CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Time had gone easy on Alec Casey.

He looked much the same as he had six years before. His hair was combed and shiny, and he wore a white shirt under a black waistcoat, all neat and trim even in the middle of the woods. He sat the same way he had last time Jasper had seen him, his limbs loose, as though a man bursting through a door with a gun in hand was nothing to worry about.

Jasper brought the revolver up, aimed.

“Don’t do that,” Alec said, his voice as placid as his face.

Jasper pulled the trigger.

The gun didn’t fire. Jasper pulled the trigger again, with the same result. His stomach sank. Had Alec Casey known that somehow? He must have to just sit there, even though he easily might have gotten shot.

Casey stood and walked toward Jasper. “May I?” he said, and took the revolver right out of his hand. “Bell’s weapons never do work quite right for anyone but him. Not unless you know their tricks. You should be careful when using someone else’s gun.” He pointed the revolver off to the side, shifting something near the cylinder with his thumb, and pulled the trigger. The shot burst hot and loud into the wall of the cabin.

Then Alec returned to his chair. He leaned back and crossed his long legs at his ankles. “You kill both my men out there?”

Jasper shook his head. “One. The man who had that gun, Bell? Even alive, he won’t be much use to you, though. He’s missing some fingers.”

“Alec,” Slip said, then stopped when they both turned to look at him.

He was sitting up on the bed, his face still pale and a little sweaty. His eyes were clear, though; maybe the sweat came from the confrontation in front of him.

Jasper had noted the similarities in their faces on first meeting Slip. Similar eyes, similar mouths. But seeing them so close together? They looked more different than Jasper could have imagined. Alec could have marched off the pages of a dime novel, a bad guy wearing black, almost unreal. Slip? Slip looked like he was going to keel over at any minute.

“You know, I sent men out to look for you,” Alec said to his brother. “No sign. Thought you might have gone off on a tear through Stockton or something till word came that you got picked up in Indigo. What were you doing there?”

“Looking for some peace and quiet.”

Alec’s brow rose, clearly skeptical of that. “Isn’t that what you use this place for?”

Jasper’s eyes had drifted to Alec as he spoke, but shot back to Slip when he finished. Isn’t that what you use this place for? Slip had been to this cabin before.

Everyone knew Alec Casey had a hideout, somewhere close to those stages and banks he kept hitting, but nowhere anyone could find. Jasper thought of all the times Slip had ventured from the path Jasper was making, driving them a little farther east than the route he wanted to take. Just hunting for onions, he’d said. No, he’d been trying to get Jasper to venture close to his brother’s hideout. A way to get himself out of this bind without drawing a gun. He’d said it himself—he liked the easy way.

Slip’s face practically confirmed it without Jasper saying a word. His mouth folded into a frown and his eyes took on that hangdog look. He looked like a sad clown.

Was that why people underestimated him? A frowny face and the occasional stumble, and people forgot he’d been an outlaw just as long as his brother. That was their game. Oh, how they’d laugh together now.

Slip didn’t look like he was going to start laughing, though. He drew himself up so his shoulders weren’t so slumped. “Just let him go, okay?”

“Why?” Alec looked as confused as Jasper felt. Why would Slip want Jasper to be let go? Why, when Slip knew all Jasper wanted was his brother dead, when Jasper had led him more than a dozen miles closer to the hangman’s noose?

“He’s just a jehu. He ain’t no lawman. No reason to hurt him. He kept me alive.”

“Kept you alive to bring you to hang if I’m not mistaken.” Alec looked to Jasper. “Am I mistaken?”

Jasper shook his head. “You ain’t mistaken.”

Alec nodded once and looked back to Slip. “You saved my life, brother. I’ll keep saving yours. The Casey brothers pay their debts. That’s what we’ve always said, isn’t it?”

“But what if I owe him? Then will you let him go?”

Alec seemed to be considering, but then he shook his head. “He shot at me—meant to, at least. I can’t be letting those things go, Slip.”

“Why not? Why not this time? Leave him be.”

Something about the way he said that tickled at the back of Jasper’s mind. Leave him be. Had he said it before?

“You’re always trying to get me to spare folks, Slip. It’s one of the things I like about you, brother.”

“Then why don’t you ever listen?”

“I listened once,” Alec said, then climbed to his feet. “And then you never stopped asking.”

Slip started talking again, saying something about Westin and Indigo, but Jasper wasn’t listening anymore. Alec’s words . . . He listened once.

He’s just a kid. Leave him be.

Jasper hadn’t gotten a proper look at the man who’d come to break Alec out of that jail cell back in Nebraska. His face had been all in shadow and then Alec had grabbed him, knocking him clean out. But Jasper thought about the picture on the handbill, the hat Slip hadn’t been wearing, the dark bandannas he’d had with him. Where Slip Casey was, Alec Casey was never far away, and the reverse was true as well.

And then he thought back to the voice asking Alec Casey to leave him be.

The voice had been Slip’s.

You know how many times Alec’s been caught by the law?

Once.

“It was you,” Jasper said. “You’re the one who broke him out of that cell.”

Slip’s mouth snapped shut with a loud clack of his teeth.

Jasper started to laugh. “I blamed him, ’cuz he pulled the trigger,” he said, gesturing to Alec. “And I blamed me, because I got too close to him. But I should’ve blamed you too. You let him out.”

Alec had taken the revolver, but Jasper still had the rifle, unloaded, useless when it came to bullets. Maybe Jasper didn’t need bullets.

He launched himself toward the bed, swinging the rifle into his grasp and then swinging the butt toward Slip’s head. One more good hit on that head, and it could finish him off. But Slip darted sideways, and the blow hit his shoulder. Slip let out a pained shout; it was his injured arm Jasper had hit.

He pulled the rifle back again, ready to deliver another hit, but strong hands grabbed his shoulders. He knew those hands, would never forget the feel of them, jerking him backward, the feel of the bars, slamming against his shoulders, against his head. Jasper flung his elbows back, dropping the gun as he did it. He felt his right elbow connect, maybe with Alec’s ribs, but the man barely grunted in pain. Alec dropped one of Jasper’s arms, spun him around, and landed a punch that sent Jasper crashing to the floor.

Jasper looked up. Alec’s hair was mussed and his waistcoat crooked, but as soon as he had his hands free, he tugged the waistcoat down and then smoothed back his hair. His right hand went for his gun again, but he paused, hand hovering just above it.

Something in his eyes sharpened. “You look familiar. We met?”

Jasper looked up at him. He could feel blood trickling down his chin from the split in his lip. He thought back to when he’d first heard about Slip Casey’s capture, the split lip he’d given Valdez. They were a matching set now . . . and soon they’d both be dead.

Jasper spat out a mouthful of blood. “You killed my father,” he said.

Alec’s shoulders slumped a little. He almost looked disappointed. “Oh,” he said, “is that all?” He pulled his fist back.

Then everything went black.