Haskell stopped before the gray-bearded man in the wheelchair, whose blue eyes were rheumy from drink. Maybe from pain, as well. Haskell looked at the man’s purple toes.
“Redfield?”
The Ranger flared a nostril. “Who’re you?”
“Your old pal Henry Dade sent me. I’m Bear Haskell, deputy U.S. marshal out of Denver.”
Redfield frowned, vaguely sheepish. “You don’t say.”
“I didn’t see a badge on your chest.”
“That’s cause there ain’t one there.”
“You can sheath that cannon, Captain.”
Redfield smirked then snaked the shotgun out from under the board table and slid it into the sheath on the right side of the chair. Haskell sat down at a small, square, badly scarred table beside Redfield, and put his back to the wall. He propped an elbow on the table and half-turned to the surly Ranger.
“You expectin’ trouble, are you?”
“I’m always expectin’ trouble,” Redfield said, spooning more beans into his mouth, sucking the juice off his mustache and looking around owlishly. “Ever since a diamondback found its way into my sleepin’ quarters an’ bit my leg—yeah, I been expectin’ trouble. Don’t see no reason to put a shiny target on my chest, to boot!”
Haskell was about to probe the Ranger further, but he stopped when the woman from behind the bar walked up to his table. Haskell opined that she was, indeed, nearly his age, early-to-mid thirties, but she’d worn the years well. Bear could see why the middle-aged Ranger frequented the woman’s cantina.
“Would you like some beans?” she asked Bear. “Tequila?”
“You can’t beat Rosa’s beans,” Redfield told the federal lawman out of the side of his mouth, chewing, looking lustily up at the woman. “You can’t beat her tequila, either. Her family makes it down in Mejico. Ever since I pulled into this backwater, I been livin’ on Rosa’s beans and tequila. Asked her to marry me, but she won’t say one way or another. I think she’s got her another man. Maybe some border bandit who visits her under cover of darkness. That’s the only way I can figure it. A looker like her’s gotta have her a man somewhere. She won’t give me the time of day.”
“I’ll give you the time of day, Captain,” Rosa said, a beguiling half-smile on her wide mouth as she glanced at a clock on the wall behind the bar. “It is a quarter to one in the afternoon.” Her smile widened. “There—are you happy?”
“I’d be a whole lot happier if—”
Rosa cut him off by turning to Bear and saying, “I also have whiskey and javelina stew, Senor ... ?”
“Bear.” Haskell smiled up at her.
“Oso.” She leaned across Haskell’s table and fingered the bearclaw necklace hanging down the front of his calico shirt. Her blouse drew away from her chest, offering him a tantalizing glimpse inside a thin chemise. “Hmmm. Did you make this yourself?”
“It wasn’t my idea. The owner of them claws knocked on my door. I didn’t knock on his.”
Rosa released the necklace, and straightened. “Is that how you treat everyone who knocks on your door, Oso?”
“Why don’t you find out for yourself?”
She arched a speculative brow then gave him a cool, slow blink. “Have you made up your mind?”
“Redfield makes the beans and tequila sound so good, I think I’ll have that.”
“Good choice.” Rosa turned sharply, skirt swirling, and strode back behind the bar to her steaming range.
Redfield glowered at Haskell, his juice-dripping spoon raised to his chin. “By God, how in the hell did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Make her blush like that. I been workin’ on that pretty Mex for nigh on two years now, and she still looks at me like somethin’ the cat dragged in.” Redfield looked Bear up and down. “Christ, how tall are you, anyway?”
“Six-six.”
“That’s it. She likes big men. I’m only five-ten when I’m standing up. Shit! I could lose some weight, at least. Christ—look at me!” The Ranger grabbed his considerable paunch in disdain.
Rosa brought a steaming bowl and a bottle and a glass over to Haskell’s table. The pinto beans, swimming in juice and speckled with chopped chili peppers and onions, flooded Haskell’s nostrils with their succulent aroma. Rosa smiled at him, ignoring the Ranger, and then strode back toward the bar.
“Goddamnit!” Redfield cursed again under his breath, ogling the lovely sway of the woman’s retreating ass.
Haskell splashed tequila into his glass and threw back half. It cut his tonsils like a rusty knife, but it smoothed out the travel kinks. “Snakebit, eh?”
“Yeah.” Redfield had resumed eating. “Someone squirreled that snake into my sleeping quarters. No way it got in there by accident. Around here, you make sure there ain’t no holes a snake can slither through. Nests all over the place.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. My last man besides myself disappeared last week. Shot out on the range, I’m bettin’. Rodriquez rode out to investigate two more killin’s. Two more small-time, ten-cow ranchers killed. Shot in the back from long range by a big-caliber rifle. I can’t ride out there myself for obvious reasons. That snake bit me a day after I sent Rodriguez out to investigate. How fuckin’ coincidental!” Redfield chuckled darkly at that.
“You think Jack Hyde’s the culprit?”
“Many of the killin’s around here have the Jackal’s stamp all over ’em. Mainly, shot from long range by a big-caliber rifle. Everybody knows Hyde carries a—”
“Sharps hybrid with a fancy scope thing.”
“You know about that?”
“Henry gave me a file on what’s been compiled on the Jackal. He’s been at play out here in the fields of the devil for a good long time, but nobody seems to know much about him except that he carries a Sharps and he’s devilish good with it. There doesn’t seem to be any agreement on just what he looks like, exactly.”
“It’s damn odd!”
“One person will say he’s a little tow-headed guy, around five-four, and the next person will say he’s dark and my height.”
Redfield spooned the last of his beans into his mouth, raked a grimy sleeve across his lips, and shook his head. “I been in this business fer a long time and I’ve never run across such a slippery critter as the Jackal.”
“Is the main reason you think Hyde is down here killin’ folks because of his trademark killin’ style?”
“That and rumors. And because whoever is doin’ the killin’ is so damned hard to catch. He’s sneaky, coyote-like! He’ll stray off course from time to time and do somethin’ odd like throw a snake into my sleepin’ quarters. That’s just like the Jackal! He likes to terrorize and beguile folks before shootin’ ’em in the back from long range.
“Some of the boys out to the Box 6, a little ranch down the road a piece, said that someone was messin’ around in their bunkhouse for several days, rearranging their gear, messin’ with huntin’ trophies on the walls, an’ leaving dead mice under pillows an’ such before two of them ended up belly down out on the range, with bullets in their backs.”
Redfield gave another dark snort and reached for his tequila bottle. As he did, both the old-timers who’d been playing poker heaved themselves up from their chairs.
That startled Redfield, who dropped his bottle back down and reached for both his sawed-off shotguns, filling his hands with both big poppers simultaneously and training the barrels on the old Mexicans.
Both jerked with startled grunts. One fell back into his chair.
The Ranger barked, “Goddamnit, why in the hell are you two bean-eaters movin’ so damn fast for?”
They looked at each other before turning their wary gauzes back to the four stout barrels aimed at them.
Haskell cleared his throat. “I think they were just gettin’ up to leave, Captain.” He looked at the two startled oldsters, both of whom were holding their hands up to their shoulders. “Why don’t you sheath them cannons before somebody gets hurt?”
Redfield wagged the guns at the old Mexicans. They hustled out away from their table to the door, glancing cautiously over their shoulders.
The Ranger looked around, as though suspecting more trouble from any quarter, then slowly sheathed the shotguns. “I can’t be too careful. Laid up the way I am, I’m a sittin’ duck. I’m an old wolf with a bum leg.” Redfield glanced at Haskell then jerked his chin to indicate the street outside the cantina. “You see them young wolves up the street, over to the Cantina San Gabriel?”
“I saw ’em.”
“If the Jackal don’t get me first, they’re gonna kill me. Sure as I’m sittin’ here.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because they want the run of the town. I’m an old wolf with one good leg. They’re young. They got both their legs. That’s the way things work out here!”
Redfield turned to Haskell, who was spooning beans into his mouth and sipping his tequila while watching the Ranger. Bear was wondering if there was anything to what the man was saying or if the snake venom was rotting out his brain. It did that to some men. He looked at the man’s toes again. They sure looked black. Maybe his brain was the same color ...
The Ranger turned to Haskell, one brow cocked malevolently. “I said I was the last lawman standin’. Not no more.” He gave a wolfish grin. “There’s you now, too.” He dipped his chin to punctuate the warning.
Holding his filled spoon to his mouth, Bear glanced out the cantina’s front windows. He couldn’t see the brightly dressed vaqueros outside of the Cantina San Gabriel anymore, but several horses were still tied to the hitch rack fronting the place.
“You think those fellers over there ride for one of the two warring factions in these parts?” he asked the Ranger, who sat back in his chair now, one hand wrapped around his freshly filled tequila glass.
Redfield nodded dully, as though deep in thought. “That’s right.”
“Have you asked them who they ride for?”
Redfield turned to Haskell, frowning, as though he’d suddenly realized he’d been sitting here chinning with a crazy man. “Around here, you don’t ask questions like that. Maybe up in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska Territory. Maybe as far up as the Canadian line.” He shook his head slowly. “Down here, this close to the border, you don’t ask questions like that. Not if you don’t want your throat cut, a bullet in your back, or ... ” He glanced down at his near-black toes. “A snake tossed into your sleepin’ quarters.”
He gave a shudder as though at the remembered image of the snake, maybe at the remembered burning pain of the two sharp fangs sinking into his flesh and pumping his leg full of poison. He threw back his entire shot of tequila, slammed the glass back onto the table, and clumsily refilled it.
Haskell turned to stare out the window at Cantina San Gabriel again. He tapped his fingers on the table, thinking it through.
“Well,” he said at last. “Someone’s gotta do the askin’. Might as well be me.”
“Here’s to ya,” Redfield said, lifting his glass in salute. He gave the federal lawman a mocking wink and threw back another entire shot.
“Is that good for the poison?” Haskell asked him skeptically as he gained his feet and scooped the Henry up off the table.
“It may not be good for the poison,” said Redfield, “but it sure is good for me. He snickered as he splashed more tequila into his glass.