The money rustled under their moving feet. The moving feet were slow and heavy. Lassiter knew he was taking a beating. He took two more punches without going down. Jack tried to rush him. Lassiter didn’t know how he managed to side-step. He didn’t get out of the way, not altogether. Jack’s meaty shoulder struck him a glancing blow and he crashed back against the wall. He tried to bounce off the wall like a wrestler off the ropes. It wasn’t much of a try, but his rawboned frame hit Jack pretty hard. Jack didn’t try to dodge or roll. He stood there and took it. It didn’t even shake him.
Jack hit Lassiter with a flat-footed punch. The thick-muscled arm jerked back, then came forward like a steam-driven piston. It was aimed at Lassiter’s face and it took him squarely in the center of the chest.
As a boy, Lassiter had been kicked by a mean-tempered jackass. The blow in the chest felt something like that. But the jackass had kicked him only once. Jack hit him again, right over the heart. It didn’t hurt more than any of the other punches. By now his body felt like one big bruise. No special hurt any place.
Now there was light in his head instead of fog. A white glare tinged with red. Jack closed in. Lassiter could feel his foul breath gusting into his face. His eyes were open but he couldn’t see. Now the glare of light was nearly all red. As the light began to fade he heard a cracking noise. Then he didn’t hear anything else for a while.
When he opened his eyes again the girl was bending over him. The whisky she was pouring into his mouth stung his torn lips. “I thought you were dead,” she said.
Too much whisky went down too fast. Lassiter coughed and took the bottle in his own hand. The hand holding the bottle shook violently. It stopped shaking after two more drinks.
“Lay still,” the girl said when he tried to get up. Lassiter did what he was told. It seemed like a good idea.
“Jack?” he said. His head felt as if it had been used for target practice. It hurt to talk, even to think.
The girl’s face twisted. “I killed him,” she said. “Shot him in the back with your gun. What else could I do?” She started to shake. “What the hell else could I do?”
The train was still moving, so they couldn’t have heard anything up front. There was pain when Lassiter twisted his head to look at the clock. Goddamn it, he’d been out for most of an hour. The pain when he tried to get up was worse, and the girl had to help him. It had been a long time since he’d taken such a beating, if ever.
He heaved himself into the armchair and the girl handed him the bottle. Texas Jack lay face down on the floor, a gaping hole in his back. The blood looked black on the gray broadcloth. There was blood everywhere, on Jack’s white Stetson, on his white boots. Lassiter tilted the bottle and drank till most of the pain went away. He didn’t offer any objection when the girl got a pan of water and a clean dish towel from the galley and sponged the blood off his face. After he was finished, the girl took the bottle and drank from it.
Lassiter stood up by himself. It wasn’t easy to do it without help, but he made it. At least he could do that much. How much else he could do was something to be discovered later.
Lassiter looked at her. “What do they call you?” he asked.
“Linda,” she said. “And you’re Lassiter. All right, Lassiter, what happens next?”
He knew he’d been wrong about this one when he figured her for a fool. He noticed, too, that the Dixie accent had been lost in the mix-up. The accent and the goddamned giggle had been part of her act for Texas. Lassiter was never hurt badly enough not to appreciate a good-looking woman.
“What’re you grinning about?” she asked him.
It was a good question, he had to admit. His mouth hurt like hell when he grinned. He tilted the bottle again, letting Texas Jack’s good bourbon put some fire back in his veins.
“I don’t know why I’m grinning,” he said. “I had figured on jumping off this train a ways back. That was when I was feeling livelier than I do now. The way I feel now, jumping off trains doesn’t seem like such a good idea. You understand, sis.”
“Sis!” the girl said. “I’m not your sis. Also, I think you’re most ways drunk and a little crazy. I asked you what you want to do?”
Lassiter thought about it. They were so close to Kansas City now they might as well go all the way. Anyway, he had never been to Kansas City. He’d been in Joplin and Jefferson City but not Kansas City. This was as good a time as there’d ever be. They could lay up in some fancy hotel and have themselves a time on Texas Jack’s money. He’d worked had enough to get it.
The girl called Linda—he didn’t know her last name and didn’t want to know—said that she’d never been to Kansas City either.
“What about it?” he asked her.
“Sure,” she said.
Lassiter knew he was drunk when he heard himself telling the girl it was time to go to bed. There was about an hour to go, and the bed was big and soft, and he was body sore and head weary.
“Never you mind about those dead men,” he told her. “You’ll get used to it after a while.”
The girl laughed, a little drunk herself now. “Where you think I been, mister?” she said. “I grew up around dead men. ’Course this was the first one I killed myself.”
Lassiter squinted at her. No, sir, he’d been dead wrong about this one. Jack wouldn’t be the last man she killed. He liked her.
The train roared on through the night, slowing down through small towns, moving fast again when it passed through. An hour was plenty for what they had to do. Maybe Texas Jack was the first man she’d killed. He sure as hell wasn’t the first one she’d climbed into bed with. It would be no lie to say she knew how to doctor a feller better than any sawbones. And she smelled a damn sight better than any doctor.
The train rocked along and Lassiter had to fight the urge to sleep. Time for that—and more doctoring—when they got to Kansas City. Lassiter still hurt from toe to top, but he felt better with each passing mile of track. He hated like hell having to get out of that big bed.
While they were pulling on their clothes, the girl said, “Too bad we can’t take all of it. What do you think? It seems like such a waste to just leave all that money laying there.”
Lassiter knew he’d have to watch this Linda. There was a lot about her that reminded him of Cassie. The looks were different, and the voice and the color of the eyes, but the resemblance was there. Lassiter didn’t mind that. Most women were greedy. It was when they let it get out of control that you had to start worrying.
Lassiter buckled on his gun and stomped on his boots.
“Well, isn’t it?” she prodded. She picked up one of the blood-smeared bills and crinkled it between her fingers. She tried to stuff it into her bag. It wasn’t easy with the bag so full.
“No,” Lassiter said. “We leave what’s left where it is. You want to walk through Kansas City toting a sack of money? Besides, the law won’t find it hard to figure things out once they find Jack and his friend. That should stop them looking for me, least for a while. A while is all I need.”
“Oh hell,” the girl complained.
They jumped off the train as it slowed down on the outskirts of Kansas City. Nobody saw them do it. Coming out of the railroad yards on to a broad avenue with gaslights, they took a horse trolley into the city. Lassiter still didn’t know how much money he had in his bulging pockets. Enough, he guessed.
The girl snuggled up to him on the trolley. Maybe she thought it was kind of romantic. Lassiter grinned at her. She was a foxy one and he’d have to watch her. He decided to give her the usual two weeks.
No more than that.
THE LASSITER SERIES
HIGH LONESOME
THE MAN FROM DEL RIO
THE MAN FROM LORDSBURG
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