31
The next morning, Henry Toole woke in a foul mood.
He often woke in a foul mood, especially when he’d had too much to drink the night before. Right now, it felt like someone hammered a sixteen-penny nail into the top of his skull and pounded it flush.
Beyond the hangover, he was sick of the company he’d been keeping.
Dog was an idiot. A useful idiot in a fight. But an idiot. He barely talked and breathed real loud through his mouth.
There was something wrong with Chester Duncan. He liked hanging folks. Hurting them, too. When they hit that farm, he cared more about hurting the woman than having his way with her. That was just weird.
Then there was Jesse Turpin, who had a reputation as a quick draw with those pearl-handled Colts of his. The way he looked at Henry sometimes, you could tell he was thinking about going for it.
Henry had half a mind to shoot him dead right now and be done with it.
Meanwhile, the mine stunk.
That was another thing he was sick of. Not just their stink but also the mine. The dust, the dark, all that rock pushing in from all sides. It was like camping in a grave.
He hadn’t become an outlaw so he could hide in a hole in the ground.
But he knew they had to hide here for at least a little longer. There was no telling how folks might react to the fun they’d been having.
Until he figured out what was happening out there, he reckoned they should stick to the hideout. Which is why he’d sent Dog to town for a paper.
Henry walked over to where Duncan and Turpin were passing a bottle. “Give me that.”
Duncan and Turpin quit talking.
Turpin took one last pull, looked at Henry sideways with those green eyes of his, then handed over the bottle, taking his sweet time about it.
Yeah, he was fixing to be a problem.
Henry considered killing him on the spot. But a gun would be awful loud in this stinking mine, and his head already hurt. He’d kill Turpin later.
He carried the bottle away from the men, wanting to get away from their stink and the sound of their voices and figuring that would bother them, him walking off with the bottle, which Turpin had brought along.
Let him say something. Just let him open that wise mouth of his.
Henry walked out the shaft. It bent hard then ramped up toward the surface.
He’d hated working here. The toil, the dust, the sameness. Just remembering that life, he hurried up and out of the mine and filled his lungs with fresh air.
He took a sip of the whiskey, listening in case Turpin or Duncan or both of them followed him out, wanting to start trouble over the bottle.
But it was silent back there.
Then, faintly, he heard the low drone of their voices. It sounded like they were still back in the camp around the bend. Sitting there, chatting away like a couple of old ladies.
Either that or plotting a mutiny.
He wouldn’t put it past them.
Especially Turpin.
Duncan didn’t want to run a gang. All he wanted was…
Henry shuddered at the thought. Was Turpin back there talking Duncan into doing something? Telling him to help him take Henry down and promising that Duncan could do whatever he wanted to Henry?
