LITMIR.BIZ

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sent him,” she said.

      They were a grimy lot, but they gathered around me studyin’ my face and seeing how it looked purple and blue and green.

      One, a big brute, simply smiled. They all raised their twelve-gauge shotguns until three bores, they was pointing at me, and I about kissed the world good-bye.

      “You got the message,” said the big one.

      I sure did. Critter, he was muttering and snapping his teeth, but I tugged on the rein to quiet him down.

      “The company, it’s got more men coming in, and they ain’t friendly,” I said.

      “Neither are we,” one of them replied.

      They waved me off, so I turned Critter down the road, feeling my back itch.

      I sure would have a few words of Carter Scruples and Amanda, too.

      Chapter Eight

      They was waitin’ for me when I got back to the Pullman Palace Car, and I got let in before I even had Critter took care of.

      “Well?” Scruples asked.

      “Oh, they got the message, all right, and she says they’ll take the fight here if you mess with them.”

      “She?”

      “Woman who runs the office and feeds ’em.”

      “But you delivered the warning, right?”

      “Yep.”

      “You have anything else to tell us?”

      “Nope,” I said. I decided not to talk about that little brat that pretty near blowed my head off.

      “Then we’re covered. They’ve been warned they’re trespassing. They’ve been given time to pull out.”

      He sounded like he wanted to make it all legal.

      Amanda, she was sittin’ there looking so pretty I could hardly stand it, but she wasn’t sayin’ much. I was wondering if maybe she’d invite me in for the night, but she was just busy with her knitting needles makin’ a pink sweater. I hardly ever seen a woman knit before, and I couldn’t see how she was making them stitches. I looked at her sort of hopeful, but she just smiled all blond peaches and cream like.

      But then she set aside her needles and stared at me. “Did they say whether they’d be leaving?”

      “Well, not exactly. She said they’d come after you if you messed with them.”

      “That’s all?”

      I didn’t know whether to get into the rest. “She said you’re, aw, you know.”

      “I don’t know, Mr. Cotton.”

      “Crooks.” I felt my ears redden.

      “I imagine we are,” she said. I plain stared.

      “Confidence man, confidence woman,” Scruples said. “The old shell game. This is the biggest one we’ve tried.”

      They had me there. “What’s a confidence?” I asked. Another one of them big words I never learnt up to grade eight.

      “Swindlers,” Scruples said.

      “I don’t know that one neither.”

      He smiled. “You’re the perfect employee,” he said.

      I got all puffed up with that. No one in my whole life ever called me perfect before. I decided it was time to get myself armed.

      “In that case, how’s about that gun?” I asked.

      “Oh, the gun. I’ve several in my office. Some of those gents who braced Cork had spares, you know. Come along, and we’ll put you in business.”

      I followed him down that long corridor to one of them rooms, and it proved to be an office, all right. A little oak desk and a black typing machine in there, and gray account books and red law books and stuff. But hanging from a coatrack were three gunbelts. Scruples motioned toward them, so I went for a look. The one Colt Frontier was so beat up I didn’t much like it. Another was an ancient Dragoon, a ton to wear and lift and shoot. The third was a shiny Colt Baby Dragoon, a capand-ball thirty-one-caliber model with an octagonal barrel. It felt fairly tight, and the hammer came down square on the nipple. I didn’t want the thing; I wanted brass cartridges, not powder and caps and balls and wads, a gun that wouldn’t fire every time it rained, and a gun needing a lot more care than I wanted to give it.

      “These don’t do me much good,” I said.

      Scruples shrugged. It was plain he was putting his chips on Glan, not me, and it didn’t matter what I thought.

      But then Amanda showed up in the doorway.

      “Try that belt with the smaller Colt,” she said. “I think you’d look very good in it, big boy.”

      “Oh, hell,” I said, and I tried it on. It shore wasn’t anything I wanted to wear, but there she was makin’ moon eyes at me, and I just sighed and nodded. The well-oiled belt fit, and the holster hung about right.

      “Twelve dollars against your pay,” Scruples said. “But you get some extras.”

      He handed me a red can of DuPont powder, a box of caps, a box of .31-caliber balls, and a pasteboard box of patches.

      “How ’bout if I just borrow her for a few days until I can get me a real gun?”

      “No, Mr. Cotton, this is it.”

      “You look just wonderful, sweetheart,” Amanda said.

      Oh, hell, what’s the use of fighting anything? I just swallered a little and smiled. At least I had a shooting iron strapped on me.

      That’s how it ended. They eased me out the rear door onto the platform, and I hopped down them steel steps to the ground. They’d put that old Palace Car on a bit of track cobbled together from mine rails and mine timbers, which is how they got her leveled up. But it sure was a strange way to live, like they was ready to roll away in a moment.

      I put Critter in the pen and hayed him. There was a couple of new nags in there, one of them a looker, with good blood showin’. The other was even uglier than Critter, and looked just as mean, too. Horses say something about their owners, so I looked ’em over real careful. The good-lookin’ chestnut one was brushed, and the mane was roached and he didn’t have a scratch. I thought maybe it was a Morgan, but I don’t know nags that good. The other, it was a big walkin’ wreck, and showed scars on the flanks where the owner’s rowels had dug into flesh. Its mouth was sore-looking, from someone yanking the bit around. It looked mean, and I steered clear, not wantin’ to catch a horse hoof right where I was savin’ up delights for Amanda.

      I tossed my saddle on a peg and headed for the bunkhouse, wonderin’ what the company had brung in.

      It didn’t take me long to find out. They was two new ones in there, in addition to Glan and the three presidents, as I called them. This new pair was big and little, and I saw at once how it was with them. The big one, he’d taken my bunk under the window, and was sittin’ there just waiting for me.

      I liked my bunk under the window, because it gave me some fresh air, which was in mighty short supply around there. But now this big galoot was sitting there grinning at me. I knew the type. He was a street fighter, a brawler, who never learnt a dirty trick he didn’t like. This was an eye-gouger, nut-pounder, ear-biter, toad-stabber, hair-yanker, knee-buster, and toe-stomper. And he showed it, too. His nose had been flattened more times than it could remember, and now it was a big wad of pulp. He had more cuts and scars on him than an army sergeant. He didn’t have one front tooth, up or down. They’d all been knocked out.

      “I guess that’s my bunk,” I said, knowing what was coming.

      “I guess it was, laddie,” he replied, his voice an odd whistle

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