face. I’m gonna use my fists and then a knife so that no woman will ever look at him again without wantin’ to empty their guts.”
“Just use your hands on him, not your knife,” Buck said. “If he bleeds to death, we would be out a lot of money.”
“I know,” Clyde said. “I just wish that fancy bastard had picked some decent weather to run off in. This storm is a real sonofabitch.”
“if it snows, we’ve almost got him boxed in,” Buck said. “The passes will close and he’ll have to ride straight south. Those Thoroughbreds will slow him down. Them horses aren’t up to traveling across this rough, muddy ground in foul weather.”
“Let’s just hope that one or the other of us finds him,” Clyde said. “I’m tired of ridin’ and I want to spend some of that money on those nasty Whiskey Creek women.”
“If you find Cox first, tomorrow, you just bring him back to those caves up yonder,” Buck said. “Remember, we’re in this together.”
“Sure,” Clyde said. “We’re brothers.”
Buck nodded and took the fork toward Redcliff. Clyde watched him disappear into the storm and then he turned his own weary horse toward Whiskey Creek. He was riding his best horse, a big roan gelding that had never quit on him no matter how hard the trail or how many the miles. But even the roan was beginning to fail. It was just plumb played out and in need of some grain and rest. Clyde liked horses and he was sorry that he’d had to push the roan so damned hard. But Whiskey Creek wasn’t very far up this long mountain valley. He’d be there by midnight and he’d find the roan a livery, a stall, and some grain. And after that he’d go hunting for that shyster Nathan Cox.
“If I don’t find him in town though,” Clyde said to himself, “I’ll find a woman and a bottle and hole up until this storm blows over.”
Clyde was sure that Buck would be smart enough to do exactly the same.
The last ten miles to Whiskey Creek were a bitch, and Clyde was shaking with the cold when his exhausted roan finally staggered into town. Clyde’s need for a drink and the warmth that it would bring to his innards caused him to rein up sharply before a saloon. He almost fell when he dismounted and crawled inside to stand before the bar.
“A bottle!” he roared, causing heads to turn.
“Mister,” the bartender said, “you’re as white as a ghost and as wet as the weather!”
“Rain is turning to sleet,” Clyde said, his teeth chattering.
He drank deeply before paying for the bottle. Then he stomped back outside, and when he tried to lift his boot up to his stirrup, he was so stiff with the cold that he just couldn’t cut the mustard. Taking another drink, he untied the roan from the hitching rail and led it up the sloppy street until he came to the only livery in town. The place was dark, but Clyde had dealt with old man Waite a number of times and so he unlatched the barn door and got himself and his horse in out of the freezing rain.
“Hey, Waite!” Clyde shouted, slapping at his pockets in his search for matches. “Wake up, you smelly old sonofabitch, I’m a payin’ customer tonight!”
Near the back of the livery barn, a match flared and then a lantern cast its sickly glow around the inside of the huge, rickety barn. Waite emerged with a shotgun clenched in his hands. “What the hell kind of—that you, Clyde Zolliver?”
“Sure is! I need a stall for my roan horse. He’s in worse shape than I am because he won’t share my whiskey.”
Waite lowered his shotgun. “What the hell are you doin’ out in this weather so far from Cheyenne?”
“Huntin’ someone.”
“Couldn’t it wait until the storm passed?”
“Nope.” Clyde peered around the shadowy barn. “You got a lot of horses put up in here tonight.”
“I’m full UP.”
“Then move one of ‘em outside or double ‘em up,” Clyde ordered. “My roan is shakin’ with the cold and the weariness. He needs grain and—whose tall horses are those?”
Waite shuffled over and raised his lantern near one of the horses. “They’re all Thoroughbreds. Fella brought ‘em in two … no, tomorrow it’ll be three days ago. Paid me a hundred gawddamn dollars! And they’ll be more money comin’ because-“
Clyde cut him off short. “What’d the fella look like?”
“Tall, but not quite as tall as you nor Buck. Big, but not near your size.” Waite grinned. “About as handsome though.”
“Did he give you his name?” Clyde asked, ignoring the man’s insincere compliment.
“Nope, just his money. That’s all that I needed to see. Don’t need to know another damn thing about the man.”
Clyde started to tell Waite that the money he’d accepted was undoubtedly counterfeit, but then he caught himself and said, “Where is this fella?”
“At the Paradise Hotel, why—is he the fella that you’re huntin’?”
“Maybe,” Clyde said evasively as he yanked his saddle and wet blanket off the roan. “Get one of them horses out of a stall so I can put my roan up before his legs drop from under him.”
“Sure,” Waite said, “he’s shakin’ pretty bad.”
The transfer was made, and when the roan had been rubbed dry with gunnysacks and then fed grain and forked hay, the two men shared a few pulls on the bottle.
