“Hoooraw fer Murrah!” the elders bellowed as Billy slipped in the door, kept a sidelong glance on the others, and made his way to Charlie’s table.
The standing elder added, “Texas shoulda seceded from the Confederacy, too. We stood fine on our own two feet, and by God’s hairy balls, we don’t need nobody else!”
“It was them generals, I tell ye,” old round face bellowed before slugging down a drink from a tin cup. “I heard tell of how Bragg lost battle after battle, never following up. His whole staff hated him. Warn’t no different no matter whar ye was. Hindman and Holmes in Arkansas. Bragg in Tennessee. They all had their heads stuck so far up their asses they farted when they sneezed.”
A bottle stood front and center on Charlie’s table as Billy took hold of the empty chair and shifted it so he could sit with his back to the wall.
“Everything go all right?” Charlie asked.
“Reckon so.” Billy shot him a measuring glance from under the brim of his hat. “Reckon tomorrow morning someone’s gonna find your Nate Holloway behind some rain barrels in the alley behind Second Street. He never made a peep.”
Charlie studied him thoughtfully. “How’d you do it?”
Billy tapped the pommel of his Bowie. “Slipped up behind him and ran nine inches of steel through his kidney, liver, heart, and lungs. Man can’t scream when that flap of muscle in the chest is cut.”
Charlie glanced down at Billy’s side. “Don’t see no blood.”
“I spent my whole life gutting hogs, Charlie. Man’s no different, and sometimes a heap easier.”
“Can’t pay you until I got proof he’s dead.”
Billy nodded. “Fair enough.”
Charlie shook his head, reached into his pocket, and slipped a small cloth sack across the table. Billy retrieved it, felt the familiar outline of coins beneath the fabric, and dropped it into his vest pocket. “Thought you needed proof.”
“You read like a book. When you come off a kill you got a glow. It’s in your eyes, the set of your mouth. You got an inner light like you was about to explode. You ain’t never as full of yourself as you are right now.”
“So you got something else for me?”
“Reckon he does,” a voice called from the back door.
Billy’s hand dropped instinctively to his Remington. Then he smiled as Danny Goodman stepped in from the darkness. “Ain’t seen you since who flung the chunk.”
“Heard you been keeping to the thick brush, Billy.” Danny offered his hand, a silly grin on his wet lips.
“I don’t spend much time around Lampasas these days. Not that anybody down there would know me, but they’d sure as hell know Locomotive.”
“Locomotive?” Danny asked as he slipped into the empty chair and poured from the bottle into the mug. “Wasn’t that Dewley’s horse?”
“Was. Turns out I kilt that animal with a neck shot, so I figure I own it. ’Sides, I sort of liked the name. Fits a big black horse, don’t you think? I got tired of riding these broke-down old nags and took me a solid mount from a man what suddenly had no use for a big black gelding.” Billy grinned. “Besides, I set the damn barn on fire on the way out so the damn horse might just as well go with me as burn to cinders.”
“Still a stone-cold killer?” Danny asked.
“That bother you?”
“Nope.” Danny pursed his lips, staring down into the whiskey. “Given where we been and what we seen, reckon that’s about all we know anymore.”
“I’ll tell ye why we lost,” the scarecrow at the elders’ table finally cried in his reedy voice. “It was the damn deserters. Bush soldiers. Cowards that ran an’ hid. Weak-livered bastards what couldn’t stand the gaff. Piss fer blood. That’s what they had.”
Danny turned, snapping, “And you got shit between your ears that’s leaking outta your damn mouth, you dried-up old cunt!”
The room was instantly silent.
“Danny?” Charlie warned.
Billy’s grin began to widen, his heart ticking up as he tightened his grip on his revolver.
The elders were staring in disbelief, the tall one, his drink still elevated, had a startled look, as if he’d been slapped.
“You talking to me?” the reedy scarecrow asked, clambering uncertainly to his feet. “I fought Mexicans and Comanche for the Republic, you little wet-eared pup! In my day I coulda whipped a dozen of you and your kind. An’ dun it with one hand tied ahin’t my back. I otta—”
Danny swiveled in his chair, his revolver casually in his hand. “Don’t got to get physical, old man. Somebody give this old goat a pistol. We’ll do it like a duel. Count to three and shoot. Age won’t make no difference, just plain old guts and steady nerves.”
“Enough!” McMannaman roared from behind the bar. “Ain’t gonna be no shooting in my place.”
The double-barreled shotgun that had magically appeared on the bar planks clicked as McMannaman eared back the hammers. “Now, this being Texas, and you both being Southern gentlemen who shot off yer mouths, you’ll each say yer sorry to the other, fergit it, and go on with yer drinking. If you can’t, you’ll both haul yer sorry damn carcasses out of my place and never set foot in here again. Right, laddies?”
Danny stared woodenly at the old man.
“Do it,” Charlie murmured.
Danny stood, reholstering his Remington, and offered his hand. “Mister, I killed my share of Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Seven of ’em. And a couple men that needed killing in Arkansas. Maybe some was cowards. Not me.”
The old man worked his receded jaws, white bristles standing out from his shrunken cheeks and chin. “Reckon ye did, boy. Reckon ye got grit.” And the old man offered his hand.
Billy felt the building thrill begin to ebb. He let his hand shift
