“This here is my car. I ain’t supposed to leave it.”
“You’re comin’ with us through the rest of the train.” Stepping across the vestibule, Dinkins pushed the porter in first, and called, “Folks! We’re goin’ to be movin’ through the car collectin’ the fare.” He laughed. “You may think you’ve already paid your fare, but this is what you might call an extry fare. Oh, and if anyone tries anythin’ funny, I’m goin’ to shoot this here darkie. You got that?”
The passengers, their faces varying in expressions from fear, to anger, even to a sense of excitement, all nodded in the affirmative.
“Julius, you hold the bag for us,” Dinkins said, and as they proceeded through the cars, the porter held the bag open, passing it from passenger to passenger to get their donation.
“I don’t believe this is all the money you have,” Dinkins said when one man dropped a dollar bill into the bag.
“It’s all I have on me,” the man answered.
“I’m going to search you. And if I find any more money on you, I’ll shoot you for lying to me.”
The man stared at Dinkins without blinking and without a change of expression on his face.
Dinkins stuck his hand in every pocket, but came away empty.
After going through two cars and getting the slimmest of pickings, Dinkins spoke out again. “What the hell?” he said loudly. “How can you people travel with so little money?”
“This is all the money my mama gave me,” one young girl, who was about fifteen, said.
“You travelin’ alone, girl?” Dinkins asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Dinkins smiled. “Well now, when you are an old woman with grandkids, you are goin’ to be able to tell ’em that you was robbed by Bill Dinkins. Think about that.”
Dinkins and Harley reached the rear of the train, then stepped onto the back platform with the porter still with them. Dinkins took the bag from the porter, then he and Harley stepped down on to the ground.
“Are you finished with us, Mr. Dinkins? Can I tell the conductor we can go on, now?” Julius asked.
“Get on back in there now, darkie, before I blow your head off,” Dinkins said with a growl.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Dinkins and the others came upon a large cottonwood tree standing just outside the town. Hanging from a limb was a corpse. His hands were tied behind his back and his head and neck were misshapen from the effect of the hanging. The corpse was twisting slowly at the end of the rope.
“Son of bitch!” Travis said. “What the hell is this? I didn’t think there was any law in Risco.”
Whoever hanged the man did not bother to put a hood over his face, leaving the grotesque visage of a violent death for all to see. The man’s skin was black, though it did not appear that he had been a black man in life. His cheeks were puffed, his mouth was open, and flies were crawling in and out of it. The worst part about him was his eyes. They were bulging nearly out of their sockets.
“He sure is an ugly son of a bitch, ain’t he?” Frank asked.
“Does anyone know who he is?” Dinkins asked.
“I don’t know him,” Travis replied. “But him bein’ all black and puffed like he is, I don’t think I would recognize him even if I did know him.”
“He’s got a sign pinned to his pant leg there,” Dinkins said, pointing to a piece of paper.
Frank rode up to the hanging corpse, then, standing in the stirrups, reached up to pull off the sign.
“What does it say?” Travis asked.
Frank read it aloud. “This is the corpse of Frank Marlow. Do not assume that because we have no law in this town means we have no law. Mr. Marlow carved up and killed one our soiled doves, and for that, has paid the extreme penalty.”
“Better pin the sign back on him,” Dinkins said.
Frank did, then the four men rode on into Risco, stopping in front of the saloon.
Inside they got two bottles of blended whiskey, then found a table. When the whores they had stayed with before saw them, they came over to the table to join them. The dissipation of years on the line told in all four of them. There was not one who was in the least attractive, and none of them could have been able to make a living in their profession anywhere else but Risco.
The irony was that they were making more money than they had ever made before in their lives. But the money did them little good, since it cost so much to live in Risco.
“I see you boys are back.” Wanda was the largest of the four, the one Dinkins had awakened with the last time he was in Risco. Because of that, she established a proprietary attitude toward him.
“You know why they’re back, don’t you, Wanda?” Emma said. Emma was running her hand through Travis’s hair. “They fell in love with us, and they can’t live without us.”
The four women laughed at Emma’s joke, but none of the men found it particularly funny.
“Go away,” Harley said to the women.
