Paul Welch was surprised to see Jessie Nolan walk up on him as he was dousing his small campfire.
“Jessie, what you got?” Paul said. He noticed that Nolan was lugging his blanket and bedroll, and had his gun belt slung over his shoulder.
“I’m bunkin’ with you, if that’s okay,” Jessie said.
“Sure, but . . .”
Jessie dropped his bedroll inside Welch’s lean-to and slipped his gun belt from his shoulder. He let the rig drop slowly to his feet.
“Madge has company,” Jessie said as he watched the last of the coals in the firepit lose its glow under a thin blanket of dirt.
“Oh, who?” Paul said.
“John Slocum, the man who saved my life.”
“Ah, well, there’s still hot coffee in the pot. Maybe this is somethin’ we ought to talk about, Jessie.”
“Only bad thing about bein’ up here is we can’t go to the Sawtooth Saloon and get a whiskey,” Jessie said.
“Hell, I got whiskey in my little pup tent,” Paul said. “You want a taste?”
Jessie’s mood brightened. His face flushed slightly and he mouthed a wide grin.
“Paul, you’re a dadgummed godsend,” Jessie said. “Maybe a slug or two would let me get some sleep. This damned arm hurts like fire.”
“Sure. I could use a taste or two myself,” Paul said.
He walked to a small tent off to the side of his shelter. Jessie heard the bang of pots and pans, the rustle of butcher paper, and the clank of tools. He licked his lips, his throat suddenly dry.
Paul came back carrying a bottle of cheap whiskey. Jessie couldn’t read the label, but he knew that they sold it at the bar in Sawtooth. He had drunk his share of it when he and Madge had lived in town.
“I got a couple of tin cups in the lean-to,” Paul said. He handed the bottle to Jessie, who took it with the hand attached to his good arm.
Jessie heard the tink of tin from inside the lean-to as he held the bottle to his lips and bit on the cork. He pulled it with his teeth and spit the cork onto his lap. Paul sat down and set the cups on the ground. He reached for the bottle.
“I’ll pour,” Paul said. “Two fingers, or four?”
“Five,” Jessie said and handed his friend the bottle of whiskey.
Paul poured whiskey into the two cups.
“Probably the fifth mashin’ of corn, but it’s sweet to the taste,” Paul said as he handed a cup to Jessie. “It’ll sure put lead in your pencil.”
“Yeah, and if we were at the saloon, I’d have somebody to write to,” Jessie said.
“You miss the glitter gals, do ye?” Paul said. He retrieved the cork from Jessie’s lap and screwed it into the neck of the bottle. He set the bottle down a foot away from him on a flat spot between two small stones. He had done this before, Jessie surmised.
“Just one, Paul,” Jessie said. “And I never got to the garden patch with her.”
“Who? Deborah Foley?” Paul asked. “Alice Easterbrook?”
Jessie laughed a dry laugh. He drank a swallow of whiskey.
“Nope, none of them,” Jessie said.
“Then who? Ain’t but one or two others.”
“Ronnie,” Jessie said.
“Veronica Sweet?”
“Yep. She strikes me as a high-toned woman, a cut or two above them gals what work for her.”
Paul shook his head and grinned.
“Ronnie’s as cold as a spring trout, Jessie. Ain’t nobody man enough to chop off all that ice that blankets her body.”
“Maybe that’s why I’d like to get her under the blankets. I dunno. She’s easy to talk to. Pretty as a speckled pup. And she’s got spunk. I’ve seen her handle men like they was toys. Pick ’em up, play with ’em a little, and then toss ’em back in the toy box.”
Paul chuckled.
“Yep, that’s Ronnie all right. I offered her a week’s poke of my gold once and she just patted me on the top of my head and pointed me towards one of the other glitter gals. Didn’t hurt my feelin’s none. She was smooth as a snake-oil drummer.”
“I think maybe she’s packin’ a broken heart, Paul.”
“Any hearts what was broke, she broke ’em, I figger.”
Jessie took another swallow of whiskey and belched. He winced when the movement jerked his wounded shoulder.
Neither man knew that someone was watching them from a small knoll some sixty or seventy yards away. The knoll rose in a copse of juniper and blue spruce that blocked its crown from view.
They drank and talked about women, prospecting, and gold mining until they both reeked with whiskey fumes and cigarette smoke.
The watcher continued to scan them with his binoculars, their voices drifting to him on the still mountain air.
“I’m going to turn in, Jess,” Paul said. He arose from the ground and walked his whiskey bottle back to the pup tent.
“Yeah, me, too,” Jessie said. “We done solved all the problems in this tired old world and my eyelids feel like they been turned to lead.”
Paul returned.
“I’ll spread out your bedroll and help you up, Jess. You just sit tight for another minute.”
Paul spread out Jessie’s bedroll inside the lean-to and then helped his friend to his feet. Jessie staggered into the lean-to.
“I sleep with my head toward the opening,” Paul said. “But you can lie down either way, head front or back.”
“I like to look up at the stars when I go to sleep,” Jessie said. “I’ll sleep with my head to the front.”
Paul helped Jessie lie down and pulled off his boots. He placed Jessie’s gun belt near him and dropped his own from around his waist and slid the folded rig under the edge of his pillow. He lay down and turned over on his side.
“G’night, Jessie,” Paul said.
“Night, Paul. Sleep tight,” Jessie replied.
Minutes later, Jessie heard raspy snores from Paul’s bed and he smiled as he looked up at the stars.
His eyes opened and closed until the stars began to blur and they stayed shut when he closed them.
Soon, Jessie was snoring, too. In perfect counterpoint to Paul’s nasal vibrato.
The man atop the knoll, hidden in the copse of trees, pulled the binoculars from around his neck and packed them in a leather case. He left the case, with its strap, under a small rock next to a juniper and got to his knees.
He crawled on hands and feet from his natural hiding place and stood up next to a tall pine.
He listened there for several moments.
He heard only the ragged snores from the lean-to and the far-off howl of a timber wolf.
Still, he waited.
Then, he adjusted his gun belt with its two pistols bracing both hips. Then, he slid a long skinning knife from a scabbard on his gun belt. It flashed a silvery sheen in the moonlight, like a fish jumping in a night pond.
He walked toward Paul’s lean-to with steady careful steps. He put one foot down and then let it take his weight before he moved his back foot to the fore.
It was the walk of a patient stalker and the man made no sound as he approached the two men sleeping with their heads at the opening of the lean-to.
Snore, snore, step, step.
Then, the man stood over the two sleeping men.
He looked down at them.
He waited several seconds, his eyes peering through the darkness to identify Paul and then Jessie.
Next, the man squatted down near Jessie.
He gently touched Jessie’s hair. Then, he ran the fingers of his left hand through the thickest part until his fingers were buried and spread out.
He leaned over, grasped the hair between his fingers, and pulled Jessie’s head back. His right hand, the one with the knife, streaked downward to Jessie’s neck.
He made a quick deep swipe of the blade across Jessie’s throat, then pulled his hand from Jessie’s head and clamped it over his mouth.
Blood gushed from the gash in Jessie’s neck. He gurgled softly for a second or two, then let out a soft gasp that was muffled by the hand over his mouth.
His snoring stopped.
The man waited until Jessie’s heart stopped beating and no more blood gushed from his severed throat.
He wiped the blade of his knife on Jessie’s shirt. The blade made a whispering sound as he cleaned both sides of the blade.
Then the assassin stood up and slid his knife back into its scabbard. He stepped away from the lean-to as silently as he had approached it. He walked backward until he was well away from the lean-to. Then he turned and slunk away like some killer mountain lion to his own lean-to on the side of one of the small hills that ran away from the massive boulders like the muscles of an enormous beast.
The man crawled into his lean-to and onto his bedroll. He sat there for a time, his breathing even and steady. He felt no remorse for what he had done.
As far as he was concerned, he had taken the life of a traitor. It was one less man that Bledsoe would have to deal with in the coming days.
And if the miners and prospectors came to town with those new rifles, they would be cut down like a field of wheat.
For now, he had taken care of the man who had delivered the rifles. There would be a bonus from Bledsoe when it came time to settle up for his services.
In the meantime, the night was dark, the moon nesting behind a cloud, and nobody knew who he was.
He smiled and then took off his hat and unbuckled his gun belt. He felt the energy he always felt from killing another man. His muscles were tingling, his veins ran hot with the oxygen he drank from the thin mountain air.
He went to sleep with a feeling of deep contentment.
His pistols were, as always, close at hand.
Far away, there was a chorus of coyote yelps and trills.
They soon died away into a profound silence that seemed to grip the mountains in the Sawtooth Range.