“Ah,” Diems said with yet another smile. “I know the place. Heard somebody had staked a claim and was proving up the place.”
“That would be us,” Mary chirped happily, her blue eyes sparkling.
“Well, I’ll have my men out there just as soon as we get everything from the lumber mill. That’s three hundred board feet of rough-cut pine, eight 12x12 beams, four thousand shakes, and enough nails to put it all together. You need any glass panes?”
“No, sir. Not yet. Maybe down the road.”
“All right. You set for hand tools?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hinges?”
Sullivan looked at his wife, who bit her lip.
Henry would like to bite it for her.
Sullivan smiled. “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Diems. Better put us down for hinges, too.”
The men talked for a time about the barn Sullivan was planning and worked out the number of hinges.
Henry couldn’t imagine working at a hardware store, listening to people talk, working things out. He wouldn’t last a day.
“All right then, Mr. Sullivan, delivery on that’ll run twenty-five dollars. Here’s your total.” Diems pushed the bill across the counter.
Mary Sullivan peered down at it. Her pretty blue eyes swelled, and she turned to her husband with an anxious expression.
Sullivan smiled reassuringly, rubbed her back with a big hand, and drew a leather pouch from his pocket. When he dropped the pouch on the counter, it gave a clink that Henry knew well.
Sullivan opened the pouch, pulled out seven twenty-dollar gold pieces, and cinched the sack tight again—but not before Henry spotted what looked like at least another dozen golden eagles.
That sick heat in him cooled at the sight of the money, growing purposeful and dangerous.
“Come on, Tripp,” he said, tossing the pipe onto a stack of flour sacks. “Let’s get out of here.”
2
“Where’d you get the scar, handsome?” the saloon girl asked later that afternoon in Fairplay, leaning close to Conn Sullivan.
“If I told you how I got that scar, you’d think I was fibbing,” Conn said.
“Well, a little fibbing makes things fun,” the girl said. “Buy me a drink?”
Conn smiled at her. She was pretty enough, but he was done with that sort of thing.
At twenty-four, Conn was ready to clean up his act and follow in the footsteps of his twin brother, Cole.
Which would surprise everyone—except Cole.
Because Conn’s brother had always believed in him. They might look the same, right down to that big scar on both their cheeks, but they were as different as night and day.
Or at least they had been.
Oh, Cole had some deviltry in him, especially when they were kids. And there was nobody in the world Conn would rather have beside him in a fight than his brother.
But Cole was full of light. Pure, white light.
Cole had always taken the straight path. He’d listened to Pa’s preaching and taken it to heart and worked hard at whatever he did, and now, it was all paying off for him.
