black lace shawl and a red and blue blouse tucked into an equally colorful skirt. She looked Indian or mestiza, perhaps Mexican, or perhaps part Spanish.

  Slocum was early, but he didn’t want to miss a chance to speak up on behalf of the accused. The large Waterbury clock on the wall indicated he had another fifteen minutes to wait for court to be in session. That is, if the judge was on time. The judge’s name was Andrew J. Wyman, as the wooden sign on his bench indicated in bright brass lettering.

  The dusky woman kept stealing glances at Slocum. And every time he turned to look at her, she turned her head away, as if afraid of being caught gazing at him. Finally, she did not turn away and Slocum gave her a reassuring smile. She got up from her pew and made her way over to where Slocum sat. She sat down next to him, wringing her hands as if she were trying to find the words she wanted to say to him.

  “I’m John Slocum,” he said.

  “And you’re here to see the judge sentence a man to death.”

  “I’m here to try and stop him from hanging an innocent man. And you?”

  “Oh, Mr. Slocum. You are the one. I was hoping you were.”

  “The one?”

  “The man who told the sheriff that my brother did not kill that man last night.”

  “The prisoner on trial is your brother?” Slocum’s face registered surprise.

  “Yes. His name is Luis Delgado. I am Carmen Delgado. We are from a poor family here in Del Rio. Luis is a dancer. We are both dancers. We dance for money. Our American mother taught us.”

  “Why was your brother at the Hotel Del Rio last night dancing with a woman? The woman who shot that man in cold blood.”

  “Ah, that is what I do not know. Except that he was paid to dance at the hotel. He did not know why.”

  “Tell me what happened, Carmen. Before your brother went to the hotel.”

  “My brother and I were dancing at a small fiesta in the barrio Hidalgo, a small community to the east of town. A man and a woman drove up in a buggy pulled by one horse. The woman, she wore a veil and we thought she was in mourning. The man, the one who drove the horse pulling the buggy, got out and spoke to my brother. He say, my brother told me, that the woman wishes to speak to him. My brother, he go over to the buggy and the woman give him some money. She say she wish to dance with him and tell him to meet her at the hotel last night. She say she will pay him much more money if my brother he do this.”

  “Do you know who the woman was?” Slocum asked.

  Carmen shook her head.

  “I do not know who she is. I could not see her face. My brother, he do not know either, I think.”

  “What about the driver? Do you know who he was?”

  “I know what he looks like. I do not know him. But he is here. In the court.”

  “What? He’s here? Now?”

  “I see him come into the court with the papers. Oh, there he is again.”

  Carmen did not point, but she cocked her head to one side in the direction where she saw the man. Just entering the courtroom again was the bailiff. He was carrying more papers. He wore a badge and a pistol. He was a big, florid-faced man, wearing a fairly new Stetson hat. He had orange sideburns that matched his hair, a shock of reddish hair that was straight and spiked, stuck out on both sides of his hat.

  “The bailiff was the man who drove the woman out to see your brother?”

  “Yes. He is the one.”

  Slocum studied the bailiff, surprised at Carmen’s revelation. What was the connection between the bailiff and the lady who murdered Granby? Who was she? And why did she set up an innocent man? What kind of heartless woman could do such a thing? Slocum knew there was a lot more to the case than he had first thought.

  “Do you know the bailiff’s name?” Slocum asked Carmen.

  “No,” she said.

  Slocum knew he could find that out easily enough. He would still have to trace out all the connections. By rights, he knew he should have taken the sheriff’s advice and be riding well away from Del Rio by now. But he couldn’t stand the thought of seeing an innocent man hanged for something he didn’t do. The injustice of it galled him and he could not live with his conscience if he didn’t at least try to do something about it.

  He knew what injustice was, Slocum did, and he knew what it was like for an innocent man to die. During the war, he had ridden for a time with Quantrill and his Raiders. When Quantrill hit Lawrence, Kansas, some of the men under his leadership went wild. They began shooting and raping and burning. But one incident stood out and he had never been able to erase the memory of it from his mind.

  Some men were holed up in a house with women and children. Quantrill’s men rode up and demanded that the men come out and surrender, assuring them that they would not be harmed. The women and children came outside and stood on the porch. The trooper in charge of the patrol told the women that their husbands would not be hurt. He told the children that they would not take their fathers away from them. All they wanted, they said, was for the men to come out and surrender. They would be treated kindly and be allowed to return to their families after Quantrill left Lawrence.

  The men inside the house believed the man who spoke to their wives. The wives and children begged their husbands and fathers to come outside and surrender to the nice men on horseback. Even Slocum believed that the soldiers would show mercy.

  Instead, the men came out, hugged their wives, kissed them, then walked off the porch toward the soldiers, their hands over their heads, and all hell broke loose. Quantrill’s men opened fire and shot the men to rags in front of their wives and children. The soldiers laughed and rode away, leaving the bleeding men to die in front of their home, cradled in the arms of their women.

  Slocum got sick and rode away from Lawrence and Quantrill, never to return. Later, he tracked down the four men who had committed the massacre, found them in St. Joe, Missouri, and called them out. He showed them the same mercy that they showed the innocent civilians they slaughtered in Lawrence.

  Slocum looked up at the clock on the wall. The hands stood at five minutes until nine.

  Then the bailiff opened a gate in the railing that separated the spectators from the counsel tables and headed toward them along the hardwood center aisle. He stopped and looked at Carmen and Slocum.

  “Are you witnesses for any of the cases being heard this morning?”

  “I am,” Carmen said.

  “What about you? You’re Slocum, ain’t ye?”

  “I am. I’m here as a witness, too.”

  “Ma’am, you wait outside the courtroom. There are benches in the hall. Slocum, you come with me. Judge Wyman wants to talk to you.”

  Carmen shot Slocum a look, as if she suspected him of betraying her. Slocum shook his head, held out his hands and shrugged.

  Slocum followed the bailiff back down the aisle as Carmen left the courtroom. The two men passed through the gate and the door the bailiff had been using to enter and leave the courtroom.

  Then Slocum followed the bailiff down a hallway to a room with the judge’s name on it. The bailiff knocked, then opened the door.

  Judge Wyman sat behind a large desk in front of a window. He looked, Slocum thought, like a gargoyle guarding the entrance to a government building lined with columns. His eyes bulged from a paunchy face with bulldog folds of skin marring his countenance. He had a small mouth with flabby lips that glistened with saliva. He chewed on a fat cigar. His black robe looked freshly pressed. His bald pate jutted out from it like an obscene bust of a living head sitting atop a draped display table.

  “This is Slocum,” the bailiff said.

  “Thank you, Rufus. You may go. Wait outside my door.”

  “Yes, sir, Judge.”

  Slocum stood there as the judge eyed him with those large fish eyes.

  “You come armed to my courtroom, sir?” Wyman said.

  “I didn’t see any signs outside.”

  “Well, sit down.”

  “I’ll stand.”

  “Sir, if you don’t sit down, I’ll call Mr. Early back in here and have him take you to jail for contempt.”

  “Is this how you treat witnesses?” Slocum asked.

  “First of all, Mr. Slocum, I determine who the witnesses will be, not you. And secondly, this is my courtroom and these are my chambers. You will do as you are told in either room or I will find you in contempt and put you behind bars. Is that clear?”

  Slocum shifted his weight.

  His movement did not sit well with the judge, who reached into a desk drawer and pulled a pistol out. He set it on the table in front of him, the barrel pointed at Slocum, the judge’s hand still on the butt of the little Smith & Wesson .38, much like the bellygun Slocum carried inside his belt.

  “I’m not going to shoot you, Judge,” Slocum said.

  “No, but if you don’t sit down right this minute, I might shoot you where you stand and rule it self-defense.”

  Slocum hesitated.

  The judge picked up the pistol again, aimed it at Slocum and cocked the hammer back.

  The clicking sounded loud in the silence of the room.

  The judge’s finger curled around the trigger and his mouth stopped worrying the stub of cigar poking from between his grotesque little lips.

  7

  Slocum sat down, his face impassive.

  The judge put the pistol back in its drawer, smiled.

  “You see, John Slocum, I know who you are. You don’t remember me, do you?”

  Slocum shook his head.

  “I’ve put on some poundage since the war, lost some hair on my pate, shaved off my beard. But I remember you, all right, and I know you’re a wanted man back in Georgia. Calhoun County, I believe. I think the sheriff has a flyer on you somewhere in his office.”

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

  “No, perhaps not. But I served under General Sterling Price, same as you. I believe General Lee made you a courier after Grant took Vicksburg, am I right?”

  Slocum nodded.

  “You came with quite a reputation. And after you rode with Quantrill, that reputation began to grow.”

  “I didn’t come to your court to swap war stories, Judge.”

  “No, indeed you did not. From what I understand, you are here to testify on behalf of the accused.”

  “He’s an innocent man.”

  The judge’s face flushed a rosy hue and his protruding eyes flashed with a sudden rage.

  “I am the judge here. Not you, John Slocum. I decide who’s innocent or guilty.”

  “I was an eyewitness to that murder last night. I saw . . .”

  The judge raised the flat of his hand to stop Slocum from saying another word.

  “Just hold on, Slocum. I’m not taking testimony here. I just wanted to remind you that you’re a stranger here and might be stepping into something you can’t handle. You may have thought you saw something last night, when in fact, you had been drinking strong spirits and might have been mistaken. We treat eyewitnesses with a great deal of skepticism here in Del Rio.”

  “I see,” Slocum said, knowing he was not going to get anywhere with Judge Wyman. Not here. Not now. He studied the man behind the desk, trying to picture him as he once might have been: in uniform, younger, with hair on his head, leaner. General Lee had appointed Slocum to be his courier to General Price. If Wyman had been with Price, he should remember him. Price had been the man who had sent him to join Quantrill, before Lawrence, before Bloody Kansas. Yes, he should remember him. He did remember him.

  “You were Price’s adjutant,” Slocum said.

  “Aide-de-camp.”

  “You gave me a hard time. Why?”

  Wyman glowered at Slocum.

  “You were just a raw kid, a country boy, back then.”

  “You got something against country boys?”

  “I thought you were favored by General Lee because of what your father did at Manassas. William Slocum, wasn’t that his name?”

  “My father was killed at Manassas.”

  “I know. That was part of it. He commanded the militia out of Georgia. I knew him. I didn’t think he was a hero, like they said. Got killed by a minie ball, I believe.”

  “He was a hero to me, and so was my brother, Robert.”

  “Robert Slocum. Yes, I heard about him, too. He was with Stonewall Jackson. Got killed at Gettysburg leading a charge. A failed charge, I believe.”

  “That was Pickett’s fault. My brother fought bravely.”

  “Well, I was the one who asked General Price to put you under Quantrill’s command. You fit the kind of men he had in his outfit. Rabble, if you ask me.”

  “So, now you’re still giving me a hard time, is that it, Wyman?”

  “That’s Judge Wyman to you, Slocum. No. The war’s over. But you went back to Calhoun Country down in Georgia and raised hell.”

  “The damned carpetbaggers stole my pa’s property, cleaned us out. I killed a crook. In self-defense.”

  “You killed a judge, Slocum.”

  Wyman’s eyes flashed a blazing hatred that seemed to flare up in him like a flash fire in a greasy skillet.

  “A crooked judge, who stole my family’s land.”

  “The law has a long memory, Slocum. Before you testify here today, I just wanted you to know where you stand with me.”

  “You’ve made it pretty clear, Judge.”

  “Good. Just so we understand each other.”

  Slocum stood up, knowing that he was about to be dismissed. He looked down at Judge Wyman, who was still seated at his desk.

  “Do you believe in justice, Judge?” Slocum asked.

  “That’s why I’m a judge.”

  “Then, that’s all I need to know. Is the accused going to get a jury trial?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. Then, if you mete out justice, you have nothing to worry about.”

  “What are you getting at, Slocum? Are you threatening me?”

  “No, Judge. I’m just watching you.”

  “Get the hell out of here. The bailiff will call you when it’s your turn to testify.”

  Slocum did not reply. He turned on his heel and walked out. The bailiff was standing just outside the judge’s door, one hand resting on the butt of his pistol.

  “Expecting trouble?” Slocum asked innocently.

  “Follow me outside the courtroom,” the bailiff said, never batting an eye.

  Slocum sat outside with Carmen. She asked him what had happened inside.

  “Just a friendly talk with the judge,” he said.

  “Friendly?”

  “Not really, Carmen. He’s trying to scare me off from testifying on your brother’s behalf.”

  “But you will do this?”

  “I will testify as to what I saw last night. Yes.”

  “Good.”

  They did not have to wait long. Slocum heard the judge call the courtroom to order and then he heard the mur murings of the prosecuting attorney, followed by a more subdued voice extolling the virtues of the accused, who had no prior criminal record.

  The bailiff came through the doors and beckoned to Carmen, who followed him inside. Slocum strained to hear the questioning and her answers, but the voices were too muffled. Then it was quiet. He waited for Carmen to return, but she did not. He heard arguing from inside the courtroom and then it was quiet once again, for a few moments.

  The bailiff came for Slocum and he went inside the courtroom. He was sworn in and took the witness chair. He looked over at the defendant’s table and saw Luis Delgado sitting with his attorney. Behind him, Carmen sat, a worried look on her face. Delgado’s eyes seemed full of pleading as he returned Slocum’s gaze and John thought that the trial had probably not been going his way.

  The defense attorney introduced himself as Emory Davis. The prosecutor’s name was LeRoy Richards and when he spoke, Slocum could almost see him drooling, so eager was he for a conviction. At any cost.

  “Mr. Slocum,” Davis began, “you were at the Del Rio Hotel last night?”

  “I was.”

  “Do you see anyone you recognize from last night now here in the courtroom?”

  “I do.”

  “Could you point that person out for the court, please?”

  Slocum pointed to Delgado.

  “Let the record show that the witness pointed to the defendant, Luis Delgado.”

  A woman sitting in front of the bench wrote something down in a ledger. Slocum wondered if it was shorthand and if it was accurate.