with Quantrill.”
He set the cup down. “You got a problem with that?”
The man had a disarming smile. “Not at all. My mother used to sing praises of Captain Quantrill, said he was saving us all from damned Yankee tyrants. Too bad how it all had to end.”
Pardo frowned. He remained silent for a long time, staring at the small fire, then spit on a coal, and watched it bubble and disappear. “Yeah. ’Course I rode with some boys as young as you would have been then. I reckon your mother wouldn’t allow you to fight those invaders.”
“My brother fought. Somebody had to work the farm. That was me.”
Pardo started scratching the palm of his right hand against the Colt’s hammer. “Who’d your brother ride with?”
“First Missouri.”
He spit again. “Some real outfit, eh, not irregulars like me and Quantrill. Not bushwhackers. Not murderers.”
“I don’t know about that. My brother was killed somewhere down in Tennessee. Ask my mother, and me, the war was being fought in Missouri.”
“And your ma? Where’s she now?”
“Dead. When Paul, that was my brother, died, it pretty much killed her, too. I buried her the next fall.”
“What about your pa?”
“I never knew him. Lightning strike got him when I was a baby.”
“No family, eh?”
He shook his head.
“That’s too bad, Mac. Me? Kansas redlegs, gutless bastards, got my pa killed. All I got now is Ma. Had me a kid brother, but he died of fever when he was just a tot. Would have been about your age now, I reckon.” Pardo’s eyes became slits. “So, Mac, let me guess. You grow up, hating Yankees, go down to Texas, get into trouble at Fort Concho, and light a shuck to Arizona. That’s your story as I remember.”
“McKavett. Not Concho.” The man smiled. Smart fellow, this Mac. He knew Pardo was trying to trap him.
“What did you do?”
“Robbed the paymaster. Killed a guard.”
Laughing, Pardo reached for the cup, took another sip. “Yankees don’t care much for that. I guaran-damn-tee you that. How much money did you get?”
“I don’t know. I lost the strongbox crossing the Pecos. Kept riding, but Texicans and the Army have a long memory, and a longer reach.”
“Yankees get their money back?”
“I don’t think so. They were asking me about it when they caught up with me in Bisbee.”
“That’s good. That they didn’t get that money, not that they arrested you. Me, I had me a little plan. Robbed us a train. That’s how come I got the kid and that handsome woman with us. Derailed that son of a bitch, but everything went to hell. Boiler blew in the engine, express car and everything else went up in flames. The boys didn’t care much for it, but I say, at least the Yankees didn’t get their pay.” He clinked his mug against the cup in Mac’s hand in a rebel toast.
“So they caught you,” Pardo continued. “They started hauling you back to Texas. Who ambushed you in the valley?”
“Apaches.”
“That’s too bad.” Pardo emptied the coffee into the fire, watching the ash bubble and boil, and pitched the cup aside.
“Would have been,” the man said, “if you hadn’t happened along.”
Pardo rose. “Let’s take a ride, Mac. Don’t give me that look. Man’s strong enough to walk, he’s able to ride, I say. Saddle us up a couple of horses. I’ll ride that roan. Saddle the sorrel mare for yourself.”
The man kept frowning. Hell, Pardo didn’t blame him for that. Suspicious. Maybe a little scared—he ought to be—but it didn’t show in his face.
“No offense,” he said softly, looking at the corral, “but that sorrel’s not much of a horse.”
“Don’t matter. We ain’t going for much of a ride. That’s my saddle yonder. You take the McClellan.”
“McClellan?” The man frowned. “That’s a Yankee saddle.”
“Makes you feel better, I took it off a dead Yank. Get to it, Mac. I need to talk to Ma and the boys before we light out.”
Ruby Pardo drowned an ant with a waterfall of brown juice when Pardo walked up to her. Working the lever of the Evans rifle, she grinned, and tossed the weapon to Pardo, saying, “Good as new.” He caught it but didn’t return his mother’s smile, and butted the stock in the dirt.
“Something’s the matter,” she said.
“Yeah.” He bowed his head. “I wanted to like Mac, Ma. Wanted to trust him. Says he hails from Johnson County.”
“Johnson County ain’t Cass County, son,” his mother said bitterly. “Damned Yankees didn’t force Southern folks from their homes over there. That was us good people in Cass, Jackson, and Bates counties. A few families down in Vernon County. You remember Order Number Eleven.”
He made himself meet his mother’s hard stare. “I remember, Ma.”
She hooked the dip of snuff out of her mouth—a few flakes still stuck in her teeth—and shot a quick glance at the corral. “I never trusted him. You’d be better off killing him, plus that woman and her kid with a mouth like a privy.”
“He says Apaches jumped him.”
She squinted. “Apaches, eh? But you said—”
“I know what I said.” He hefted the rifle, tried to change the subject. “Heavy, ain’t it?”
“It’s loaded,” she said. “Where you taking him?”
“Down below.”
“Be careful.”
“I always am.”
“I’m sorry he didn’t work out, son.”
“It’s all right. He ain’t family. And like you said, Johnson County ain’t Cass County. I got to go talk to The Greek.”
Carrying and studying the Evans, he stopped where the boys were playing poker in front of the Sibley tent. Wade Chaucer didn’t bother to look up, but Harrah, Duke, and The Greek did.
“Got a chore for you, Greek,” Pardo said.
Silently, The Greek waited.
“You and your Sharps.”
Now, the swarthy man smiled, and looked at the corral. “Him?”
Pardo
