the gun. I’ve several in my office. Some of those gents who braced Cork had spares, you know. Come along, and we’ll put you in business.”
I followed him down that long corridor to one of them rooms, and it proved to be an office, all right. A little oak desk and a black typing machine in there, and gray account books and red law books and stuff. But hanging from a coatrack were three gunbelts. Scruples motioned toward them, so I went for a look. The one Colt Frontier was so beat up I didn’t much like it. Another was an ancient Dragoon, a ton to wear and lift and shoot. The third was a shiny Colt Baby Dragoon, a capand-ball thirty-one-caliber model with an octagonal barrel. It felt fairly tight, and the hammer came down square on the nipple. I didn’t want the thing; I wanted brass cartridges, not powder and caps and balls and wads, a gun that wouldn’t fire every time it rained, and a gun needing a lot more care than I wanted to give it.
“These don’t do me much good,” I said.
Scruples shrugged. It was plain he was putting his chips on Glan, not me, and it didn’t matter what I thought.
But then Amanda showed up in the doorway.
“Try that belt with the smaller Colt,” she said. “I think you’d look very good in it, big boy.”
“Oh, hell,” I said, and I tried it on. It shore wasn’t anything I wanted to wear, but there she was makin’ moon eyes at me, and I just sighed and nodded. The well-oiled belt fit, and the holster hung about right.
“Twelve dollars against your pay,” Scruples said. “But you get some extras.”
He handed me a red can of DuPont powder, a box of caps, a box of .31-caliber balls, and a pasteboard box of patches.
“How ’bout if I just borrow her for a few days until I can get me a real gun?”
“No, Mr. Cotton, this is it.”
“You look just wonderful, sweetheart,” Amanda said.
Oh, hell, what’s the use of fighting anything? I just swallered a little and smiled. At least I had a shooting iron strapped on me.
That’s how it ended. They eased me out the rear door onto the platform, and I hopped down them steel steps to the ground. They’d put that old Palace Car on a bit of track cobbled together from mine rails and mine timbers, which is how they got her leveled up. But it sure was a strange way to live, like they was ready to roll away in a moment.
I put Critter in the pen and hayed him. There was a couple of new nags in there, one of them a looker, with good blood showin’. The other was even uglier than Critter, and looked just as mean, too. Horses say something about their owners, so I looked ’em over real careful. The good-lookin’ chestnut one was brushed, and the mane was roached and he didn’t have a scratch. I thought maybe it was a Morgan, but I don’t know nags that good. The other, it was a big walkin’ wreck, and showed scars on the flanks where the owner’s rowels had dug into flesh. Its mouth was sore-looking, from someone yanking the bit around. It looked mean, and I steered clear, not wantin’ to catch a horse hoof right where I was savin’ up delights for Amanda.
I tossed my saddle on a peg and headed for the bunkhouse, wonderin’ what the company had brung in.
It didn’t take me long to find out. They was two new ones in there, in addition to Glan and the three presidents, as I called them. This new pair was big and little, and I saw at once how it was with them. The big one, he’d taken my bunk under the window, and was sittin’ there just waiting for me.
I liked my bunk under the window, because it gave me some fresh air, which was in mighty short supply around there. But now this big galoot was sitting there grinning at me. I knew the type. He was a street fighter, a brawler, who never learnt a dirty trick he didn’t like. This was an eye-gouger, nut-pounder, ear-biter, toad-stabber, hair-yanker, knee-buster, and toe-stomper. And he showed it, too. His nose had been flattened more times than it could remember, and now it was a big wad of pulp. He had more cuts and scars on him than an army sergeant. He didn’t have one front tooth, up or down. They’d all been knocked out.
“I guess that’s my bunk,” I said, knowing what was coming.
“I guess it was, laddie,” he replied, his voice an odd whistle without those teeth.
“I guess first come, first pick,” I said.
“You can pull me off of it, me boy,” he said, sort of smirky. “I’m game.”
He sat there cracking his thick knuckles. His fingers were about the size of my wrist.
Truth to tell, I wasn’t in no mood to make a contest of it. My ribs were still bound up, and my face still looked like an old T-bone steak.
“Game’s been postponed,” I said. That would let him know a thing or two. This wasn’t over.
“Youse is a thmart laddie.”
“Busted ribs,” I replied. “I’m Cotton.”
“Arnold,” he replied.
“That’s all?”
“Arnold is all thish man wants for a name.”
“That’s better than two of ’em,” I said, wanting to be reasonable. I’d want this brute on my side in a fight.
I looked the other one over, and damned if he wasn’t pretty near a dwarf. He wasn’t no dwarf, but he didn’t get much ahead of four feet. He was plumb delicate, but eyeing me with brown eyes that was neutral. He was decidin’ whether I’d do or not. He’d taken a bunk over near Glan, and the pair of them looked to be the real gunslicks in the outfit. That little feller had him a gunbelt of black leather with two little guns hung from it. They was little short-barreled items, maybe thirty-two caliber. You had to be pretty close to do any damage with a rig like that, but maybe that’s how this little feller liked it.
“We all have pseudonyms around here,” he said.
There was another of them words I’d never heard of. “Soodo what?” I asked.
“Noms de guerre,” he replied.
I sure didn’t know what he was yakkin’ about. “Cotton here,” I said.
“Front or rear,” he asked.
I wasn’t about to admit to nothin’. “Take your pick,” I said.
The little guy smiled. Nice even white teeth. He owned that fine horse out there.
“Call me The Apocalypse,” he said.
“Mind if I just call you Pock?”
“Of course I mind.”
This was getting plumb difficult. “That a nice Morgan horse you got out there?”
“How did you know it is my horse?”
“It sure don’t belong to him,” I said, jerking a thumb at Arnold.
“You’re smart,” The Apocalypse said.
I was damned if I would
