“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “You know Pony Flores?”
“No.”
“Breed,” I said. “Dark, kind of tall, works some for Pike.”
“Tall as you?”
“Nope,” I said. “More like Virgil.”
“High moccasins, knife in the top?” Frisco said.
“That’s him,” I said. “He’ll bring them in the morning.”
“Ain’t normally very busy in the morning. They come in; I go out.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Frisco leaned her head against my shoulder.
“I’ll miss you,” she said. “You’re a good guy.”
“You too,” I said.
“Want to do it ’fore you go?” she said.
“I would,” I said.
Frisco grinned and patted my crotch.
“I could tell,” she said.
66
IN THE MORNING, Virgil and I walked with Allie and Laurel down to the train station and got aboard the nine-o’clock train to Del Rio. Allie carried a carpetbag. Virgil and I just had weapons and ammunition. The train left the station on time, and when we were under way, Virgil got up and spoke with the conductor. The conductor shook his head and Virgil tapped the deputy star on his shirt and spoke again. The conductor looked at us and paused, then nodded, and moved on, toward the front of the train.
Virgil came back and sat, on the aisle, with his right hand free, where he could look at the door at the front of the car. I sat opposite, with the eight-gauge beside me, where I could look at the back door, same as we always did. We didn’t speak of it, we did it automatically, the way we always spread apart approaching a fight or entering a strange place. We’d been doing what we did for so long that sometimes we seemed to me like two parts of the same apparatus.
As the train came in close to the river, I could feel it begin to slow, and about a half-mile into the straightaway, it braked and came to a sort of muttering halt the way trains do. We stood and got off the train. Pony was there, with four saddle horses. The horses were grazing comfortably on tether. We walked to the horses, and the train started up and moved south with slowly increasing speed.
We got the women mounted without saying anything.
“You know how you’re going to get them into Frisco’s room,” Virgil said.
Pony nodded.
“Know all parts of Pike’s Palace,” Pony said.
“Including the whores’ quarters,” Virgil said.
“Them ’specially, jefe,” he said.
“You got the gun I gave you,” Virgil said to Allie.
“In my bag,” she said.
“And bullets,” Virgil said.
Allie nodded and patted the carpetbag that hung on her saddle horn.
“And you’ll stay in there and be quiet no matter what,” Virgil said.
“Yes.”
Pony pulled his horse up next to Laurel. He took a.45 derringer out of his coat pocket, broke it open. Took out the two bullets, closed it again.
“Chiquita,” Pony said.
He held the gun out and cocked it.
“Click,” Pony said.
He pulled the trigger.
“Bang,” he said.
He cocked it again and pulled the trigger again.
“Click,” he said. “Bang.”
Laurel nodded.
“Do that?” Pony said, and handed her the gun.
She cocked it.
Pony nodded and said, “Click.”
She pulled the trigger.
Pony said, “Bang.”
She nodded and dry-fired it again. Then she gave the gun back to Pony. He loaded it.
“Now,” Pony said. “Click-bang only when you mean it.”
He pointed to the middle of his body.
“Shoot here,” he said.
Laurel nodded.
“Shoot only to protect yourself,” I said.
She nodded and put the gun in her coat pocket.
Virgil said, “You get them settled, Pony.”
“Sí.”
“Nobody sees them.”
“Sí.”
“We’ll be along in the afternoon. We see you in the saloon, we know it’s all gone right.”
Pony nodded and turned his horse and rode a little way toward town, and paused and waited for the women.
Allie paused and looked at Virgil.
“I love you,” she said.
Virgil nodded.
Laurel pulled her horse close to him and bent down from the saddle and whispered to him.
He nodded.
“Me ’n Everett been doing this most of our lives,” Virgil said. “We know how.”
We all sat silently for a moment.
“You come back to us,” Allie said.
“We will,” Virgil said.
Then he pointed toward Pony and gave Allie’s horse a slap on the flank. The horse moved forward and Laurel’s followed, and they rode away from us, toward town.
67
VIRGIL AND I SAT ON the riverbank and waited for Pony to do what he needed to.
“I don’t know if we’re really smart or really dumb,” I said, “hiding the women upstairs at Pike’s.”
“Nobody goes up there but whores and customers,” Virgil said. “Pony told me employees ain’t allowed.”
“Pike sure as hell wouldn’t look for them there.”
“No,” Virgil said.
A fish splashed in the river and left a series of concentric ripples. Bass probably, snapping up a
