don’t know how to survive. So unless you’ve got a better plan, I highly suggest you listen to me from now on because, the next time, you’re liable to get us both killed.”
Trammel watched Hagen wipe his bloody blade clean on the dead man’s vest before he slipped it back into his boot. “Any other demands while we’re at it?”
“As a matter of fact, there are.” The gambler stood and faced him. “Only one, actually. Never touch me again, do you understand? If you do, I’ll kill you. Do I make myself clear?”
Trammel laughed, really laughed for the first time in as long as he could remember. He could hear the sound of his own laughter echo off the outcropping. “You’ll try, little man, but it won’t get you very far.”
“Laugh if you want to, but I mean it. Now, help me get the boots off this one. Baxter over there has feet smaller than my sister, and my current footwear is about ready to give out.”
Trammel walked toward his horse to stow the shotgun. “Do it yourself. I’m busy cooking.”
CHAPTER 8
Matt Bowman and his cousin Walt tied up their horses to the hitching rail outside the Winter Star Saloon. Matt had known about this place for years, but had never ventured inside, as he had never been one for whoring or gambling. His nephews Will and Tyler and cousin Walt had cornered the family’s market on those particular vices, and he saw no reason to contribute to it further.
He turned to his cousin, Walt, who still looked like he needed a bath despite that he had already taken one before the previous morning’s burial services. “Are you sure we’ll find the men we need in here?”
“If we were in the market for ranch hands or well diggers, I’d say no,” Walt admitted. “But seeing as how we’re looking for killers, the Star’s the best place to find them.”
The wind changed, and Matt caught a whiff of the stench coming out of the Star. He wondered how long he could hold his breath before passing out. He was tempted to allow his cousin to go in and hire the men he saw fit. But that temptation passed quickly when he remembered Walt was more likely to hire five of his drinking buddies than men equal to the task before them.
He turned to the three ranch hands who had volunteered to ride out with them. They had chosen to remain mounted. “You three stay out here with the pack animals. Walt and I will be out in a bit.”
None of them seemed to object. Walt had already walked inside before Matt turned around.
Matt breathed in deep and bounded in after his cousin.
The inside of the Winter Star was every bit as run down and miserable as Matt had expected it to be. The green felt on the gambling tables bore years of stains that defied all description. And while no one appeared to be gambling at the moment, there was no shortage of patrons drinking their fill at the bar and the tables. It was almost ten in the morning, and none of the men were at work, a concept that defied Matt’s way of thinking. All of the men were dressed as cattlemen or ranch hands. He didn’t know of a single ranch within a day’s ride that wasn’t always looking for a few good hands to help out. How someone could prefer to drink their days away as opposed to putting in an honest day’s work was beyond his capacity to comprehend. But then his father’s words returned to him. Men like them aren’t men like us.
His cousin beckoned him over to a table in the far corner of the saloon where five men sat around a full bottle of whiskey. Matt walked over to the table as quickly as possible, ignoring the looks he received from the drinkers and the painted ladies who fluttered around them like flies on a dung pile.
“Boys,” Walt told the men at the table, “this here is my cousin, Matt. Matt, this here is the best group of men for the kind of work we need doing.”
One look at the men Walt had chosen made Matt wonder if this was a good idea. In all of his years as a rancher and a soldier, he had never seen such a ragged group of men in one place.
All of them were bearded with various amounts of hair sticking out beneath their weathered hats. Each of the men was as pale and skinny as newborn sheep. They looked like they lived on tobacco juice and whiskey, and Matt imagined that may very well be the case.
His cousin Walt began the introductions. “Matt, I’d like you to meet five of the worst men in this part of Kansas, which makes them the best men for us.” He gestured to the man facing Matt, the man with the gray-streaked hair poking out from beneath a filthy brown hat. A ragged patch of leather tied around his head covered his left eye. His hands were large and deeply scarred.
“This is Lefty Hanover,” Walt said, “the one you might say is the leader of this group.”
“Ain’t a leader,” Hanover croaked. “Ain’t no group, neither. Quit building us up as if we was some kind of gang or I’ll split your head like a rail. We’re trail hands, by God, and ain’t ashamed of it.”
The four others grumbled their assent, with the scrawniest among them repeating, “Ain’t ashamed of it. That’s a good one, Lefty. Ain’t ashamed of it at all.”
Undeterred, Walt pointed at the man. “This one’s named Parrot Wheeler on account of how he likes to repeat everything Lefty says. Like a parrot.”
Matt motioned for his cousin to get on with it. The others were a rangy man named Skinner, a pinch-faced man named Hooch, and a swarthy man named Chico. “They’re not much on conversation,” Walt said when the introductions were concluded, “but when it comes time to sling lead, there’s no one better.”
Lefty spat a stream of tobacco juice in the general direction of the spittoon, but missed badly. “Now that we’re acquainted all proper-like, how about you tell me why we’re acquainted at all. Never saw you in here before, Matthew.”
“Yeah,” Parrot said. “Never seen you in here before, Matthew.”
Matt cleared his throat as he tried to ignore the smell of the five men. “You boys probably knew my nephews Tyler and Will. They were killed a couple of nights ago at The Gilded Lilly by Buck Trammel and a drunken gambler named Hagen. They’ve both left town before the law could catch up with them, and we aim to bring them to justice.”
Skinner looked up at him. Matt only counted three teeth in his head and all of them yellow. “You mean jailing justice?”
“I mean real justice,” Matt told him. “At the end of a gun or an end of a rope, whatever’s handy so long as they’re dead. Both of them.”
He watched Lefty look around at his friends as if to take their measure. They seemed to communicate in some way by a silent vote. When he seemed satisfied, he looked up at Matt again. “How much you figure this justice of yours is worth?”
“A hundred a head when it’s all said and done,” Matt told him. “Five hundred in total but only when the job is done.”
When Lefty sat back in his chair, Matt thought he was insulted. He knew a hundred dollars was good money no matter the deed. At the ranch, they only paid their hands twenty-five a month and these men were being hired for just two things—to ride and kill two men.
The glare from Lefty’s good eye didn’t intimidate Matt, but he still felt compelled to add, “That’s a damned sight more than you’ll make sitting around here drinking it away.
