After his father got back and they buried her, he got out his long piece of leather and went to work on Karl. He drew blood. He slashed his buttocks to the point where Karl's legs were numb, not just his buttocks. Finally, Karl fell to the floor, sobbing, pleading for his father to stop.
A few minutes later, he heard the father outside. There was just the one shot. Karl knew immediately what it was. He'd have a lot of work to do, burying the two of them. He wanted good, deep graves.
He worked a full day and a half on those graves and he was proud of them. He shot and killed six coyotes in the process. For headstones he took large round rocks that sparkled like fool's gold and drew their names in heavy pencil.
He knew the coyotes would get them, but by then he'd be gone—and damned if he wasn't. Just going on eleven, he packed everything he owned and jammed it all into his father's carpetbag and then headed off to Dexter, the small town to the north. He'd already pretty much forgotten about his folks. They'd never especially liked him and he'd never especially liked them.
Who he couldn't forget was Daisy. Poor little Daisy.
Big for his age, and already with a frightening temper—it not only frightened other people, it also frightened him—he set off west.
Three weeks shy of his fifteenth birthday, he met Rooney in a most unusual way. He was standing on a street corner in Denver and happened to see Rooney, a red-haired runt, snatch a bag of groceries from an old woman. Rooney took off with the groceries. A cop just happened along. One of those coincidences that happen in real life but that you could never get away with in books or on the stage. The cop started chasing him and was closing on him.
Until Karl offered his services by innocently stepping into the cop's path and nearly knocking the man down. The thief got away. What Karl got was screamed at by the bully-faced copper.
Three blocks away, Rooney fell into step with him and said, "You could come in handy, kid."
The "kid" thing amused Karl. Rooney looked several years younger than he did.
From then on, the two became friends of a sort, even though Karl didn't especially like Rooney or trust him or have any respect for him. Friends—even though Rooney thought Karl was stupid, sneaky, and too often reluctant to do what Rooney told him to—friends of a sort.
All these years later, in a saloon in Junction Gap, waiting for a train that was still several hours away, talking to the man he didn't like, trust, or have any respect for, Karl Tolan said, "You think they figured out we paid off Valdez to give us the key?"
"Not all men are stupid, Karl."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning that not all men are stupid."
"Meaning me."
"Uh-oh, Karl's having his monthly visitor again."
"I hate when you say that."
"Yeah, well, there are a few things I don't like to hear you say, either."
"Yeah? Like what?"
"I don't want to argue, Karl."
"Just gimme one example."
Rooney sighed. "You'll just get pissed the way you always do when I offer constructive criticism."
"C'mon, just one example."
"You never fucking take a bath."
"Oh, yeah? I took a bath last week."
"That's just my point, Karl. You need to take a bath more often than once a week."
"What, so I can look like some dude the way you do?"
"See what I mean? I offer you constructive criticism—and at your request, mind you—and you go and get pissy on me."
"Nobody's getting pissy."
Rooney smiled. Pure ice. "Yeah, I noticed that."
"Maybe I won't be goin' to St. Louis with you, after all."
"Fine. It's a free country."
"Maybe I'll go to California."
"Whatever you want to do, Karl. It's up to you."
"Yeah," Karl said, sounding almost mystical, "California."
Rooney just couldn't seem to resist.
"Is this," he said, "anything like the time you were going to go to Montana or anything like the time you were going to go to Alabama or anything like the time you were going to go to Mexico?"
"You really don't think I can pull away from you, do you?"
Rooney gave him his most superior smile. "I was just asking, Karl. Just asking."
With seven hours to go before train time, Rooney told Karl he was tired and would get some sleep back in his hotel room. Emphasis on his. Usually, the two men shared a room, not exactly being in the robber baron category.
This time was different. And for a good reason.
Before heading back to the hotel, Rooney stopped off at a shop, bought himself a couple of good stogies and some magazines to read on the train during the daylight hours.
He also used this time to plan on how he was going to break into Karl's room.
For his part, Tolan went to a whorehouse. He paid six dollars for a lady with an ass of considerable size and a mouth as nasty as a cowhand's.
"You make good money on a gent like me," Tolan told her. "I'm quick."
When she saw how quick, she said, "You sure weren't kiddin' about bein' quick. You're about the quickest man I ever seed, in fact."
As he walked to the hotel, Tolan kept chewing on her remark. Quick, huh? He didn't mind himself sayin' he was quick in a joshin' sort of way. But the way she said it, he wondered if she really was joshin'.
Thinking about it soured him.
And then all of Rooney's superior bullshit came back to him too. Not takin' a bath often enough. Just because Tolan wasn't a dandy like Rooney. Just because Tolan found taking a bath to be a really complicated task. You had to take your clothes off, you had to lower yourself into the tub, you had to soak and scrub and get soap in your eyes and fart in the water, and then you had to get up and dry yourself off and put your clothes back on—it was an additional burden if you had to take your clothes to some Chinese laundry in advance—and then you had to put your socks and your boots back on. Who the hell wanted to spend all that time doin' all that bullshit?
Besides, splash on a little bit of that smelly stuff he bought off that barber in Idaho that time, who could tell you hadn't taken a bath?
What he should do now was get on a horse and ride as wide of that sawed-off little prick Rooney as he could.
That's what he should do.
But much as he hated to acknowledge that Rooney was right, he'd tried it so many times before. Got right up to the point of leaving—told Rooney off right to his face—and then just couldn't quite do it. Couldn't quite get on the horse. Couldn't quite leave.
But this time, dammit—
And then he got one hell of a good idea.
Rooney knew that this was not without risk. If Tolan caught him, he just might think of all the ways Rooney had pushed him around, humiliated him, stolen from him, and generally been what you might call a real bad friend.
So.
So he had to be very, very careful.
He had to get Tolan's money and then clear the hell out. He had a horse waiting for him at the livery. He hoped that he would be a good ten miles away before Tolan ever figured out what had happened.
Getting into the room was no problem. He'd merely slipped the desk clerk some extra money.
That was the easy part—the only easy part.
Tolan could turn any room he squatted in into something that even barnyard animals would shun. There was Tolan's stench, for one thing. Rooney opened the window. There was Tolan's messiness, for another. You wouldn't think a carpetbag could hold such a cornucopia of junk—reeking clothes; a collection of photographs depicting bovine naked ladies; an array of patent medicines that offered to cure every disease known to men of all colors, creeds, and political persuasions; and fruit that was now covered with maggots. Tolan had been told by some barfly somewhere that fresh fruit was one good way of holding scurvy at bay. The trouble was (a) you couldn't always find fresh fruit and (b) fresh fruit didn't stay fresh very long and (c) Tolan hated fresh fruit. He claimed he always got pieces of it stuck in his teeth and spent half the night lying in his bed with a quiver of toothpicks trying to get rid of the aggravating little chunks between his rotted black teeth.