“Is that a fact?” Smoke asked.
“Oh, yes, it’s a fact,” Smith said. “You’ve got that money, plus the money you took from me in the card game last night.”
“Well, now, Mr. Smith, if I had known you were going to be that bad of a loser, I’ll be damned if I would have played poker with you,” Smoke said. “And here you told me you were a professional gambler and all. I guess it just goes to prove that you can’t always believe what people say.”
Smith laughed, a dry, cackling laugh. “You’re a funny man, Jensen,” he said. “I’ll still be laughin’ when I’m in San Francisco spending your money.”
“What makes you think you’re going to get my money?”
“Are you blind?” Smith asked. “There’s four of us here, and we’ve got the drop on you.”
“Oh, yeah, there is that, isn’t there? I mean, you do have the drop on us,” Smoke said almost nonchalantly. “By the way, Matt, do you remember that little trick I showed you?”
“I remember,” Matt answered.
“Now would be a good time to try it out.”
“Now?”
“Now,” Smoke replied.
Even before the word was out of his mouth, Smoke and Matt both drew and each fired two quick shots. Kelly Smith and the three men who were with him were dead before they even realized they were in danger.*
The mournful wail of a distant coyote calling to his mate brought Matt back to the present, and looking up, he saw a falling star streak across the black velvet sky. He closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep.
At dawn the next day, the notches of the eastern hills were touched with the dove gray of early morning. Shortly thereafter, a golden fire spread over the mountaintops, then filled the sky with light and color, waking all the creatures below.
Matt rolled out of his blanket and started a fire, then began digging through his saddlebags for coffee and tobacco. He would have enjoyed a biscuit with his coffee, but he had no flour. He had no beans either, and was nearly out of salt. He did have a couple of pieces of bacon, and they now lay twitching and snapping in his skillet, alongside his coffeepot.
After his breakfast of coffee and bacon, he rolled himself a cigarette, lighting it with a burning stick from the fire. Finding a rock to lean against, Matt sat down for a smoke as he contemplated his next move. It was clear that he was going to have to replenish his supplies.
“Spirit, I think it’s about time we went into town again,” he said.
Sometimes on the long, lonely trail, Matt felt the need to hear a human voice, even if it was his own. Talking to Spirit satisfied that need, and because he was talking to his horse, it didn’t seem quite as ridiculous as talking to himself.
Quigotoa
In the Casa del Sol Cantina the next morning, Odom rolled a tortilla in his fingers and, using it like a spoon, scooped up the last of his breakfast beans. He washed it down with a drink of coffee, then lit a cigar and looked up as Emerson Bates came over to his table.
“Here’s the man I was tellin’ you about,” Bates said, indicating the man who was with him. “His name is Paco Bustamante.”
The man with Bates was short, but looked even shorter by comparison with Bates. He had obsidian eyes, a dark, brooding face, and a black mustache that curved down around either side of his mouth. He was wearing an oversized sombrero.
Odom frowned. “He’s a Mex,” he said. “I don’t work with Mexicans.”
“Paco’s a good man,” Bates insisted.
“How do you know?”
“Me an’ him have done a couple of jobs together,” Bates said. He chuckled. “Besides, you slept with his sister last night.”
Odom took a puff of his cigar, then squinted through the smoke. “Well, if you come along—Paco—you only get half a share,” he said, setting the Mexican’s name apart from the rest of the sentence.
Without a word, Paco turned and started to walk away.
“Wait a minute,” Odom called to him. “Where you goin’?”
“For half a share, Señor, I don’t do shit,” Paco said. It sounded like “sheet.”
Odom laughed. “I reckon if you got that much gumption, you might do after all.”
Paco came back to the table.
“What will you do for a full share?” Odom asked.
“Anything you say, Señor,” Paco replied.
“There might be some killin’,” Odom suggested.
“I do not want to be the one who is killed,” the Mexican said. “But I do not mind if I am the one doing the killing.”
“You’re in,” Odom said.
If Odom had expected some expression of gratitude from Paco, he was disappointed, for neither by word nor gesture did he respond. Instead, he looked at Odom with his unblinking, black eyes.
“What about Schuler?” Odom said. “Did you get him?”
“Odom, are you sure you want Schuler?”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Odom said.
“He’s a drunk.”
“I know he’s a drunk. But he’s also a good powder man. The last job I pulled, the son of a bitch slammed the safe shut on me. I don’t intend to let that happen again. If I have to, I’ll blow the damn safe this time, but I want someone who can do it without killing us all. Now, go get him.”
“I already got ’im,” Bates said. “He’s out front.”
“Bring ’im in.”
With a sigh, Bates walked to the front door, pushed the beaded strings to one side, and called out.
“Schuler, get in here.”
The man who answered Bates’s call was of medium height and very thin. His face was red, though whether from a natural complexion, or from skin long unwashed and subjected to alcohol, no one knew. His eyes were so pale a gray that, at first glance they looked to be without color of any kind. He shuffled up to the table.
“You know why I asked for you?” Odom asked.
“Bates said you had a job for me.”
“I might. If you can do it.”
“I can do it.”
“How do you know you can do it?”
“You have something you want blown,” Schuler said.
“What makes you think I want something blown?”
“I’m a drunk,” Schuler replied. “You wouldn’t want me for anything unless it was for something that I was the only one who could do it. I’m a powder man. That means you want something blown.”
“Let me see your hands.”
“Why do you need to see my hands?”
“Hold them out here, let me see them,” Odom ordered.
Schuler held his hands out for Odom’s inspection. They were shaking badly.
“Damn,” Odom said. “Look at that. Hell, shaking like that, you couldn’t even light the fuse, let alone plant the charge.”
“Give me a drink,” Schuler said.
“You’ve had too much to drink already.”
“Give me a drink,” Schuler said again.
Odom poured a drink from his bottle and handed it to Schuler. Schuler tossed it down, then held his hands out again. They were as steady as a rock.
“I’ll be damn,” Odom said. “All right, you’re in.”
“I’m in what?”
“Does it really matter as long as there’s money in it?”
“How much money, Señor?” Paco asked.
Odom studied them through his half-drooped left eye. “A lot of money,” he finally answered. “If you was to take all the money the four of us have ever had in our whole lives and put it in one pile, it wouldn’t make as much as one share of the money I’m talking about now. Are you boys interested?”
Bates smiled. “Hell, yes, I’m interested. I told you that from the beginnin’, you know that.”
“What about you, Paco?”
“Sí, señor. I am interested.”