grin right off his face.
“Even though I don’t believe you had anything to do with that robbery,” Gil said as he glanced down at the gun hanging from Nick’s battered holster, “my bet is that you’d know something about it. I hear you were the only man Cobb called his friend…although there are some folks who say you might have been the one to kill him.”
“Barrett was like my brother,” Nick said.
“Hell, I’d like to kill my brother every now and then. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
Despite everything running through Nick’s mind at that moment, he couldn’t help but look at Gil with outright confusion. “Just who the hell are you, and where the hell did you hear all of this?”
“Didn’t the lady tell you? I’m Switchback Gil.”
Nick recognized the tone in Gil’s voice, as well as the arrogant posture that meant that Gil fully expected his name to strike a chord with anyone who heard it. Seeing that proud display made Nick feel as if he were looking at a faded picture of himself, back when he was young and full of his own brand of hellfire.
“That name don’t mean shit to me, boy,” Nick said. “Now tell me who filled your head with all of those rumors.”
“Word’s been getting around about that stash you buried. The company that owned them jewels has been out looking for them and they say you were wrapped up in the robbery.”
“Folks say I’m wrapped up in plenty of things.”
“Are they all lying?” Gil asked.
Nick didn’t respond to that right away. As the memories flooded through his mind, Nick had to stand there and let them run their course before he said, “Not all of them.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about. But that was in the past,” Gil quickly added. “A blind man could see you ain’t in any condition to be a threat no more. That’s what I was trying to tell the folks that came around talking about them jewels.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Nick said dryly.
“There ain’t many men as thoughtful as me. Most are just chasing off after the tales that are being spread without doing any scouting ahead. I hear there’s been graves dug up all the way from here to the Dakotas and everywhere in between.”
“That’s not a very wise way to go about things. Not with so many Indians in those parts.”
Gil smirked and snapped his fingers. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“Are you going to tell me why you came out here to waste so much of my time?” Nick asked.
To Nick’s surprise, Gil actually stepped up to him and looked him squarely in the eyes. “I want you to tell me where I can find that grave. After that, I’ll be on my way and you can have all the time you need to think about how lucky you were that I found you instead of some of them others that are out there looking.”
“What others?”
“There’s a price on your head, old man. Didn’t you know that?”
Nick found himself grinning at the sound of that. Although he knew there were some gray strands in his hair and a few silvery whiskers in his beard, he hadn’t exactly thought of himself as old just yet. Then again, he could recall pinning that same moniker on men younger than himself when he’d been around Gil’s age.
If Gil had been concerned with privacy before, his own confidence had wiped that worry away. Now he stood in the street and glared directly into Nick’s eyes, bowing his shoulders like the proverbial cock of the walk. “You may have been a real bad man all them years ago,” he said. “But that was all them years ago. I’ve heard about some of the things you done from a cousin that lives up in Montana. He knows some real good stories about Nicolai Graves.”
“I barely ever hear people call me by my given name anymore. Most folks just say Nick. That’s good to hear.”
“Glad you like it,” Gil said with a smug grin. “From what my cousin tells me, you were shot up, ran out of Virginia City and left for dead by the vigilantes up there.”
“I wasn’t the only one.”
“Not by a stretch, but you’re one of the most famous ones.”
“There was a time,” Nick said fondly, “when it would have done me good to hear that.”
Gil nodded and then took a step back so he could square his shoulders to Nick. “Yeah? Well you can look back on the old days all you want after you tell me where to find that grave.”
“Barrett was my friend. Why would I tell you something like that?”
“Because it’d be real bad for you if you didn’t.” As he said that, Gil pressed the palm of his hand against his holstered gun as the muscles in his jaw flexed beneath the skin of his face.
Nick kept his head down and his eyes on Gil. He could hear a few people walking along the street to his right, but he didn’t bother looking in that direction. It was too late to be concerned with appearances. As Nick’s hand brushed aside his coat to give him better access to his gun, he asked, “You sure you want to do it this way, boy?”
“You could just tell me what I want to know and that’d be it. If you think I’m gonna start shaking because you got a gun strapped around your waist, you got another thing comin’. That piece of shit you got there couldn’t even kill a snake if you jammed the barrel down its mouth. Hell, the holster alone looks old enough to start rotting away if I gave it another few minutes.”
There were so many scars on Nick’s hands that he could barely feel the handle of the modified Schofield pistol. The leather of the holster was so worn and had been tooled so much that it was more like a piece of him. “Who else is going after that grave?” Nick asked. “I want names.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter if you heard of them or not. If I was you, I’d pile my things into a wagon and get out of this town, because there’s gonna be more coming around looking for you.”
“There always are.”
“Once I find them jewels, they’ll stop coming and you can live out the rest of your years in peace.”
“I can’t allow that,” Nick said calmly.
Gil cocked his head and leaned forward a bit. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me, boy. I can’t allow anyone to defile my friend’s grave. Especially not some wet-behind-the- ears prick like you.”
Gil heard that just fine. His face contorted into an angry mask and he drew in a deep breath until his chest was puffed out, pulling himself up to his full height.
Nick, on the other hand, remained in the same relaxed posture he’d taken since the conversation had begun.
“I’m finding them jewels one way or another,” Gil said. “You can tell me where the grave is or I could get it from that pretty lady who owns that restaurant. She seemed to know all there was to know about you.”
“That’s not the path you wanna take,” Nick said calmly.
“I won’t have to if you stop strutting like you got some stones between yer legs and answer the question you were asked.”
Nick let out a discouraged breath, blinked once and then drew his gun. The inside of his holster had been tooled with curved ridges that interlocked with the grooves twisting around the barrel of his modified Schofield. When the gun was brought up, the grip shifted directly into Nick’s palm. Most men wouldn’t have much use for such a feature, but most men also had all their fingers. The modification allowed Nick to make up some of the speed he’d lost when his gun hand had been mangled. His own skill and instinct, combined with a loosened trigger, gave Nick enough speed to clear leather and fire a shot before Gil could utter one more sarcastic word.
The shot cracked through the air and punched a hole through Gil’s chest. It was a little right of center, which meant Gil was still drawing breath and able to look down as his body absorbed the impact. Although Gil had drawn his own pistol out of pure reflex, he wasn’t able to lift his arm before Nick’s second shot drilled through his heart.
Gil’s eyes were open wide and his face bore a look of surprise that wasn’t at all unfamiliar to Nick. He’d seen that same look on plenty of other men’s faces. Seeing it now, Nick’s ears were filled with the echoes of his own youthful laughter that might have followed such an easy kill.
Nick wasn’t laughing now. Instead, he kept his gun in hand and his eyes on Gil until the other man’s legs finally buckled and he crumpled to the ground.
Looking up, Nick saw several familiar faces staring back at him. Shop owners looked through their windows
