He was tall, with wide-set, shallow blue eyes and a split chin gouged deeper than a Comstock bonanza. His bearing aped that of a Sierra porcupine, slow and deliberate, at least until he spotted the piece strapped to Rash’s hip. Then he showed his quills, drawing on her in an instant.
He was fast. Much faster than she was. But speed wasn’t everything.
Fouch took a few steps toward her, inspecting her holstered Colt as he moved. Then he laughed and sheathed his weapon.
“For a second, I thought Long John Silverware here finally hired a crew,” he said. “Nice costume, by the way. Is the DAR putting on a show or something?”
Rash smiled, contorting her face into something she hoped approximated innocence. “Something like that.”
She’d take being underestimated over being quick any day of the week for sheer lethality. It had served her well over the years, even more so now that she was gray and wrinkled.
“Would you like to see the pistol, son?” she asked, testing her trigger finger. It felt fairly limber.
“Surely. Does it still fire?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Maybe you can tell me.”
As she drew her Colt, ready to give Fouch the last surprise of his life, two more shooters slipped through the front door next to Dandy.
This was no place for a shootout. Not with the kid sitting right beside her and certainly not with her newly unreliable hands.
With no decent alternative, she handed her Colt to Fouch. He glanced at it and whistled.
“You’ve got a real museum piece here,” he said. “1862 Colt Police, isn’t it?”
Rash opened her mouth to inform him that it was actually an 1862 Pocket Navy, but caught herself in time.
“Is it?” she asked instead.
“And fully loaded as well. You’re lucky we came along.” He turned to one of the two gunmen at the door, both quite young. “Briggs, empty this for the lady. For safety, of course.”
Rash cursed herself. Disarmed with nary a shot fired. Perhaps Mrs. Tolliver’s was indeed the right place for her now.
Briggs took the weapon and stared at it, scratching his head.
“Never seen nothing like this before,” he said.
Fouch sighed. “Then give it to Fremont.”
The other man took it. “Is it a flintlock?” he asked.
“No,” Fouch said. “It’s cap and ball.”
“Never heard of it.”
“What do you mean you never heard of it? It’s what Bill Hickok favored.”
“Who?” the young gunmen asked in unison.
“You mean to tell me you ain’t never heard of Bill Hickok? Wild Bill?”
They both shook their heads.
“What about Jack McCall?”
They shrugged.
“He’s the hombre what killed Bill Hickok,” Fouch said. “Walked up behind him at a card game and pistol shot him dead. Jack McCall’s one of my personal heroes.”
Briggs’s face dropped. “Why would you favor a man what shot another in the back?” he asked.
“Jack McCall was nothing but a run-of-the-mill drunk and two-bit gambler,” Fouch said. “Yet here he gunned down one of the most famous gunslingers around. Imagine it.”
“What happened to him?”
“Hanged. But that don’t take nothing away from his ideas. That’s why, when I was old enough, I tracked down his brother and killed him on the streets of Abilene.”
“Why?”
“Same reason Jack McCall had for his deed. Notoriety.”
“So his brother was a gunfighter?”
“No. A druggist. Didn’t matter. It got my name out there.” Fouch took the Colt back from Fremont and glanced at Rash. “Now, whenever I find me a famous shooter I add another trophy to my collection. I guess you could call it my hobby. Jim Younger and Dick Liddle might call it their epitaph. And it’s only getting easier nowadays, what with the real gunfighters getting older and all. Some say Bill Hickok only got killed because of his advanced age. He was nearly forty.”
With that, he pointed the Colt through the open door and emptied it into the distance.
“There,” he said, presenting the pistol back to Rash. “It’s safe for you to have now, sugar.”
Rash held her tongue as Fouch motioned to his men. “Search the place.”
Briggs and Fremont snaked through the house, turning it upside down.
“Ain’t nothing in here worth nothing,” they announced when the task was done.
Fouch ambled over to Lila, still seated in her chair, stopping directly behind her. Dark bags hung from her helpless eyes like lingering bruises, contrasting paraffin skin and pallid lips imbued with the faint blush of a strawberry heart.
“Well then,” he said, grinning at Dandy as he dropped his hands onto Lila’s cowed shoulders, his eyes betraying a deep malevolence. “You’ve got a day to come up with my money, otherwise I’ll be back for your little mandarin orange here. She may not be quite ripe just yet, but I know several buyers who prefer green fruit.”
Rash glanced at her pistol. Reloading cap and ball took time, which was the one thing she didn’t have. Killing three attentive men with her side knife didn’t strike her as particularly feasible either. She didn’t have a choice. She’d have to let them get away with their molestations. For now.
Fouch dragged his rough fingers up Lila’s shivering neck, lingering for a moment at her jaw line. Then he released her, blowing out the front door with his men.
The menace gone, silence descended on the house. Rash stood in place, infuriated by her impotence. Lila remained in her chair, frozen. Dandy moved first, walking to the table and taking a seat in front of his cold breakfast.
He tried to dip his spoon apparatus into his food as if nothing were wrong, but the shaking utensil betrayed his inner turmoil. He slammed his spoon against the tabletop. Once. Twice. Then he attacked the leather straps with his teeth, pulling and gnashing until he’d shed the apparatus.
His bowl was still in front of him. He swung at it with a stump, red-faced and furious, but missed. This only enraged him further. The next swing connected, knocking the sticky bowl to the floor. He pushed his way to his feet, staring around the room like a wild man in search of something to hit. Distracted, his foot slid through the spilled food, dropping him to his tailbone.
There he sat, wheezing for breath, snot running from his nose beneath glassy eyes, while Lila scrambled to clean up his mess. After a moment, he wiped his snotty nose with the sleeve of his ratty housecoat.
“I’m going back to bed,” he said.
As soon as he was gone, Rash moved to Lila’s side. Tears streamed down the kid’s flushed face, dripping onto the sticky pile of food she’d corralled with her hands.
“Stop crying,” Rash told her.
But she wouldn’t. She just sat there, shuddering—the eerie silence of it broken only by the occasional escaping whimper.
So Rash slapped her in the face.
The kid snapped to attention, glaring with wide, wild eyes.
“You cry when you’re safe,” Rash said. “Not when you’re still in danger. Come with me. We’re gonna learn you a thing or two.”
