Stepping out onto Wazee Street, he took stock as the sun began to fade behind the distant Rockies. God might have played him like a fool, but no one was a better hunter.
There had been no blood on George’s saddle, which meant Sarah had either missed him, or barely nicked him.
Sarah!
Alive.
Not a demon.
“Well, God, or whoever you are, you son of a bitch, you ain’t playing me no more.”
All those years he’d been trying to kill something that wasn’t dead. Bitterness churned as self-loathing took over.
“Time to square the accounts,” he told himself.
Where would George go? Not to one of Big Ed’s establishments. No, it would be one of the other taverns.
Why a tavern?
Billy licked his lips as he started for Blake Street. George would want to lick his wounds, salve his defeat with a couple of drinks. It wouldn’t be a cheap hole, but somewhere with style. He’d want to figure his next move. On top of being broke over the Piute Lode deal, he’d be smarting. Sarah had beaten him again after whatever setback she’d handed Nichols earlier. Was that why he’d been fingering that new scar? He’d tried to rape Sarah, and she’d beaten him off with a pistol?
He grinned. A man had to love a sister with that kind of grit.
But George? He’d be seething.
Billy started with the Tremont House, then the Broadwell House, followed by the American. One by one he went through Denver’s finer establishments.
“Did you hear?” one worthy asked at the International. “George Nichols and a friend went after Sarah Anderson at her house. One man’s dead, and she’s shot!”
Billy stopped at the edge of earshot, listening.
“Word is that Marshal Cook’s looking for Nichols,” the worthy’s friend replied. “Bet he don’t try an’ force no woman with a pistol in her hand. Heard she’s got bruises on her throat.” The second man shook his head, spitting on the floor.
On her throat? I did that.
Billy ground his teeth, feeling sick to his stomach. Damnation and hell! One minute he was on the verge of rage—the next his eyes were burning with tears. He staggered out into the night, leaning against the saloon wall, one hand to his heart.
When he remembered Sarah, it was as a girl. How she smiled, the way she teased. The time she’d set him up, tripped him so he fell headlong into the river.
Damn and hell, they’d been great friends as kids: her chiding, his practical jokes. The time he’d put pine pitch in her comb. Sarah’s shrieks as Maw had washed her hair with turpentine. How Sarah had finally gotten him back, dropping a mouse in his pants pocket, the one with a hole in it. How he’d gone berserk with the little beast scampering around his cock and balls and then down his leg.
When did we lose that?
The pain built.
In the end, the sense of desolation was too much to bear; he threw his head back and laughed, and laughed. Soul screaming at the trick fate had played on him.
It took a couple of hours, but he found George. He was drinking upstairs at the Criterion—the infamous tavern and gaming hall started by dangerous Charlie Harrison and now run by Ed Jumps. The upstairs was separated from the riffraff, reserved for the more respectable clientele.
“Hello, George,” Billy said, walking up behind his friend.
George whirled, hand reaching for the pocket where he used to keep his single-shot Sharps. Then his slow smile spread. “Billy, where the hell you been? What happened to you? One minute you’re behind me, the next you’ve vanished! Goddamn it! You were supposed to back me up!”
“How much is Sarah Anderson’s life worth to you? Assuming I kill her tonight?”
“Five thousand.”
“Oh, I forgot. You’re broke. Sarah took you on the Piute Mine deal. Maybe I better do it for free?” Billy smiled, gesturing for the bartender down the way. “Best you’ve got,” he called. “George is buying!”
“Like hell,” George whispered, his eyes like black pits. “You crawled on me back there!”
“Odd turn of events,” Billy told him as he took the amber liquor and drank it down. “That is good stuff. What’s it cost?” He gestured the bartender for another.
“Four dollars a glass,” the bartender told him, filling it and retreating.
“And it’s such a small glass,” Billy noted as he tossed off the second.
George was red-faced, the corners of his lips trembling. “You and Parmelee. Start at the beginning where you killed my men.”
Billy shrugged. “Not much to tell. I’d been running into Parmelee up and down Montana. Couldn’t remember where I’d heard of him. So, outside of Virginia City, a bunch of stranglers had him. Rope around his neck and all. Devil just gigged me, so I saved him.”
Billy gestured for another whiskey.
“See, George, this is all like one of them puppet shows. You know, the ones that dangle odd-looking little fellas on strings? I haven’t decided if it’s God or the Devil that’s been playing us.”
“Do you know how goddamned crazy you sound?”
“Reckon you ain’t up on the half of it.” Billy lifted the whiskey glass. “All them whores I been strangling and burning? It’s ’cause my sister’s ghost kept coming in my nightmares. What she’d do to me? If I told you, it would make your skin crawl. Let’s just say I’d wake screaming. And sometimes it was Maw rising out of the grave all full of hate.”
“You are one insane son of a bitch!”
Billy raised his voice. “Just your hired killer.” Felt the devil break loose in his chest. “The Meadowlark! At your service.”
The bar had gone quiet. The bartender, a couple of paces down, stopped short, gaping, eyes wide.
George had stiffened like an oaken rod. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Want me to deal with Sarah Anderson? Kill her for running you out of her house? You were going to rape her
