Cantrell heard a sound from within the shadows of the crib; then Oliver appeared in the doorway. He was wearing his boots, hat, and long underwear. He joined Cantrell at the wall.
“Philbin, where are you?”
Philbin didn’t answer.
“You seen Philbin this morning?” Cantrell asked as they stood there relieving themselves. He shook himself, then put it away.
“Not this mornin’, I just woke up. I seen him last night, though. He went in there,” Oliver said, pointing to one of the other cribs.
Cantrell walked over to the crib and looked inside. The whore Philbin had been with was still asleep, but she was alone in the bed.
“He ain’t here,” Cantrell said.
“So where the hell did he go?” Oliver asked.
“Beats me. I ain’t goin’ to worry about it right now. I’m goin’ over to have breakfast. You want to come along?”
“Yeah, I reckon so,” Oliver replied.
In the Casa del Sol cantina, Cantrell rolled a tortilla in his fingers and, using it like a spoon, scooped up the last of his breakfast beans. He washed it down with a drink of coffee, then lit a cigar just as Philbin and Meechum came in.
“Well, I’ll be damn,” Cantrell said. “Look here, Oliver. Look who has just showed up.”
“Meechum,” Oliver said. “I didn’t think we’d ever see you again.”
“I sent word about the time lock on the safe in that bank back in Bent Canyon. It ain’t my fault you didn’t get it.”
“If you’d done a little more lookin’ into it than you done, you wouldn’t have had to send word about nothin’,” Cantrell said angrily.
“And if you hadn’t left early, you would of got the word,” Meechum said. “The truth is, you got greedy and was plannin’ on keepin’ all the money for yourself, wasn’t you?”
“What money?” Oliver asked bitterly. “The only thing we got out of that was damn near killed. And Morris did get hisself killed.”
“Do you want to sit around here and argue about that? Or do you want to do a job that will make us some money?”
“What’s the job, and how much money?”
“I don’t know,” Meechum said.
Cantrell’s laugh was gruff.
“You set us up with a bank robbery that got us no money and damn near got us killed, now you want to set us up with another job, but you don’t know what it is and you don’t know how much money,” Cantrell said. “Meechum, you ain’t makin’ a hell of a lot of sense, you know that?”
“I’m not the one setting up the job,” he said. “But I know who is and, knowin’ him, I figure there’s goin’ to be a lot of money involved. Otherwise, someone like him wouldn’t waste his time with it.”
“Someone like who?” Oliver asked. “Who are you talkin’ about?”
“He’s talkin’ about Pogue Willis,” Philbin said, unable to keep quiet and let Meechum tell them.
“Pogue Willis?” Cantrell said, his demeanor changing. “Is this for real?”
Smiling, Meechum nodded. “Yeah, it’s for real,” he said. “I run into Willis back in Arizona and he asked me if I knew where I could get a few good men for a job he had in mind.”
“He didn’t tell you what the job was?” Oliver asked.
“No.”
“And you didn’t ask?”
“You don’t ask a man like Pogue Willis,” Meechum said. “If he says he has a job lined up, I believe him. And like I say, a man like Pogue Willis ain’t goin’ to be wastin’ time with a job that don’t pay a lot.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think,” Philbin said.
“Philbin, you’re willin’ to go along with this?” Cantrell asked.
“Yeah.”
Cantrell nodded. “All right,” he said. “You was in Bent Canyon, same as me and Oliver. I reckon if this is good enough for you, it’s good enough for me.” He looked at Meechum. “Where is this job?”
“It’s over in the Arizona Territory,” Meechum said. “About five days ride.”
Chapter Twelve
For the first month after he returned, Delshay felt isolated from the rest of the people. Many, he knew, blamed
