The colonel leaned forward and put his hand on the flap of the revolver in its holster.

  “And what would you think if we decided to take these guns for ourselves? Right now. Just take them from you and leave you and your men dying in the dust.”

  “It wouldn’t be quite honest, Colonel. Not the way a Southern gentleman does business.”

  “I could crush you like an ant.”

  Colonel Will Muncie pulled the flap loose.

  CHAPTER 38

  “Colonel, Colonel, Colonel . . .” Jed Foster chided the ex-Confederate officer as if he were addressing a child, or maybe a boorish old man who had lost a war, a son, and most, if not all, of his faculties. “Do you think you are dealing with a fool?”

  “A damned fool!” Colonel Muncie thundered. “Not only that, but a damned Yankee fool! I can take those rifles from you right now.”

  “And we’d all be in hell, Colonel”—Foster shook his head—“if Lucifer could find enough of us left worth his while.” He turned just a little and pointed to the seat of the nearest wagon. “What do you see on the driver’s bench, my good ol’ Rebel colonel? You aren’t wearing eyeglasses, so I reckon you are like most old men in this country. You can’t read a newspaper six inches before your very eyes, but you can see the snow on a mountaintop forty miles away. That wagon’s maybe twenty yards from you right now, Colonel. So tell me, what do you see?”

  “A bottle,” Muncie snapped. He roared, “Of gin or something clear. Not Kentucky bourbon, suh.”

  “I wouldn’t know, Colonel. About Kentucky bourbon, I mean. Now, were we talking about Pennsylvania bourbon, well . . .” Foster laughed at the look on Muncie’s face. The fool probably thought all bourbon hailed from Kentucky. “Of course, if I recollect correctly, Kentucky wasn’t a member of the Confederacy, either.”

  “But a number of Kentuckians fought on our side.”

  “And lived or died to regret it.”

  The colonel’s face flushed with anger, and his right hand gripped the handle on the revolver.

  “Colonel,” Foster called out coldly. “That’s not gin in that bottle, sir. You want to die and take me and all your boys and most of this dot on a map . . . and every last one of those new Springfield rifles . . . you go ahead and pull that hog leg.”

  Muncie’s hand seemed to be glued to the revolver’s walnut handle, but the pistol remained stuck in the holster.

  Soledad Tadeo had stepped into the doorway of La Cantina Que No Tiene Nombre, The Cantina That Has No Name. The old skinflint of a bartender, however, must have taken Foster’s advice and was hiding, shaking in his sandals on the floor behind a keg of whiskey.

  The sight of the beautiful woman excited Jed Foster. He loved to play in front of an audience, especially before a stunning woman like that black-haired, dark-skinned girl. “Look at the other wagons, Colonel,” he commanded.

  The old man’s eyes moved. That pleased Foster, as well.

  There was a West Point graduate, class of 1843, a hero of the war down in Mexico, a man who had served with distinction in the United States Army for eighteen years before resigning to go home and fight for the doomed Confederacy. There he was . . . obeying orders from a mere captain, and a blue-bellied captain, at that.

  Foster did not glance behind him. He just watched Muncie’s eyes as they moved from wagon to wagon . . . specifically from driver’s seat to driver’s seat on each freight wagon. Even more specifically, from whiskey bottle to whiskey bottle that stood in the center of each seat. He also studied the men behind the old soldier. They were looking at the bottles, too, and he could see a few brows start to knot, a few men glance at the companion mounted on the next horse over.

  Confuse and confound your enemy. That was another thing Custer had drilled into Foster’s brain. That’s half the battle. Confuse him, and you have a fine chance at killing him. And even if you do not kill him, confounding him will send him retreating with his men in wild panic and his reputation ruined.

  Colonel Muncie’s gaze once again landed on Jed Foster. “Your drivers, suh,” the colonel said in that slow drawl, “appear to have a preference for gin. I certainly hope they do not imbibe too much of such liquor, for I would sure hate for your wagons to suffer some terrible accident.” He said that softly, sarcastically, but that was an act.

  Foster knew the bottles had left the man confused and confounded. Muncie wanted to sound confident, but the voice came across as concerned. Uncertain.

  The battle, Foster already knew, had been won.

  “Colonel Muncie, my good man.” He laughed. “You fought down here against the Mexicans before you took up with that losing army of the South.” He liked to see Muncie’s face redden and those eyes just about pop out of his face. “You served in armies of the North and the South for a good long time. Surely, sir, you must remember that any teamster or any soldier worth his salt would never, not in a hundred years, not in a thousand years, leave a bottle of gin or bourbon—Pennsylvania or Kentucky—corked and sitting in plain view of other teamsters, other soldiers, other vagabonds, and wastrels. Because if he did that, well, all he would find would be an empty bottle waiting for him. Now, sir, isn’t that right? From your own personal experience?”

  Muncie removed his hand from the revolver. He was at a loss for words.

  The Mexican beauty had stepped out farther. She had only glanced at the bottles on the wagons and was focused entirely on Colonel Muncie and Captain Foster.

  “What are you saying, suh?” It took Muncie a good long time to work up enough courage to ask the question. His voice came out as strained and, to Foster’s delight, helpless.

  Jed Foster stepped closer to the horses. “I’m saying, Colonel, that you are a damned fool. That’s right. You’re a damned fool for treating me like a damned fool. Did you think I’d just leave those rifles out here so you could swoop down like one of Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Southern caballeros or some of Mosby’s irregulars? Did you think that I would not expect you to try such a cowardly act? What happened to Southern honor, Colonel? Have you spent so many years hiding down here that you have forgotten all that made Southern men, Confederate officers, idolized by all the good folks of the South. Suh.” He mocked Muncie’s thick accent. “General Robert E. Lee is a-rollin’ in his grave at ya. Ya lack honor, Colonel Muncie, ol’ boy. But I daresay what y’all lack in fine, Southern, gentlemanly honor ya make up with wagonloads of stupidity.”

  He palmed his Colt, cocked the hammer, and whirled. But he did not aim the revolver at Colonel Muncie, nor any of his men. He pointed the pistol at the closest wagon.

  CHAPTER 39

  “Tell me, Colonel Muncie!” Jed Foster bellowed. “Have you ever heard of nitroglycerin?” He kept his back to the former Southern aristocrat who had become a penny-ante thief south of the border. Foster was gambling again, but this hand, he felt, was a winner. He did not even try to keep Colonel Will Muncie in view out of the corner of his eye. He just grinned, and aimed that big .45 at a bottle of gin that was only half full.

  He heard the gasps from Muncie’s men. Several of their horses stepped back and stamped and snorted, as if they knew what nitroglycerin was capable of doing. Most likely, Muncie’s boys were showing their true colors and just wanted to get out of the miserable little village in the middle of nowhere as fast as they could.

  “I’ll give you a history lesson, Colonel. This instructor I had at West Point—before I got expelled—was utterly fascinated by this harmless little liquid. An Italian chemist concocted it back around the Mexican War, maybe just before it ended or a year or so after it was over. I’m not that good at dates. But I do remember that colonel at the Point just marveling over how a lot of folks experimenting with nitroglycerin at some factory had blown themselves and most of the factory to bits at some town in Sweden. That was in ’64 . . . just before the commandant called me to his office and told me to get the hell out of his academy.”

  Foster grinned and glanced at the girl. She did not seem afraid of the nitro or, for that matter, anything else. Then again, she was just a stupid, ignorant Mexican girl who likely had never even heard of nitroglycerin.

  He kept talking, mostly to give the shapely little wench a lesson.

  “Not too long after that, some Germans tried to make it available as explosives. They blew themselves to bits, too. Finally, folks worked very carefully . . . and I do mean very carefully . . . so they could ship a handful of crates of this stuff across the ocean and all the way to California . . . to help build the railroad that connected the western United States and her territories with the eastern United States. When one of those crates blew up the Wells Fargo office in San Francisco and reduced fifteen Californios to little bitty pieces, that got the transportation of nitroglycerin banned in California. And many other places. Dynamite took over. It’s a little safer. But doesn’t pack the wallop . . . or produce the fear . . . that nitro does. Still, you can make your own nitroglycerin. A lot of mines do that by sweating out dynamite sticks. I’m not sure it’s any safer, but—Well, it’s highly available in places where railroads are being built and where mines are making lots and lots of money.

  “Like the Territory of Arizona. And—” Foster turned around, but kept his arm steady, and the sight of the .45 trained on one bottle on one wagon. “Well, you see, Colonel, I have plenty of access to plenty of mines and enough nitroglycerin to blow those rifles, me and you, and most, if not all, of this town . . . all the way to hell and gone.”

  He waited.

  Colonel Muncie’s face glowed with sweat. The men behind him looked deathly white.

  Jed Foster grinned and thanked Ascanio Sobrero for all he had done when he had pretty much discovered nitroglycerin back in 1840-something.

  “You wouldn’t blow yourself up, man,” Colonel Muncie said, but his voice could not hide his fear.

  “If I don’t get paid, Colonel, you don’t get guns. Nobody gets nothing. You deal in money. I deal in death. So what’s it going to be, Colonel? Money for Springfields? Or the most horrible death you and your boys can imagine?”

  The colonel did not answer. So Foster told him, “The Fourth of July, Colonel, at The Canyon of The Sorrows. Around noon. Don’t worry, Colonel. I won’t have the band strike up ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ when you ride in to make your bid.”

  Foster saw that Muncie was not ready to quit. Not yet. The man didn’t like the taste of defeat, so Foster came up with another gamble. He was confident he would win this bet, too.

  “I’m told, Colonel, that you are a sporting man. That you like to bet on horses and games of billiards and, on certain occasions, other games of chance.”

  Muncie said coldly, “So?”

  “So, Colonel. I hate for you to make that journey all the way here for nothing. I tell you what. I’ll give you a chance. Reese.”

  The gunman near the first wagon grunted.

  “Draw your Colt, Reese, and keep it aimed at the bottle. Just so our guests don’t get any fool notions.”

  Reese did not appear to like the order. He stood closest to the wagon, which meant he would not only be the first to die, but he would likely be chewed up worse than anyone in the town. And if he pulled the trigger that destroyed the gin bottle, he would also be committing suicide.

  Still, he pulled the Colt from its holster, and aimed it at the bottle. The cocking of the hammer sounded like bells ringing in the stillness of the day.

  CHAPTER 40

  Once Reese’s .36-caliber Navy Colt was aimed at the gin bottle Jed Foster slowly lowered the hammer on his Colt and drop it into the holster. He winked at the Mexican girl and grinned at Will Muncie.

  “Pick one of your boys, Colonel. Mano a mano. Man to man. Him against me. We face each other. You call it, Colonel. On three. If he kills me . . . or even just wounds me . . . you can ride out with all the Springfield rifles. But if I win, you ride out and don’t give us any more trouble. You can take your boy home and bury him.”

  “What if you just wound him?” Muncie asked.

  Foster laughed. “Colonel? Really? I never leave a man wounded, suh. That ain’t my style, ol’ boy.”

  Now the girl had moved to the hitching rail. She leaned against it and studied both Jed Foster and the crazy old Southern officer and gentleman. She was sizing up the grizzled old soldier, wondering what he would do.

  Foster knew, of course. Will Muncie’s honor . . . and the honor of all Southern soldiers . . . had been challenged.

  Muncie twisted in the saddle. He looked at his men. Every hand shot up. Every man was willing to die for Colonel Will Muncie, and that, Jed Foster had to admit, was a surprise. And Jed Foster did not find himself surprised very often.

  Then again, maybe it wasn’t that surprising. Those old fools weren’t willing to put their lives on the line for the stupid colonel. Foster had challenged Southern pride. They weren’t volunteering for a duel to the death for Will Muncie. They were fighting for Southern honor. They were fighting for themselves.

  “Corporal Bowdre,” Muncie called out in a soft voice, sounding weak.

  A slight man with buck teeth and a brown mustache slid out of his saddle, and handed the reins to the younger trooper mounted next to him.

  “Thank you, Colonel.” He sounded pleased and confident.

  Foster studied him closely.

  He had to be in his middle forties. Too old to be faster than Foster, who tried to guess why the colonel had selected this man, sentenced the particular gallant gentleman to death. Unmarried. Yes, that had to be the reason. Or a man with no relatives, no brothers or sons or neighbors serving alongside him.

  It was as good a reason as any, Foster thought. Not that it mattered.

  He wasn’t doing it for show, although he felt certain that’s what Colonel Will Muncie figured. Likely, Soledad Tadeo figured something similar. But Foster felt out of practice at that kind of thing—a real gunfight. Man to man. Separated by twenty paces or so. He had not done anything like that in years. It got his heart racing. He could taste the sweat. He enjoyed it.

  He’d always thought it the ultimate gamble.

  Since he would have to face Apaches, the US Army, and possibly more . . . Rurales and those damned Mexican bandits . . . he needed all the practice he could get.

  If that practice had to be against an over-the-hill former Confederate soldier, well, so be it. Everyone had to die sooner or later. Foster decided he would make this one quick. Besides, Colonel Will Muncie had taken too much of Foster’s time already. Foster wanted to sip some tequila, and maybe get better acquainted with that handsome little filly who was watching him now with intense interest.

  And yet, Corporal Bowdre demanded more of Foster’s attention.

  The old man—old by Foster’s reckoning and standards—removed one of his gloves, the one on his right hand, and laid it atop the seat of his saddle. The left glove Bowdre kept on. Probably, Foster surmised, the corporal was right-handed. Fitting a gloved finger into the trigger guard of an 1851 Navy was a hard thing to do. Especially squeezing a gloved finger into the trigger guard in a fight where half a second could decide between living and dying.

  Next, Corporal Bowdre unbuttoned his tunic and removed it, folding it gracefully and laying it atop that lone glove. He stepped back, found the sun, and since it would be neither behind the corporal or Foster, removed his hat as well and placed it on the horn of his saddle.

  Corporal Bowdre then stepped away from the horses and Colonel Muncie and the command, unfastened the flap over the holster, and bent it so that it would not interfere with his draw. After taking a few steps away, he stopped and pulled on the belt, twisting it so that the holster now lay against Bowdre’s right thigh instead of his left, as was military fashion. Finally, he pushed the holster down a little bit, lower on his hip.

  He reached for the butt of the Navy. “May I?” he asked respectfully.

  Foster bowed. “By all means, Corporal.”

  “Thank you, suh.” Bowdre slowly drew the long-barreled relic from the Civil War out of his holster.

  The gun had not even been modernized to take modern cartridges. Foster could see the percussion caps on the cylinder of the old pistol.

  Keeping the muzzle of the Colt pointed at the dirt and away from Foster, Corporal Bowdre rotated the cylinder, checking the loads, the caps, and making sure no dust or debris would keep the cylinder from rotating once he cocked the hammer.

  He would fan the hammer, Foster decided. That’s why he had kept the glove on his left hand.

  Corporal Bowdre had been picked by Colonel Muncie for another reason. The man was a quick-draw artist. A real shootist. He might be old, might use a weapon that most gunmen found antiquated, but Bowdre was a real professional.

  And that made Jed Foster happy.

  This would be a good show. A bet that was not stacked. This would be for real.

  CHAPTER 41

  Bowdre slowly slipped the old cap-and-ball Navy Colt into the holster and stepped into the street, closer to the cantina where Soledad Tadeo still leaned against the hitching rail. He stopped about six feet to Tadeo’s right and dropped his arms to his waist.

  “Do you mind?” Foster asked, and tapped the handle of his Colt with his trigger finger.

  “No objections at all, my friend,” Bowdre said. “I have always been one to observe courtesy among professionals.”

  “You are truly a professional, my friend.” Foster pulled the Schofield from the holster, drew the hammer to half-cock, and rotated the cylinder. He stopped at the empty chamber, and fished a spare .45 cartridge from his pocket, and filled the hole with the brass casing. Finally, he pulled the hammer to full-cock, and then softly lowered it to its resting place.