Zak reached into his pocket, fingered the bracelet. He pulled it out, dangled it like bait on a hook from his left index finger. He looked straight at the woman.
“You lose this?” he said.
The woman uttered a small breathy “Oh,” and her face drained of color. She glanced quickly at the man on the ground, the man in the duster, standing at the head of the four horses.
“She didn’t lose nothin’,” the man said, and he glanced up at the woman. The look he gave her was so quick it might have escaped notice from the average person. But Zak caught it. He caught the warning, the puzzlement. “Well, now, she might have,” the man said. “Where’d you find it?”
“I asked
Zak moved the bracelet up and down. Lances of bright light shot from its faceted surface as he twirled it to catch the sun.
“Or maybe you lost this,” Zak said, fishing one of the earrings from the same pocket. “Or this, the other one.” He held up the second earring.
The woman rubbed her wrist. It was paler than the rest of her skin, a place where a bracelet might have been worn. Then she touched her neck.
Zak put the other pieces back in his pocket, pulled out the necklace. He dangled it like some gewgaw he was hawking, his gaze taking in both the man and the woman.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” he said in an exaggerated drawl, as if he were some backwoods drummer bent on a sale.
“None of them’s hers,” the man said, stepping away from the horses, into the open. He kept his feet apart in a belligerent stance.
“Mister, you seem to be doing all the talking. Is the lady deaf and dumb?”
The man brought his hands back, brushing the duster away from his pistol grips. He wore two guns, like some drugstore cowboy. He bent slightly into a menacing crouch.
“You take your jewelry and ride on,” the man said. “The lady ain’t interested.”
“Here, you take it,” Zak said, and tossed the necklace into the air. It made a high arc, and the man reached up to grab it.
Zak climbed down from his saddle just as the man caught the necklace. He stood facing the man.
“Think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” the man said.
Zak said nothing. He stood straight and level-eyed, staring at the man.
“I think that necklace belongs to the lady,” Zak said.
“I think you’re full of shit, mister.”
The man dropped the necklace onto the ground. His hands hovered like a pair of hunting hawks above his pistols, a pair of converted Navy Colts.
“You’ll want to think about drawing those pistols,” Zak said, making no move toward his own, a Walker Colt converted from percussion to center-fire.
“Why is that?”
“Because,” Zak said, “I’m the quicksand under your feet.”
The man’s eyes widened, then flashed with anger.
His hands dove for his pistols.
Zak’s right hand streaked down toward his own holster.
The man’s hands grasped the butts of his pistols. He started to draw them from their holsters. He seemed fast.
An eternity winked by in a single split second and Zak’s Walker cleared leather. A
Zak held his breath, squeezed the trigger. The Colt bucked in his hand as it exploded with orange flame, belching out golden fireflies of burnt powder and a .44 caliber lead slug that slammed into the man’s chest just as the muzzles of his pistols slid free of their holsters.
A crimson flower blossomed on the man’s chest. His breastbone made a crunching sound as the ball smashed into it like a thousand-pound pile driver.
He dropped to his knees. His hands went slack and the pistols slid from his grasp and hit the ground. He opened his mouth to speak, and blood enough to fill a goblet gushed from his mouth.
He never took another breath and pitched forward, dead weight succumbing to gravity.
The woman let out a short cry.
A thin tendril of gray smoke spooled from the barrel of Zak’s gun, scrawling in graceful arabesques before the wind shredded it to pieces that vanished like some sleight-of-hand illusion.
Zak reached down and picked up the necklace, held it up so the woman could see it.
“This yours?” he said, his voice as soft as kid leather.
The woman’s eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slumped down on the seat in a sudden swoon.
