They also needed scouts.”
“Scouts?”
“Yeah. Riders with fast horses who could cover a lot of ground. My brother weren’t one of them, but one of his friends fit that bill just fine. Anyone looking to work was supposed to meet someone in San Trista.”
“Where is that?”
“A few days’ ride south of here. It’s just a hacienda with a general store that serves drinks. Ride south until you hit a dried up riverbed. Follow that until it hooks east and turn west, instead. You’ll hit San Trista before long. I don’t know who’ll be there, though. They said not to bother if it took too long to make up their minds.”
“I’ll just have to take my chances.”
“You like taking chances, don’t ya boy?”
“Pardon me?”
Schultz spread the corners of his mouth apart in a wide, filthy grin. He snorted and wheezed with the effort of leaning forward until he was close enough for Joseph to smell the rotten meat stuck in the fat man’s teeth.
“You ain’t asked for the money I owe that Indian,” Schultz grunted. “I bet you can’t even tell me how much it is.”
“Eighteen and a half dollars,” Joseph recited.
“You still seem to have forgot all about it so you could ask about them men that came along to give my brother a job. You the law, boy?”
Every time Schultz called him boy, Joseph felt his teeth grind together. The fat man seemed to have picked up on that right away and now put extra emphasis on the word.
“I asked you a question, boy. You the law or are you just trying to stick yer nose into my brother’s affairs?”
Before Joseph could answer that, he heard boots scraping against the floor behind him. A few quick glances over his shoulders told him that those men who’d been scared off before were now closing in on him again. As the men got closer, Joseph wondered if he could draw his gun before they made their move. In the time it took to ponder that question, he knew he was already too late.
“We don’t take to the law ’round here, boy,” Schultz grunted. “Fact is, we like to slice law dogs open and pin their badges to the fucking wall behind you. That’s why I prefer this here place over that Indian’s saloon. What do ya say, Stein? You think this asshole’s got another badge to pin to the wall?”
The tallest of the men standing behind Joseph laughed under his breath and dropped a hand on Joseph’s shoulder than felt more like an anvil. “If he don’t, I’m sure his balls’ll do just fine.”
As the men closed in behind him, Joseph could hear them all laughing to each other. They were looking at him as easy pickings and that, alone, sparked a fire inside his gut.
Balling up his fist, Joseph turned and swung his arm around like a whip. The side of his fist cracked against a man’s head, making him stagger back and to the side. Pain flared in Joseph’s hand, so he swung his other one with the same amount of fury.
“Get ’im Stein!” Schultz hollered.
The man who responded to that was taller than Joseph and outweighed him by at least fifty pounds. His blond hair was cropped so short that it looked like bristles on a brush. He grabbed hold of Joseph’s shoulder and shoved him hard enough to spin him like a top.
Joseph’s first reaction was to take a swing and Stein stood there to let him do it. His fist made solid contact, but thumped uselessly against a wall of pure muscle. He swung again, but only got a pain in his knuckles for the effort.
Stein grabbed the top of Joseph’s head in an iron grip. He pulled back his left fist and smashed it into Joseph’s face.
For a moment, Joseph thought that Stein was the only thing holding him up. His legs turned to pudding and he couldn’t feel the floor beneath him. He only realized he was falling a split-second before his backside hit the floor. When he dropped, all the air was forced from his lungs.
It took a second for Joseph’s vision to clear. He was sitting on the ground with his legs splayed out in front of him, leaning back on his arms for support. Above him, Stein was trading jokes with Schultz as the fat man pulled himself out of his chair to get a better look.
Joseph couldn’t see everyone else in the saloon, but he could hear them shouting and cheering as if they were watching a stage show. When Stein looked down at him with a cruel purpose in his eyes, Joseph knew he had to make a move before he was knocked out for good. Frantically grabbing for the gun tucked under his belt, Joseph fumbled a few times before finally managing to pull the weapon free.
“Lawman’s got a gun,” Stein growled. “But he don’t got the sand to use it.”
Holding the pistol in hand, Joseph placed his thumb on the hammer and immediately thought back to the man he’d killed with that same gun. The longer Joseph waited, the wider Stein’s smile grew.
“Maybe he ain’t no law dog,” Shultz said.
Stein slowly drew a gun from his own belt. In the big man’s hands, the weapon looked like a toy. “Maybe, but he sure as hell won’t be walking out of here.”
Joseph couldn’t hold his gun up. It weighed his arm down to the point that the end of the barrel tapped against the floor. When he heard that sound, Joseph snapped his eyes up as well as his arm. The pistol made a satisfying thump as he slammed it straight up into Stein’s groin.
Stein’s knees bent and his body slumped forward. He dropped the gun so he could move his hand between his legs. For a second or two, Stein didn’t make a sound. He then let out a strained moan and lowered himself to one knee.
Joseph collected the gun that Stein had dropped and jumped to his feet. Holding a pistol in each hand and keeping the rest of the saloon at bay felt good enough to make him forget about the throbbing pain in his face. “Anyone else interested in trying their luck?” Joseph asked.
There were no takers.
Swinging one of his guns to aim at Schultz, Joseph said, “Put any weapons you got on the table.”
The fat man complied, producing a gun from his holster and a knife from his boot.
“How many men came through here looking for hired guns?” Joseph asked.
The fat man sputtered for a bit and then spat out, “Five or six.”
“And how many took them up on the offer?”
“Maybe another five or six. I don’t know for certain.”
Joseph glared over the barrel of that gun as he tried to think of anything else he should ask. Unable to come up with anything, he nodded and backed toward the door. “All right, then,” he said. “Anyone who wants to push their luck can follow me out this door.”
The rest of the men that had been fighting on Shultz’s behalf lowered their heads and backed away. Everyone else in the saloon was just waiting to make sure the show was over.
Once he was on the street, hardly anyone bothered to look at Joseph. The fact that he still had a gun in each hand didn’t seem to carry much weight. Joseph tucked his gun back into its regular spot and then found another space under his belt for the one he’d taken from Stein.
Passing by the next saloon, Joseph went straight to the one at the end of the street simply because it was far away from the rest. He went inside, ordered a drink and downed it in one swig. The next drink went down just as fast.
TWENTY-FIVE
“So,” Nick said as he walked up to Joseph a while later, “you get into any trouble?”
Although the question was meant as a joke, Nick could tell Joseph was rattled by it. His eyes quickly picked up on something else, as well.
“Where’d you get the second gun?” he asked.
When Joseph let out his breath, it was thick with the stench of cheap whiskey. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”
