from me?”
Nick sat down as Joseph moved up behind J. D. When Joseph took the pistol from J. D.’s holster, he got no resistance. Nick lowered his gun.
“I came up with a few more questions. We’d like to know where you’re going,” Nick said.
“I thought I might go into Old Mexico. Seems to be a lot safer down there.”
“Is that where your friends are headed?”
“I’m alone.”
“You know why that is?” Nick asked. “Because the only people who use this trail are either lost or on the wrong side of the law. You’re riding to catch up with some of your friends.”
“Look around! I’m alone!”
“For now,” Joseph grunted. J. D. shifted to get a better look at Joseph now that he was closer to the fire. When he saw Joseph’s face, he scowled and shook his head. “Goddamn gravedigger needs to hire on some help just to keep me from eating my dinner.”
Joseph’s free hand snapped forward and knocked the hat off of J. D.’s head. Grabbing a handful of J. D.’s hair, Joseph nearly wrenched the man’s head off as he forced J. D. to look at him again. “I’m not a hired gun. I’m the man that your friends tried to kill. Those same friends of yours killed my family.”
“As you can see,” Nick said, “my partner here is a little upset. He’d like nothing more than for me to walk away and let him find some creative ways to put different parts of you into that fire.”
J. D.’s muscles slackened and his voice rose to a high-pitched whine. The more he talked, the closer he sounded to breaking into tears. “I already told you about Dutch and where they were headed. What more do you want from me?”
“We heard the rest of your gang were using this trail,” Nick said. “So that means there was more you could have told me before. I want the rest of it.”
“Like what?”
“Like the names of the places where the rest of the gang is going to pick up your new members.”
J. D.’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Judging by the look on his face, even he was impressed as to how much Nick had learned. When he felt Joseph’s grip tighten on his hair, J. D. sputtered, “Pe—Perro Negro!”
“Where’s that?” Nick asked.
“A day or two ride east of here, farther into Arizona.”
“Where are they headed from there? You might as well lay it all out for us, because if we need to track you down again…”
“San Trista, and then they’ll hit a ranch called the Busted Wheel.”
“Is that the place near Dos Rios?” Nick asked.
“Jesus Christ, who told—”
Joseph shook J. D.’s head as if he was trying to shake something loose from his ears. “Is it?” he shouted.
“Yes! Yes!” J. D. squealed. “The man who owns that place is supposed to have a stash of gold hidden away. It’s left over from the strike that let him buy up so much land.”
“Dutch found himself another source of information, huh?” Joseph snarled. “Is that it?”
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“And killing the folks there is just a means to an end? That’s how you assholes work, isn’t it?”
J. D. squirmed as he tried to think of an answer that wouldn’t buy him a close-up look at his campfire. Unable to find one, he merely clenched his eyes shut and let out a whimper. When the gun barrel touched his head once more, the next thing J. D. felt was the warm flow of urine down the inside of his leg.
“Looks like you made a little mess there,” Nick said through a smirk. Glancing up to Joseph, however, took that smirk right away from his face. “All right, Joseph. Ease up and let the man talk. He still needs to tell us the quickest way to find his friends.”
“Anything,” J. D. sniveled. “I’ll tell you anything you want. Please…”
Nick’s eyes narrowed as he studied Joseph’s face. There was fiery rage in the man’s expression that was all too familiar. “You hear me, Joseph? I said ease up.”
Joseph stared intently down at J. D. The anger that had flared up in his eyes was receding once more to give way to a coldness, which concerned Nick more than anything else.
“Hey!” Nick shouted. The sound of his voice was enough to make both of the other men jump.
J. D. clenched his eyes shut even tighter and whimpered to himself.
Joseph, on the other hand, looked as if he’d been revived with a splash of water. He looked back down at J. D., but without the intensity that had been in him only moments ago. Twitching out of frustration, he shoved J. D. away and stormed from the fire.
“There now,” Nick said as he let out a breath. “See how easy that was?”
“That asshole’s crazy,” J. D. said. He was still letting out the last bit of those words when Nick’s fist cracked into his jaw. After J. D. was knocked to one side, he stayed put as if playing ’possum was the only option left.
“That man lost his family, and your friends took them,” Nick growled. “You should be praising the Lord above you don’t have a bullet in your head right now.”
J. D. sputtered and made a weak hissing noise. At first it sounded as if he was trying to spit out the tune he’d been whistling before, but then it sounded as if Nick had knocked a tooth loose.
After a few seconds of that, Nick sighed and said, “Stop it. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead already.”
J. D. kept making the noise. Now he sounded like a whistling teakettle that was moving back and forth from the flame.
“Pull yourself together.”
“I can’t…can’t do it,” J. D. cried.
“Just take a breath and—”
“It’s two short, one long and one short.”
Nick stopped and sorted through what he thought he’d just heard. Even after a few seconds, he was still coming up short. “What?”
“The signal,” J. D. whined. He started making the noise again, but only wound up with his face buried in the dirt out of frustration and exhaustion.
Nick let out a series of crisp whistles: two short, one long and one short.
“That’s it,” J. D. said as he lifted his head and nodded. “That’s the signal to get in close to Dutch and the rest of the boys. Otherwise, they’ll shoot you off your horses before you get within a hundred yards. But you probably already knew that.”
Keeping his best poker face intact, Nick said, “Yeah, I knew that. All I needed was the signal.”
“Now you have it, just please don’t let that other one near me. He’s gonna kill me, I can see it in his eyes.”
“Stay here,” Nick said.
“Oh, God.”
“Better yet, just leave.”
“Are…are you sure?”
“Yeah,” Nick said with an annoyed wave. “Just as soon as you give me those directions. And if I smell a lie on you, I’ll stick you in that fire, myself.”
J. D. rattled off a string of directions to the places his partners would be going. After he was done, he looked to Nick expectantly.
“Get the hell out of here,” Nick told him.
“You’ve got a good heart,” J. D. said as he scurried toward his horse. “I don’t know about that other one, but…I mean…never mind.”
Nick was headed to where Joseph was standing, but paused long enough to see what J. D. was doing. “Leave the horse,” he said.
J. D. stopped with one foot in the stirrup and one hand on the saddle horn. “What?”
“Leave the horse,” Nick repeated. “You can go, but you’ve got to run.”
“There ain’t much of anything around here.”
