Winter Kill

“Yeah, I saw it. I did more than that.” Trench took a deep breath. “I caused it.”

“What in blazes are you talking about?”

“That bastard wasn’t shooting at you, Frank,” Trench said. “He was shooting at me.”

Chapter 2

Trench’s angular face appeared to be completely serious. Frank was intrigued enough by his old friend’s claim that after a moment he nodded and said, “All right. I reckon we can have that drink.”

“Good. I feel mighty guilty about you almost getting ventilated because of me. Seems like buying you a drink is the least I can do to settle the score.”

“That and tell me why somebody wants to kill you,” Frank said as they started across the street toward the Cascade. Some of the men they passed must have recognized Frank as being involved in the shooting from a few minutes earlier. He saw the looks they cast in his direction and heard the whispers, but he was able to ignore them.

He’d had plenty of practice.

The Cascade Saloon was a good-sized establishment doing a brisk business. It was noisy enough inside, what with the tinny notes of a piano, the clicking of a roulette wheel, and the bawdy laughter and raucous talk of the customers and the girls who worked there, that Frank was confident nobody would be able to eavesdrop on him and Trench as they sat down at a table in the corner with a couple of beers.

Frank wasn’t much of a drinker, but he liked a cold beer now and then. The beer in the Cascade was icy and went down smoothly. After a healthy swallow, Frank set his mug on the table and said, “All right, Jacob. Let’s hear it.”

Trench took another drink from his mug, then thumbed his hat back on his thinning hair. Like Frank, he was well advanced into middle age, but still a vital, powerful man.

“I was walking along the other side of the street from you,” he began, “although I didn’t know it at the time. Just as I passed that alley, I heard a little noise, and I reckon I was jumpy enough that it made me duck. That’s when the fella who was lurking there pulled the trigger. The bullet came mighty close to parting my hair anyway, but it missed and went on across the street.”

“Where it went right past my ear and busted out a window in the building I was passing,” Frank said. The moment was still vivid in his mind.

“Yep. That’s about the size of it,” Trench agreed.

“Question is, if he was trying to kill you, why did he keep shooting at me?”

“Because you were shooting at him,” Trench said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

And it was, Frank supposed. When he had felt the hot breath of that bullet, his instincts had taken over, making him whirl toward the source of the shot, drop to a knee, and return fire. Once things had gone that far, the man in the alley had kept shooting to try to save his own life. Frank could see now that that was the way it must have been.

He took another sip of his beer. “All right, that explains part of it,” he said. “Where were you while the rest of it was going on?”

“I got the hell out of the line of fire, of course. Once Haggarty opened the ball and you accepted his invitation to dance, there was nothing I could do to stop it.”

Frank grunted. “You knew the fella, then?”

“Damn right. His name was Leon Haggarty. Mean as hell.”

“Had a grudge against you, did he?” Frank guessed.

Trench shrugged. “Yeah. He and his brothers think I killed a cousin of theirs over in Idaho a while back.”

Frank’s eyebrows rose. “Brothers?” he repeated.

Trench rubbed a hand over his jaw and grimaced. “Yeah.”

“How many brothers are there?”

“Three more.”

“They as mean as Leon?”

“Meaner,” Trench admitted with a sheepish grin.

Frank shook his head. Despite his reputation, he had the most peaceful intentions in the world, especially now that he was getting on in years, and yet he still managed to walk right into trouble, usually through no fault of his own, again and again.

Both men drank from their mugs, then Trench went on. “It wasn’t until after you’d plugged Leon that I got a good look at you and realized who you were. I didn’t know my old compadre Frank Morgan was anywhere close to Seattle.”

“I wasn’t until today,” Frank said. “This cousin of the Haggarty brothers they think you killed in Idaho…did you?”

“Well…yeah. But I didn’t have any choice. He was trying to open me up from one end to the other with a bowie knife. He found an extra jack somewhere in a game of cards we were playing and took exception to it when I pointed out that fact.”

Frank nodded slowly. He supposed he couldn’t blame Trench for getting in that jam. He couldn’t abide anybody who cheated at cards, either.