Jacob stood to greet Mr. Fitzgerald—Fitz—as he entered the dining room. He had never seen a man like this. He was built like a buffalo: enormously broad across the shoulders, wide in the torso, but narrowed down to impossibly thin legs. And seemed to be covered all over in hair. His thick brown beard and hair both fell halfway down his abdomen.
He scratched at his chest under his beard as he crossed the room to them.
“I keep telling you,” he bellowed, “call me Fitz. The mister makes me itchy.”
He offered his hand to Jacob, looking him up and down as they shook. Jacob had rare occasion to meet a man bigger than he was, but this Fitz character was a mountain.
“Jacob Payne,” he said. “In town with the marshal from Tucson. I have some questions for you, if you have a minute.”
“Well, I don’t,” the big man said matter-of-factly. “Unless you want to roll up your sleeves and start chopping onions. I got work that needs doing. You can do it with me and we’ll talk, or you can go about your business.”
Jacob grinned at the man’s candidness. “I can chop onions. Put me to work, sir.”
“Sir makes me itchy too,” Fitz said over his shoulder as he strode past Jacob into the kitchen. “It’s just Fitz.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” Jacob said to Ferguson as he followed the cook into the kitchen.
The moment they crossed into the small room, the other man seized two of the largest knives in sight, spun around and threatened the bounty hunter with impalement on one or both of the sharp tips.
“What do you want?”
Jacob instinctively put his hands up, and wracked his brain for any mention or hint of a known outlaw that matched Fitz’s description. He didn’t exactly fear for his life, but how cautious should he be right now?
“I’m looking for some information and Mr. Ferguson suggested you might be able to help,” Jacob said slowly, soothingly as though trying to calm a wild animal. “That’s all I want. Just information.”
“About what?” Fitz demanded.
“What you might know about … Elliott Stone.”
“Slippery?” Fitz asked, scornfully. He lowered the knives. “Yeah, I can tell you some about him. What do you want to know?”
Jacob hesitated where to start.
“Mr. Ferguson gave me the impression you were a cook for Stone for a time. Is that right? Do anything else for that man, or his gang?”
“Yep it’s right. But, nope. Nothin’ else.”
He turned one of the knives so the handle was toward Jacob. The bounty hunter looked from the knife to the man and back again.
“Over there,” Fitz said, gesturing with a nod. “As long as you’re chopping, I’m talking.”
Jacob glanced to where the big man indicated and saw a tall pile of yellow onions spilling over the workspace. “I can do that,” he said, taking the knife from Fitz.
The cook followed him to the far table, and set a big pot down heavily. “Fill this. What else you want to know about Slippery?” He patted Jacob heartily on the shoulder before crossing to the other table crammed in the small space. He lit a fire and set a pot to warming.
The bounty hunter thought about how to word his questions and sliced the first onion in half; the pungent stench stung his eyes. Jacob had always had a more sensitive nose than most people, but he pushed past it. “How long ago were you with the gang?”
“I told you. I never was with the gang. Slippery just brought me on to cook for them. I always stayed back at the camp minding my own business while they went about theirs.” The big man started tossing flour, butter, eggs and Jacob couldn’t tell what else into a big bowl. He mixed vigorously as he answered questions.
“How’d you find yourself in that position, then?” Jacob eyes continued to water as he chopped.
Fitz shrugged. “Didn’t have nothing else to do. Hooked up with Slippery round about El Paso. I had been there for a few weeks, making my way cooking for a cathouse, when Slippery came in. He liked my onion soup and my rhubarb pie and made me an offer. That town was getting too hot for me to handle, as it happens, so I accepted.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, let’s see.” Fitz scratched at his neck under his beard. As he thought, he scooped of what looked like dough from a covered clay pot into the bowl he had been stirring. “Must be nine or ten months ago now. After El Paso we came farther west. Stoppin’ here and there as his business required, you understand.”
Jacob wanted to ask more about Stone’s business. There was, of course, the delicate matter of not wanting to accuse this man of involvement unfairly.
“And you were with him for six months or so?”
“Right. Right about that, yeah. I left because one of— well, actually two of Slippery’s guys were getting out of hand. Brothers. They’d keep going off on their own, making more trouble for the gang.”
“You included?”
“Hell yes,” Fitz said emphatically. He sprinkled a handful of flour on the tabletop and upended the bowl he had been mixing. A mound of dough sat waiting to be handled. “Those goddamned Maloneys. Always thinking they were smarter than everyone else. So, a couple months ago, the brothers set to stealing a barnful of horses, and ended up killing the kid who got in their way. Couldn’ta been more than ten years old and just wanted to keep his gelding. Slippery made amends to the parents as much as he could, but I wasn’t having any more of it. I don’t want to be feeding men like that. They ain’t going to be roving around the countryside with my help. So I lit on out of there. Olmos wasn’t my first stop, but this is where I managed to find me a proper job. The owner here was more than happy to look the other way when I told him where I come from.”
Jacob listened to this story with interest. He had never pegged Elliott “Slippery” Stone as the kind of man who would make amends for another fellow’s error, but if Fitz was to be believed, he did it without complaint. But Stone’s behavior wasn’t the only part of that story that grabbed his attention.
“Did you say Maloney brothers? Two of them? Was one of them named Seamus by any chance?”
“How’d you know that?” Fitz asked, narrowing his eyes at Jacob. “He get mixed up with the law again?”
Jacob dumped several handfuls of chopped onions into the pot before answering. “Were you very close to Seamus Maloney?” he asked, trying to be casual.
“Seamus? No. Not particularly. He was a mean son-of-a but manageable. If Colin weren’t around Seamus might have been a better part of the gang.”
“Hm,” said Jacob, noncommittally. “So it was these boys that drove you to leave the gang? Any hard feelings with Stone?”
“Nah. He understood. Real understanding man, that one. He’s a real leader. Not what you’d expect of an outlaw but…” Fitz shrugged. “I suppose it ain’t strictly true to say he’s a ‘good’ man, but he certainly could have been worse. Why is it you need to know all of this stuff, eh?”
Jacob weighed his next words carefully. Could he trust this man? He had, after all, been part of the Slippery Stone Gang hadn’t he?
“Here,” Fitz said walking over to where Jacob was still chopping onions. “Try this for me. I think it needs more somethin’ … pepper, maybe.”
He held out a small bowl with a few spoonfuls of soup in it. Jacob took it from him, raised the spoon to his lips and swallowed a mouthful. The mellow scent rounded out to a sharp, bright taste. The sweet onions Jacob had been chopping seemed destined for another batch of this.
Impressed, he looked back up at Fitz. “Is this the onion soup Stone hired you for? I think it’s perfect. Where’d you learn to cook like that?”
“Army,” he said shortly. “Confederates. Had to make do with practically nothing.”
“You did God’s work then, my friend,” Jacob said with a grin, handing back the bowl. “I was a Confederate myself and if I had tasted anything this good I could have beaten the entire Union Army single-handedly.”
Fitz laughed and returned to his soup pot over the fire. The two men worked in silence for another moment before Jacob spoke up again.
“We got word that we should expect Stone and his gang to hit the bank across the street here. Sometime before tomorrow afternoon.”
Jacob glanced over at Fitz, trying to gauge his reaction. The other man tasted his soup one last time before putting the lid on the pot and moving back to the dough that needed his attention.
“Is tomorrow the last day before the stagecoach takes the money?” Fitz asked.
Jacob chuckled. “It is.”
“Yep, that sounds like Slippery. Efficient as ever. Where’d you hear about this alleged scheme?”
“One of his girls got arrested in Phoenix and talked.”
“And you believe her?”
Jacob shrugged, putting another few handfuls of chopped onions into his pot. “Should we not?”
“Couldn’t really say. Depends on which girl. Depends on what she knows.” He shrugged. “All’s I can tell you is it sounds like the kind of thing Slippery Stone would do, so you’re best to assume it will happen.”
“Anything else we should worry about, like tricks he might use or distractions to look out for?”
Fitz appeared to consider the question for a moment before answering, “I dunno. That’s why he’s slippery, ain’t it? Sure, he’s efficient. He’ll go where the cash is. But otherwise he’s completely unpredictable. Only thing I can offer you is to hope that the Maloney brothers aren’t on this particular job with him.”
Jacob nodded. “Thanks.”
“That’s plenty of onions,” Fitz said, nodding to the nearly full pot next to Jacob. “That’ll keep me for the rest of the day. I imagine you have a lot you need to go take care of.”
He tossed Jacob a scrap of cloth to wipe his hands on. The scent of onion would follow him for a bit, but he had gotten information they could use to take down the Slippery Stone Gang.