LITMIR.BIZ

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sprawled across several lots. Except for a nearby opera house, the Thousand Delights was the largest business establishment in town. In nearly the whole county, in fact.

      Now as Slash and Pecos rattled along the dusty street, clattering past the rollicking, bustling bordello, they could hear the hum of conversations and laughter and the raucous strains of a fiddle, and smell the tobacco smoke and the mouthwatering aromas of beer and fine spirits wafting out through the main set of batwing doors mounted atop a broad front veranda that wrapped around three sides of the yellow-and-white-painted, wood-frame structure.

      They delivered the dead men to the county sheriff and were glad that the sheriff himself, a portly, contrary man by the name of Wayne Decker, was not on duty. Decker always eyed Slash and Pecos with suspicion, as though he’d seen them somewhere before, which he probably had.

      On wanted dodgers tacked up across the West.

      Even though Slash and Pecos had been pardoned by the president at the request of Chief Marshal Luther T. Bledsoe, they knew that their likenesses no doubt still adorned the walls of many post offices, telegraph offices, and Wells Fargo stations all across the frontier. Decker probably even had one on his own bulletin board, and a vague, nettling memory caused him to try to match the poor pencil sketches to the faces of the two Fort Collins newcomers who’d come from seemingly nowhere to buy the local freighting outfit.

      Even though Slash and Pecos were no longer wanted men, they didn’t feel like trying to convince the sheriff of that and having to explain the circumstances surrounding their pardons, which were supposed to be secret—known to only them, a few politicians, including Rutherford B. Hayes, and Chief Marshal Luther T. Bledsoe. Bleed-Em-So was counting on them to keep their true identities secret and to forevermore go by only their given names of James “Jimmy” Braddock and Melvin Baker.

      “I don’t know,” one of the three deputies on duty that night at the new courthouse said, shaking his head as he stared into the wagon box. The dead men’s four sets of eyes glittered eerily in the light from a nearby saloon window. “Sheriff ain’t gonna like this. No, he ain’t gonna like this a bit. He’s gonna want to talk to you fellas himself.”

      “County coroner might wanna seat a jury,” opined one of the others, also staring moodily into the bed of the freight wagon. “You’re gonna have to write out an affidavit. There might even be a . . . a whatdoya-callit. . . ?”

      “A coroner’s inquest,” said the third deputy from inside a halo of aromatic cigar smoke.

      “A what?” both Slash and Pecos said at the same time, flabbergasted by the ever-growing complexity of these modern times.

      “I told you we should have buried those boys under rocks,” Slash told Pecos, when the coroner, unhappy at having been roused from his smoking parlor, had come to collect the dead men and the three deputies had returned to their courthouse office, smoking, shaking their heads, and casting suspicious glances over their shoulders at the two freighters. “Now we’re gonna have to have a talk with Decker and the coroner, and you know how that fat badge-toter is always givin’ us the woolly eyeball.”

      “What’s right is right, Slash. I mean Jimmy, damnit!”

      “Dammit, how are we gonna get out of the habit of usin’ the old handles?” Slash said, rocking back on the seat as Pecos pulled the mules up to the small compound of their freighting office, which was flanked by a stable and a barn. “Maybe we oughta get ourselves hypnotized.”

      “Ah, hell,” Pecos said, “we’ll remember when the chips are down. Besides, we don’t overly socialize in town all that much. Hell, this job has us toolin’ around the mountains most days of the week. Breaking our butts for pennies and pisswater,” he added with a surly grumble.

      “Yeah, well, I reckon it’s better than what most range hands make in a whole month.”

      “Yeah, but most range hands are young,” Pecos said. “We’re gettin’ old, Slash. We gotta start savin’ up for our retirement.”

      “Jesus,” Slash growled, leaping down off the wagon when Pecos had drawn it up in front of the main corral. “You are one dark and depressing cuss tonight, Pec—I mean, Melvin. Galldangit, anyway!”

      He kicked a front wheel.

      “Yeah, well, I don’t got a woman to go see. Nor one to marry, neither. Hell, you won’t need to work once you marry Jaycee.” Pecos looked around. “Now, where do you suppose Todd’s at? He’s supposed to be out here takin’ care of this team.”

      Todd Elwood was the young wrangler they’d hired about a month ago to help out around the barn. He had a history of drunkenness and general sloth, Elwood did, but he’d promised he’d lay off the Taos lightning if Slash and Pecos would give him the job. He’d been plumb tired of bouncing around from one ranch spread to another.

      Slash looked around, fists on his hips. He called for Elwood but was met with only silence from the darkest corners of the freight yard. No lamps appeared to be burning anywhere.

      “I’d say he’s on a tear,” Slash said with a sigh.

      “Damn his drunken hide!” Pecos cursed again. “That’s what we get for giving a firebrand a second chance.”

      “I had a bad feelin’ about him, and I told you so,” Slash said. “He had layabout written all over him. Your problem is you got too big a heart.”

      “Oh, shut up!”

      “Don’t tell me to shut up!”

      “Shut up!” Pecos walked around the front of the wagon to help Slash unhitch the team. He cast a glance back toward the giant, glittering jewel of the House of a Thousand Delights, from which they could still hear the fiddle music, albeit faintly. “As I was sayin’ about Jay . . . if she ain’t by now, she’s soon gonna be one of the most money-eyed women in the whole damn county if not all of eastern Colorado Territory!”

      That gave Slash pause. As he worked on snaps and buckles and removed hames and harnesses, he too glanced toward the Thousand Delights. He hadn’t thought of Jay’s money.

      Could he suck his pride down deep enough to marry a woman who would for all intents and purposes be supporting him?

      “Me?” Pecos said, taking a bridle strap in his teeth. “They’ll likely be digging a shallow grave for me out in potter’s field.”

      “Oh, shut up, will ya?”

      Pecos looked at him, his eyes sharply indignant even in the relative darkness of the unlit freight yard. “Now, what the hell’s got into you?”

      “Oh, just stitch your mouth closed, will you?”

      Slash cursed and began leading the team through the open corral gate.

      Pecos yelled behind him that he should do something physically impossible to himself.

      * * *

      Slash’s mood improved later, after he and Pecos had taken whores’ baths in their respective rooms in their cabin flanking the freight yard office.

      He and Pecos had silently agreed, as they always did after one of their frequent dustups, to bury the hatchet. They might argue bitterly from time to time but never for long. They brushed their clothes, rolled cigarettes, took a few pulls from a bottle, then tramped off side by side toward the Thousand Delights for drinks and supper—and, of course, so Slash could see Jaycee.

      He wasn’t planning on asking the woman to marry him tonight. In fact, he still hadn’t decided whether he ever would pop the Big Question. While the whiskey had sanded the rough edges off the day, he was still wrestling with the idea of marriage. He shoved his hand in his coat pocket just to make sure the ring was still there, on the off chance his heart would overrule his mind and his pride and he’d blurt out a proposal.

      It was still there, inside the small maple ring box, the box’s top adorned with an antique gold metal flower with a rose crystal in the center. The inside of the box

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