Ed Gorman - Showdown

"Nobody's getting pissy."

Rooney smiled. Pure ice. "Yeah, I noticed that."

"Maybe I won't be goin' to St. Louis with you, after all."

"Fine. It's a free country."

"Maybe I'll go to California."

"Whatever you want to do, Karl. It's up to you."

"Yeah," Karl said, sounding almost mystical, "California."

Rooney just couldn't seem to resist.

"Is this," he said, "anything like the time you were going to go to Montana or anything like the time you were going to go to Alabama or anything like the time you were going to go to Mexico?"

"You really don't think I can pull away from you, do you?"

Rooney gave him his most superior smile. "I was just asking, Karl. Just asking."

With seven hours to go before train time, Rooney told Karl he was tired and would get some sleep back in his hotel room. Emphasis on his. Usually, the two men shared a room, not exactly being in the robber baron category.

This time was different. And for a good reason.

Before heading back to the hotel, Rooney stopped off at a shop, bought himself a couple of good stogies and some magazines to read on the train during the daylight hours.

He also used this time to plan on how he was going to break into Karl's room.

For his part, Tolan went to a whorehouse. He paid six dollars for a lady with an ass of considerable size and a mouth as nasty as a cowhand's.

"You make good money on a gent like me," Tolan told her. "I'm quick."

When she saw how quick, she said, "You sure weren't kiddin' about bein' quick. You're about the quickest man I ever seed, in fact."

As he walked to the hotel, Tolan kept chewing on her remark. Quick, huh? He didn't mind himself sayin' he was quick in a joshin' sort of way. But the way she said it, he wondered if she really was joshin'.

Thinking about it soured him.

And then all of Rooney's superior bullshit came back to him too. Not takin' a bath often enough. Just because Tolan wasn't a dandy like Rooney. Just because Tolan found taking a bath to be a really complicated task. You had to take your clothes off, you had to lower yourself into the tub, you had to soak and scrub and get soap in your eyes and fart in the water, and then you had to get up and dry yourself off and put your clothes back on—it was an additional burden if you had to take your clothes to some Chinese laundry in advance—and then you had to put your socks and your boots back on. Who the hell wanted to spend all that time doin' all that bullshit?

Besides, splash on a little bit of that smelly stuff he bought off that barber in Idaho that time, who could tell you hadn't taken a bath?

What he should do now was get on a horse and ride as wide of that sawed-off little prick Rooney as he could.

That's what he should do.

But much as he hated to acknowledge that Rooney was right, he'd tried it so many times before. Got right up to the point of leaving—told Rooney off right to his face—and then just couldn't quite do it. Couldn't quite get on the horse. Couldn't quite leave.

But this time, dammit—

And then he got one hell of a good idea.

Rooney knew that this was not without risk. If Tolan caught him, he just might think of all the ways Rooney had pushed him around, humiliated him, stolen from him, and generally been what you might call a real bad friend.

So.

So he had to be very, very careful.

He had to get Tolan's money and then clear the hell out. He had a horse waiting for him at the livery. He hoped that he would be a good ten miles away before Tolan ever figured out what had happened.

Getting into the room was no problem. He'd merely slipped the desk clerk some extra money.

That was the easy part—the only easy part.

Tolan could turn any room he squatted in into something that even barnyard animals would shun. There was Tolan's stench, for one thing. Rooney opened the window. There was Tolan's messiness, for another. You wouldn't think a carpetbag could hold such a cornucopia of junk—reeking clothes; a collection of photographs depicting bovine naked ladies; an array of patent medicines that offered to cure every disease known to men of all colors, creeds, and political persuasions; and fruit that was now covered with maggots. Tolan had been told by some barfly somewhere that fresh fruit was one good way of holding scurvy at bay. The trouble was (a) you couldn't always find fresh fruit and (b) fresh fruit didn't stay fresh very long and (c) Tolan hated fresh fruit. He claimed he always got pieces of it stuck in his teeth and spent half the night lying in his bed with a quiver of toothpicks trying to get rid of the aggravating little chunks between his rotted black teeth.

Not that a, b, or c made any difference to Tolan. Anytime they were anywhere near fresh fruit, Tolan would buy some and toss it into his carpetbag. And leave it there to rot. Who the hell wanted to lie awake half the night picking pieces of apples or plums or pears from your teeth?

Such was life with Tolan lo these many, many years.

Rooney searched for nearly fifteen minutes, stopping every time he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Once he got nervous enough to excrete a sheath of cold sweat that covered his entire body. Another time his bowels clenched with such force that he doubled over. Damn.

None of the warnings turned into anything.

He went back to work. Under the bed. Under the mattress. The bureau drawers. The closet. The closet shelf. Nothing nothing nothing.

And then the most dreaded place of all: the inside of the carpetbag. Easy to imagine pit vipers in the deep, dark interior. Or hellfire-breathing dragons from the medieval fantasies of his boyhood reading. Maybe it was the portal to Hades itself and would suck him in with the force of a vortex.

Whatever it was, he knew it would be vile. God, just touching the outside of it was slimy enough. Imagine the inside.

He closed his eyes, held his breath, and began to insert his arm when

He heard noise in the next room. His room.

His first thought was that Prine and Neville had found them. But how, with the head start they'd had? And how, when they had no idea where he and Tolan had been headed? He thought of the old man in the ghost town saloon. But how could the old man talk? Rooney had killed him personally. He'd checked his pulse at neck and wrist. Dead for sure.

Then who the hell was in there?

He realized what was going on soon enough. A hotel. Daytime. This was the busiest time of day for hotel thieves. They'd figure that most gents who stayed in a place like this would be drummers or traveling businessmen of some kind. The perfect time to toss a room and steal any and all of its valuables.

Frustrated that he hadn't found any of Tolan's money, he decided to have some fun. He'd kill the bastard who was in his room, was what he'd do. Then he'd wait for Tolan to show up and rob him right at gunpoint.

I want your money, Tolan. Or I'll kill you right here on the spot . And when he got the money, off he'd go. Points unknown. Tolan would never find him again, because Tolan would be dead.

For the first time in decades, Rooney would be a free man. No more dragging Tolan along. Being embarrassed by him whenever they were in polite company. Always worried that he'd get some dumb-ass idea to steal the money that Rooney had had the initiative to go out and steal himself.

Drawing his Colt, he crept out of Tolan's room, tiptoed to the adjoining room, and then flung the door open.

And it opened, all right—just fine and dandy, it opened. But the sight it opened on was enough to make Rooney slump against the door frame.

"What the hell're you doing in my room?" he said.

"You're s'posed to be the smart one, you figure it out." Tolan's Peacemaker was pointed right directly exactly unerringly at Rooney's head.