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HE BARREL OF BILL Hunnigan’s forty-five looked me straight in the eye. The man was big and angry, and looming over me, he looked like a god-damned giant, but that little black hole held all my attention. “I want to know,” Hunnigan demanded. “If you tell me, Mick, maybe I won’t kill you.” He wasn’t fooling or lying. That was one thing about Hunnigan—he might shoot you in the back if he thought it was for his own good, but he never told a joke or an untruth. He stood by his word, and he handled his own trouble, too. Hunnigan had a gang of four tough hombres, any of whom would have been glad to kill me on his say so, but Bill saddled his own broncs when it was personal. And the twenty-thousand dollars lying loose on the bed in my hotel room was a very personal problem for Hunnigan because before it came to me, he stole it first. “I work alone since I left the gang, Bill. You know that,” I told him. “’S’why I left in the first place, since we couldn’t get along.” “Bull hockey,” Hunnigan spat. “I don’t buy it.” The forty-five inched closer. Both it and Hun-
nigan looked even bigger now. I began to sweat something fierce. “You left… what was it, ’81? Yeah,” Hunnigan decided. “When we had that big storm. That was three years ago. Ain’t seen you since. So someone had to tell you about the money. I wanna know who. Who’s the long tongue, Mick?” Getting out of this was going to be rough. I thought I was slick, ducking in and out of Hunnigan’s place lickety-split while he and his boys were attending the few cows they ran to keep up their half-respectable front. Someone must have seen me and recognized me, though, cuz Hunnigan kicked in the door of my room not an hour later. If I hadn’t dallied or if he’d been fifteen minutes slower in getting here, I’d have been in the wind. It seemed so perfect when I planned it. They’d never know who took the money, and who was there to cry thief to when they’d stolen it in the first place, somewhere up in the Territory? I thought my days of living in dingy rooms and eating lousy food were finally at an end. Now, it looked like everything was just about over.
