Decker leaned on the desk and said, “I’m asking you.”
Decker went to the hotel and got Dover’s hotel key from the clerk. In Dover’s room he looked around but found nothing but some extra shirts, an extra gun and some bullets.
He sat on the bed and looked at the stuff he’d gotten from the sheriff. Some money in a wallet—there had probably been more, which the sheriff had spent—a letter to someone named Jane which Dover hadn’t mailed yet, and an old knife, which Decker recognized. Dover’d had that knife a long time, and the blade had dulled over the years. He’d only kept it as a lucky piece.
He dropped the knife and picked up the wallet from the bed. He riffled through it and found a folded-up paper. He unfolded it and spread it out. It was a poster on a man named Oakley Ready. Decker had never heard of him, but the price was high, five thousand. He was wanted for three murders.
He was wanted by Decker for a fourth. The only reason Dover would have hidden the poster was he didn’t want anyone else to see it. He wanted to make sure he got this man himself.
“I’ll get him for you, Dover.”
As Decker refolded the poster, he saw some writing on the back—a list of cities. It was probably the route over which Dover had tracked Ready.
There were two cities left on the list. One was Harrison City. Dover had died here. The other city on the list was probably where Dover expected to find Oakley Ready.
When Decker left the hotel carrying his gear, the Tyrone boys had been removed. He stopped at the sheriff’s office on his way to the livery.
“You clean up real quick,” he said to the sheriff.
“Yeah,” the sheriff said. He was pouring himself a cup of coffee and didn’t offer Decker one.
“I guess you’re the town garbage man, too, huh?”
The sheriff opened his mouth to reply, then thought better of it. He knew Decker’s reputation.
“Did you check out the Tyrone boys?” Decker asked.
“Uh, what do you mean…check them out?”
“Don’t play dense with me, Sheriff,” Decker said. “How much money did they have on them?”
“Uh, they each had more than one hundred dollars on them.”
“One hundred dollars?” Decker asked. “Are they local?”
“Yeah.”
“How long would it take them to earn that kind of money in this town?”
The sheriff laughed and said, “In a week, a month or a year?”
“Where’s the money now?”
Very quickly the sheriff’s eyes went to his desk, and then away.
“I…guess it’s at the undertaker’s—”
Decker walked around behind the desk and started opening drawers.
“Hey, you can’t do that—”
“You gonna stop me?” Decker asked.
The sheriff took one step forward, then stopped and took two steps back, shaking his head in disgust.
Decker found the money in a drawer and took it out. There was more than five hundred dollars there. He counted out enough for four burials and dropped it on the desk.
“I’ll be back to see the graves,” he said.
The sheriff hesitated a moment. Then he licked his lips and said, “They’ll be there.”
He watched as Decker tucked the rest of the money into his pocket and walked out.
Decker went to the livery, retrieved his horse and rode out of town. He had to find the nearest railroad and start his journey to New York City.
Chapter One
During the train trip to New York, Decker thought a lot about Dover…
…about a conversation they’d had when they were both seventeen.
“I wanna be the best lawman I can be,” Dover said. “I wanna be famous.”
“You want to be rich, too?” Decker had asked.
Dover had smiled.
“If that comes with it, fine.”
“A lot of other things come with being famous, Dove,” Decker had warned him.
“Good things.”
“Bad things, too.”
“Like what?” the youthful Dover had asked.
“Like people trying to kill you.”
Dover had laughted, filled with bravado, and said, “Never happen…”
Well, Dover had achieved a certain degree of fame, and now he
And then there was that incident that happened when they were both twenty, when they became deputies, against Decker’s better judgment…
…they were passing through an Arizona town, stopping to sample the whiskey and other pleasures that a small town like that might have to offer. In the saloon they heard shooting in the street and rushed to the door with the other patrons. The bank was being robbed.
In front of the bank was a man holding five skittish horses. Four other men came piling out, each carrying a bag filled with money. Apparently the robbery had not gone smoothly and some shooting had been done inside the bank.
This had alerted the local law, and the sheriff and two deputies came running onto the scene, guns drawn. After a brief exchange the five bank robbers rode out and the sheriff’s two deputies lay dead in the street.
When the shooting had stopped, people began to file out onto the street. The sheriff asked for volunteers to carry the body of his two deputies off the street, and he got them.
Then he asked for volunteers for a posse to follow the bank robbers and track them…and he got none.
Dover stepped forward, pulling Decker along with him.
“We’ll volunteer,” he said.
We, Decker thought.
The sheriff said, “You boys are strangers in town. Why volunteer?”
Dover shrugged. “So? Why look a gift horse in the mouth?”
The sheriff stared at him.
“You’ve got a point there,” he said.
Then he bent down and took the deputy badges off his dead men and handed them to Dover and Decker.
“We’ll worry about the swearing-in later,” he said. “Get your horses.”
As they went to the livery for their horses, Decker said, “What the hell was that all about? Didn’t anybody ever tell you it’s not healthy to volunteer for anything?”
“Hell,” Dover said, “do we have anything better to do?”
“I’ve always got something better to do than die,” Decker said.
On the train, Decker studied the poster of Oakley Ready.
He wondered why Dover had sent him a message to meet him in Harrison City. Had he known that he was
