LITMIR.BIZ

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deputy nodded that everything looked fine. Reilly let out a breath.

      “All this for just us two poor, misguided souls.” W.W. Kraft laughed. “We can’t be that dangerous.”

      No, Reilly thought. K.C. was the dangerous one. The free one. That’s what worried him.

      The whores started singing “Rock of Ages.”

      Stepping back, Reilly wiped the beads of sweat peppering his forehead.

      “Why don’t you shut them the hell up, McGivern?” Slim Chisum grumbled from the driver’s box. He hadn’t lowered the hammers of the scattergun.

      Reilly shrugged. “Maybe I’m Cupid after all,” he said, but not loud enough to be heard, and walked across the street toward Denton, the horses, and, most importantly, Reilly’s .44 Evans Sporting Rifle in the saddle scabbard. Taking the reins from Denton, Reilly started to swing onto the buckskin gelding. That’s when he saw her, moving through the crowd down the boardwalk, past Wilbur’s Tonsorial Parlor, and into the sea of whores.

      He almost didn’t recognize her, not wearing that French sateen skirt with the ruffled bottom and the silk ottoman wrap. Then again, he tried to think of how many times he had seen her with her clothes on. Not that many. At least, never for long.

      “Oh, hell,” he said, and tossed the reins back to Denton.

      She was moving fast, reaching into her purse.

      The whores had started singing “Ar fin y don,” a Welsh tune he’d often heard Gwendolyn sing. That’d be ironic, he thought, shoving one strumpet aside.

      One flailing arm knocked his hat off.

      He kept moving.

      She was standing in front of the bars now, right hand coming out of the purse. No, the purse was falling into the dust. No one noticed her. Not Matilda. Not the other whores. Not Slim Chisum, Gus Henderson, or any of the guards on the flat roofs. Not W.W. Kraft, whose hands gripped two iron bars, as he leaned forward and kissed a whore whose name wasn’t Matilda. Not L.J. Kraft, who sat in the shade, working on a mouthful of chewing tobacco.

      She pulled out the sawed-down Colt, cocked it, and aimed the .36 at W.W. Kraft’s chest. Finally, one of the whores spotted her and screamed. W.W. Kraft pulled away from his lover. His mouth fell open. His brother spit between the bars.

      Gwendolyn Morgan pulled the trigger.

      The hammer caught Reilly’s left hand as it came down on the Colt, biting into the meaty flesh between his pinky finger and wrist. Blood spurted. It hurt like hell. He shoved Gwendolyn aside, felt the hideaway gun fall into the dust, and he kicked it underneath the wagon.

      “What the hell?” Slim Chisum called out.

      “She tried to kill W.W.,” a whore cried.

      “Bitch!” Matilda snapped.

      Reilly put his right hand to keep Gwendolyn back. He saw her now, the ugly bruise that blackened the left side of her face, down which tears streamed. Her eye remained almost swollen shut. Her lips trembled.

      Blood dripped down Reilly’s fingers into the dust. W.W. Kraft giggled. “Gwen, ol’ gal, are you still mad at me?”

      His brother shifted the plug of tobacco to the other cheek. “She come from Contention to see you off.”

      “Hell, Gwen, you didn’t need to do that. We’s going to Contention City. I could have given you some good loving there.”

      “Shut up!” Reilly snapped, and W.W.’s face froze. He pulled Gwendolyn away from the wagon, steered her across the street. “Gus, get that belly-gun from under the wagon. Now!” One of those whores would likely pick it up, slip it to one of the Krafts.

      She was sobbing, shaking with rage, when they reached the boardwalk. Her head fell on his shoulder, and he let her cry.

      Cupid, he thought, and cursed silently.

      Slim Chisum had had enough. He braced the shotgun on his left thigh, and let one barrel sing. “I’ve heard enough music today!” he bellowed. “You strumpets, get gone. Everybody get gone. This wagon’s leaving for Contention, and if I sees anybody—wench, baker, miner, or parson’s wife—anywhere on the street in the next two minutes, I’ll blow him or her apart.” Pellets from the first load rained onto the roofs of nearby buildings.

      The concert was over.

      “Reilly?”

      She had pulled away from him. He tried to smile.

      “I’m sorry, Reilly. I hurt you.”

      “I’ll be fine,” he told her, but she had lifted his left hand, found a handkerchief, and wrapped it around the torn flesh.

      “You need a doctor.”

      “It’s nothing,” he told her again.

      She looked past him, at the prison wagon. “I want him dead.”

      “I don’t blame you. But Judge Spicer gave him and L.J. fifteen years.”

      “Not for what he did to me.”

      Reilly put his right hand under her chin, turned her face toward him. “He’ll get his, Gwendolyn. Fifteen years in Yuma…”

      “If he gets there.”

      He frowned.

      “Can you get back to Contention?” he asked.

      “I made it here.”

      “You best go. Matilda’s girls can be meaner than guttersnipes.”

      “I can take care of myself. Maybe I should have waited till you brought him to Contention.” She smiled at him. She had quite the smile, even with her face disfigured by that bastard W.W. Kraft. “Can I see you in Contention, Reilly? I won’t try to kill that peckerwood. I promise.”

      He started to say something, stopped himself, then decided to tell her. “We’re not going to Contention.”

      “What the hell?” The words came from Gus Henderson, who stood at Reilly’s side, stupidly holding Gwendolyn’s Colt and purse.

      “Be quiet, Gus,” Reilly said. He cursed his own stupidity. Should have kept his big mouth shut.

      “Gwendolyn, you get back to Contention. Pretend that you’re waiting for us. Anybody asks you, I told you that I’d see you in Contention before the train left. That’ll buy us some time. Do this for me?”

      “Sure, Reilly.”

      She took the purse and reached for the belly-gun, but Gus pulled it back, eyeing Reilly.

      “Give it to her,” Reilly said. “It’s some rough miles to Contention.”

      She took the gun, dropped it into her purse, and hurried down the boardwalk, rounded a corner, and was gone.

      “We’re supposed to catch the train in Contention,” Gus said.

      “We’re not,” Reilly told him, and looked across the saddle at Frank Denton.

      “Everybody knows we’re going to Contention.” Reilly spoke in a hoarse whisper. His left hand throbbed. “Including K.C. Kraft.”

      “It’s about three hundred miles to Yuma,” Denton told him. “Across the desert.”

      “I know.” Reilly wet his lips. “K.C.’s not going to let his brothers reach Yuma, not without making a play. He’ll be waiting for us in Contention, maybe Benson, maybe Tucson, or somewhere on the road, somewhere on the rails. When we don’t show at Contention, he’ll start wondering, fretting.”

      “And looking,” Denton said.

      “And looking,” Reilly agreed. “But looking west of here. We’re crossing the San Pedro and riding northeast. Skirt around Tombstone, through

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