“Indeed you may, sir, indeed you may,” Ware answered. “I’ve already taken off the first batch of biscuits, if you would like one. And there’s butter and honey here.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ware,” Matt answered. He poured himself a cup of coffee, then held it out in a salute toward the cook. “This will do me for now.”
“All right. I’ll get back to my cookin’ then,” Ware said. “But if you need ’nything, just ask.”
“I appreciate it.”
Matt took a swallow of his coffee as he stared down into the fire, watching the flames curl around a piece of glowing wood. That was when he heard three shots being fired—the signal that had been arranged in the event cattle rustlers were spotted.
Tossing his coffee aside, Matt hurried toward the rope corral where he saddled Spirit as quickly as he could. Then, mounting, he galloped away from the small encampment even as the others were just beginning to stir in their bedrolls.
“Where’s he goin’ so fast?” one of the cowboys asked.
“Didn’t you hear them three shots bein’ fired? Poke must be in trouble,” another said.
Matt heard the shooting then, not a signal this time, but several rounds being fired in a pattern that suggested trouble. He rode hard toward the sound of the guns, in the direction of the muzzle flashes which were lighting up the predawn darkness.
When he arrived, he saw Poke lying on the ground behind his dead horse, being assailed by at least four men. Snaking his rifle from its saddle sheath, Matt raised it to his shoulder and fired, knocking one of the riders from his saddle. Jacking another round into the rifle, he fired again, taking down a second man. The remaining two rustlers turned and galloped away.
Putting his rifle back in the saddle sheath, Matt pulled his pistol and walked out into the gray shadows of early dawn to check on the men he had shot. He found them both dead.
By now the rest of the outfit arrived, carrying weapons and ready to do battle.
“We don’t need you,” Poke said. “Me ’n Mr. Jensen done took care of ’em all by ourselves.”
“Yeah, I’m sure you were a big help,” one of the cowboys said, and the others laughed.
“Yeah? Well the sons of bitches kilt my horse, is what they done.”
“It wasn’t your horse, it was Mr. Frewen’s horse.”
“Maybe, but he’s the one I’d been usin’. He was a good horse, too.”
“And Poke kept them from getting any of the cattle,” Matt said.
“Yeah,” Poke replied with a big grin on his face. “I kept ’em from taking any of the cows.”
“We’re just teasing you, Poke. I think you done real good out here,” another cowboy said.
Carlos Silva was sitting in a back corner table at The Lion and The Crown Saloon. The first day he came into the saloon, Lucy started toward him, but stopped when she saw his face. For a moment she felt as if the devil himself had come for her because of the life she was living, and, terrified, she turned and moved as far away from him as she could. And though she no longer believed he was the devil, she still avoided him.
Lucy was not the only one who avoided any contact with Silva. Neither Rose nor any of the other girls would have anything to do with him. But it wasn’t just the women who avoided him. The men who were regular customers also tended to give him a wide berth. There was about him a “scent of sulfur,” the bartender, Harry Moore, suggested when he talked about the strange and silent red-faced man who had come every night now, for a week.
He ordered the same thing every night. Two mugs of beer, a plate of pickled pigs’ feet, and a boiled egg. Almost immediately there was speculation about who he was, and what he was doing here. He didn’t wear a gun, so nobody thought he was particularly dangerous—though his looks were enough to frighten all but the most confident person.
Silva had come to The Lion and The Crown every day waiting for his “subject” to show up. He had no intention of confronting Matt Jensen, so there would not be a shoot-out in the way of Kyle Houston. Carlos Silva had killed seventeen men, though not one of the killings had been the result of a face-to-face confrontation. That wasn’t the way Silva worked. He operated from afar, killing every one of his victims from a distance of from five hundred to one thousand yards.
But despite his long-distance killing, before he shot anyone, he wanted to—no, he had a compulsion to—see them up close. He wanted to see them breathing, eating, drinking, laughing, and talking with others. He wanted to experience some of their life before he took it from them. He intended to kill Matt Jensen, just as he had promised. But he wanted to get a close look at him first, and Reed had told him that from time to time Jensen frequented this particular saloon.
Silva had heard stories about Matt Jensen, he had even seen dime novels that were written about him. Matt Jensen was a famous man, certainly far more noted than anyone Silva had ever killed before. Because of the way Silva worked, most people had never even heard of him. But after this job, after killing Matt Jensen, Silva had an idea that he would be well known. He would become famous for killing a famous man.
On his fifth consecutive day of coming to The Lion and The Crown Saloon, four men came into the saloon, laughing and talking. Silva listened.
“Harry, four beers.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Morrison,” the bartender replied. “What brings you to town? We don’t often see you in the middle of the week like this.”
“We brought two more Yellow Kerchiefs into the undertaker,” Morrison said. “That’s four of them gone now. I’m telling you the truth, Matt Jensen is like a one-man army.”
Upon hearing Matt Jensen’s name, Silva began to pay very close attention to the four men. Was Jensen among them?
