Ironhorse

51

We stood on the boardwalk in front of Doc Meyer’s office. Virgil puffed on his cigar, thinking. A buckboard came around the corner from the east and stopped. Two tired-looking miners jumped from the bed, grabbed their gear, and entered a boardinghouse. The buckboard moved on west and turned north at the corner of Full Moon Street.

“What do you allow, Everett?”

“Vince and the others did not stable the horses with the livery, that much we know... could be long gone.”

Virgil glanced back through the office window as Doc Meyer turned out his desk lamp and we started up the boardwalk toward Hotel Ark.

“But,” I said, “they don’t feel any threat from this town.”

“No, don’t think they do.”

“And on pure speculation, I don’t think they hightailed it out tonight, either.”

“Don’t?”

“I don’t.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Nope. Don’t think I would, considering the circumstances.”

“Circumstances being?”

“First circumstance being they lost some of their hands tonight. That being the case, fellows of this ilk got no way of dealing with those kinds of feelings, other than drinking and busting a nut.”

“That’s right.”

“Next circumstance, they would not be expecting us here in Half Moon Junction, so they won’t be skittish.”

“No, they won’t,” Virgil said.

“Far as they know, we are near a hundred miles from here.”

“That’s right.”

“Don’t think they would have the gall or stupidity to check in to a hotel, though.”

“But maybe,” Virgil said.

“Next circumstance is, they got money.”

“They do.”

“If they stayed,” I said, “I think bedding down with whores would be their most astute move.”

“Seems prospect,” Virgil said.

“Don’t you imagine?”

“I do,” Virgil said. “That’d be my summation as well, considering the circumstances.”

A mangy cur stepped out of the shadows from between two buildings in front of us and stopped. He looked at us for a moment and moved on slowly across the street. He sniffed at something, then disappeared behind a rotted section of siding on a blacksmith’s shop. We continued walking until we got to the corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon and stopped.

“They might have picketed the horses outside of town, hidden in a stand of trees or someplace,” I said, “and come back in on foot.”

“Sounds right,” Virgil said. “Come back, gamble a bit, buy a piece for the evening.”

“Probably too lazy, though, considering,” I said. “Been a wearying day for those boys, with all the commotion they’ve had to go through. First, the expectant excitement of the robbery, followed by the shooting and friends dying off. Vince having his helix and concha pieces wrapped in a napkin and sitting at the bottom of a trash bucket in the drunk dentist’s office. They’re going to be in need of some comfort, some mothering, a basic hankering for food, drink, and women. Plus, they got dollars and dimes they stole from the people on the train burning a hole in the bottom of their pocket.”

Bugs were circling the gas lantern again near where we stood across from Hotel Ark on the southeast corner of Full and Three Quarter Moon Streets. Virgil stood with his thumbs in his vest pockets puffing on his cigar, thinking. He pulled out his pocket watch and looked at the time. He looked back to the south and to the north.

“We got four blocks with alleys,” he said. “I’ll look around the backside outskirts, all the way around. You do the center alleys. We meet back here, thirty minutes.”

I looked at my watch.

“We see something,” Virgil said. “We come back here. Put together a go-to-it plan.”