potential customer. “Well? How about it?”
Shifting in his chair, Marcus unwound his legs and stretched them across the planking. He stared at his boots a moment, wondering when it had ceased being important to him to have shined boots, a shaved face or well-pressed clothes. Wondering if he was as unkempt inside as he was outside. If his heart and soul were as disreputable as the rest of him. Wondering if he cared.
“You win,” he said at last, with a sigh of resignation. “Have at it, kid.”
“Yessir!” The boy snapped his soiled chamois rag, knelt, then promptly spat on Marcus’s left boot and got to work.
“Mighty nice timepiece for a bootblack,” Marcus said casually, looking down at the top of the boy’s head. The hair there was yellow and wild as fresh pitched hay, and probably hadn’t seen a comb all month. “Did you lift that watch from a fella heading east or west?”
“Neither.” He stopped working the shine rag long enough to pat his pocket. “This here watch is a legacy from my pappy. He was rich.”
“Uh-huh,” Marcus drawled. “What was your rich pappy’s name?”
“Joe. Joe Tate.”
“Mighty poor speller for a rich man.”
The boy glanced up now, his eyes big and quizzical. “What…what do you mean?”
“The initials on your watch, son.” Marcus winked. “Somebody named N.F.R. is walking around somewhere right now, scratching his head and wondering whether it’s ten minutes till or ten minutes after, I expect.”
The pockmarked little face flushed with color, and the boy swallowed hard. “You won’t tell anybody, will you, mister?”
“Not as long as you promise me you’ll quit stealing watches.”
The boy released the chamois cloth just long enough to sketch a quick cross over his heart. “I swear,” he said. “Honest I do.”
Marcus sighed and closed his eyes again. I swear. Honest. It wouldn’t surprise him one bit if, ten years from now, he was tracking this kid, once he graduated from watches to payrolls, from petty larceny to felony or worse. Now that was a depressing thought—Marcus Quicksilver still in the saddle riding down lowlifes a decade hence, at the ripe old age of forty-four. God almighty. He’d probably need spectacles to read the Wanted posters.
Not that his keen eyesight was doing him any good at the present. His last three bounties had been pure busts. He’d gotten to El Paso on the heels of Elmer Sweet, a rival manhunter, who’d had himself a great guffaw when he led his thousand-dollar prisoner right past Marcus’s nose. A month after that, he’d had the hell kicked out of him by a horse thief named Charlie Clay, who turned out of be the wrong Charlie Clay, one with no bounty on his head. And damned if three days ago Marcus hadn’t arrived in Rosebud just in time to watch his quarry take a long drop from a short rope in the town square.
He never used to lose bounties before, Marcus thought. Every man he set out to catch, he caught. Over the past decade or so, he’d earned himself a fearsome reputation. Often as not, if a man heard that Marcus Quicksilver was on his trail, he’d know he was as good as done for and just turn himself in to the nearest available lawman.
Ten years. Twelve. How long had it been? Marcus stared at the yellow-headed kid now, thinking the boy hadn’t even been born when he collected that first bounty. Suddenly it seemed like the criminals were getting younger and faster with each passing year, while he was getting older and slower and…
“That’s not true, dammit.” Marcus said it out loud as he jerked his leg and pushed himself straighter in the chair.
“Hey, watch it,” the kid snapped. “Who’re you talking to, anyway?”
“Nobody. Mind your own business.” Marcus settled back in the chair again, attempting to relax his leg and to clear his aching head of such dismal thoughts.
Hell. If he wasn’t getting any younger, he certainly wasn’t getting any richer, either. It kept getting harder and harder to save that last few thousand dollars toward the land he’d hoped to buy. Even when he did collect a bounty these days, by the time he got back to Denver he’d be honestly surprised that most of it had slipped through his fingers.
Since they’d hanged Doc Gibbons in Rosebud, there wasn’t even sand to slip through Marcus’s fingers this time out. Still, here he was sitting in the sunshine at a train depot in Nebraska, getting his boots shined for a nickel when his pockets were very nearly empty. That realization made his head ache all the worse.
“Psst.”
He opened a single eye at the sound of the nearby hiss but didn’t see anyone, so he settled deeper in the chair.
“Psst. Yoo-hoo. Little boy.”
The brisk cloth stopped moving across Marcus’s boot when the boy said, “You calling to me, lady?”
Marcus hadn’t seen anybody—lady or otherwise—but when he opened both eyes now he caught a glimpse of a little female in fine traveling clothes peeking around a corner of the depot.
“Yes, I am calling to you.” She smiled and crooked a gloved finger. “I’d like to speak with you. Would you come here a moment?”
The kid dropped his chamois rag and tore off in her direction, leaving Marcus with one boot shined and the other still covered with trail dust. He started to curse, but then he laughed instead. It wasn’t the first time a young entrepreneur had let his business go all to hell when beckoned by a pretty smile. He, himself, had lost a bounty or two when distracted by other, softer pursuits.
He leaned forward, picked up the rag, and went to work on the dusty boot, thinking maybe he’d keep the nickel—Lord knew he could use it—but knowing he wouldn’t deduct even a penny from the scrawny little hustler’s pay.
“There you go frittering away money again, Marcus,” he murmured to himself, shaking his head with dismay more than disgust. “When are you going to learn?”
Both boots looked pretty good, in Marcus’s opinion, by the time the kid reappeared a few minutes later. But instead of returning to finish the job he had started, the boy walked right past Marcus’s chair, toward the door of the depot.
“Whoa. Wait a minute,” Marcus called after him. “You started something here, pal. For a nickel, remember? Here’s your shine cloth.” Marcus waved it at him.
The scrawny boy stopped for a second, his hand on the door, and then he shrugged. “Aw, that’s all right, mister. You keep ‘em. The nickel and the rag both. I don’t need either one of ‘em now.” He flashed a lopsided grin before he disappeared inside the depot.
Marcus sat there a minute, shaking his head in bafflement while staring at the dirty and now abandoned rag in his hand. Then, just at his shoulder, a throat was cleared with polite insistence.
“Excuse me, sir. Could you possibly tell me what time it is and how soon the train is due?”
Marcus looked up into a pair of eyes the color of money, the shade of greenbacks fresh from the press. They were bright and clear and rich with promise. Below those was perched a delicate nose, and somewhere in his field of vision
