They rode on to the Two Sisters, where Chess — still off-colour, still uncertain why — started in on a bottle of absinthe, while the rest of the gang made various sorts of hay. Rook sat in the corner and watched, nursing a whiskey shot of his own, while Chess cleaned his guns and hummed to himself tunelessly.
“So here’s the latest,” Hosteen told Rook, sitting down next to him, and brandished a fresh-printed newsbill in front of Rook’s face, as he did so. “Turns out, we got us an honest-to-God posse bein’ formed against us.” As Rook took another sip, not even deigning to look. “Could read ’bout it yourself, right here, you cared to.”
“Why don’t you go ahead and summarize, instead? Seein’ I know you’re literate.”
For a second there, Rook almost thought Hosteen was going to snap back at him, in reply — Saved your life a few too many times, back when we was still at War, t’play your damn secretary, Reverend! But the glance Rook turned his way seemed to freeze the older man in his tracks, making him clear his throat instead and commence, stiff but steady:
“Various recent train and payroll robberies executed at No Silver Here, Solomonville and Calvary Cross are all to be laid at the feet of one Asher E. Rook, late of the Confederate Army, a convicted murderer and so-called ‘hexslinger.’ The so-called ‘Reverend’ Rook . . .”
“I think we both know who I am, by this point, Kees.”
Over Hosteen’s shoulder, Rook could just glimpse Chess casting drink-narrowed eyes at three newish gang-conscripts playing a clueless game of whist to his left, all haplessly unaware of how close they were to risking injury for the grand crime of obstructing his door-ward sight-line. Even from here, Rook could almost hear the way Chess had begun to tick, an ill-wound watch with just a hint of lit fuse in the background. That sulphurous hiss.
I could stop this, he thought, whatever “this” turned out to be. But . . . why should I?
Hosteen ran a blackened finger down the newsbill’s centre column, and continued: “Uh . . . the posse against Rook’s gang will be led by Sheriff Mesach Love, who retired from the Union Army upon announcement of Armistice. Once a gentleman of leisure, he has since invested in a small cattle ranch nearby the township of Bewelcome, New Mexico. The fees paid by Union Pacific for Rook’s capture will go to raise a permanent church for this district, where Love himself is well-known as a Nazarene preacher of avid devotion. . . .”
Rook ground out a short laugh. “Don’t want the competition, might be,” he suggested.
Hosteen half-shrugged, half-nodded. “‘Having heard ample testimony that this man-witch Rook quotes Scripture while practicing his vile sorcery,’ Love states, ‘I take it as a holy charge to see him caught and punished for propagating such blasphemy. For how can any Christian stand to see God’s Word perverted, especially by one who — if rumour holds true — is guilty not only of using Satan’s power for gain, but of all the sins which saw Gomorrah blasted, along with her even-more-infamous sister city?’”
Taking a quick shot of whiskey to distract himself, Rook found his eyes automatically drawn back to Chess, only to find him already looking his way — tracking one of the Sisters’ resident whores, as she sashayed in Rook and Hosteen’s direction. Toying with the ribbon which anchored a faded sateen flower just above her overspilling cleavage, the woman slung a leg up over Hosteen’s startled lap, fixing Rook with a sleepy smile.
“Buy a gal a drink, Reverend?” she drawled.
“I’d’ve thought the house already stood you a few per shift, to be frank,” Rook returned. “Ain’t that what the surcharge is for?”
She made a practiced moue. “Oh, now; we both got our parts t’play in this affair, don’t we? Go along to get along, that’s what they say. . . .”
Always assuming you’re my kind of destination, in the first place, Rook thought. But —
“Move by, woman,” Chess snapped, stepping up behind her in one quick stride, at the same time. “He ain’t for you.”
The whore barely turned a hair. “Oh no?” she asked, one brow arching. “Well, I know you for damn sure ain’t interested in my wares, little pussy . . . but I’ll bet the Rev here can prob’ly speak for himself, one way or t’other. What’cha say, darlin’?”
Rook gave her a sad smile, and shook his head. Before he could finish shooing her away, however, Chess had already broken his empty bottle across the whore’s head, knocking her to the ground in a shower of dirty glass.
Then leaned down an
d snarled, right in her ear: “’Cept he don’t have to, ’cause I just did. So how’s your hearin’ now, bitch? Better? Or worse?”
The fiddle and squeezebox wheezing away at each other in the far corner fell silent, and some drunk cried out a name — Sadie, Rook thought it was. Another barfly lunged Chess’s way, only to end up froze in place with a barrel to his jaw, while Chess used his other gun to cover the rest of the patrons; probably couldn’t really shoot all of them, or at least not all at once. But he certainly looked game to try.
Hosteen threw Rook a begging glance: C’mon, Rev! While Rook just sat there, stony, a fresh-poured shot already in hand.
“Look, mister,” the barfly told Chess, his voice shaky. “I . . . don’t know what sorta beef you’n her got with each other, but take a gander. She needs help.”
“Why bother? She’ll be dead in a year, either way — pox, or gut-rot. She fuck you for free the once, so now you think she’s sweet on you? Or . . .” As Chess’s thumb caressed the firing pin, his voice dropped into a purr. “. . . is it that you’re sweet on her?”
Sadie’s prospective saviour blushed. “None of your affair!”
“Sure ain’t. Then again, slow as she moves, I guess she’s probably pretty easy for any dumbass to throw a leg across. . . .” Confidingly: “It’s the syphilis does that, most times, so best make sure and check your pecker, once you get somewheres a bit more private — ”
“Oh, you son-of-a-bitching little redhead faggot motherfucker!”
Rook sighed, and rose, before Chess could finish the fool off. “Stand down, Private Pargeter,” he rumbled.
“What do you care?”