the Indian would have another long gun. Maybe a short pistol, but probably nothing more than a knife. Odds were McCulloch could make it to the black, mount up, and ride away without any trouble. Better odds were that the Indian had bled out and would soon be feeding javelinas and coyotes.
Three steps later, McCulloch leaped back, more from instinct and that hearing he prided himself on. Even then he almost bought it. The knife blade sliced through his shirt, through flannel and the heavy underwear. The Winchester dropped from McCulloch’s hands and into the dirt as he staggered away. Blood trickled.
The Indian came at him again.
CHAPTER TWO
Sean Keegan had been drummed out of the United States Cavalry after saving the lives of a bunch of new recruits but having to shoot dead a stupid officer who was inclined to get everyone under his command killed. Keegan had learned to accept the fact that he no longer wore the stripes of a sergeant, no longer had a job to whip greenhorns into shape and teach green officers the facts of surviving in this miserable country of Apaches, Comanches, rattlesnakes, cardsharpers, bandits, hornswogglers, and various ruffians.
He often missed that old life he had led, but every now and then he came across the opportunity to relive some of that old glory.
The morning proved to be one of those times.
Purgatory City had become civilized, damned close to even gentrified, with marshals, sheriffs, Texas Rangers, city councils, school boards, churches, and a new newspaper that wasn’t the rag that old one had been. The editor kept preaching—along with the Catholics, Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Hebrews, and Lutherans—about the need for more schools, better roads, a bridge or two, and higher taxes on the dens of iniquity that allowed gambling, dancing, ardent spirits, and, egads, in some cases . . . prostitution. But there was one place a man could go and feel like Purgatory City remained a frontier town.
The Rio Lobo Saloon, although no river named Lobo flowed anywhere in the great state of Texas, and certainly not one in the vicinity of Purgatory City. The saloon had been open seven years and had not closed its doors once. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—no matter how much the Baptists raised holy hell—serving liquor that would either put hair on a man’s chest or burn off the hair he had on his chest. Potent, by-gawd, forty-rod whiskey that would make Taos Lightning seem like potable water. Even that fire that had swept across the bar two and a half years back had not shut down the Rio Lobo, and Sean Keegan had done his best, starting the fire and the fistfight that landed him in jail for thirty days and got him busted, briefly, back down to mere trooper.
Keegan had arrived the previous afternoon, ate the sandwiches the bartender set out for free to patrons paying for their drinks, did a couple of dances with the prettiest chirpies, put a good-sized dent in the keg of porter, arm-wrestled the blacksmith Wi
Finally Keegan found a seat in a friendly poker game at about two-thirty that morning, and set down with a bottle of Irish and seventeen dollars and fifteen cents.
When the game broke up while the Catholic church bells were ringing eight times, and folks were opening their shops on Front Street, Keegan tossed the empty bottle toward the trash bin, missed, and smiled at the sound of breaking glass and the curses of Clark, the barkeep.
“It’s been a fine game,” Keegan said, grinning at the dealer, and sliding him a double eagle. “But I suppose all good things must come to an end.”
“Thank Queen Victoria for that,” said the weasel in the bowler hat.
The railroad hand with the ruddy face leaned back in his chair and waited for Sean Keegan to react.
“The hell did you say?” Keegan asked, though he wasn’t sure if he was looking at the right pipsqueak, since for the moment he saw two, and both of them were fuzzy.
“I said thank Queen Victoria that you’re leaving. You took me for better than two hundred dollars.”
“Queen”—Keegan closed his eyes tightly—“Victoria?”
“Yes.”
When his eyes opened, Keegan saw only one runt of a weasel.
“She’s your queen.”
“The bloody hell she is. She’s the queen of England. I’m Irish,” said Keegan.
“She’s the queen of England and Ireland, and, if I remember correctly, Empress of India.”
“She’s a piece of dung like every other English pig, sow, and hog.”
The runt rose and brought up his fists. “You shall not insult Queen Victoria in front of me, you drunken, Irish pig.”
What confused Keegan was that he didn’t detect one bit of an English accent rolling off the weasel’s tongue, and while he was trying to figure out why a drummer in a bowler hat who didn’t sound like a Brit would bring up Queen Victoria in West Texas, the little weasel punched Keegan and split both of his lips.
He had been leaning back in his chair, trying to clear his head, and wound up on the floor, tasting blood and seeing the punched-tin ceiling of the saloon spin around like a dying centipede.
Chair legs scraped as the bartender said, “Oh, hell.”
Keegan rolled over and came to his knees, just as the weasel brought his right boot up. The boot, Keegan later recalled, appeared to be a Wellington, which didn’t make the runt an Englishman but hurt like hell, and sent Keegan rolling toward the nearest table.
“I’ll teach you to libel Queen Victoria and servants of Her Majesty.”
The Wellingtons crunched peanut shells and a few stray poker chips as the weasel rushed to give Keegan another solid kicking, but Keegan came up with one of the chairs from the nearest poker table, and the chair became little more than kindling after he slammed it into the charging, puny devil.
“Keegan!” the bartender roared.
Out of the corner of his eye, Keegan saw the bartender lifting a bung starter and removing his apron.
Keegan figured that would give him enough time to pick up the bleeding, muttering, sobbing fellow and throw him through the window, which he did. As the glass rained across the boardwalk, hitching rail, Front Street, and the now quiet weasel, Keegan turned to meet the morning-shift barkeep and saw something else.
The railroad worker was helping himself to some of Keegan’s winnings.
“You damned sneak thief.” To his surprise, he realized he still held the broken chair leg in his right hand. The railroad thug swore, tried to stuff some more coins and cash into his trousers pocket, then grabbed the pipsqueak’s chair and came after Keegan.
“You men stop this!” the bartender yelled. “You’ll wreck this place!”
Like that had never happened before, Keegan thought with a smile and a few fond memories about previous times when he had tried to shut down the Rio Lobo Saloon. He’d never been able to manage it,
