Dutch Uncle Read online

  DUTCH

  UNCLE

  Marilyn

  Durham

  ‘Thoroughly enjoyable, totally absorbing. . . the mixture becomes explosive, spine-chilling and heart-warming at the same time’

  Jake Hollander, former cardsharper, present gunslinger, finds his hands full of young orphans, old scores, women and gun butts.

  Reluctant marshal of a New Mexico mining town, he tangles with gamblers, bandits, prospectors, a parcel of mail-order brides and a sassy young miss out of his past.

  Add a busty brothel queen, stir in $10,000 and Jake finds a hell-brew of trouble on his plate.

  ‘Funny, raunchy, exciting’

  AMERICAN PUBLISHERS’ WEEKLY

  ‘Confirms Marilyn Durham as a lively romancer with a delightful sense of humour’

  COSMOPOLITAN

  ‘Warm, funny, dramatic...

  A splendid read’

  THE TIMES

  Also available by Marilyn Durham in Pan Books

  THE MAN WHO LOVED CAT DANCING

  Dutch Uncle

  Marilyn Durham is a native of Evansville, Indiana, where she had all her formal training and where she has continued to live since her marriage. Her first novel, The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing, was a bestseller, and was made into a highly successful film.

  Also by Marilyn Durham in Pan Books

  The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing

  Dutch Uncle

  Marilyn Durham

  Pan Books London and Sydney

  First published in Great Britain 1973 by

  Macmillan London Ltd

  This edition published 1976 by Pan Books Ltd,

  Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG

  ISBN 0 330 24724 7

  © Marilyn Durham 1973

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by

  Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press) Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  For my Grandmother,

  who always liked a good clean story

  But mostly for my mother,

  who doesn’t

  1

  The dust was usually ankle deep in the streets of Tucson when the wind wasn’t blowing it around. The merchants tried putting planks down at the corners for the ladies to cross on, but every wagon that came along knocked them apart and stirred the dirt over them until they were nearly invisible. It had been a good thought, though.

  The Mexican woman stood looking down at the drifted filth between the boardwalk and the first plank, as if of a mind to settle where she was rather than risk her skirts and boots in an attempt to cross. She was dressed in such unrelieved black, from bonnet to shoes, that she might have been on her way to Juárez’s funeral, and she clutched two equally somber children by the wrists, holding them back from the plunge.

  Jake Hollander had already given her a full minute of his attention when she boarded the train at Yuma. She had sat across the aisle and one seat forward, eyes closed, riding backward while her kids ogled him tirelessly over the near seat. Her face was sallow, almost waxy, and her eyes when she opened them were large and fierce, as if with pain or grief.

  She hadn’t acknowledged his examination of her or even appeared to notice it, nor did she speak more than a few terse words to her offspring. But Jake had formed one of his quick professional conclusions about her before turning his mind to other things.

  In spite of her rigid propriety and puritanical black dress — perhaps in some way even because of them — Jake Hollander had pegged her as a reformed whore. There was no shade of malice in the judgment, no reproach, and no interest; just the practiced eyes of a man who made his living on quick estimates.

  Now, when he drew even with her on the walk, she still seemed to be hesitating on the verge of a leap, so he circled her and made a long step out to the first board ahead of her. He was halfway across the street when he heard a high-pitched wail from one of the kids.

  ‘Mama!’ Still walking, he glanced back.

  She had fallen. She was crumpled face down in the street, with the two spindle-stick boys hopping and crouching around her like a pair of worried crows.

  Nobody was running to her rescue. A few of the other train passengers had stopped some yards back, consulting their nerve. There had been random outbreaks of smallpox all over the Southwest that summer, and people who fell over in their tracks weren’t necessarily just drunk.

  Jake stopped. He was pretty sure she wasn’t drunk, and smallpox was no threat to him. Still he hesitated, looking at the little heap she made in the dirt. Some of the others began to move forward slowly on the authority of their varied consciences, but by then Jake had already started back for her.

  She had been saved from asphyxiation by falling across the cheap, fat carpetbag she carried, but she was heavily floured with the dun-colored dust when he picked her up. Her eyes fluttered and closed as she sagged in his arms. The bystanders hustled up to see, now that she was safely in somebody else’s charge.

  ‘What’s the matter with her, mister? Too much sun?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Jake. ‘Is there a doctor around here?’

  ‘Just got off the train myself, same as you. There ought to be one in a town this size. She your little woman?’

  ‘No,’ Jake said irritably, scanning the clapboard-faced street for a doctor’s shingle. He saw none, but directly across from them were the hotel and saloon that had been his own destination. ‘Somebody pick up my bag for me.’ He carried her there, trailed by five or six interested transients and the two Mex kids. One of them was hauling both pieces of luggage while the other one trotted beside him, squalling with dismay.

  Inside the cramped hotel lobby he put her down on a settee that wasn’t long enough to include her feet, then brushed the results of their contact off his good black coat. She was drenched in a breath-stopping perfume that seemed to confirm his first estimate of her, but overriding that was the unmistakable stench of a fever. He stepped back as the clerk and manager bent over her. ‘If you’ve got a doctor around here I guess you’d better get him,’ he told the manager. ‘And if you’ve got a room left, I want it.’ He set his own black leather valise up on the desk and wrote ‘Jeb. Hollander, Sn. Frsco.’ in the register.

  ‘Yes, sir. Elmer, you run down to the billiard parlor and see if Doctor Cheathem’s having office hours now.’ He looked at the slight bulge under Jake’s breast pocket. ‘You can either check your weapon in with me, or down at the sheriff’s office. Or you can keep it in your valise. Just don’t wear it out on the streets. That’ll be three dollars.’ Jake looked at him coldly. ‘That’s the rules here, mister. I don’t make them, but I won’t say they aren’t good ones.’

  ‘Three dollars for a single room?’ Jake echoed with cool scorn. He slipped the gun from its shoulder holster and dropped it into his open valise, then locked it up again.

  ‘No, sir, that’s three dollars for a double. And of course we put in a day bed for the little ones, too.’ He demonstrated the smile of a tolerably forgiving man.

  ‘What little—’ Jake caught the drift of the manager’s eye. ‘They’re not mine, they’re hers. No connection. How much is the single room?’

  ‘Dollar and a half. Fifty cents more if you take a bath.’

  Jake nodded, satisfied, and stacked three half dollars on the desk beside his valise. Then he made the shortest path across the lobby to the adjoining bar.

  He had a beer first to clear his throat, and a judicious sample of th
e free lunch on the bar while he looked around. There was nothing of any interest to him in the hotel bar. He left it and tried the saloon next door.

  The saloon held more promise. Though it was still early in the day for a serious game, in the back of the long, wainscoted room there was a table encircled by a body of earnest-looking poker players. They displayed two characteristics Jake was always pleased to find. Each player telegraphed his current luck with little twitches and grimaces of unconscious candor, and they were playing for cash. He watched them from the anonymity of the bar, his thin, cold face gradually softening into an expression that was almost affectionate.

  In time he moved their way, drink in hand, to stand behind the most successful player and observe how he bet his hand. He wore a look of respectful attention. The one who was winning asked him to join them — smelling fresh meat — and Jake did so with mannerly caution.

  Travel was expensive, and he was determined not to dip into his money belt until he reached El Paso. Still, he let them take a bit out of his pocket cash before settling down to work.

  *

  When he returned to the hotel it was after midnight. There was no one in the lobby. He went straight up to his as yet unseen room, tired now, but satisfied with the evening’s profit.

  The cards had come his way all afternoon, so that he stayed far enough ahead to allow a pot to go from time to time to keep somebody happy. It hadn’t been his intention to clean out the rubes. With them he was friendly, even talkative, not too lucky, and a good sport when somebody else claimed a pot.

  He had discovered years ago that the good opinion of a rube was a free ticket to the bigger games in a strange town. The more accomplished and well-heeled players then took him for a lucky yokel himself and welcomed the opportunity to relieve him of his undeserved wealth.

  Luck had about as much influence on Jake’s game as rumors of the Second Coming. Not because he tried to force the cards, although when it came to that he had the hands of a conjurer, but because he put his confidence in the odds.

  By nine o’clock the hobbyists had begun to leave the table, and the serious players took their places. After a short period of testing on both sides, the blood flowed freely. The losers were silent, according to their code. They might also have begun to grow doubtful toward the end, but they could find no fault with his dealing or his punctilious observation of the rules. By the time the game closed out he had won, if not their friendship, at least enough money to take him another hundred miles in comfort along his chosen way.

  When he put his key in the hotel-room door and found it already unlocked, he frowned. But the moonlight coming through a long window inside showed the room to be undisturbed. The bed was turned down and his valise sat at the foot of it, unopened. He felt a moment of regret that his gun was in the valise rather than snug against his chest, but after another second spent listening to the silence behind the door and in the direction of the closet he went in with a sigh.

  No one had any reason to wait for him up here. Assault in a hotel room would be too noisy. The best place for a poor loser to recoup his losses was outside in the dark street.

  Without bothering to light the lamp, he undressed, hanging his clothes over the foot of the bed. Under his shirt and vest was the chamois money belt, which he unfastened and put beneath the pillow. Just to feel more secure about it he opened the valise and felt for the gun. He put that under the extra pillow so he could slide his hand up to touch it without effort.

  Naked, he fell into the bed and stretched out long legs that ached from inactivity. Just before sleep drowned him, he thought there was a subdued outbreak of voices somewhere down the hall and the jar of feet hurrying past. But they didn’t stop at his door. They were the last thing he heard that night.

  *

  A floor board creaked. He heard that, and the strange wordless whisper that followed it. He didn’t move or allow his breathing to alter while he listened. Sometime in the night he must have grown cool, because he could feel the slight weight of a cotton quilt thrown over his shoulders.

  Someone brushed against the bed, and the odd vocal noise was repeated, almost like a hum. Whoever it was must think he was drunk or dead to be so careless. The quilt pulled up to his chin helped to cover his right hand’s careful movement up under the pillow next to his head.

  His gun was gone.

  At the same instant he realized that, he heard the unmistakable cluck of a hammer being cocked. He opened his eyes while he still had time to see who it was that was about to use his own gun on him.

  The muzzle was at eye level with him but aimed higher. It wavered in and out of focus between him and the face of the person holding it — a damned kid! One of those Mex kids he had seen yesterday. He’d erased them from his mind so effortlessly that now he had to spend another second trying to recall how or where he had seen them.

  Anger flooded in with the memory, and he drew his breath for a shout that would send the little bastard flying. Then he let it out again, carefully.

  The gun, on half cock, was swinging back his way again. The kid was trying to pick out its cartridges with his fingers. He was breathing heavily with concentration, and again there was that sound; he was humming or mumbling to himself, but not in English.

  Jake tensed for a snatch at the weapon just as the boy raised his eyes and saw him awake. Jake’s hand snaked out from under the pillow and grabbed the gun, getting his little finger between the hammer and the cylinder and jerking up, just as the boy’s two thumbs brought the hammer back to full cock and slipped off.

  ‘What the hell are you up to, you little bastard?’ Jake yelled, making a futile swing at the brat’s head with his other hand as he sat up in bed.

  The boy started back with a rabbity shriek and fled around the bed, where he collided with the second boy on his path to the door. Jake had locked the door, and it was still locked.

  They fell against it, sobbing, as he released his pinched finger from the pressure of the hammer and flung back the quilt. He intended to rush them, knock their heads together, and throw them out. They seemed to see their death in his face, because they screamed in unison and fought the door handle, pulling at it instead of turning it.

  On his feet and towering over them Jake had a sudden sense of himself, a naked man threatening two mindless little animals with a pistol. He paused, still outraged, and glanced around to see how they had got in, then saw the cot against the far wall. Baffled, he stabbed the gun in its direction.

  ‘What the hell? You slept in here! Who put you in here?’ But they saw the gesture as a command and obeyed it, darting around him like terror-stricken cockroaches to throw themselves back on the cot and cling to it wailing.

  Amazement disarmed Jake. He threw the gun down on the bed and snatched up his clothes. His questions needed no answers. Who else could have put them in his room but the goddamn manager? In his room and on his bill, no doubt. He hauled his pants up to his lean waist and crammed in the tails of his crumpled shirt while he stoked his rage with more questions.

  Where was their mother? Why, nicely recovered from her little faint and working out her own expenses down the hall

  somewhere. He’d bank on it. Was this her standard routine in every new town? Flop out flat in front of some passing idiot and trust him to carry her in to a good bed, then kennel her pups for her while she went to work on her back!

  When he reached for his vest he saw that his pockets had been rifled. His winnings from the previous night were stacked and laid out on the floor decoratively, with his watch as a centerpiece. He grabbed up the money and counted it, glaring at the two brown faces on the cot between times, but it was all there and the watch still ticked. He stuffed the money and the watch back into his pockets, then got out the door key. They didn’t move when he unlocked and swung open the door.

  ‘Come on, get out of there. Out! Fuera! Pronto!’

  They slid out together and bolted for the freedom of the hall. At the head of the stairs
they passed the manager, just arriving with a pale, greasy smile.

  ‘I want to see you in about one minute!’ Jake snarled at him before he slammed the door again.

  He hadn’t touched the hidden money while they were in the room. He got it out now and pulled up his shirt to fasten it around his waist. With his savings snug against his body again he felt better. He tucked in the shirt, strapped on the shoulder holster, then put on his coat. He hadn’t shaved yet, but that could wait.

  When he jerked the door open again the boys were gone and the hotel man was still waiting, hands folded like some undertaker waiting to be paid.

  ‘Why did you put those two little greaser pickpockets in with me? Do they work for you? What do you do with them, run some kind of switch on the badger game?’

  ‘Mr Hollander, we — I had no wish to inconvenience you. Naturally, there’s no charge for them lo you—’

  ‘There damn well better not be!’

  ‘— and of course we — I should have obtained your permission first—’

  ‘You’d have played hell doing that!’

  ‘— but you were so late coming in, and there wasn’t another room, and their mother, as you know, was so ill—’

  ‘I’ll bet she was!’

  ‘— that we didn’t think you’d object. When you didn’t complain last night, I assumed that you had spoken to the boys and understood how it was with them. I must say, I thought it was very kind of you, indeed.’

  Jake looked at him with slowly ebbing suspicion. ‘All right. Fine. I’ve been kind. We’ll call it even, then, if you just take them back to their mother and tell her to kindly keep them out of my way from now on.’

  ‘But, Mr Hollander, that’s just what I was on my way to tell you. Their mother is—’ his voice dropped to a whisper — ‘dead.’ Jake looked at him stonily, once more suspicious of a catch. ‘We were very much concerned last night that her fever might prove to be something contagious and the whole hotel would have to be quarantined. It’s happened before.’