advice, and let the memories come back on their own.
Meanwhile, there was the horse to consider. And he still had to come up with a way to make some money.
From breakfast he went right to the livery to see Mal.
“Mornin’, Lancaster.”
“Mal.” They shook hands. “How’s he’s going?”
“Crow Bait?” Mal asked. “He’s already surprised me.”
“How?”
“The way he eats,” Mal said. “Horse eats like an animal twice his size.”
“Yeah? That’s good, right?”
“It’s good if he puts on weight,” Mal said. “If he eats like that and he don’t put on weight, then I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Well, like I said yesterday,” Lancaster replied, “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”
“You wanna take a look at him?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Go on back.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s that gun feel?”
Lancaster stopped and looked down at the gun on his hip.
“It feels good,” he said. “I just need to clean it a little better.”
“I’ve got a kit for that,” Mal said. “I’ll give it to you before you leave.”
“I’ll pay you—”
Mal waved away any mention of payment.
“Just bring it back when you return everything else,” he said.
“Okay.”
Lancaster walked to the stall where Crow Bait stood, head in. The horse’s rear end was probably the only part of it that looked normal. Maybe that big rump was where his stamina came from.
Lancaster patted the rump, walked farther into the stall, and held the horse’s head, patted his nose.
“How you doin’, boy?” he asked. “Man, you are ugly but you saved my life, so to me you’re the most beautiful horse alive.”
Crow Bait nodded his head and poked at Lancaster’s hand.
“You want a treat? I got nothing for you, but I’ll make sure I do from now on.”
“Here,” he heard from behind him. He turned and Mal was holding out a couple of green apples. “He likes ’em.”
“They sour?”
“Yeah,” Mal said. “I found out he doesn’t like sweet.”
Sweet?
Suddenly, it went dark.
Seventeen
“What happened?”
Lancaster was looking up at Mal’s face.
“You blacked out,” Mal said. “I caught you when you fell.”
“Fell?”
Lancaster pushed himself to a seated position and looked around. He was still in the livery, just outside Crow Bait’s stall.
“Maybe you shouldn’t get up yet,” Mal said.
“Give me a hand,” Lancaster said.
“Okay.”
Mal pulled Lancaster to his feet. There was a brief moment of dizziness, and then he stood solid.
“You all right?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lancaster said. “I don’t know what happened.”
“You just ain’t recovered from bein’ kicked in the head,” Mal said. “Gonna take a while.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.”
“Maybe you should go back to the doc.”
“I’ve been to see him a few times already,” Lancaster said. “He says I should recover. What I’m worried about is my memory. If that doesn’t come back, then I won’t be able to track down the three men who bushwhacked me, and find out who hired them.”
“You think somebody hired them to do it?”
“That’s about the only thing I’m sure of,” Lancaster said.
“How can you be that sure?”
“I heard them talking. I didn’t hear everything, but one of them said that killing me wasn’t what they were supposed to do, or something like that. I’m sure they were hired.”
“Men like you and me,” Mal said, “we have a lot of people in our past who’d like to see us dead.”
“I know it.”
“You had a funny look on your face just before you fell,” Mal said. “You sure—”
“Wait a minute,” Lancaster said. “I remember…you said something just before…what was it?”
“We were talking about the apples,” Mal said. “You mean the apples?”
“Something about apples…”
“I said Crow Bait liked the sour ones, not the sweet ones.”
Sweet.
“That was it,” Lancaster said.
“What?”
“Sweet.”
“What about it?”
“Wait,” Lancaster said, “give me a minute.”
He went back into his patchy memory with the word
“I’ve got it!” he said. “Just before I got kicked in the head the last time, somebody said, ‘Sweet, don’t.’”
“So one of them was named Sweet,” Mal said. “Well, that’s a helluva lot more than you had before. You ever know a man named Sweet?”
“No,” Lancaster said, “but I’m going to.”
Lancaster went from the livery to the sheriff’s office, to see if the lawman knew anyone in the area named Sweet.
“Sweet?” the lawman asked. “That’s all you’ve got? No first name?”
“For all I know, that is his first name,” Lancaster said.
Sheriff Race sat back in his chair, took off his hat, and scratched his balding head.
“The name doesn’t sound familiar to me,” he said, replacing his hat. “I’ll take a look through some of the posters I have, though.”
“I’d be obliged, Sheriff,” Lancaster said.
“So your memory’s startin’ to come back?” Race asked.
“Not completely,” Lancaster said. “In fact, that’s all I have right now.”
“Well, a name is at least somethin’ to go on,” Race said. “I find anything in my paper and I’ll let you know.”
