Slocum 419 Read Online Free PDF

sat a bulky mechanical cash register and jars of hard candy. The place smelled of wood and metal and the faint aroma of stale hardtack.
    â€œHelp you, mister?” the man behind the counter said as he turned around at Slocum’s approach.
    â€œYou Wally Fowler?” Slocum said.
    â€œYep, I’m Mrs. Fowler’s boy, Wally. What can I do you for?” Wally grinned at his corruption of the standard customer greeting.
    â€œI wanted to ask you about your friend, I don’t know his name, who was caught up in the old badger game.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œThe man who was surprised with another man’s wife or gal friend.”
    â€œOh, that. That’s old news. What’s your interest?”
    â€œI’m more interested in the gal that got him into that fix and the man who claimed he was being dishonored.”
    Wally looked askance at Slocum. He was a wiry man, stood about five and a half feet tall in his boots. He wore a faded green shirt and a tattered vest with pencils jutting from one pocket, striped trousers. He had beady eyes and a furrowed forehead that projected over a slightly bulbous nose that was raw around the nostrils from a nasal drip that he wiped every so often with a crumpled handkerchief.
    â€œYou ain’t the law?”
    â€œNo. But I saw a man killed this morning, and I think a gal worked the plunger that dynamited the man from his mine.”
    â€œI hadn’t heard,” Wally said.
    â€œProbably one of your customers,” Slocum said. “Wilbur Nichols.”
    â€œWilbur? Hell, I just saw him last night. Had a drink with him.”
    â€œWell, you won’t drink with him anymore. What I’m trying to find out is who killed him and why, if I can.”
    â€œEverybody liked Wilbur.”
    â€œSomebody didn’t,” Slocum said. “That feller who got tangled up with a gal in a badger game. I need to talk to him.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œIt was a gal who dynamited Wilbur’s mine. Might be a connection there.”
    â€œAwww.”
    â€œI need his name,” Slocum said.
    Wally’s eyes went wide and rolled in their sockets.
    â€œMan’s name is Ed Jenkins. But you can’t talk to him.”
    â€œWhy?” Slocum asked.
    â€œBecause Ed’s dead. Somebody shot him in the back less’n a month ago.”
    â€œKnow who killed him?”
    â€œNope. He was backshot at his mine early one morning.”
    Slocum thought for a minute.
    â€œHe have any kin?”
    â€œNot that I know of.”
    â€œSo who got his mine, Wally?”
    Wally scratched his head.
    â€œDamned if I know. You might check at the assay office down the street. I know Ed filed a claim.”
    â€œAny other miners you know who got backshot or dynamited?”
    Wally blinked.
    â€œThere’s always somebody buys the farm up here. It’s a rough town. I seen a gunfight in the saloon one night. Two or three men started blasting away with Colts and they carried one of them out, and he was buried next day.”
    â€œMiner?”
    â€œHell, I don’t know. Drifter, maybe. Gold brings the bad men to town and they . . . hey, wait a minute. I just thought of something.”
    â€œWhat’s that?” Slocum asked.
    â€œA man came to town about four or five months ago. He looked like a gunslinger when we saw him belly up to the bar at the Mother Lode. ’Bout a week later, another’n come in and they acted like they knowed each other. And pretty soon there was a bunch of them. They didn’t buy any tools from me. They played cards and kept to theirselves. And one of ’em come in with a pair of pretty gals. I think they was his daughters. But he was one of the bunch all right.”
    â€œHow many, and do you know the names of any of them?”
    â€œThere’s a half dozen of ’em. That first ’un what come to town is the leader, I think. They called him Wolf. He’s got a