Biggs cleared his throat. “A couple of months’ pay ain’t so much when you’re dealin’ with a man like Jensen,” he said, rubbing his chin with his hand.
“Well, like the boss says, fourteen of us ought’a be able to handle one man, Jason,” Cletus said, trying to keep the scorn out of his voice. “But if you’re so worried, then maybe you ought’a turn your mount around and head on back to the ranch where it’s safe.”
Biggs snorted through his nose. “Thirteen men, Clete, and the boss’s little bitch, who looks plenty good to play in the hayloft with, but who ain’t near as tough as the old man seems to think.”
Before Biggs could blink, Cletus backhanded him with a fist the size of a ham, knocking him backward off his horse to land sprawling in the dirt.
When Biggs jumped to his feet and grabbed for his gun, he found himself looking down the barrel of Cletus’s big Walker Colt. Cletus wasn’t known as a fast draw, but he’d been handling men like Biggs for more years than he cared to think about, and he knew most of them were cowards when they didn’t have an edge.
“You shouldn’t ought’a talk about Miss Sarah like that, Biggs,” Cletus said, his voice soft but all traces of friendliness gone from his manner. “I don’t much like it, an’ I hate to think of what the boss would do if’n he happened to hear about it.”
Biggs relaxed and let his hand move away from his pistol. He tried a grin, but there was little humor in it and his eyes blazed with hate and humiliation. He wiped the blood off his lip with the back of his hand. “Aw, I was just funnin’ with you, Clete. I know you got a soft spot for the girl. I didn’t mean nothin’ by what I said.”
“It ain’t that way, Biggs. I knowed her since she was born, so watch you mouth when you’re around me, you hear?”
“Yes, sir,” Biggs said, throwing an insolent half-salute.
“I mean it, Jason,” Cletus added, “or your friend from jail won’t be the only one eating his meals through a straw.”
“Is it all right if I get back on my hoss?” Biggs asked, his face flaming scarlet.
Cletus holstered his gun and leaned over in the saddle until his face was close to Biggs’s. “Sure. Just don’t go getting any ideas about putting a lead pill in my back, Biggs, ‘cause I’m gonna tell the other men if that happens to string you up to the nearest tree. You get my drift?”
“Come on, Clete,” Biggs said with a sickly smile as he climbed into the saddle. “You know we’ve always been friends, even if I do let my mouth override my ass ever’ once in a while.”
Cletus smiled back, his face equally devoid of humor. “No harm then, long as you keep your thoughts about Miss Sarah to yourself.”
He jerked his horse’s head around and proceeded on up the trail, whistling softly to himself while the other members of the group looked from him to Biggs, unsure of how to take this altercation.
Behind him, Biggs rode along, keeping his face bland, but his teeth were so tightly clenched together it made his jaws creak. If Cletus could have read his mind, he would not have been so cavalier about turning his back on the ex-prisoner and murderer.
Just outside the city limits of Big Rock, on the trail to Pueblo and points north, Carl Jacoby and Daniel Macklin were having some trouble. The late fall temperatures had begun to drop, and there was even the smell of snow in the air, though it was early in the year for that.
They’d stopped at the general store and bought provisions for their camp , while Sarah pretended not to know them as she waited on them with Peg Jackson working nearby. Along with foodstuffs, they’d bought a couple of small one-man tents that would keep the worst of the weather off them, though the thin oilcloth of the tents’ walls would do little to keep them warm in the dropping temperatures.
Working as ranch hands and cowboys for many years, they were both experienced in camping out under the stars, but neither particularly enjoyed it, having become accustomed to the niceties of bunkhouse living over the past few years working for Angus MacDougal.
They’d also become quite accustomed to having a camp cook make their meals for them, so neither was particularly looking forward to doing their own cooking.
Jacoby gathered some hat-sized stones and made a small circle in the middle of their camp, which they’d placed on a hill overlooking the trail a quarter of a mile below them. There were some maple and oak trees in a small copse nearby that would help keep the worst of the wind off them, but it was clear that it was going to be a cold night nevertheless.
Macklin dumped an armful of deadwood he’d picked up under the trees into the campfire area, and squatted next to the stones as Jacoby put a match to some moss and dry leaves to get it going. He reached into his pocket and took out his makin’s, and proceeded to build himself a cigarette as he waited for the coffeepot on the edge of the fire to begin to boil.
“How long you reckon ‘fore the men from the ranch get here?” he asked.
Jacoby shrugged. “Who knows? If’n they left the same day Angus sent the wire, they could be here as early as tomorrow mornin’, but that’s unlikely. They’d have to get provisioned up and all, so I don’t really ‘spect them for another couple of days.”
Macklin shivered as a cold wind blew up inside his jacket, and he reached for the coffeepot, which was beginning to put out some steam. “Damn,” he said as he poured them both mugs of dark, strong coffee. “That means we’re gonna sit out here freezin’ our balls off for two or three more days.”
Jacoby blew on his coffee to cool it. He glanced up at lowering, dark clouds overhead that were scurrying across the sky under heavy winds. “That’s about the size of it.”
Macklin shook his head, letting cigarette smoke trail from his nostrils. “I should’a taken my chances with Jensen and drawn down on him when I had the chance.”
Jacoby smiled over the rim of his mug. “Then you wouldn’t be out here freezing your balls off, Mac. You’d be planted forked-end-up in boot hill being food for the worms.”
“Hell, maybe not. Maybe I could’ve taken him,” Macklin argued, though it was clear from the way his face paled at the thought of bracing Jensen that he didn’t believe a word of it.
“Yeah,” Jacoby snorted, “an’ maybe pigs can fly too.”
Macklin took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared into the red-hot end for a moment. “Carl, why do you think a man like Jensen would trouble himself with a nobody like Johnny MacDougal?” He cut his eyes at Jacoby as he stuck the butt back into his mouth. “Hell, it ain’t like he was gonna get more famous for killin’ him.”
Jacoby sipped his coffee, turning it over in his mind. “You ever think maybe Jensen didn’t have no choice in the matter, Mac, that just maybe Johnny pushed the man too far and had to pay the price for it?”
“Whatta you mean?”
“Just that the men with Jensen claimed they acted in self-defense, that Johnny got pissed when one of Jensen’s party beat the shit out of him, and that he drew down and fired on them first without givin’ them no warning.”
Macklin pursed his lips as he thought about this. “I can see it happenin’, if Johnny had a snootful of liquor an’ was actin’ the big man like he usually did when he was drunk an’ showing off in front of the boys.”
He hesitated, and then he looked at Carl. “You try tellin’ that little story to his sister, Sarah?”
Jacoby shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t listen to anything bad about Johnny. Her and the old man both always turned a blind eye to his shortcomin’s, though he certainly had plenty of ‘em.”
“Maybe that’s why he’s dead,” Macklin said, flipping his butt into the coals of the fire. “If Angus would’ve kicked his ass a few times when he was growin’ up, ‘stead’ve lettin’ him get away with being a horse’s ass, maybe he’d of learned to keep his mouth shut.”