“Wow!” James said, grinning. “Conn already killed four of them?”
“Three,” Mary said, and explained about Danny Bump. “Of course, the last I saw Conn was noon yesterday. It wouldn’t surprise me if more of them were dead by now.”
“Well, he’d better stay out of it now,” George said with a solemn expression. “Lawmen don’t tolerate vigilantes. And if there’s one man in the world Conn doesn’t want to cross, it’s Marshal Mayfield.”
26
Rafer Johnson, Rafe to his friends, felt like a king.
He sat at the head of the table with a pretty girl on his left and a pretty girl on his right. The girls were Mexican, maybe sisters, maybe not, with dark hair and dark eyes and pretty smiles.
He’d already had fun with both of them, and if he didn’t get too drunk, he would have more fun with them tonight.
Though truth be told, he might just get drunk instead.
The bottle in front of him was already half empty, and he knew as soon as he finished it, one of the girls would go off and get him another one, the same way Toby’s girl was doing now, getting up from the table in nothing but a slip and swinging her tail back and forth as she went off to get him another bottle of all is well in the world.
“You’d better slow it down, son,” Rafe suggested. “You get too drunk, you’ll miss out on all the fun.”
“Already had fun,” Toby said. “Now, I’m gonna get drunk.”
“That’s up to you, old buddy,” Rafe said, running his fingers through one of the girl’s hair. “But if you pass out, I might just rope your girl.”
“Fine by me,” Toby said. “When I pass out, I pass out. I try not to mix my pleasures.”
The girls said something in Spanish and laughed.
They sure were pretty. He grabbed them both by the shoulders and pulled them up tight against him, and they laughed some more.
That was something he liked about the West. Back East, girls this pretty never would have given him the time of day. They wouldn’t have said two words to Toby, either. Not unless he and Toby struck it rich.
Out here in the land of the free, however, girls like these were available to any man who built up a few dollars. Which sure seemed better than back East. Back there, women had all kinds of ideas and qualifications for a man, most of which involved marriage. Out here, it was to the victor go the spoils.
And Rafe and Toby were the victors.
Rafe took another pull of whiskey and handed the bottle to the big, flat-chested girl. He didn’t care about her shape. He liked that pretty smile of hers and the way she laughed at his jokes, and she sure knew what she was doing in the sack.
She winked at him and took a long pull off the bottle and handed it to her friend.
“Old buddy,” Rafe said to Toby, who was nodding off at the other end of the table. “We should’ve become desperadoes a long time ago. This life suits me.”
Toby nodded drunkenly. “Me, too, partner. Sure beats Georgia.”
They’d come West together fifteen months ago. Truth be told, things had been up and down since then, but they were up now, so Rafe wasn’t about to ruin the good thinking about the bad.
Until Toby roused and looked around, blinking, and said, “I just hope Toole don’t find us.”
The mention of Toole’s name made Rafe shudder. The man had always talked tough, but a lot of men talked tough. And he’d been tough, too. They’d known that. Tough with his fists, anyway. He could fight. It was fun, going to saloons with him because he stirred stuff up.
Of course, sometimes, he looked at Rafe like maybe he might want to take a swing at him, and that was no fun. Rafe figured it was because he was a little on the tall side. That was something he’d noticed about Toole. He didn’t like tall fellas.
But yeah, they’d had no idea how dangerous Toole was. Again, he talked like he was a bad man, but everybody out here ran their mouths. At least the sorts Rafe ran with, fellas that liked to drink and have a little fun.
He and Toby were plenty tough. They could fight if they had to, and they’d been knocking around for a long time even before they came west. They’d robbed folks and forced themselves on women who thought they were too good for them and one time, down in Louisiana, Rafe had gotten into it with a gambler who’d tried to shoot him with one of those little double-barreled derringers, but the fella had missed, and Rafe had hit him so hard with a beer mug that he’d almost killed him. That one had landed him in jail for a stretch until they were certain the gambler would live. Rafe had argued self-defense, but the gambler’s buddies had testified that Rafe had been cheating, which he had, but there was no way those liars had actually seen him.
Whatever the case, he had never thought much of Toole’s tough talk, but that night at the Sullivan place, he had shown what he was made of. The man was a cold-blooded killer.
The thought frightened Rafe, but again, he wasn’t willing to ruin his good time. Where was the percentage in that?
