platform and spoke for forty-five minutes, extolling the virtues of Pueblo and the progress the city had made under his administration. Not until the last minute of his speech did the mayor remember to thank Matt Jensen for recovering the money that had been taken from the bank.
***
Lucas Meacham sat at a table in the back of the Blue Star Saloon, nursing a drink and planning his job. He could hear the sounds from outside, the band music as well as occasional applause and cheers from the crowd.
“Honey, are you goin’ to be a’ wantin’ me for anything?” the lone saloon girl asked him. “’Cause if you don’t want me for nothin’, I’m a’ goin’ to go outside and see what all is goin’ on.”
“No, I ain’t goin’ to be wantin’ you,” Meacham said. “If I was wantin’ me a woman now, I’d get one a lot prettier than you.”
The smile left the girl’s face and her eyes reflected a moment of hurt, before she was able to file the insult away with all the other insults she had heard for most of her life. Turning from him, she walked quickly to the door, then outside.
With the departure of the bar girl, the only people left in the saloon were the bartender and two Mexican men who were sitting at a table near Meacham. It was obvious that the bartender didn’t want to be here, as he was standing over by the door, staring out over the batwings at the activities outside.
One of the two Mexicans looked over toward Meacham. “Senor, you are not going to …” He turned to his companion.
“Celebrate.”
“
“I have no interest in Matt Jensen,” Meacham replied. “As far as I’m concerned, Matt Jensen could fall off a horse and break his neck.”
The two men smiled. “I think maybe we are amigos,” the tall one said.
“What makes you think we are amigos?” Meacham asked. He wasn’t the kind of man who would likely be friends with these two men, or any Mexicans for that matter.
“Because we do not care if he breaks his neck either,” the tall one said.
“For two years we were in prison because of Senor Matt Jensen,” the smaller of the two said.
Meacham took a quick glance toward the bartender and saw that he had not moved away from the batwing doors.
“So, because of Matt Jensen, you two were in prison, huh?”
“
“How would you like to get revenge? And make some money besides?” he asked.
The two men looked at each other, then the smaller responded. “I think maybe we would like that very much.”
Because of the many festivities and the dinner, it was late by the time Matt went to bed that night. He was staying in a room in the Railroad Hotel, the accommodations having been provided for him by the Colorado Bank and Trust. He fell asleep, not basking in the honors that had been bestowed upon him today, but feeling a sense of sorrow because it had been necessary for him to put Spirit down.
Later that same night, Lucas Meacham, Pablo Sanchez, and Enrico Gutierrez, the two men he had hired to help him, slipped through the dark shadows down the street to the Railroad Hotel. Although Lucas Meacham was a skilled gunman who believed he could take Jensen in a face-to-face gunfight, why take the chance? All he wanted was for the man to be killed so he could collect his fee from Denbigh, and if Sanchez and Gutierrez guaranteed that result, that was good enough for him.
Meacham, Sanchez, and Gutierrez moved in through the front door, then walked quietly over to the counter where the sleeping desk clerk was snoring loudly. Meacham turned the registration book around and, in the light of the quietly hissing kerosene lantern, ran his finger down the list of names until he found the one he was looking for.
“Room Two-oh-seven,” he whispered.
Leaning over the counter, Meacham removed a key from a nail that was labeled 207.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Meacham led Sanchez and Gutierrez upstairs, cautioning them to walk very, very quietly. When they reached the top of the stairs, Meacham held out his hand to stop them on the stairway, then leaned around the corner to look down the hallway toward Room 207.
The hallway was lit by four kerosene lanterns, two on each of the facing walls. The lanterns made hissing sounds, and occasionally the flame in one or another lantern would flicker for a few seconds, causing the shadows to dance. After making certain that no one was in the hallway and that all the doors were closed, Meacham pulled his pistol and, with his arm crooked at the elbow, pointed it straight up.
“Put out the lanterns as we go by,” he whispered. “Let’s do it.”
The three men walked quietly, very quietly, down the hall, making certain they stayed on the hall runner, a long, narrow carpet that stretched from one end of the hallway to the other. As they passed each lantern they extinguished it so that the hallway grew progressively darker, until, by the time they were standing in front of Room 207, the only illumination was a dim, silver splash of light down at the far end of the hall, projected through the window by the moon.
Matt had no idea what time it was, nor how long he had been asleep, when something awakened him. He lay in the dark for just a second, fighting the momentary confusion of being unexpectedly awakened, when he heard, though it was barely audible, the sound of a key being inserted in the lock of his door. In one motion, he grabbed the gun from the holster that hung on the headboard, and rolled off onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed from the door.
At almost the same time as he reached the floor, the door to his room was opened and three guns began shooting at the bed. Because of his alertness, none of the bullets struck Matt, though he could feel and hear them hitting the bed.
