LITMIR.BIZ

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Pecos said later that night as the two former cutthroats lay in their respective cots, on opposite ends of their small, crude cabin behind their just-as-small and crude freighting office.

      “Forget it.”

      “Huh?”

      “If you’re thinkin’ I should help you use the privy after all that steak an’ beans you had for supper—not to mention beer and whiskey—forget it. You’re too damn big an’ drunk, and I drank too much whiskey my ownself to stay on my own two feet. You’d fall and kill us both.”

      It was true. After they’d gotten back to Fort Collins, they’d headed for the Bon-Ton Café on Larimer Avenue, where they’d proceeded to pad out their empty bellies with liberal portions of red meat, beans, and sourdough bread. They followed that up with whiskey in a little cantina on the other side of the street. They’d decided that after the dustup earlier in Jay’s room, they’d probably best not show their faces in the Thousand Delights for a while. Someone might recognize them for who they really were and complicate their lives.

      Pecos’s wrath over Slash’s high jinks out at the Cormorant had dissipated quickly. The big cutthroat could blaze as hot as a pistol in mid-fire, but the smoke and flames usually cleared just as quickly as they had erupted. Especially when his ire was directed at Slash. They could get into all-out brawls, the cutthroats could, but they were the brawls of brothers, not true-blue enemies.

      Pecos’s wrath would burn down quickly, even when Slash did something as boyishly devilish as what he’d done to his partner out in Cedar City, in front of the gal for whom he had developed an animal-like attraction. Pecos knew Slash had merely been out to amuse himself as well as to distract himself from one Miss Jaycee Breckenridge. Pecos knew Jay was on Slash’s mind. Her and the fancy-Dan town marshal, that was. Pecos always knew what Slash was thinking, just as Slash could read his partner’s mind as well.

      “That ain’t what I’m thinkin’ about,” Pecos said. “I’m too drunk to even think about usin’ the privy even with help. I was layin’ here thinkin’, waiting for this cabin to stop turnin’ circles around me, that one reason Bledsoe selected us for that job up in Tin Cup is because he’s wanting to get our goats.”

      “Oh, yeah.”

      “Ain’t I right?”

      “You’re right, all right. One of the rare times.”

      “He’s probably just chucklin’ to himself right now, as he’s rollin’ back toward Denver, about how that gold is going to affect us. And there’s not gonna be a damn thing we can do about it, ’cause we both know we’d never make a clean break with it.”

      “Oh, yeah,” Slash said, keeping one bare foot on the floor as he tried to steady the cabin that was swirling around him, as well. “He’s a devil, all right.” He chuckled. “He’ll ram the knife into each of us whenever he can, gettin’ us back for past history. He can’t jail us or hang us anymore, but he can do what he can to ride roughshod on us. Give us all the toughest, most dangerous jobs, likely half-hopin’ in the back of his mind that we’ll eventually get fed a pill we can’t digest.”

      “He’s takin’ his revenge on us, ain’t he?”

      “Oh, yeah.” Slash chuckled again as he stared up at the ceiling. Or tried to. It was hard to stare straight at something that was moving. “He knows us too well, don’t he?”

      “All too well.” Slash turned his head to stare at his partner, whose lumpy silhouette was all he could see over there on the other end of the cabin. “You know what I was layin’ here thinkin’ about?”

      “Jay.”

      “No.” Slash drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I was thinkin’ about that damn gold just the way I know Bleed-Em-So wants us thinkin’ about it. Dreamin’ about it.”

      “I know. I was, too.”

      Slash chuckled, shook his head, and resumed staring up at the ceiling. “That old catamount!”

      “One hundred thousand dollars.” Pecos whistled. “That’d take us a long way, Slash. We could go down to Mexico, all the way down to South America. Buy us a big ranch down there. Or our own mine. Oh, how the busthead would flow!”

      “Not busthead,” Slash corrected his partner. “Nothin’ but the good stuff. The best tequila and pulque south of the border!”

      “And the women . . .”

      “Oh, lordy—the women.” Slash had said that last sentence with little of the delight he’d intended. His own words had sounded flat to him. That’s because he hadn’t quite gotten the word “women” out of his mouth before Jay’s face had floated up in his mind’s eye. No sooner had he seen her face than he saw the face of Cisco Walsh, as well.

      Walsh—that handsome face of his, and the fancy cut of his clothes.

      Walsh with that smile on his face as he gazed appreciatively—all too appreciatively—at Jaycee Breckenridge. . .

      “You could bring Jay,” Pecos said. He had his head turned toward Slash, staring through the darkness at him. “She’d come along down to Mexico, if we were toting that much gold. She’d meet us down there . . . and you two . . . well, you could . . .”

      “Forget it.”

      “Huh?”

      “I don’t want to talk about her tonight. I just want to lay here and torture myself with ideas about all the ways we could spend that gold down in Mexico, where we’d live like two Jay Goulds in golden castles.”

      “Best not do that no more.”

      “Why the hell not? We can at least dream about it, can’t we?”

      “Dreamin’s one thing. Actin’ on them dreams is another. I’m afraid if we keep layin’ here thinkin’ up all the ways we could spend that treasure we’re gonna have in our possession for four or five nights—just you, me, an’ a hundred thousand dollars in high-grade gold—we might start venturin’ into dangerous territory. We might start plannin’ on how we could really get away with it!”

      Slash rolled onto a shoulder, facing Pecos. “Well, you know what, partner? I was just thinkin’ . . .”

      Slash let his voice trail off. Even in the darkness, he could see Pecos’s two scolding eyes staring back at him.

      Slash sighed and rolled back against his pillow. “All right, all right. Bad idea.”

      “Go to sleep, Slash.”

      “Yeah, yeah,” Slash said, sheepish. “All right.”

      It took a while, but he finally did. But he dreamed of dusky-eyed Spanish queens and golden castles.

      * * *

      Slash woke earlier than he’d expected. Pecos was still asleep, and rather than wake him, Slash took a whore’s bath, dressed, and headed out to fill his belly. He’d had a big steak and a platter of beans only a few hours ago, but the whiskey must have dissolved it and left a gaping hole in his innards.

      He felt as hollow as a dead man’s boot.

      Since the dining room at the Thousand Delights boasted the best breakfast in town, maybe on the entire Front Range north of Denver, he headed that way. He wasn’t much in the mood for seeing Jay, but he doubted he’d run into her at this early hour. Jay usually stayed up late, keeping an eye on the saloon and gambling parlor as well as overseeing the working girls on the third floor—she was as protective as an old mother hen to her doxies—and usually didn’t roll out of her big, four-posted bed till mid-morning.

      Not that Slash knew that from personal observation. He had not yet known the charms of the woman’s boudoir. He was not a fast mover in that regard. Nor in matters of the heart. Sometimes he dragged his feet too long in the dust, and that’s where he’d often gotten left. He feared he might be there right now, in fact.

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