gunnin’ for each other, too.”
Grimshaw kept his cold, level stare locked on Hooley for a couple of seconds longer, then nodded. “Radburn’s right. What’s done is done. We’ll let it go.”
“Just don’t be callin’ me a coward,” Hooley warned.
“I never said that.” Grimshaw’s lip curled. “I can’t help what you think of yourself, though.”
That comment was almost enough to set Hooley off again, but Radburn pushed his horse up alongside Hooley’s and caught hold of the lunger’s arm. “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s get on to town and collect our pay.”
“Now you’re talkin’,” one of the other men said. “Maybe the boss’ll have another job for us, too.”
The group of riders got moving again. Grimshaw said, “I wouldn’t count on anything else right away. Bosworth’ll want to let what happened today soak in on everybody for a while.”
The atmosphere among the hired killers eased as they approached the settlement. Most of them were thinking now of the money they had coming to them, and how they would spend it. The saloons and whorehouses in Eureka would do a booming business tonight.
While they were still outside of town, Grimshaw reined in and said, “We’ll split up here. The rest of you drift into the Bull o’ the Woods one or two at a time as usual. I’ll see the boss and meet you there in a little while.”
“Don’t lose any of that money along the way,” Radburn cautioned.
Grimshaw snorted. “I know you fellas. I’m not enough of a damn fool to try something like that.”
“Damn right,” Hooley said, still a little proddy from the earlier confrontation. “We’d hunt you down and take it outta your hide.”
Radburn used his horse to crowd Hooley’s mount toward the saloon. “That’s enough. Let’s go get a drink.” He licked his lips. “Killin’ is thirsty work.”
Grimshaw left the others at the saloon and headed on up the street toward the Eureka House. It was midday, and the town was busy, the streets full of pedestrians and buggies and wagons, and a few men, like Grimshaw, on horseback.
He drew up in front of the hotel and dismounted. After tying his horse at the hitch rail, he went inside, striding through the lobby without stopping at the desk. He knew where he was going.
His destination was a suite of rooms on the front of the hotel, overlooking the street. Grimshaw raised his hand to knock, but someone inside jerked the door open before he could rap on the panel. Emmett Bosworth stood there in his shirt sleeves, his collar undone. He must have been looking out the window and seen Grimshaw approaching the hotel. He glared at the gunman.
“Is it done?”
Grimshaw nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but Bosworth held up a hand and stopped him. The timber magnate opened the door a little wider and inclined his head toward the divan, where an attractive, nearly nude woman lay curled up with her eyes closed and a satisfied smile on her face.
“Give me a few minutes,” Bosworth ordered under his breath.
Grimshaw nodded and stepped back as Bosworth closed the door. He understood now why Bosworth hadn’t wanted him to say anything. He didn’t want the woman to overhear any details of the job that might come back later and implicate him in mass murder.
Grimshaw strolled down to the end of the corridor and waited, looking out a window at the alley that ran alongside the hotel. He didn’t see anything more interesting than a big yellow cat rummaging through some garbage. He heard the door of Bosworth’s suite open again, heard some quiet words exchanged between Bosworth and the woman as she left, but didn’t turn around. She hadn’t gotten a look at his face, and he figured Bosworth would want to keep it that way.
A moment later, he heard a heavy footstep behind him and turned. Bosworth gestured curtly.
“Come on.”
Bosworth had fastened his collar, put on a tie and his coat. He looked like the successful businessman he was. As he led Grimshaw into the sitting room of the suite, he went on. “Can I get you a drink?”
“You damn sure can,” Grimshaw said, recalling what Radburn had said a few minutes earlier about killing being thirsty work. That was sure true. He had been craving a shot of whiskey ever since they’d finished chopping those poor devils into little, bloody pieces.
Bosworth picked up a cut-crystal decanter of bourbon from a fancy sideboard and splashed the fiery liquor into a couple of glasses. He handed one to Grimshaw and said, “To the success of your mission.”
“Yeah,” Grimshaw said. He clicked his glass against Bosworth’s and then threw back the booze. It burned quite satisfactorily in his gullet.
Some men were content to guzzle any sort of rotgut or panther piss. Grimshaw liked the finer stuff in life, including liquor, which was why he had attached himself to Emmett Bosworth a year earlier, when the timberman had first approached him about ramrodding a crew of troubleshooters, as Bosworth called them, while he expanded his operation into the area of northern California now controlled by Rutherford Chamberlain.
Grimshaw had known right away what Bosworth was getting at. Any time one strong man tried to take something away from another strong man, there was bound to be trouble. In most cases, gun trouble. Grimshaw had been in that position many times in the past and knew what went with the job. He’d helped Bosworth recruit other men, some of them known personally to Grimshaw, like Radburn. Others, like Hooley, he had only heard of from mutual acquaintances.
There had been problems along the way. Grimshaw had lost a man early on, when he was just getting started putting the bunch together. But now the group was at full strength, and Bosworth was ready to make his move. The attack on Chamberlain’s camp this morning was just the opening salvo.
Bosworth sipped his bourbon. “You did it like we discussed?”
Grimshaw nodded as he helped himself to another drink, feeling confident enough in his relationship with
