“Is that my coach parked out front?” he asked as he stepped inside.
“Oh, it is indeed, sir, and you are in luck, as we had one of our finest drivers available.”
“What do I owe you?” Houser asked.
“Suppose you settle when you return? That way I will know how long you have kept the coach, and it will give me a better idea as how to assess the amount.”
“Very good,” Houser said, turning around and walking back to the coach. Walker followed him outside.
“Sylvanus, here is your passenger,” Walker called.
“Will you be ridin’ up here with me, or down in the box, sir?” the driver called down to Houser.
“I will be in the coach,” Houser replied.
“Well, sir, to be honest, the ride is a little softer up here, but you can do whatever you want.”
“Driver,” Houser replied, “we can save time and wasted conversation just by assuming that I can always do anything I want. At least with respect to this trip.”
“Yes, sir,” Sylvanus replied. “Just climb in and make yourself comfortable.”
As the coach left Chugwater and started up toward Cheyenne, Houser thought back to his lunch with Meagan Parker. She was a beautiful woman, owned a successful business, and he already knew that she was quite well liked and respected by the people of Chugwater, and all over the valley.
She would make a great wife for him, but not in any kind of amorous way. He had no illusions of love or romance. He just believed that a marriage with someone like Meagan Parker, someone who was very smart and successful in her own right, would be like a good and effective business merger.
He smiled. And it didn’t hurt that Duff MacCallister considered his relationship with her solid. Taking his woman away from him would be a great personal victory.
Chapter Seventeen
It was quite dark by the time the private stagecoach stopped in front of the Crooked Creek Saloon in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The Crooked Creek Saloon was on Fifteenth Street, separated from the Eagle Bar by the Western Hotel. Houser was the sole passenger, and on the stops the coach made to change teams, Houser avoided any conversation with the driver because he didn’t want to give the driver any idea that he was anything more than a hired man.
“You want me to wait here, Mr. Houser?” the driver asked.
“Yes, keep the coach here until I return.”
“Yes, sir.”
Leaving the coach, Houser went into the Crooked Creek Saloon and stood just inside the batwing doors for a moment, perusing the two dozen or more customers. Because a man in a three-piece suit was seldom seen in a saloon, Houser was as much the viewed, as the viewer.
About a third of the drinkers were standing at the bar, the rest were sitting at the tables. He saw his brother sitting with several others at a table in the farthest corner of the room. He had no idea who the other men were, though he recalled that the telegram had said there would be five men with him.
Shamrock stepped over to the next table and, picking up the only remaining empty chair, without asking, moved it to his table. There were three men at the table that lost the chair, but they saw that there were five with the man who took the chair and decided that it would be better not to offer any protest.
The others at Shamrock’s table made room for the chair that was brought over for Houser.
“I must say, Thomas, that I am rather surprised to see you in Wyoming. I thought you were in Texas,” Houser said as he took his seat.
“See, what did I tell you fellers? Did you hear how he called me Thomas? He’s just real polite, bein’ as he’s a lawyer ’n all.”
“I no longer follow the legal profession,” Houser replied. “I am not even a member of the bar in Wyoming.”
“What do you mean you ain’t in a bar?” one of the men with Shamrock asked. “Hell, you’re in a bar now, ain’t you?”
“Indeed I am,” Houser said without further explanation.
“What I want to know is, why did you call Shamrock, Thomas? Don’t you know his real name?” Wix asked.
“It’s a name I used to use sometimes,” Shamrock said. No further explanation was needed, as not one of the men who had come with Shamrock was using the name he was born with.
“What are you doin’ now, if you ain’t lawyerin’?” Shamrock asked.
“I own a ranch, some north of here.”
“You need ’ny more hands?”
“No.”
“We need a place to . . .”
“Hide out?”
“Yeah.”
“What have you done?”
“Same thing me ’n you done down in Sulphur Springs, only this here ’un didn’t turn out as good as that one did.”
“You got a great deal of money from that, uh, incident,” Houser said. “Fourteen thousand dollars, as I recall. What did you do with it?”
“You done a job that you got fourteen thousand dollars for?” Hawke asked, surprised by the amount. “Son of a bitch! That’s a hell of a lot of money! I ain’t never seen that much money in my whole life. How come we ain’t never done nothin’ to make that much money?”
“Tell them why,” Houser said.
“Uh, ’cause I ain’t never found another bank like that first one.”
“Who found it?” Houser asked.
“You did.”
“Yes. I did. What did you do with the money?” Houser asked.
“I spent it,” Shamrock said.
“You spent fourteen thousand dollars, with nothing to show for it?” Houser asked.
“Yeah.”
“Are there wanted posters out on you, Thomas?”
“Prob’ly down in Texas there is,” Shamrock replied. “But they don’t nobody know nothin’ ’bout us up here in Wyoming.”
“So you came up here to ask for my help, did you?”
“Yeah. I mean, bein’ as we’re brothers ’n all, I figured, where else could I go? Besides which, like I said, I ain’t wanted up here, ’n I was figurin’ that, well,
