the knife into each of us whenever he can, gettin’ us back for past history. He can’t jail us or hang us anymore, but he can do what he can to ride roughshod on us. Give us all the toughest, most dangerous jobs, likely half-hopin’ in the back of his mind that we’ll eventually get fed a pill we can’t digest.”
“He’s takin’ his revenge on us, ain’t he?”
“Oh, yeah.” Slash chuckled again as he stared up at the ceiling. Or tried to. It was hard to stare straight at something that was moving. “He knows us too well, don’t he?”
“All too well.” Slash turned his head to stare at his partner, whose lumpy silhouette was all he could see over there on the other end of the cabin. “You know what I was layin’ here thinkin’ about?”
“Jay.”
“No.” Slash drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “I was thinkin’ about that damn gold just the way I know Bleed-Em-So wants us thinkin’ about it. Dreamin’ about it.”
“I know. I was, too.”
Slash chuckled, shook his head, and resumed staring up at the ceiling. “That old catamount!”
“One hundred thousand dollars.” Pecos whistled. “That’d take us a long way, Slash. We could go down to Mexico, all the way down to South America. Buy us a big ranch down there. Or our own mine. Oh, how the busthead would flow!”
“Not busthead,” Slash corrected his partner. “Nothin’ but the good stuff. The best tequila and pulque south of the border!”
“And the women . . .”
“Oh, lordy—the women.” Slash had said that last sentence with little of the delight he’d intended. His own words had sounded flat to him. That’s because he hadn’t quite gotten the word “women” out of his mouth before Jay’s face had floated up in his mind’s eye. No sooner had he seen her face than he saw the face of Cisco Walsh, as well.
Walsh—that handsome face of his, and the fancy cut of his clothes.
Walsh with that smile on his face as he gazed appreciatively—all too appreciatively—at Jaycee Breckenridge. . .
“You could bring Jay,” Pecos said. He had his head turned toward Slash, staring through the darkness at him. “She’d come along down to Mexico, if we were toting that much gold. She’d meet us down there . . . and you two . . . well, you could . . .”
“Forget it.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want to talk about her tonight. I just want to lay here and torture myself with ideas about all the ways we could spend that gold down in Mexico, where we’d live like two Jay Goulds in golden castles.”
“Best not do that no more.”
“Why the hell not? We can at least dream about it, can’t we?”
“Dreamin’s one thing. Actin’ on them dreams is another. I’m afraid if we keep layin’ here thinkin’ up all the ways we could spend that treasure we’re gonna have in our possession for four or five nights—just you, me, an’ a hundred thousand dollars in high-grade gold—we might start venturin’ into dangerous territory. We might start plannin’ on how we could really get away with it!”
Slash rolled onto a shoulder, facing Pecos. “Well, you know what, partner? I was just thinkin’ . . .”
Slash let his voice trail off. Even in the darkness, he could see Pecos’s two scolding eyes staring back at him.
Slash sighed and rolled back against his pillow. “All right, all right. Bad idea.”
“Go to sleep, Slash.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Slash said, sheepish. “All right.”
It took a while, but he finally did. But he dreamed of dusky-eyed Spanish queens and golden castles.
* * *
Slash woke earlier than he’d expected. Pecos was still asleep, and rather than wake him, Slash took a whore’s bath, dressed, and headed out to fill his belly. He’d had a big steak and a platter of beans only a few hours ago, but the whiskey must have dissolved it and left a gaping hole in his innards.
He felt as hollow as a dead man’s boot.
Since the dining room at the Thousand Delights boasted the best breakfast in town, maybe on the entire Front Range north of Denver, he headed that way. He wasn’t much in the mood for seeing Jay, but he doubted he’d run into her at this early hour. Jay usually stayed up late, keeping an eye on the saloon and gambling parlor as well as overseeing the working girls on the third floor—she was as protective as an old mother hen to her doxies—and usually didn’t roll out of her big, four-posted bed till mid-morning.
Not that Slash knew that from personal observation. He had not yet known the charms of the woman’s boudoir. He was not a fast mover in that regard. Nor in matters of the heart. Sometimes he dragged his feet too long in the dust, and that’s where he’d often gotten left. He feared he might be there right now, in fact.
Old Cisco Walsh was likely up there, sawing logs at this very moment, with a big, dung-eating grin on his handsome jaws, Jay curled up beside him.
The idea made Slash feel as though he’d just chugged a quart of sour milk. He almost decided against breakfast, but if he and Pecos were heading back into the mountains this morning, he’d need to fill his trough, so to speak. Neither he nor his partner were very handy with camp cooking, though they’d had plenty of opportunity. Usually, they just ate beans and jerky and baking powder biscuits, if they remembered to buy flour before leaving town. Occasionally they’d shoot or snare a rabbit and cook the meat on a makeshift spit, usually charring it beyond recognition.
Now, he needed some ham and eggs, a big helping of fried potatoes, and a half-dozen buttermilk pancakes with a big scoop of butter and a hearty helping of the real maple syrup they served in the Thousand Delights dining room.
The three steaming platters were set out before him in all their succulent glory, the scent of the warm maple syrup adding a pleasant sweetness to the smoky aroma of the slab of ham that resided half under four big, golden-yolked fried eggs fresh from the chickens of an old Norwegian woman who owned a little shotgun ranch at the edge of town, near Horsetooth Rock.
Slash was one of only four men in the dining room, which sat adjacent to a small, carpeted entrance hall from the saloon, and which was outfitted with a dozen round oak tables clad in fine white cloths and silverware wrapped in cloth napkins. Nothing but the best for Jaycee Breckenridge. Slash knew that she’d put down the stake Pistol Pete had left her as a down payment and taken out a bank loan for the rest, and already, only a year into the business, she’d paid the note down by half.
She was too good a woman for him. She had too much business savvy and plain old horse sense. She was a respected businesswoman in Fort Collins, and that reputation would do nothing but grow. It was just as well she’d taken up with the stylish town marshal, Cisco Walsh. They’d make a handsome couple. A pair of eights. A jack and a queen.
Slash Braddock had been a damn joker all his life, and he’d be buried in a potter’s field, a joker in death. It was what he deserved.
