Why had he been chosen to hang for the murder of Granby? Out of all the people in Del Rio, why Delgado? And who had been the woman who danced with him and fired the killing shot? He would have to get to the bottom of that. And somewhere in the mix was the bailiff, Rufus Early. He had been the one to contact Delgado and take him to the hotel. So Early was in on the scheme as well. Judge Wyman’s bailiff.

  And finally, Slocum wondered who the two men had been who came to murder him in his hotel room. Did Hardesty know about that? If so, why had he brought his daughter, Lorelei, to town? If Lorelei had been in his room when the killers came, she would have been dead, too. Was Hardesty that cold-blooded? Would he stop at nothing to achieve his goal of wealth? It was hard to imagine a man who would kill his own daughter, but it was not beyond all reason.

  The more he thought of those things, all the loose ends, the more puzzling everything became for Slocum. What he should do, he knew, deep in his heart, was to ride out the next morning and leave Del Rio behind. Forget about Delgado and Hardesty, Wyman and Fernandez and all the little soldiers carrying spears in this complex Greek tragedy.

  But he wouldn’t do that. He had an itch, too. Not for wealth, but for knowledge.

  Somehow, he knew, he had to find out who the woman was who had murdered Granby. And he had to find out why Wyman and Fernandez would conspire to murder innocent men in public.

  In Slocum’s experience, this puzzle seemed to point one way. In most men’s affairs, in war and in peace, there was always a common denominator behind what men did to each other. It could be summed up by an old French saying that he had read in a dime detective novel: Cherchez la femme.

  “Look for the woman.”

  Somewhere, Slocum thought, behind the murder of Granby, the hanging of Delgado, the attempts on his own life, there was a woman.

  He had neglected to focus on Granby’s wife. She was now with Hardesty as if that had been prearranged. If so, why? But she had not shot her husband. She had been a witness. A lying witness, no doubt.

  No, there was another woman behind all of this and Slocum had a strong hunch where to look for her. In a way, she was the most enigmatic of all the people involved in the hangings, murder, deceit and betrayal.

  One woman.

  A woman with the cold heart of a killer.

  And that was the woman he must find.

  15

  Abeja returned with a large wicker basket of hot food for his and Slocum’s supper. They sat down to a meal of spiced beef strips, steaming tortillas, refried beans and rice, which they washed down with a sturdy red wine. The two men spoke little during the meal, but afterward, outside, Abeja accepted a cheroot from Slocum. The two men leaned against the adobe wall in the darkness, looking up at the tapestry of bright stars spread across the heavens.

  “You will see the banker tomorrow,” Abeja said.

  “If I can. But I don’t think he will be of much help.”

  “You want to know why Luis Delgado was made to look like a murderer.”

  “I think I know why, Abeja. I just don’t know who planned it. I think there is a woman behind it. After all, it was a woman who shot and killed the rancher, Granby.”

  “I think you know how to track the fox,” Abeja said. “Who is the woman?”

  “I don’t know. Wish I did. Someone very cool and calculating. Do you understand what I mean?”

  “A cat,” Abeja said, his deep voice soft like a dry corn husk stirred by a gentle breeze. “Very patient, eh? Very sure.”

  “Yes. The woman danced as if she had not a care in the world and then she shot a man in cold blood.”

  “Then you will know who to look for, Slocum.”

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know where to start.”

  Abeja drew on the cheroot and smacked his lips as he let the smoke back out of his lungs. The smoke rose in the air over his head like a thin scrim over the sky. The stars twinkled like the distant lights of a town.

  “The wolf can wear the hide of an antelope,” Abeja said. “The antelope will think the wolf is of their tribe. Until the wolf wants to eat one of them. Then the wolf gives himself away. When he opens his mouth to bite, he becomes a wolf again and the antelope hide falls off.”

  “Like a leopard cannot change its spots,” Slocum said.

  “Is this how you say it in English? One is who he is. A thing is what it is. The wolf cannot be the antelope. The spotted leopard cannot paint its spots.”

  “Yes. Like a man’s habit. Or a woman’s.”

  “Follow the tracks,” Abeja said. “Always follow the tracks. These, too, do not change.”

  Abeja left a short while later and Slocum went inside. There was no latch on the door, so he could not lock it. This did not bother him. He was a light sleeper and always kept one eye open when he was sleeping under the stars or in a strange bed.

  As he lay there on his bedroll atop the sleeping mat, he thought of Carmen, wondered how she was handling her grief. Her house was probably filled with women helping her to get through it. But it was a sad time and his own heart was filled with a kind of sadness that had as much to do with justice as it did with Delgado’s wrongful death. An innocent man had died. Why? Because of another man’s greed.

  He had run into greed after the war when he returned home to find crooked judges and carpetbaggers gobbling up all the land for next to nothing. People taking advantage of others, less fortunate. Yes, the South had lost the war, but they were still Americans, and the men had been off fighting for what they believed was a just cause, the right to choose their own destiny, without interference from the government. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; all guaranteed by the United States Constitution. But that was not what Slocum had found back in Calhoun County, Georgia.

  Drowsiness overtook him and Slocum dropped off a dark precipice and into a deep sleep. He had been more tired than he had thought, he supposed, and he found himself swimming deep in dream, oblivious to all danger, all outside cares of the waking world.

  Slocum turned over in his sleep and that might have saved his life. He heard a thud from somewhere far off in the dream, and through the cotton of his ears, rough, gruff voices, whispering. Instantly, he was awake and scrambling to get away from hands that were reaching for him, grasping his neck as if to choke him into senselessness or death.

  “You son of a bitch,” a gravely voice intoned, “you were told to get your ass out of town.”

  “Get him. He’s gettin’ away,” another voice growled.

  Slocum heard scuffling noises and tried to adjust his eyes to the darkness of the room. It was pitch-black and he could not make out any definition of objects.

  “Where is he?”

  “He ain’t down there, Smitty.”

  Suddenly, Slocum knew who his attackers were. The two deputies, Smitty and Jones. He lashed out at the last voice he heard, Jones’s, and felt his fist strike cloth, a soft mass, like a shoulder.

  “Ow,” Jones whispered in a loud voice. “The bastard.” Then one of them, probably Smitty, drove a fist into Slocum’s gut. He felt the air rush out of his lungs and he doubled over in pain. He heard a hissing sound over his head and knew that Jones had taken a swipe at him.

  “Slocum, you can make it easy on yourself,” Smitty said. “We just mean to give you a drubbing and run you out of town. Don’t make us kill you.”

  Slocum drew back and loosed a straight shot at the sound of the voice. His knuckles smashed into something hard that went soft as mush. He felt a warm rush of blood drenching his knuckles and knew he had probably broken a nose.

  Slocum circled his invisible attackers, pushing away from the wall, sliding along another until he ran into the edge of the big table. He heard one of the men crash into a chair and send it skidding across the floor in a screech of wood. He waded out into the center of the room, away from the table where he would have been trapped and bowled into a body. He rammed a right and a left into the man’s midsection and side, heard him grunt and expel air from his lungs. He sidestepped and ducked a haymaker, then rammed an uppercut into the man’s chin, knocking him backward into the table.

  The other man, Smitty, he thought, came at him then, wielding a pistol, Slocum believed, and slashed at him with the butt, just grazing his arm and bouncing off his shoulder. Slocum kicked at the man, aiming for the groin. He hit a leg, the upper thigh and the man grunted in pain.

  “Get him, Jonesy,” Smith snarled. “Knee him in the nuts.”

  Slocum felt hands grab at him, grasping his shoulders. He doubled over and spun away as Jones rammed a knee toward Slocum’s groin. Slocum felt a fist slam into the side of his face, mashing his left cheek. A starburst of lights exploded in his head and he reeled from the solid blow. The two men closed in on him and fists slammed into his sides and solar plexus. He groaned in pain, knowing he would go down if he didn’t escape their pincer movement.

  Darker shapes moved in front and around Slocum, as if his eyes were becoming adjusted to the darkness. He warded off fists and kicking boots, swaying from side to side to avoid the blows that sailed out of inky blackness into forms that danced before his eyes like black blobs. But he knew he was outnumbered and the deputies could see better than he, for they had come through the night and their eyes had adjusted.

  Slocum lowered his head and charged between the two men, his fists flailing at the end of his windmilling arms. He smacked flesh on their faces and felt them move away under the impact of his balled up fists. But then they grabbed at him and snatched at his clothing, holding him back. A fist hammered into the small of his back and he felt pain surge through him. He spun around again and started looking for a way out. Where was the door? No light seeped through the opening in the adobe and he knew the door was closed, locking out starlight and moonlight.

  They were on him like pouncing cats, pummeling him with hammer-hard fists. He felt blood streaking from a fissure in his check as a fist broke the skin. A fist slammed into his right eye and blinded him with pain. The eye began to swell and the darkness around him grew as tears flowed from the swollen eye.

  Now, it was all pain and Slocum felt his resistance ebbing. He rammed an elbow into one of the men, but that only made him a better target. He grappled with the other man and felt the weight of him on his arms, pushing him downward. Then his legs turned to rubber and jelly as a flurry of fists drove into his belly and chest, seemingly from all directions.

  “You’re goin’ down, you bastard,” Jones rasped and Slocum felt a fist smash into his jaw. More lights danced in his head and then his knees bent and gave way. He slumped down under the rain of blows and one of the men rammed a knee into his face, breaking the skin, smashing veins and capillaries and knocking him senseless.

  Then the door burst open and he heard a voice he recognized.

  “Let’s light a shuck. Finish him off.”

  Slocum barely saw Rufus Early’s silhouette in the open doorway.

  One of the men stepped up to him and smashed him with the butt of his pistol, hammering straight down on the top of Slocum’s head and the dancing lights blurred and vanished as he sank into a Stygian pit where there was no light, no sense, no anything but oblivion.

  Somewhere in the distance he heard footsteps and the scrapings of boots and then all sound faded. He fought to rise out of the well of blackness, but all thought was jumbled, askew, useless and he lay there panting in his deafness, his lungs burning, his body screaming in pain. One of the men had kicked him before bolting out the door and Slocum felt the agony of it in his side as if his body had caved in and there was a bruise there, spreading like a blazing stain.

  Slocum sank into unconsciousness, shackled in the irons of pain like some battered prisoner chained to a dank dungeon wall.

  The bare beginnings of feeble sunlight streamed through the open door of the adobe. Slocum awoke to groans somewhere outside. His head throbbed with a pulsating pain and his body seemed to be one huge bruise from the top of his head to his ankles. He struggled to his knees, feeling knives in his ribs where one of the attackers had kicked him. He steeled himself and rose to his feet. He stood on wobbly legs, struggling to get his bearings through a fuzz of thoughts that seemed all tangled up like frayed yarn.

  “Slocum,” a voice called from outside. The voice was weak and raspy, but Slocum recognized it as belonging to Abeja. “Slocum.”

  “Give me a minute,” Slocum said, forcing his voice through a throat sore from the pounding he had taken. Blood caked the side of his face and his ears rang like church bells on Sunday morning.

  He wobbled to the door, every step bringing pain that shot through his body like hot lances, or knifed his torso with stinging daggers.

  Abeja lay outside, bound with manila rope, his hands and feet tied tightly, the rope knotted several times. The sun was not yet up over the horizon, but there was plenty of light now, light that spread to the shadows of a sleeping village, its inhabitants seemingly unaware of the fight that had occurred in their midst sometime in the early morning hours.

  Slocum untied Abeja and watched as he stretched his arms and legs, rubbed his wrists to restore the circulation of blood to his fingers and hands.

  “They jumped me,” he said. “They knocked me cold. I just woke up.” He looked up at Slocum. “You look like they got you, too.”

  “They found us,” Slocum said.

  “They did not kill you.”

  “No, and I’m not sure why. They were trying to run me out of town, I guess.”

  “And will you now go away?”

  Abeja got to his feet. He stood there with his feet wide apart, as if for balance, and shaded his eyes from the rising sun.

  “No, Abeja. Those boys chalked up a big debt with me. There were two of them who worked me over, Smitty and Jones. But the bailiff, Early, was outside, I guess to keep anyone from coming in or to watch over you.”

  “What will you do, Slocum?”

  “If they come at me again, I will kill them,” Slocum said, and his jaw, despite the pain, hardened until a muscle twitched like some warning nerve, the same way a cat’s tail quivers just before it makes its kill.

  16

  Carmen tied the last of the tightly wound strips of cloth she had used as a bandage around Slocum’s rib cage and sat back to survey her work. She had put some kind of a mixture on his chest and side that was cool and soothing.

  “I do not think they broke any of your ribs,” she said. “But you must be sore all over. Poor Abeja. He never complains, but he has a knot on his head as big as a duck egg.”

  “Abeja and I were both lucky,” Slocum said.

  Slocum and Abeja had walked, painfully, over to Carmen’s house after drenching themselves with water from the town well, and she had prepared breakfast for them, then tended to their wounds.

  “In Del Rio, if you stay, John, your luck may turn bad.”

  “I have to get to the bottom of this conspiracy, Carmen. I am going into town today to ask some questions. I will not be here for your brother’s wake. But I will pay my respects this morning, before I go. I am sorry for your loss.”

  “I do not know what my mother and I will do,” she said. “With my brother gone, we will have no way to earn money. He was our support.”

  “What did your brother do?” Slocum asked.

  “He worked for Mr. Hardesty on his ranch,” she said.

  Slocum reared back in his chair.

  “What?”

  “I said that Luis worked for Mr. Bill Hardesty. That is why I was surprised that he did not say some good things about my brother at the trial.”

  “Do you know what your brother did for Hardesty?”

  “He worked the cattle. He was a vaquero. But for the last month, he told us that he was digging in the ground on some land.”

  “Digging? Where?”

  “On some land Mr. Hardesty wanted to buy.”

  “Did he tell you if he found anything?”

  “Just before . . .” Carmen choked up and tried to keep from breaking down and crying. She sniffed and dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, then continued. “Maybe a day or two before . . . you know . . . he said his shovel struck some metal and some wood. Mr. Hardesty was there. He said that Mr. Hardesty sent him back to the rancho.”

  “So, your brother never did find out what was in the ground?”

  “No. He said it looked like a chest. It was made of wood and had metal straps on it.”

  “Do you know if any other men who worked for Hardesty were ever hanged?”

  A look came over Carmen’s face, as if someone had wiped it with a hot cloth. Her eyes glittered and her lips tightened in a grimace.

  “Let me think,” she said.

  Slocum waited.

  Finally, Carmen drew in a deep breath, then let it out.

  “That’s funny,” she said, “because my brother mentioned that when he first started to work for Mr. Hardesty . . .”

  “What?”

  “Luis said that it was a . . . a . . . , oh, what is the English word? Like a bad thing, maybe, to work on the Rocking H.”

  “A jinx?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The jinx. He said that two other young men he knew, Pablo Cardoza and Rafael Fuentes, had been caught stealing cows and the judge had hanged them. I did not think anything of this at the time.”

  “Anyone else?” Slocum asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I do not know. Those are the only two I can think of. We did not believe either Pablo or Rafael had stolen any cattle. They were honest men.”

  “I’m sure,” Slocum said, his mind racing.

  He knew he had to find out more. But a pattern was emerging, and it was ugly. And diabolical. It began to look like Luis Delgado wasn’t just a random pick for a setup, but that there was a purpose behind his execution that, in a sense, killed two birds with one stone. If Hardesty had wanted to shut him up because Delgado had found one of the strongboxes containing gold, and if he had wanted to eliminate Granby as the buyer of the valuable property, then the job had been pulled off very neatly. Almost.