Slash cast him a fiery look, his cheeks reddening beneath his deep brown tan. “Ah, hell—I never shoulda told you a damn thing. Look at you—you’re actin’ like you got ants in your pants!”
Pecos dipped his chin demurely and held up his hands in supplication. “I’m sorry, partner. I apologize. I shouldn’t make fun. It’s just that—well, hell, you really caught me by surprise. I mean, I know you an’ Jay got . . . well, got somethin’ goin’ on, though I can’t rightly put my finger on just what it is. You take her out to breakfast a whole lot, an’ she buys you more beers than what you pay for at her saloon, but . . . Well, you’re pretty tight-lipped on the subject of women, Slash. You always have been.”
Pecos studied his stoic partner, who was looking off through the trees again as though he were watching for Apaches. In fact, Pecos could tell that Slash would probably rather tussle with Apaches than continue the current conversation. James Braddock was not a man who could speak frankly on subjects of the heart.
“All right, all right,” Pecos said, using a glove to grab the coffeepot from the iron spider over the fire. “You’ll tell me when you’re good an’ ready. I won’t prod you about it no more.”
He refilled his coffee cup, then held the steaming pot up to Slash. “More mud? Pretty good pot, if I do say so my—”
“I think I’m gonna ask her.” Slash was still staring off as though watching for those imaginary Apaches. He turned to Pecos again and said, “You think she’ll have me?”
Pecos just stared back at him for a few seconds, still overcome with shock. Slash had never confided in him about women before. Pecos had confided plenty in Slash, but never the other way around. Mainly because Slash had never seemed interested in women. At least, none beyond the sporting variety. Oh, he’d made time with plenty of parlor girls, but Jimmy Braddock had always been a love-’em-an’-leave-’em kind of fella.
“Well,” Pecos said, when he found his tongue. “I think she’s too good for you, but, yes, I think she’ll have you.” He grinned, chuckled. “Yes, I do indeed think that Jaycee Breckenridge will accept your hand, James.”
“Son of a buck! Do you really think so, or are you just sayin’ that to humor me?”
It was Pecos’s turn to cloud up and rain. “You dad-blasted fool! What does it take to convince you? Can’t you see the way she looks at you? Why, as soon as we step into that saloon of hers, her eyes light up like a Christmas tree. Like a barn fire! And a flush always—always! —rises in her cheeks. And, believe me, it ain’t me she’s lookin’ at. Why, that pretty li’l redhead is pure-dee gone for you, Slash!”
“Jimmy.”
“I mean Jimmy!”
“Okay, okay,” Slash said, running a sleeve across his nose. “If you say so.”
“Can’t you see it for yourself?”
Slash winced, shrugged. “I’m a little slow that way, I gotta admit. Besides . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know, Pecos, but—”
“Melvin.”
“Melvin, I mean. But it always feels like there’s a hand inside me, holdin’ me back.” He punched the end of his fist against his chest.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.” Slash raised a knee and hooked his arm over it. He picked up a stick with his other hand and poked it into the flames. “I’ve never been good with women. I’ve never really known how to talk to ’em. I reckon that’s why I always preferred parlor girls to . . . well, you know, to real women. Real ladies like Jaycee.”
“Well, that just don’t make sense.”
Slash frowned. “What don’t?”
“Women fall all over you, Slash. I mean, Jimmy. They always have. Leastways, they always seem primed to. It’s your looks. You’re a square-jawed, handsome devil. I’ve always been jealous of that. I suppose we’re so old now it don’t matter if I go ahead and confess it.”
“Pshaw.” Slash flushed.
“No, no. You’re a dark-eyed, handsome devil. Me? I’m too big an’ lumbering. I’m an ole bulldog. And I got this stringy hair, an’ the sun makes my face all splotchy instead of Injun-dark like yours. Oh, I’ve had me some women over the years. I don’t deny that. Some I’ve loved. Some have even loved me back.” He chuckled as he stared into his steaming coffee cup. “But I’ve always had to work for the ladies. You? Hell, all you gotta do is walk into a saloon or restaurant, and the eyes of every girl in the place just naturally shuttle to you like steel to a magnet.”
“Well, I sure wish I knew how to talk to ’em.”
“You gotta pretend like they’re just people.”
“Huh?”
“Like they’re just like you an’ me. ’Cause they are. Just start talkin’ like you’d start talkin’ to a man an’ see where it goes from there. You’d be surprised. But, then, hell—you already got that figured out with Jaycee. I seen you two huddled over some long, serious conversations lately. You appeared to be givin’ back as good as you was gettin’.”
Slash nodded. “It’s easier. Talkin’ to her. Always was—leastways, it was when Pistol Pete was still alive.”
Jaycee Breckenridge had been married to Slash and Pecos’s outlaw partner, Pistol Pete Johnson, until Pete had met his end by way of a posse rider’s bullet late one night in a deep-mountain box canyon. That had been five years ago now. Slash had loved Jaycee before she’d married up with Pete, but he hadn’t known how to tell her. Or even how to just carry on a casual conversation with her.
He’d gotten more comfortable with her, though, over the years that she was married to Pete, and they—Jaycee, Pete, Pecos, and Slash—had holed up together in Jay and Pete’s remote shack high in the San Juan Mountains of southern Colorado, on the back side of jobs they’d sprung. He supposed Jay’s being married to Pete had taken some of the pressure off his expectations, since she was already married and there was room for a genuine friendship to grow.
Now, however, Pete was dead.
“Well, you go for it, then, you son of a devil!” Pecos spat into the fire, then ran a sleeve across his eyes. His voice pinched as he added, “Go ahead and leave me high an’ dry!”
“Don’t tell me you’re cryin’!”
Pecos blinked as he stared guiltily into the fire. A few tears dribbled down his cheeks and into his short blond beard. “Yeah, I reckon a little. Not out of sadness. Just chokes me, is all—hearin’ about you an’ Jay. Here, I figured you’d be the one to die alone pinin’ for some woman you never had. I figured I’d be the one with a woman keepin’ my feet warm on cold winter nights, feelin’ guilty about you out in some desert cabin—just you an’ the scorpions an’ centipedes.”
“Well, let’s not put the cart before the horse. I haven’t asked her yet, and just thinkin’ about it is givin’
