Slocum’s ears had perked up, too, but he hadn’t been so foolish as to show it. Suddenly, Drug Cassidy’s presence was forgotten. All Slocum could hear was the kid.

  “Sure, I heard of him! Fastest gun in the Territory,” the boy went on energetically. “Some say fastest this side of the Big Muddy!”

  The kid was maybe nineteen years old, dark-haired and good-looking, but with that overeager demeanor that Slocum had come to loathe.

  The boy wasn’t wearing a gun—didn’t look like he’d ever strapped one on—but Slocum pegged his type right away. His worn cuffs bore ink stains and he probably worked as a minor clerk at some office or other. But he stamped a mental label on him and filed him away under the general heading of “Fool.”

  The man who had dropped his name was the same sonofabitch who’d been orating, up toward the front of the bar. Slocum hadn’t said a word—’fact, the fellow was hardly aware of his existence—but Slocum had learned a whole lot about him inside of just three minutes.

  The white-fringed dandy was called Teddy LeGrande, although that meant nothing to Slocum. LeGrande was out of Santa Fe, and he’d come here to do some kind of job, although he was elusive—in a winking way—about just what that might be.

  Slocum knew, though. In these parts, Tate McMahon was the only man with the wherewithal to put a hired gun on his payroll, even a rigged-up, rigged-out gun like this one.

  And it appeared that LeGrande wasn’t the only gun McMahon had hired. Drug Cassidy’s appearance in town was just too goddamn coincidental. Of course, that bastard Cassidy had the good sense to sit back and not call attention to himself, unlike the fringed dandy at the bar.

  So did Slocum, for that matter.

  Teddy LeGrande’s eyes narrowed, and for the first time Slocum saw that there was a killer lurking beneath the Wild West Show veneer.

  LeGrande stared at the kid and said, “You seen him?” The boy, too, reacted to the sudden change in LeGrande’s demeanor.

  He gulped and said, “N-no, sir. I was only sayin’ that I heard of him. He’s supposed to be faster’n greased lightning! Why, he took out Big Ricky Trumble up in Wyoming! He shot it out with the Piper brothers down in Nogales and killed ’em both. He—”

  “Would you know him if you was to see him?” LeGrande cut in, without altering his expression.

  “I . . . I guess not,” the boy admitted. “I never see’d him afore. But I heard—”

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, kid,” LeGrande said, his amiable smile returning. “Now, beat it.”

  The boy turned, but not before LeGrande theatrically raised a foot and booted him in the leg. The kid stumbled and fell.

  Both members of LeGrande’s audience found this hilarious, as did LeGrande.

  The boy’s features knotted and his hands flexed into fists, but he picked himself up and backed away, out of range.

  “Your big hero, Slocum, can’t hold a candle to Teddy LeGrande, boy,” LeGrande said through his laughter.

  Don’t ask him, kid, Slocum thought with an audible groan.

  But the boy did anyhow. Rubbing his thigh, he asked angrily, “So, who’s Teddy LeGrande?”

  Slocum sighed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Drug Cassidy, at the rear table, stiffen almost imperceptibly. His right hand stayed on the table top, though.

  Well, that was good, Slocum supposed. Two times now, Cassidy had proved that he didn’t want any trouble. Public trouble, anyway.

  He flicked his gaze back up front.

  “Hold this,” LeGrande was saying. He tossed the boy a silver dollar.

  Fumbling, the lad caught the cartwheel and clutched it to his chest dumbly. He’d probably just stopped in here for a quick beer on the way home. He was dressed like a petty clerk. Neat and clean, but a little worn around the edges, and quite possibly underpaid.

  And he probably spent too much money on dime novels for his own good.

  “Hold it up, boy, ’less you want to take a slug where you’re holdin’ it now,” said LeGrande.

  Once again, the boys at the bar thought this was pretty damned funny.

  The kid didn’t, though. Trembling, he held the coin up with his left hand, barely gripping it by the edge.

  “Back up,” LeGrande demanded.

  The kid backed all the way to the wall and hit it with a thump as LeGrande drew his gun. There was more laughter from the yokels at the bar.

  And Slocum was thinking that this was the kind of kid, who, if he lived through this episode, was liable to come after LeGrande with a gun. He looked fool enough.

  With no further thought, Slocum moved to intervene. But before he could take a single step, Teddy LeGrande fired.

  The silver cartwheel flew into the air as the kid yelped and stuck his fingers in his mouth. LeGrande now joined in the laughter.

  “Pick that up and take ’er with you,” he said. He twirled his gun on his index finger, then jammed it back into its holster. Quite grandly, he added, “A keepsake of the time you met Teddy LeGrande, for real and in person.”

  Pulling his fingers from his mouth only to stick them beneath his armpit, the kid nearly cried, “You busted my finger!”

  LeGrande cocked a brow. “Be glad that was all,” he said, then turned his back on the boy. “Another one,” he said, and slid his empty mug spinning toward the barkeep.

  The boy, powerless and near tears, bent and scooped up the silver dollar with his good hand, pausing to peer at it. Slocum saw the bullet hole drilled through it before the kid shoved it in his pocket.

  Not too proud to take that souvenir, though, are you, junior?

  Slocum shook his head tiredly. It was getting so that his life had turned into a series of repeating loops. The details changed, but the basics remained the same.

  And he thought, for not the first time, that he was getting too old for this horseshit.

  The boy stood there a moment, behind the back of Teddy LeGrande, as if considering his options and finally seeing none at all. Angrily, he banged out the batwing doors, presumably on his way to visit the doctor.

  Slocum noted that it was his left hand that had been injured. Too bad. A busted up right one would save them all a whole lot of grief later on.

  Of course, he could be wrong.

  He hoped he would be.

  He flicked a glance back toward Drug Cassidy, who remained in the same place, sipping the last of his beer and apparently unfazed. Amazing how he just faded into the background like that. It must be a goddamned gift or something.

  Slocum knew that even though Drug Cassidy’s attention seemed to be focused on his beer mug, he was aware of everything and everybody in the place, as well as what was going on out on the street. Hell, probably in the shop-front next door, too!

  Sneaky old peckerwood.

  And then Drug Cassidy stood up, stretched, and slowly ambled from the bar as anonymously as Slocum imagined he’d come in.

  It’s about time I took care of this, Slocum thought, and reluctantly gulped down the last of his beer.

  He thumbed the strap from his hammer before he walked past Teddy LeGrande, but there was no need. LeGrande was so swept up in his own story—this one was a real horse-choker about shooting Boss Tucker in a duel on the streets of Dodge City—that he didn’t even notice Slocum’s passing.

  Slocum stepped outside, glanced right, then left. No sign of Cassidy.

  It figured.

  Cassidy had planted himself just inside the mouth of an alley about halfway between the McMahon Palace and the McMahon Livery, and waited, his hand resting impatiently on the butt of his gun.

  When he heard the echoing boot steps approaching on the boardwalk, he stiffened and stood erect, poised to move.

  “Shut up!” he hissed at the precise moment that he stepped forward, grabbed Slocum, and hauled him into the alley.

  Slocum didn’t fight him, but wrestled free almost instantly and turned on him, gun drawn.

  Cassidy raised his hands and took a step backward, farther into the alley. “I give up, you sonofabitch,” he said. “Don’t shoot.”

  Slocum stood there for a second, expressionless, before he jammed his gun back down in its holster and asked, “What the hell’s goin’ on, Drug?”

  Cassidy sniffed. “Glad to see you, too,” he said dryly. “You know, there’s five hundred, cash, on your lousy head. You ought’a thank me for not pluggin’ you on sight and draggin’ your carcass back down the street for the cash.”

  “McMahon hire you?” Slocum asked, taking another step deeper into the alley, into the shadows.

  Standing there in the cramped space between barrels and crates, across from Slocum, Cassidy realized again what a powerful man he was.

  He must have half-expected to be tackled somewhere along the way, or Cassidy never would have been able to drag him as far as he had. Which hadn’t been all that far.

  “Yeah, he did,” Cassidy answered. “And that big theatrical lamebrain in all the fringe, too.” He hiked a thumb up the street, toward the saloon. “Reckon that means there’s actually a thousand on you, Slocum, if McMahon offered him the same as me. Y’know, I could just shoot you right here and claim my reward and Teddy LeGrande’s, too. I could really use me a thousand bucks.”

  Slocum actually grinned. “Sure, Drug. Try it.”

  A smile crept across Cassidy’s face, too. “Think I’d druther go over to the other side. I take a real strong exception to any man who’d have the nerve to hire both Teddy LeGrande and me to do the same job. Hell, that idiot did me out of a four-hundred-dollar reward up in Jackson Hole!”

  Slocum, situating himself so that he was covered by the late-afternoon shadows—and so that he still had a good view of the street—pulled out his fixings bag and began to roll a smoke.

  As he bent the paper into a V, he asked, “How’d he pull that off?”

  “Oh, he just snuck up and bushwhacked me while I was sleepin’,” Cassidy replied. “Hogtied me, then let my prisoner go, so’s he could shoot him ten feet later. Left me trussed up like a Christmas goose, and turned my prisoner’s body in.”

  Cassidy shook his head. “And here I was, tryin’ to be all Christianlike, not shootin’ the sonofabitch myself when the paper on him said dead or alive.”

  Slocum stuck his quirlie into his mouth, flicked a sulphurtip into flame, lit it, and smiled. Around it, he said, “That’ll teach you to sleep.” He shook out the match.

  “Yup,” said Cassidy, bitterly. “Thing is, Teddy’s so dumb he figures it’s some sort’a joke. He don’t figure I should be all that het up about it, the big, pig-eyed jerk.”

  “Did McMahon bring anybody else in?” Slocum asked, staring not at Cassidy, but out toward the sunlit street.

  “Not that I know of. Guess he figures two against one is good enough odds for anybody.”

  Slocum snorted.

  “There’s a woman mixed up in it, too, ain’t there?” Cassidy asked.

  Slocum cocked a brow. “He didn’t tell you much, did he?”

  “Nope.”

  Slocum sighed. “Yeah, there’s a woman.”

  “Always is,” Cassidy said, happy to have been right.

  Slocum looked a tad irritated, but went on, “Lady named Becky Jamison out west of town. She’s the final holdout. McMahon’s spent the last year and a half buying everybody else out, though I sure can’t figure out why. Hell, the land’s so rugged and rocky up here that it takes two acres to feed one steer! Anyhow, when he couldn’t high-pressure her husband, he shot him. Had him shot, I mean. That was about six months ago.”

  “I’m pure sorry to hear that, Slocum,” Cassidy interjected.

  “Yeah,” said Slocum, without expression. “You wouldn’t know of a distance marksman who was travelin’ out here on a job of work back then, would you? Marks his cartridges with a big cat scratched into the brass?”

  “Nope,” said Cassidy after some thought. “And don’t go lookin’ at me. I can’t draw a cougar or a jaguar worth beans, and if you’re addlepated enough to think it was me that done it, hell, I ain’t any good past a hundred feet or so.”

  Actually, it was more like forty feet these last few years, but he didn’t say so. And Slocum was kind enough not to say so, either.

  Cassidy knew there was a reason he liked the big man.

  Cassidy also knew his eyesight was failing these last few years. Lately, it was faster all the time. He’d been to see a couple of doctors, and after a lot of looking and humphing and so on, they’d both told him the same thing. Retinal something-or-other. He had a blind spot right dead center of his left eye, which he had to close to fire, and his right eye was all messed up. Objects seemed to just run downhill and trail away to nothing, even when he knew damn well they were there and solid.

  The upshot of which was that he’d be blind inside five years.

  But he figured he could see almost good enough right now. Good enough to get along, that was. He’d learned to compensate for it. And he didn’t like to think about it. He’d rather think about the business at hand.

  “Tell me the rest,” Cassidy said.

  “I’ll tell you as much as I know,” Slocum replied, “but it ain’t much.”

  11

  “Where you been?” Teddy LeGrande asked, carefully straightening his fringe. “You disappeared.”

  “Around,” replied Cassidy. He had left Slocum a good half-hour ago, and had just wandered back up to the saloon. “What business is it of yours, anyhow? I mean, now that you’ve decided to come down off your damn perch and speak to me.”

  The remark had no effect on LeGrande. Cassidy hadn’t expected it to.

  “There was fellas in here before,” Teddy LeGrande said, as if that explained everything. Actually, it did. The McMahon Palace was now vacant of any customers other than themselves. They stood shoulder to shoulder at the rail, making eye contact only in the mirrored bar-back. He said, “You still didn’t tell me where you was.”

  “If it’s any of your nevermind, which it ain’t,” Cassidy said, “I been askin’ around town nice and easy-like. Seems Slocum ain’t been in town. Or so says the general populace.”

  Teddy LeGrande looked confused, and Cassidy added, “That’s what the people tell me, leastwise.”

  “Oh,” said LeGrande, and took another sip of his beer. “So, how you wanna do this thing? Just ride out there and shoot him, or what?”

  Cassidy’s mouth muscles clenched up for a moment. He really ought to just say, Sure thing, Teddy, and let LeGrande ride out there bold as brass. And let Slocum shoot him square in the butt. But he’d made a promise to Slocum.

  “That there would be a real bad idea, Teddy,” he said.

  LeGrande smiled. “Hey, you’re callin’ me by my name. I knew you wasn’t really mad about that bounty deal. Fellers like you an’ me got to stick together, right?”

  Cassidy didn’t answer. He took a drink, then stared at his beer. This was going to be harder than he’d thought. If it had been anybody else other than Slocum who had asked him to hold off . . .

  “Well, you got any other suggestions, Drug?” LeGrande went on. “You don’t mind if I call you Drug, do you?”

  “Sure,” said Cassidy, meaning, yes, I sure do mind it, you rigged-out, fancified asshole.

  “Good, Drug,” LeGrande said, impervious. “Things’ll be easier if we’re friends. You know? So what you figure? We wait for Slocum to come into town, then?”

  Cassidy could bear the conversation no longer. He said, “Let me get back to you on that, Teddy. Want to think on it for a spell.”

  LeGrande seemed relieved. Whether it was that he wouldn’t have to do anything complicated—for instance figuring out a plot of his own—or that he was just happy to have help, having learned a little more about Slocum, was beside the point.

  But as usual, LeGrande didn’t know when to quit.

  “That’s good, Drug, real good,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I been a tad-mite worried about this deal.”

  When Cassidy said nothing, LeGrande went on, “I mean, what with hearin’ so many stories ’bout this Slocum character.” He glanced to both sides, then lowered his voice. “You think he’s really as fast as they say?”

  LeGrande was looking anxious, now, and for a moment, Cassidy wondered if he should just scare him off. By the looks of things, it would be fairly easy to do.

  But Cassidy had promised Slocum. Plus, he figured, if LeGrande tucked his tail and headed home, McMahon might not trust him to take care of things on his own. McMahon might just bring in somebody else.

  Even a fancy-assed, pretty-boy louse like Teddy LeGrande was a sight better than an undrawn card. Like his daddy had said, you’d best stick with the devil you know and the cards you’re dealt.

  Although he wasn’t too sure about his daddy’s wisdom on the card thing.

  He knew LeGrande could be tough when he was in a spot. Experience had taught Cassidy to read what was behind those eyes of LeGrande’s. But being tough when push came to shove still didn’t cancel out that streak of cowardice he’d just uncovered.

  Before, he’d figured LeGrande for just a plain idiot. Now he figured him for a chicken, too. And he was beginning to wonder just how LeGrande had come by that reputation of his.

  Cassidy said, “Yeah, Teddy, I think he probably is pretty damn fast with a gun.”

  “But he ain’t come into town yet,” LeGrande said, more to himself than to Cassidy. He stared directly at his own reflection in the bar mirror, not noticing that Cassidy was staring at him, too.

  And suddenly Cassidy saw something else flickering there, something that had lurked beneath the facade of being either frightened or foolish or just plain stupid: It was something cruel and primitive.

  A shiver went through him, unbidden.

  And his first thought was that he and Slocum could very well be in a world of trouble.

  Slocum finished putting Concho up in the barn before he announced himself at the house. He wanted a word with Pete and Dave and the boys, anyhow. That finished, he stepped up on the porch, stomped the dust off his boots, then opened the door.