“Wait a minute! That’s what we come all this way for? A little dirt hut like that? What the hell is it?” Monroe asked.
“Monroe, if you’d ever done one day’s work in your life, you would recognize it,” Dagen said. “It’s a line shack.”
“What’s a line shack?”
“It’s where the cowboys that watch over the herds in the field stay,” Dagen said. “It’s lonely work, but as I recall, most of the time the cowboys in the line shacks eat better’n the boys back in the bunkhouse.”
“I’ve heard that my ownself,” Casey said. “But I ain’t never spent no time in a line shack.”
“I have,” Dagen said. “And believe me, whoever is in there now will have food.”
“What if they do have food?” Monroe asked. “You don’t really think they’ll just share it with us, do you?”
“Oh, I don’t intend to ask them to share it,” Fargo said. “I intend to just take it. Dismount, pull your long guns, and follow me.”
“What do we want with our rifles?” Dagen asked.
“You’ll be needin’ them,” Fargo said without further explanation.
There were four cowboys inside the small adobe line shack. One was asleep on the bunk; the other three were sitting across a small table from each other, playing cards. They were playing for matches only, but that didn’t lessen the intensity of their game. When one of them took the pot with a pair of aces, another one complained.
“Sandy, you son of a bitch! Where’d you get that ace?” His oath, however, was softened by a burst of laughter.
“Don’t you know? I took it from Shorty’s boot while he was asleep.”
“Does Shorty keep an ace in his boot?”
“You think he don’t? I never know’d him to do anythin’ honest when he could cheat.”
“That’s the truth of it,” Shorty admitted from his bunk, proving that he wasn’t actually asleep. “Hell, it’s the only way I can be sure to win. But Arnie is just as bad.”
“I am not,” the dealer replied.
“And so is Curley,” Shorty added.
“Well, now you’re right there,” the third cardplayer said. “I will cheat if I think I can get away with it.”
The others laughed.
The cards were raked in, the deck shuffled, then dealt again.
“Hey, do either one of you know Jennie?” Arnie asked as he dealt the cards.
“Jennie? Jennie who?” Sandy asked as he began picking up cards.
“You know Jennie who,” Arnie insisted. “She’s one of the whores down at the Desert Flower.”
“Oh, yeah, that Jennie. What about her?”
“Well, here’s the thing. Do you fellas think she likes me?” Arnie asked.
The others laughed. “Do we think she
“You’re just talkin’,” Arnie said. “She won’t go upstairs with just anybody.”
“You may be right about that,” Shorty said from the bunk. “She won’t go upstairs with Curley. I mean, he’s so damn ugly he can’t come up with enough money to make any woman go upstairs with him.”
Sandy added, teasing Curley, “How’d you get to be so ugly, Curley?”
Curley was short, round, freckled, and without a hair on his head.
“My mama says she was scairt by a bear when she was carryin’ me, and some of that bear’s ugly wore off,” Curley replied.
The others laughed.
“But speakin’ of Jennie,” Curley continued, “better not nobody be messin’ around with her unless they’re wantin’ to tangle with Tucker.”
“Tangle with who?”
“Tucker Godfrey,” Curley said. “You know, that bandy-legged little shit from the Flying J Spread? He’s got his cap set for Jennie and he sees anyone sniffin’ around her, why, he runs ’em off.”
“Ha! You think I’m scared of Tucker? I could break that little pipsqueak over my knees like a piece of kindlin’ wood,” Arnie said.
“Hell, any of us could, if we could ever catch the little son of a bitch without his gun. But he’s damn good with that gun, and he has it with ’im all the time. Folks say he even has it with him when he goes to take a shit.”
The others laughed again.
At that moment, four riders stopped on a little hill overlooking the line shack. They ground-tied their mounts about thirty yards behind them, then moved to the edge of the hill at a crouch and looked down toward the little building.
