Outlaw Hearts(105)
“Nothing much here,” he said aloud. “They’re having some kind of sailboat races off the coast.”
Kennedy chuckled. “Big deal. This town’s a little too big for my liking anyway. We’ll hit a few saloons tonight with our new duds, find us some card games and some women and get out of here in a couple of days. I like these Mexican women. The ones who are easy are hot mamas who know how to please a man, and the ones who aren’t easy fight you so hard they’re even more excitin’ than the whores.” He laughed a throaty laugh, joined by the others.
“Says here they’re planning to bring in a railroad to Southern California, partly following the old San Antonio–San Diego stage route.” Clarence looked over at his boss. “Hell, at the rate they’re bringing railroads out here now, we might as well start robbing trains instead of banks and stagecoaches. Now that they’ve completed the transcontinental railroad, they’ll be putting in more tracks all over the place.”
“Yeah, and bringing in more civilization and more law,” Kennedy complained. “And don’t be tellin’ me what kind of jobs I should pull.”
Clarence reddened a little. “Sorry, Bill.” He always felt his position among them was tentative, and did his best to prove he was worth having along, even though he had never quite gotten used to being the target of lawmen’s bullets. He turned back to the paper, hoping to find something to interest Bill Kennedy and stay on the man’s good side. He turned the page and saw a headline reading Come to the Fair. He read on a ways and then spoke up.
“Some small town east of here name of Desert, they’re having a fair—stitching contests, baked goods, a horse auction—hey, and a shooting contest! Hell, we could go there and win every prize they got. Nobody in a little town called Desert is going to be any good with a gun.”
“Now that could be fun, boss,” Jeb Donner spoke up, rubbing at his left arm. “If the town is small enough, while everybody is at that fair, we could check out the bank, break in, and rob it before anybody knows what’s happening. Maybe there isn’t even any law there.”
“Yeah, and maybe there’s no bank either!” Joe Stowers said, joking.
They all laughed again, all but Clarence, who sat up straighter in his tub. “Hey, Bill, listen to this!” They all looked his way. “It says here that the prize this year at the shooting contest will be a hundred dollars instead of fifty, and that they’re offering a special challenge to outsiders. They have a citizen of their own that none of the locals can beat. They want to draw as many people as they can and will take side bets on top of the hundred-dollar prize.”
Kennedy smiled smugly. “Well, the guy might be good, but he would never beat any of us.”
“That’s not what’s important here, Bill. What’s important is the man’s name. It’s Jake Logan.”
Kennedy’s eyebrows arched. “Jake Logan?”
“Jake Logan,” Clarence repeated. “Doesn’t that make you wonder? If this guy is so good that they’re challenging men from all over to try to beat him, then he must be damn good. How many men do you know named Jake who are that good with a gun?”
Kennedy just sat there a minute, then straightened, looking over at Juan, who was beginning to grin. He looked past the man at Jeb. “What do you think, Jeb?”
Jeb’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the thought of possible vengeance, finally, after three years of searching! Actually, they had given up looking for Jake, but just the slim hope of finding him brought new life to his veins. “I think we ought to check it out. We know Jake came to California. Maybe he picked that little-ass town so he’d be harder to find.”
“If it is Jake, patrón, when I am through with my knife, I will personally drink his blood and spit it in his face!”
Kennedy looked back at Clarence. “Boy, I knew there was a good reason to keep you on. If you couldn’t read, we’d never have known about this.”
Clarence grinned with pride, his teeth already stained brown from chewing tobacco. The two teeth in front that Jake had blackened were getting even more rotten. He had finally done something that showed them he was valuable to the gang. If this Jake really was the one they were looking for, he’d be favored in Kennedy’s eyes the rest of their days. He checked the article once more. “We don’t have much time. This is an old paper. The fair starts in two days.”
“Well then,” Kennedy said with a sly grin, “looks like we’ve got some riding to do.” He settled back into his bath water. “Boys, let’s get done with these baths and get dressed. We’re goin’ to a fair!”