Davis chuckled softly. He had a pleasant voice when he chose to use it. “I got you all set. I know you’re a man who likes his comfort. We got rooms over at the Gunther Hotel. Ain’t two blocks from here. And the cook will still be there. I warned him there was a bad ol’ bear coming to town and if he didn’t get a steak or two, he might eat the hotel and everybody in it.”
“Well, that’s a fair start, Davis,” Longarm said. “Could be we’ll get out of this with you still alive. That is if somebody else don’t kill you.”
Davis laughed. “Yeah, and I’m glad to see you, too. Hell, I was scairt you might have changed and turned human. I bet ol’ Billy Vail had to twist your arm plumb off to get you to come down here.”
Longarm looked at him. “Hell, I heard it the other way around. The way Billy told it, you wanted anybody but me. Somebody, I reckon, who didn’t know all your sly ways.”
“Billy’s sly ways,” Davis corrected. “This is kind of a tricky setup we’re going into and I told him I didn’t reckon was anybody else but you could pull it off.”
They had left the train depot and were walking down the street toward the hotel. Longarm stopped dead. “Now listen, smooth-mouth,” he said, “that kind of silver tongue bullshit might sell in some markets, but it won’t fit me. I ain’t rising to that kind of bait.”
Davis shrugged. “You can believe me or not. Don’t make a damn bit of difference to me. Things have changed since you swore me in in Mason County. Now I wear the same badge as you do and they ain’t no place on the back of it where they stamp in the years you got in the saddle. Me and you is equal, partner, and you can like that or lump it. I ain’t smooth-mouthing you about nothing. I don’t have to. I asked for you and that is a fact. And by the time we are halfway through this little deal I expect, unless you get taken by a serious case of the dumbs, that you will see why. But, like I say, it’s all the same to me. We ain’t got to be friendly.” With that, he turned and continued walking toward the hotel, his back very straight and rigid.
Longarm, startled, stared after him for a moment. Finally, when he could find his voice, he yelled, “Hey, wait a damn minute! Davis! Hold up there, you sonofabitch!”
Austin Davis slowed and stopped some ten yards down the street. He turned halfway around. He was still holding Longarm’s valise in his hand. “What?” he said.
Longarm walked toward him. When he’d arrived so that they were facing each other he unslung the saddle from his shoulder and dropped it at Davis’s feet. Staring the other man flat in the face, he said, “I have carried that saddle better than halfway from the station. If we’re going to be partners, it seems only right that you carry it the rest of the way.”
Austin Davis stared back for a half a moment. Finally he shrugged and said, “All right. That sounds square.” But before he bent to pick up the saddle, he held out the valise. “But then you ought to take this.”
“Fine,” Longarm said stiffly.
Austin Davis picked up the saddle and slung it over his shoulder. “The hotel is just another block yonder,” he said.
“I know where the damn Gunther Hotel is as well as you do.”
“You still ain’t shucks as a poker player.”
“Listen,” Longarm said with some heat, “before this job is over I am going to have every cent you got and a lien on your next year’s salary.”
Davis replied amiably, “You just keep on dreaming, partner. And I wouldn’t count on no comfort from the ladies, not while I’m around.”
As they resumed walking toward the hotel, Longarm said, “If you’re a real good boy I might let you have some of my leavings so far as the females are concerned. But I can guarantee you they will be gnawed down to the bone by the time I’m through with them.”
“My, my. That is brave talk for a man of your years. You sure you got the strength for it?”
“If we don’t get to that hotel and get me a steak, you will shortly find out about my strength. And I just hope you haven’t already got the situation screwed up where I can’t save it. I’m down here to do a job and I can only hope you don’t get in the way with your big feet.”
The Gunther was an old institution in San Antonio, known for miles around as the best cattleman’s hotel in the West. It had a big, spacious lobby with a first-class bar that served liquors and whiskeys not found in the ordinary saloon. Their rooms were of good size and their restaurant was famous for the quality of its menu. A man could walk across the Gunther’s marble floor, go up to the desk, drop his saddle, and say what he wanted and expect to have it happen faster than he could put his name in the hotel registry. When Longarm told the clerk what he wanted, the man just nodded and snapped his fingers. In an instant porters were there to relieve him of his gear and luggage and the clerk recommended they have his supper, following which, Longarm’s bath would be waiting for him in his room. And if he didn’t feel like shaving himself or wanted his hair cut, the clerk would have a barber sent up.
And that at eleven o’clock at night.
As they went into the dining room Longarm said, “These folks know how to run a hotel. I come in here one morning at about three A.M. with a bullet in my side and a terrible thirst for some goat’s milk. I guess I was half out of my head with the wound, but it seemed like somebody had told me goat’s milk would keep your strength up. Well I don’t know how they did it, but they had a glass of goat’s milk in my hand before the doctor arrived to take the slug out of me.” He made a face. “My word, I can still taste that damn goat’s milk. But I drank it. Man gets an idea in his head, he can’t shake it. I asked the doctor about it later and he said he’d thought it was a little strange to find a gunshot victim drinking goat’s milk, but he figured it was probably some kind of superstition. Said it wouldn’t hurt me, but he doubted it would have done me as much good as getting the bullet out.”
Austin Davis gave him a glance. “Is they a point to that story?”
Longarm shrugged. They had come to the big double doors of the dining room. A uniformed waiter was hurrying toward them. “Naw, not really,” Longarm said. “Just makes me wonder how many other hotels there are around could come up with a doctor and a glass of goat’s milk at three in the morning.”
“Not many, I’d guess,” Davis remarked dryly.
The waiter came up and said, “Mister Davis, I seen y’all when you come in the lobby. I done told the cook and he’s already got y’all’s steaks on. Big T-bones. Got some potatoes and some corn, and some apple dumpling for
