Shrugging, the saloon keeper pulled the cork from the fresh bottle.
“I’m looking for a man named Odom,” Matt said. “Cletus Odom.”
“Mister, if you want whiskey or beer, I’m your man. If you want anything else, I can’t help you,” the bartender replied.
“How about a man named Bates? He’s a big man. He isn’t wearing a hat.”
The bartender poured the whiskey into a glass.
“Bates’ horse is tied up out front,” Matt continued.
“Is he wanted?”
“I know Odom is. Bates might be.”
“You the law?”
“No,” Matt said.
“You a bounty hunter?”
“No.”
“Then why are you lookin’ for him?”
“It’s personal,” Matt said.
“Mister, maybe you don’t know it but with the clientele I get in here, it ain’t a good idea to go around blabbing everything I know. Hell, I could wind up gettin’ myself kilt if I was to do somethin’ like that,” the bartender said.
Matt took out a ten-dollar bill and, though he wasn’t obvious about it, he made certain that the bartender saw it.
“You say Bates is a big man. We have a lot of big men who come in here, so that doesn’t tell me much. What about the other one you were talking about? What does he look like?”
“He’s uglier than a toad,” Matt said. “He has a purple scar on his face and a misshapen eyelid.”
Matt did notice a slight reaction to his description.
“He is here, isn’t he?” Matt asked.
The bartender said nothing, but looking around to make certain no one saw the transaction, he took the money, raised his eyes, and looked toward the stairs at the back of the room.
“Thanks,” Matt said.
At the back of the saloon, a flight of wooden stairs led up to an enclosed loft. Matt guessed that the two doors at the head of the stairs led to the rooms used by the prostitutes who worked in the saloon. Pulling his pistol, he started up the stairs.
The few men in the saloon had been talking and laughing among themselves. When they saw Matt pull his gun, their conversation died, and they watched him walk quietly up the steps.
From the rooms above him, Matt could hear muffled sounds that left little doubt as to what was going on behind the closed doors. He tried to open the first door, but it was locked. He knocked on it.
“Go ’way,” a voice called from the other side of the door.
Matt raised his foot and kicked the door hard. It flew open with a crash and the woman inside the room screamed.
“What the hell?” the man shouted. He stood up quickly, and Matt saw that it was the big man, Bates. He heard a crash of glass from the next room and he dashed to the window and looked down. He saw a naked Odom just getting to his feet from the leap to the alley below.
“Who the hell are you?” Bates shouted from behind him in the room.
Matt smiled at him. “Where’s your hat, Bates?”
“It’s you!” Bates yelled. Bates grabbed his knife from a bedside table. “You son of a bitch, I’m going to gut you like a hog!”
Bates lunged toward Matt, making a long, stomach-opening swipe. Matt barely managed to avoid the point of the knife. One inch closer and he would have been disemboweled.
Bates swung again and Matt jumped deftly to one side, then brought the barrel of his pistol down, sharply, on Bates’s knife hand. That caused Bates to drop his knife and when it hit the floor, Matt kicked it so that it slid across the floor and under the bed.
Inexplicably, Bates smiled.
“Well, I’d rather kill you with my bare hands anyway,” he said, lunging toward Matt.
Again, Matt stepped to one side, but this time he grabbed Bates and pushed him in the same direction that Bates had lunged, thus using Bates’s own momentum against him. Bates slammed headfirst through the window, breaking the glass. With a sharp, gurgling sound, he pulled away from the window, staggered back a few paces, then fell to his knees. A large shard of glass was protruding from his neck. The glass had severed his carotid artery, causing bright red blood to spill from the wound down onto his naked chest.
“Where are the others?” Matt asked, kneeling beside the wounded man. “The others who robbed the train. Where are they?”
“You—go—to—hell,” Bates said. Blood bubbled at his lips when he spoke.
