 
I Might As Well Because I Have No Choice

By

Travis Ford

I Might As Well Because I Have No Choice by Travis Ford

Copyright © 2016 Travis Ford.

Smashwords Edition

License Notes: This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and you did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to www.smashwords.com/books/view.com/14578 and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the author.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This book is dedicated to Wardell James for his kindness. He is remarkable. His selflessness will always be remembered.

I Might As Well Because I Have No Choice

CHAPTER ONE

It was drizzling by the time we reached the railroad bridge. Evening was coming on, and the air was death.

We tied our shoe laces tighter and slid down the embankment to get under the bridge where there was some kind of shelter of a sort. We built a fire then huddled over it wondering what had become of our summer wages.

Three of use were there. Strangers until a few hours ago. Now joined in the idea of going east, being rootless as a tumbleweed, blowing on, resting here and there against this fence or that, but staying nowhere long. As for the others, I had no idea.

The black skeletal frame of the bridge danced in the wavering light from the fire. And from time to time, the flames guttered and hissed as the wind blew down the bridge, spattering us with cold drops from off the bridge.

Hustling around for firewood reminded me of a winter I spent in Vermont at the Harpoon Cottage. No snow on the ground all winter long, only ice grass from time to time, but cold. The grass froze rock hard on the ground that year and never warmed until late spring.

Thinking about it now all in all, that had been a good winter. The cabin was snug against the wind, the pot bellied stove gave off almost too much heat, and there were old magazines and a couple of books lying around.

When not in mind to read, I'd sit and ponder. Whilst only a young adult, I had taken to rebuilding places in my mind. Places I'd lived in or seen. And when nothing else to do, I would put a place together, every single thing in place, then bit by bit I'd recall people I'd known there and what was said, talked about and the like.

When a man sets out to recall in detail as I did, he sets more to working than he's figured on, for he never looks at anything after that without thinking how he'll recall it in time to come. It also sets a man to thinking about himself and when a man stands himself up to ponder at, he can't always be pleased at what he sees.

No man is going to get very far unless he's a hand to notice. Hustling takes you over a lot of rough terrain, and pretty soon you get to know every draw, everybody, hill, lump of shrubbery, dirt maneuver, scheme, contender, and ally there is. And you get to learn the police and their tactics. You notice the game trails and springs, and where the homeless go for shelter and a lot more besides that.

Back there at the Harpoon Cottage, there'd always been a pot of baked beans. And I've never had my fill of beans. Sitting there beside that warm blazing fire under the trestle with night coming on, I kept thinking back to that place and those pots of beans. They would be tasty right fucking now.

That big nigga, he looked at me and he said, "You look like you been in a fight."

"Here and there," I said.

"You fight with the gloves?"

"Nobody ever showed me how. I just fight the best way I know how."

"I've boxed," he said.

He was a nigga, maybe a year or two older than my twenty six years, standing around six feet, and built strong. And he had good hands.

That was the first thing he said about me, 'You have good hands.' He doubled up my fist. "Flat across my knuckles. Stands shock better. You could punch, I think."

Puttering around, I fetched back a few more sticks. A branch or two, a few old sticks and such the like, anything to keep the fire going with.

"When did you say the freight was due?" Karl Kellen asked.

"Ten twelve if it's on time."

Karl Kellen was a nigga, a big black man, raw boned and with an uncurried look, shaggy hair and with a broad, tough face, yet not bad looking. He had small, ice hazel eyes, no more warmth in them than in the head of a nail.

Twelve hours before, not one of us had known the other. Before then, we were complete strangers. We'd come together in jail, in the holding tank. Only I'd been pulled in for fighting, and it wasn't the first time. Seemed like I was always being arrested for fighting, either something violent.

The wind blew cold. Rain spattered over us and I pulled the collar of my cloth suit coat higher around my ears and stretched my hands toward the flames.

We were sheltered in part by a bank of drift sand. On our left ran a small stream. The rain was falling harder now. The gusts of wind were more frequent.

"You got a place," Jaquan Vessey, the nigga asked. "I mean, do you got a place to go?"

"I got no place and never had a place except east." With a jester, I indicated my sacked back pack. "My home's been in the middle of that," I said pointing at the back pack.

"You got to have a ride."

"You think so, do you? Sometimes I figure I've packed that back pack damn near as far as a hitchhiker."

"I'd be damned if I'd pack it," Karl Kellen said. "I'd steal a ride before I'd do that."

"It's been done," I admitted, not wanting to argue principle with a stranger over a friendly fire.

We listened to the rain and hopefully listened for a train whistle, but it was a long while until train time and I was hungry as a springtime bear fresh out of hibernation.

"Maybe I could get a big rig job," Jaquan suggested.

"There was a nigga who rode for a firm I worked for down in New Mexico. He was a good hand. Can you drive?"

"I never drove any eighteen wheelers, but I drove a sixteen wheeler." He grinned at me. "I was a licensed CDL."

"You aren't the first," I said. And then added, "They tell me you really got to drive for Ciant."

"I can drive. But I never drove for any farm service."

"A man who can't live without working," Karl Kellen scoffed, "is a fool. I'd see myself in hell before I'd eat dust behind a bunch of hypocritical government know it all buffoons."

Well, I sat quiet feeling the Old Ned coming up on me. All my life I've driven rigs, hustling a few items from the hauls on the market, either worked hard for what much I'd had, and I didn't take to this stranger making me out to be a fool. Come to think of it, he didn't seem to be doing so well either.

Jaquan Vessey, he sat quiet too, and never said a'ight, yes, or no. And that seemed to be a good idea. This black guy was a whole lot bigger than me and my ribs and jaw was still sore from the last fight.

"You do what you're a mind to," I said after a minute. "I'll drive rigs."

"For $4000 a month?" He sneered. "You guys come along with me and you'll be wearing silk shirts and versache and suit clothes. I could use two men like you."

Back up the stream I heard a footstep splash in the water. "Somebody's coming," I said and turned my head to look. When I looked back, Karl Kellen was gone.

"Sit close," Jaquan warned. "It's the law."

It sure was. There were four of them. Four big men wearing uniforms an armed with shotguns. They had spread outward as they came up to the fire and they looked from one to the other at us.

"You," The man I knew as the sheriff said with his shotgun, "stand up." He came up to me. "You armed?"

"No," I said.

He went over me with as smooth and knowing a frisk as ever I got, then did the same for Jaquan.

"You haven't even got a knife or a razor?"

Jaquan lifted his big hands. "Nothing but these," he said, meaning his own two fists.

The sheriff looked around at a narrow faced, red haired man. "Didn't you say there were three of them? You had three of them, you said."

"That's right. They didn't come together, but they left together. The black man there, he was straight vag. Loafing around, no visible means of support. We gave him an overnight stay in jail and a floater."

"The one in the bread hat, he got into a fight with Quri Zainuddin over at Club Exotica. They busted up the place."

The sheriff looked at me with respect. "With Quri? I saw him. I figured it had to be a bigger man than you. What do you weigh?"

"A hundred and seventy," I said. "I never seen size made any much difference." Then kind of grudgingly, I had to say, "Although that there Quri, I'd say he was a fair hand."

The sheriff chuckled, "Yes, I'd say that also. Nobody ever whipped him before."

He kicked the sack containing my gear. "What's in that?"

"Clothes. Essentials. I'm headed east."

"How'd you get here? A trainload of cattle?"

"Uh huh."

The quiet man with the gray eyes had said nothing up to then, but he had been looking around. "Where's the other one?" He asked. "The big black man?"

"I haven't seen him," I said. "Only once since we left jail. He was heading for Club Exotica an a drink." I grinned at them. I figured I'd no business going back there."

They just looked at me, and then the quiet man said, "Don't cover for him guys. He isn't worth it. He's a murderer."

"I wouldn't know but you had him in jail, why didn't you keep him?"

The sheriff spoke, "Because we didn't know who he were. And like damn fools we let him go. Then Hilmore here," he looked in Hilmore's direction and grinned, and got to thinking about an old reward poster. "There's a reward on that man, dead or alive. He's wanted for murder."

Jaquan, he never even looked at me the whole time.

"How much is the reward?" I questioned, wanting to know.

You don't see much working for $4,000 a month and I found it was a lucky thing when I put forty five thousand dollars into a bank.

Hilmore looked at me. "What's your name?"

"Mussolini, I said. "Barns Mussolini. In some places they call me Pacino."

"Pacino."

Me, I grinned at him. "Maybe because I swing too quick. I got a dangerous temper when I'm riled, but it isn't always that. I never had much fun, except for fighting."

"I can believe it," the sheriff said, "and I saw Quri Zainuddin afterwards."

They poked around a little, and started off down toward the stream bed. Only Hilmore, lingered behind. He kicked at the ground were Karl Kellen had sat.

"One hundred thousand dollars reward, is a lot of money," Hilmore said.

"Mister, I seen that guy in jail and I didn't like him, but I never sold anybody out, an I am not about to start."

"I kind of thought you'd be that way," Hilmore said quietly. And added, "But don't tangle with that man. You leave him to us, he's bad news."

"You been east?" I asked.

"A time or two," he said. "And maybe again."

Then he walked on off after the others and we said nothing, Jaquan Vessey and me, watching them go.

Finally Jaquan picked up sticks an added them to the fire.

"Murder. That's bad. I wonder who he murdered?" Jaquan asked.

"He's full of vengeance and rage. I could see it in him." Then I looked at Jaquan. "Are you going any place in particular? If you're not, come with me. Two can starve as free as one. And if I get a driving job, I'll speak for you."

"I thank you kindly," he said.

CHAPTER TWO

The fire was warm, the wind had gone down, and the rain had about stopped. There were still the sound of big drops falling off of the trestle.

For a long time we sat quiet, and I were wishing I could catch some shut eye, but little time remained if we were going to catch a nap. I kept squatting there thinking about how I wished there were a fucking empty on that train. I never enjoyed riding freights unless there were an empty freight car.

"We're partners Pacino?" Jaquan Vessey asked.

"Why not?" I questioned. And then the train whistled far off in the distance.

We got up and Jaquan kicked out the fire mostly and then scooped water from the creek with an old can and poured it on what was left to put out. Then we strolled to the trestle together.

The train slowed up along here with a good grade ahead, an a man could catch it moving.

"Can you make it toting that fucking thing?"

"Why not?"

We let a dozen freight cars go by and then Jaquan saw an open door as it passed a red light on a switch and called out to me. He was a fast man making the run easy and swinging up and he caught my gear for me as I swung it at the open freight car. Me, I caught the edge of the floor and hauled myself off the ground.

Long after, Jaquan had rolled up in some paper he found at one end of the car. I sat there by the open door looking out at the country. Here and there we passed by lonely farms with lights on in the windows. One time there were a man walking toward a house with a lantern on a pail, and a dog barking at the train.

"Crop farmers," I sneered. "Home guards." But away down inside, I wasn't sneering at all. That man was going into his own home to sit down to his supper at his own table with his kinfolk around him.

And me, all I had were a lonesome whistle sound as the train bent around a curve, the distant glow of the firebox, and somewhere down the train, a flea bitten cow pony, on a chuck wagon for home.

CHAPTER THREE

When I woke up, it was daylight, and the train was bumping along its train tracks at a good pace. Walking to the door, I could see patches of woods, a stream and miles of wheat fields whizzing by.

Jaquan sat up straight an asked, "Is that right what you said? We're partners?"

"Sure, Partner."

"Where are we going?"

"I dunno. Maybe Elizabeth Jersey."

"I could eat. Boy could I eat."

"You and me both," I said.

"Have you been driving rigs for a long time?"

"Yep. Ever since I was old enough. Worked along with my brother until he was killed. Then on my own for the Big Ridges & Corp."

"My brother, finally one time he braced a town Marshall."

The train were slowing a little. Leaning out of the door, I could see the long sweep of the cars ahead as they rounded a curve and started up a steep grade.

"The marshal told him to pull over and sleep it off. But Sidney, he just went ahead and dragged on."

"You seen it?"

"Sure. That Marshall, he walked over and looked at the body, and then he looked up at me, and he said, "Man, I'd no choice. I hope you don't hold that against me."

"I blamed that Marshall. Sometimes afterwards, that Marshall met a bullet. And let's just say it had his name on it for my brother's death."

We sat down in the boxcar door and dangled our legs. The sun was warm and pleasant. You could smell coal smoke from the engine and that hot dry smell you get from ripening grain fields. They'd be shoving wheat in no time at all, but I had my fill of that, even though it paid much as driving rigs. I never hunted no kind of work a man couldn't do from the back of a truck.

"We're coming to a town," Jaquan said.

"Are we? Yep," answering my own question.

"It seems to me you could get you a path. I mean to say, on a railroad, they tell me when a man ships cattle or rides with cattle, the railroad will give him a path back home."

"You heard it right. Only I didn't take to that new clerk back in Chicago. The one I used to know, he was aright. That one's holding his nuts at a man hate'n. And nobody does that to Barn Mussolini."

Suddenly footsteps drummed on the freight car top and then a face leaned over above head, looking apake. It was Karl Kellen. He turned around, lowered his feet, then his full length, and swinging by his hands; he swung in and dropped to the floor in the freight car besides us.

"You could get killed that way," I said.

He chuckled, "My numbers not up."

There was a hard reckless light in his eyes that I did not like. Perhaps because they were also lighted with contempt. The way I figured it, a man has no right to hold anybody or anything in contempt. Especially the odds. From time to time, I'd seen a few men die. An I couldn't bring myself to think there was any special providence looking out for any of us.

Too me, we work out our destinies subject to a lot of accidents, incidents, and whim. The men I have viewed die, died mostly because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, either they really deserved it. And the kind of men they were mattered none in the least. The good went easily as the bad. The brave as quickly as the cowards.

As for me, I did what I had to do, what I believed I ought to do, and tried not to take any unnecessary chances. There and there, I'd seen more than one man die showing how brave he was or doing something he was dared to do which didn't make sense anyway any which way you looked at it.

Those police back there, they asked about me?" Karl asked us.

"You know they asked about you Karl."

"What did they say?"

"Nothing much. Only they seemed anxious to put them handcuffs on you. If I were you," I said, "I would stay away from few places. And we're coming into town now."

"You call that a town?" Karl asked. "That's nothing but a wide spot in the road. The clowns in a place like that won't worry me."

The town clowns. I heard that term given to the constable or Marshall in those little towns. His likes is a good enough sort if you give him a chance and often further we stayed away from Clan Vine graveyards, they were filled with his type.

"They don't bother me. I'm packing the difference," Karl said.

Why do all those would be toughs talk like echoes of each other? How many times have I heard much talk an each one of them like animals in their hideouts, coming out every once in a while emphasizing about what they plan to do? And then like the Reurp Seater gang, they run into a bunch of gangs, small town hoodlums and get shot to rag dolls.

"That gun your packing is the handle that will open a grave for you on Clan Vine," I told him.

Jaquan Vessey got up. "Pacino let's unload and hunt us some grub."

Karl Kellen chuckled. "You guys on your uppers. Don't be damn fools. Stick with me and you'll be rolling in money."

"You're riding the same train we are," I said.

An ugly light came into his eyes. "What I'm doing here is my own business and business is good." He then brought a stone of crystal meth amphetamine from his pocket. "How about that?"

"Jaquan, there's a house with a woodpile and two axes," I said. "Let's you and me see if we can earn our breakfast."

Jaquan dropped to the roadbed, ran a few steps, then he walked back to meet me. I tossed my gear out into the weeds and dropped off towards the ground myself.

The last I heard, Karl Killeen saying, "A couple of finks! Just plain bums!"

"I don't like that man," Jaquan said.

Jaquan waited by the woodpile while I walked up to the house and knocked on the door. A skinny Irish woman looked at Jaquan and then at my sack.

"What's in it?" She asked.

"My gear ma'am. I'm a rider. But right this minute, I'm riding a two day hunger. There's a pair of axes and we were wondering if we could earn a meal."

"Well now, you're a couple of lads. You heft those axes awhile and I'll be making up my mind."

We'd worked a few minutes when she came to the door. "Come off it now!" She called. "Pat will be home for his supper and if he found me making you work for a meal, he'd take the stick to me."

She brought two big plates piled high with ham hocks, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and seated them down on the stoop.

"If that's not enough, knock on the door. Himself is a healthy eater. And I know he'll make way with twice the lot."

CHAPTER FOUR

We sat down by the food, and she placed a pitcher of cold ice tea beside us and went back inside.

"There's good people wherever you go," Jaquan said. "She didn't even comment that I was a black man."

"Could be she didn't notice," I said.

If her Pat was a healthy eater, we'd no idea of putting the man to shame, so after a bit, we knocked on the door and she filled our plates again, then brought us a sack to the door. It were a potato sack, and packed to the top.

"Here's a bit to take along. And there's a mile of coffee there if you can find something to make it in."

"Thank you ma'am. Thank you indeed," I said.

"Obliged," said Jaquan.

"It's been said that hobs mark the gates of houses where they'll be fed. Is it true then?"

"Ma'am, I've no idea. I shall remember this place as the home of the fairest flower of the land. You're the picture of loveliness, ma'am."

"Oh, go on with you. You've had your bait. Now take yourselves on."

We slept the night in another empty boxcar listening to the creaking of the car as it rounded curves, the bumping as the train rolled over the tracks.

We had seen no more of Karl Kellen and I were sure he had left the town before us and I was pleased at that.

"Where do we stop next?" Jaquan asked, and then said, "I have ever ridden the train hitchhiking before."

"Pennsylvania, I guess. If we can pick up a meal there, we can ride out to New Jersey with a little tightening of the belt."

"That's a fair piece," Jaquan objected, "and I'm a man that likes to eat."

The train rumbled along accompanied by whistles and then as it neared some road crossing. The country we were passing through were broken into wheat fields, miles of them. And sometimes there were stretches of pastureland. It was a glaciated region of rolling prairies with occasional low hills and small lakes or sloughs, their fringes lined with cat tails. The only trees were those along the streams, or freshly planted ones near farmhouses or villages.

When the freight slowed down before coming into the station at Pennsylvania, we dropped off and headed for Main Street. This was my second time in town in a moment and I saw that it had changed some.

"I came riding in home on the first train over the road. The Big Ridges & Corp had driven some auto parts from Texas to Boulder Colorado, then shipped them to Arkansas and I'd gone along. The boss decided to have a look at Pennsylvania, so he rode that first train east with a couple of hands. He took me along to feed the stock.

"Nothing much here then, I reckon," Jaquan commented. "Isn't much now. Mostly tents then," I said. "Now they got hotels and much more."

It was in my mind to look around for a man I had known as a kid in Fargo in the Timber. Back in those days, that were the roughest place a man could find an it stayed rough until the Gradayne guys cleaned it out. Track Bier had killed three of the guys before they moved in to get him. This friend of mine were one of the Bio Ridges & Corp riders who decided to stay in Chicago, like I did, and we stayed in Illinois. There were a Fargo in the Missouri too. But that was mostly descent folks, but not so exciting to me as Fargo in Illinois.

This man I knew, he were wise enough to decide we should leave Illinois after Track Bier killed those guys. He had known the Seventh Calvary down in Kansas, and they weren't likely to stand by then after some of their click had been killed. We had nothing to do with it, but my friend taught me a good lesson then.

"It's the innocent bystanders who get hurt," he told me.

So we went north to the end of the coast toward New Jersey. It was built in a city where the river flowed into the Atlantic Ocean. And there were a few guys stationed there when we first came.

Now there were no uniforms about and small as the place were, it looked prosperous.

"If we find this friend of yours, will he put us on some work?" Jaquan asked.

"That's my guess. And if he's around, I know how to find him. I'll hunt up a drug store. Hobes Izumi could never pass up a drug store. I ever knew a man who had so many ailments. He told me he never knew how sick he was until he were snowed in one winter with a home medical adviser, and read it cover to cover. If it hadn't been for that book, he might have lived a long life in bad health without knowing it."

CHAPTER FIVE

We found a drug store, and while Jaquan watched my back pack on the street, I went in the store.

"I'm hunting a man named Hobes Izumi," I said.

"If there were more like him, I wouldn't need anybody else for customers. He's the strongest dying man I ever learned. But you've come too late. He went towards Utah, I think," said the druggist.

"Just my luck," I said.

The man came from behind the counter. "You might learn something from Jarez Claymount. He handles Hobe's local business."

"Last time I seen him he were hustling hoodlums. We hustled the same turf and hoodlums."

"That must have been several years ago. Mr. Izumi has been shipping and trading in manufacturing parts. He's done very well, I believe."

We found the son of a bitch Jarez loafing in front of a saloon. And when I told him I was hunting Hobes Izumi, he got up carefully and looked me over, and then looked Jaquan over too.

"Just what do you want with him? The Jarez was carrying a gun tucked in the back of his belt under his coat. A rough guess told me that Jarez Claymount was a pretty salty character and if Izumi was trading in manufacturing parts, they must have some fancy work for brands. Come to think of it, Hobes Izumi used to talk about he could hustle and move something with the best of them. So I began to understand some of the phases of his business.

"As a matter of fact, I was hunting a road stake. Me and Jaquan here, we're broke and headed for New Jersey. Hobes was an old friend of mine. In fact, we came to Chicago together."

"What did you say your name was?" Jarez asked.

"Mussolini. They call me Pacino."

Well his face cleared right up. He had been looking mighty suspicious until then. "Oh sure, I've heard him speak of you," Jarez said.

Jarez Claymount ran his hand down into his jean pockets and came up with an address and phone number. "You take this. You may find him there," he said.

"This is where I'll find him?"

"Well, he moves around a good deal. Don't you go asking for him. If you want to see him, look around New Jersey. You stay around a while and he'll find you."

When we walked away from there, Jaquan looked at the address and phone number with respect. "You got some good friends," he said.

Me, I said to myself, it may be a trap because I was wondering why Jarez was so quick to hand a phone number and address and said he could be found there, maybe, but the way I remembered him he was mighty on the move. Of course that could have been because he was on the run much. Maybe he was doing better now.

If he could afford having a man living around Pennsylvania like Jarez was, well, he was doing a lot better.

But why ship from here? Why not from Jersey itself?

CHAPTER SIX

We had ourselves a meal and when we came out of the restaurant, a man was standing on the curb, "Hello Mussolini," he said.

It was that man Hilmore that we last seen a couple of hundred miles east.

"I figured you will settle in east Dakota with a town named for you," I said.

"It wasn't named for me" He took some cigars from his pocket and offered them. "Smoke?"

It was a good cigar.

He lit one himself and we all lit up. Then he said, "You're living good."

"We got a right."

"I was wondering why, how somebody, you could go on like that?"

"Look man, you looking to fucking start something, you keep on with that big nose into my business."

He chuckled, "You may have the best of me there. I can't break yours. Somebody beat me to it."

Well, what could I do but laugh? My nose had been broken a couple of times. "The hell with it. You following us?"

"No. Just going east. Have you seen any more of Karl Kellen?" Hilmore asked.

Odd thing, I'd been so busy thinking about Hobes Izumi, that I had forgotten all about Karl Kellen.

When I didn't say anything, Hilmore glanced at his cigar and commented, "Mussolini, you strike me as an honest man. Maybe a hard one to get along with, but an honest one. So I don't want you to get in some of the bullshit floating around."

"I been up the creek. Most ways I knew my way around," I said.

"All right." He held out his hand and said, "Guys, my name is Price Hilmore. Call me Price. And if you ever want to talk about things, or if there's anything I can do, call me."

We walked away and left the end of city were we would catch our freight going out. Jaquan said to me, "He's a rebel, Pacino. That's a rebel man."

An it made a lot of sense. But who was he after? Karl Kellen?

They had said Karl Kellen was wanted for murder.

"That Karl Kellen, maybe he murdered a Rebel," said Jaquan.

We dropped off the freight before it reached New Jersey station and walked up Pacific Avenue.

"This here's a living city," I said to Jaquan. But before after a few steps, I amended that. "Now, I better back off on that, for I should say this here is a stock town, there's folks around who favor sheep."

We turned off and went past the cat houses to Main and kept on to Zian's Coupe. A couple of Hat X Timers were hanging out in front of the bar and one of them, seeing me packing that gear, commented, "Now look here, first time I ever seen Pacino when he had the saddle in the right place."

"Least I chase steers. They don't chase me."

Dropping the gear to the boardwalk, I dug into my pocket for the stub end of the cigar Hilmore had given me. They eyed me while I put some fire to the ash end of the cigar, making a great deal of it to impress them with my presence.

"I and Jaquan," I jerked my head to indicate my partner, "are hunting a business connection where we can invest."

"You might try the Kloaks," one of the guys said, looking wickedly. "They always seemed ready to take you on."

"You can't spread the word," I said solemnly, "those Kloaks are safe. I'm a reformed man."

"Now they'll be mighty relieved to hear you said that," the other guys commented dryly. "Shalhoup Cleveland was around last night, saying how dull it was with you out of city and there were nobody around to turn to a bloody pulp. He was drunk. And remembered that fight from ages ago."

"He was the better of me once in a fight. But he didn't mention I beat his ass when I sobered, did he?"

"No. You stick around. You can have your chance tonight."

"He's still around over at Bret Roundtree's?"

They exchanged a glanced. "You surely been gone. Roundtree left out of here one night by special invite."

That was news, but not expected. Roundtree's had been a long time hangout for the wild bunch. If anything was going on, you could hear it over at Roundtree, if they knew you.

Big nose George and his crowd hung out there when they were in the city and come to think of it, Hobes Izumi had a few friends in that getup. But when I started to ask about Hobes, something wanted me to hold off. Hobes and me, we'd been friends, but never partners, partners.

We went into Zian's and I led the way to the store. Zian always kept a big pot of mulligan stew going on the stove, and you could help yourself.

Jaquan and I couldn't afford to pass up a social invitation of that sort.

"That Shalhoup Cleveland, did he beat your ass?" Jaquan asked.

"I was off guard. An I was a little drunk. He's big and he's fast. But when I sobered, I beat his ass! Because when a man whoops me once, he gotta whoop, me until I beat his ass and win. That fight happened ages ago."

"What did you get to fighting about?"

Well, I just looked at Jaquan plainly surprised. "He pissed me off. And he's pissing me off now."

"You gonna fight him again?"

"I'm sober now. I'm gonna beat his ass again."

Jaquan said, "We can box some."

CHAPTER SEVEN

We ate for a while without talking and then Jaquan went on, "I boxed forty seven times in the ring for money. I boxed Divan Nakato before he was champion. An I boxed Zimmer over in England. I boxed Masello Henly, Brian Grin, and Damian Cereme."

Little as I knew about prize fighting, I'd read the Fighting Edge enough to know who they were and they were the best.

"I might be able to pick up a few moves from you," I said.

"I'll go rustle some mitts," Jaquan said.

CHAPTER EIGHT

There was no sign of Hobes Izumi in Newark or in New Jersey, although I covered the whole of it. Most of the time I listened and what I heard didn't make me feel any better. It was less what I heard than what I didn't hear. There were suddenly a lot of suspicious folks around town and a lot that wasn't being said.

A stranger coming to New Jersey would see the dusty main street with a row of false fronted frame buildings along either side. The signs mostly extended from the buildings to supporting posts on the edge of the board buildings to supporting posts on the edge of the boardwalk. Usually one of the Diamond R guys was standing in the street.

A man looking along that street would believe there wasn't much to it, but he would be wrong. In my time I'd been a sight of places and I'd call New Jersey a big state, big in the outlook of most of the folks who lived here. They had police here, but nobody paid them much mind. I mean, when trouble came nobody thought of going to the police about it, you handled it yourself. If somebody made trouble in the city, usually the police will haul them in and they'll be bribed.

Times where changing and there were new faces around, the neighborhood were cleaning and the government were toughening. The big pushers were loosing money and they didn't like it. And that meant they would do something about it when they got to the point where they decided some action was called for an I had a hunch that time had come.

As we were going along the street, Jaquan said to me, "You ought to get you a gig of your own, Pacino. A man will never get anywhere working for the next fellow."

"A hide out and an apartment. It's been ages ago when I had a gambling house. I started the gambling house from a few licks. The cops heard of the gambling house and raided it."

"You were something. You need another place of your own. On one of them streets you been mentioning of."

"Trouble is I said, those vultures every damn where on most of those and they wake you any night and loot at day and night."

"You need to save your money and get yourself a front," Jaquan insisted.

"A front?"

"Somebody to give you some work, either some bread, and then get yourself some clothes, get yourself some new shoes, keep them polished, get yourself a new hat. Maybe a suit. You look like money, money will come to you."

"A man I knew once, he figured that. Then got way over his head and they found him dead, hanging. He owed folks and he robbed folks to get it. And they weren't too kindly either when they got to him."

"Hung him?"

"Everybody began to wonder where the man got the money from. They brought him to the bridge, wrapped a rope around his neck and lynched mobbed him. He fought like hell."

"What you need to do is put the pistol to them," said Jaquan.

"Arm robbery."

"Arm robbery and murder them for the money. Put the pistol to them and cut the bullshit and get the money quicker than selling something and be done with it and get a large quantity of money at one moment. And then if the money isn't enough after that, we put the pistol to them again once more."

CHAPTER NINE

I found that GrandvilleMcNamara, who owned one of the biggest operations in New Jersey, was in town. He stopped me on the street and offered me a job. But the gig was that I'd be holed up all winter in an area with Vein Strychnine.

There wasn't a better man on the earth. He was a sharp shooter, trapper, hunter, hustler, hell raiser an one of the best rumblers you ever known. Thing about him, he had a bad temper and was quick to fly off the handle. We'd wind up killing each other.

There were a hundred stories about him. One time Grandvilletackled a group of Italians with a clubbed rifle. They figured nobody but a crazy man would do that, an afterwards they left him alone. Another time a bullet hit him in the face and he rode for a doctor, but his jaw was broken an it pained him so much he just reached in and tore out a chunk of jawbone so big it had two teeth in it. That marked him forever. I never did hear whether tearing that piece of jawbone out made the pain any better.

Me and Jaquan finally went back to Zian and hit that stewpot again. We got there early and Zian looked over at us and said, "You fucked up, aren't you Pacino?"

"We can sleep over to the moat and eat here until you throw us out. Soon as we find some work, we'll be riding out of here."

Zian stood there quiet for a moment and then he said, "Pacino, I'm going to put you onto something you may not thank me for. Johnny Santini needs two men for his click in the Camden area." Then he said, "You guys step up to the bar."

We were alone in the place, but I guess he didn't want to talk too loud. He filled a couple of cups with cognac and shoved them towards us.

He leaned his forearms on the bar. "Pacino, this here country is walking wide open into trouble and you will be a fool not to see it. And that trouble may bust loose right in Camden. That's why the job's open."

Well, I looked around at Jaquan. "What do you say man? It's going to be a cold winter and a man doesn't have to hunt for a living there."

"I have been in trouble most of my life. This time, I'm not going to be by myself."

"Zian, you tell Johnny Santini, he's caught himself a couple of live ones. We'll go."

We finished our cognac and headed for the door.

Just then, it opened wide and a man filled the open space with his shoulders. It was Shalhoup Cleveland. Shalhoup was a Diamond R and a tough hand.

"What's up? If it isn't the heavyweight?" Shalhoup mocked.

Five ten and weighting one seventy. But alongside his two hundred and forty pounds and his six feet four inches, I might be considered a midget.

The room was filling up and I could see they had been egging on him anxious for a fight. Well, I hadn't had no fun since the night they pitched me out of that honky-tonk back in Chicago. And tomorrow, I will be headed for the breaks along Camden.

"Shalhoup, how tall are you?" I asked.

"Six feet four inches in my socks," Shalhoup answered.

"I didn't know they piled it that high," I said. Then I hit him.

When Shalhoup Cleveland opened his eyes, the sun struck right into them, but it were that city noise, jouncing in the road that woke him.

It took a minute or two to realize where he were and when he did, he didn't like it. There he were, lying on his back on the bare concrete of the sidewalk with boxes and garbage all around him, and his head felt like it had been pounded by a sledge hammer.

There's nothing like lying on a sidewalk when people are walking around you. When he started to rise, he wished he had another idea. A shot of pain took him in the side and when he grabbed at a passerby's hand, he fell back on the concrete.

"That Cleveland from the Diamond R, you did the son of a bitch to him and knocked him out cold."

"Damn right Jaquan, I beat his ass!"

"Whatever you done, he shrugged it off and counter attacked. He knocked you down and up to that time. After that, you set out to pain him."

Jaquan drew up the team in the shade of a house. "I was about to wake you after that fight, then I thought otherwise. You needed your rest. Mr. Johnny Santini sent a car for us to conduct business. I don't know the neighborhood. Mr. Santini, he just pointed me this way," said Jaquan.

Jaquan had a cloth and a fifth of gin in his hand. And I took a few gulps and then wiped my face with the cloth. The gin burned my throat.

"Mr. Santini said he wanted me to take you to the edge of the city. The informant will be waiting there. And he didn't want anybody to know where we were going."

That didn't sound like Johnny Santini, but a lot of things had happened since I'd been away.

"Jaquan, rest your nerves. I got to figure this out."

He started digging around looking for clues, but all of a sudden, he pulled up and held his breath, then said, "Pacino, you look at this here."

What he were showing me were a SK-47 and a .30-06 and boxes with 500 rounds of ammunition. Alongside the assault rifle lay two .44 caliber, both new. And with them was a note scrawled on a piece of paper, greasy with gun oil:

Somebody's been stealing my weed.

That was all that were scribbled on it with his initials signed to it. But with all the guns, and coming from a subtle man like Johnny Santini, it seemed he must figure he were sending us into the middle of war.

"You want to quit?" I asked Jaquan.

Jaquan chuckled. "Where are we going to? Mighty soon there'll be snow falling, and I never did enjoy riding in the snow."

We drunk up our coffee and Jaquan smoked a cigarette and I dug around in my pocket for the butt of that cigar. When I found it, it was all mashed to pieces. But no use in throwing it away, so I put the tobacco in my mouth and chewed it, although I'd never been a man to chew tobacco.

From what Zian had said in Zian's, and of Johnny Santini, they must believe Camden was were the trouble lay, or some of it.

Everybody knew Johnny Santini didn't play no games with you. Mighty few crossed him. And if you did, you were a goner. Santini was a shrewd man, and he took account of conditions. He sold tons of marijuana, but on account of that, it was supplied from the motherland Africa.

If he were missing pot, somebody was playing a mighty tight dangerous game.

While we rolled around the street, I puttered around cleaning the grease from the rifles and holding it up. Then I did the same for the pistols. Come dark, we pulled off the street where there was a little street that trickled down toward the coast.

We ate pizza and afterwards drunk a soda. They tasted almighty good.

Where we had stopped, there was a small patch of grass among the scattered trees and we peeped the scene then moved back under the trees and hid in the shadows.

If anybody was hunting us, we'll see them first with no problem.

Only they weren't close behind us or I would have seen them. So if they didn't know exactly where we stopped, they might overlook us.

I grabbed the SK and sighted it and put a pistol in the crotch of my pants.

A man never knew when he had to brush off a bunch of scalp hunting hooligans.

Once I were relaxed out under the trees, I started trying to figure out what Johnny Santini had in mind. It seemed to me he was hoping we will get to the spot in Camden without anybody knowing we were there and he wanted us ready for a fight when they did find out.

If they were that bad, Jaquan and I could look for trouble, real trouble.

Time enough to cross the bridge when we come to it, so I stretched my muscles on a bit and then sort of let myself relax looking at the stars through the night sky.

Those earlier remarks of Jaquan's were beginning to nag at me. Come to think of it, I amounted fairly, so and so. Top hand in anybody's click. But what did that mean? Fifty grand a month if I were lucky? Thirty if I wasn't? And when I got to be an old man, sailing on a private boat. Living on the shoreline either a condo in the suburbs, either a home in the mountains?

Somewhere along there I dropped off and it was coming on toward morning when my eyes fluttered open at a noise and then I were wide awoke at the blink of an eye and my hand on the trigger of the rifle.

"That there's some of Quirk's click," I heard somebody whisper.

"Hell, Quirk's boy's been over this here streets a half of a dozen times," another voice said.

"You think he's scoping us out?"

"Wouldn't put nothing passed him."

"I believe we should bomb first before he does."

I held the heavy artillery SK-47 in rage with a conscious of putting a few bullets in his brain and seeing the brain splatter from his head. But I listened intensely as to what were a brewing. A war from the sound of it.

"They don't call him Pacino for nothing."

There was a moment of quiet then the second voice questioned, discussed like, "You going to contemplate all night?"

"No."

There was a streak of dirt crunching then the sound of footsteps moving off through the grass. I stayed in the cover of the trees and tried to remember where I heard those voices before.

After awhile, I heard a faint stir from where Jaquan lay. And I think he where awoke also. He were waiting for them and it gave a man a good feeling to know he wasn't alone out there. Just the same as I stretched out to collect interest on a night's sleep, I couldn't help but wonder what I had gotten myself into.

Winter was coming on. When snow fell, all we had to do was sit tight and keep an eye on the shipment.

But something kept bothering me. What would they do if they had found us?

And we still had more nights to go before we got to another spot.

CHAPTER TEN

The apartment stood on a low land just back of Camden, getting in nice among the trees. There was a house with two windows and a door. And from the door of the house, a man could see a short distance off where folks usually posted up.

When me and Jaquan drove up, Cochecine Neiden was standing in the doorway, and he had him a pistol right there.

"You taking your time?" He asked irritably. Then he gave a look around and gathered up his keys. "I'm getting out of here," and stepped out heading toward the coupe.

"You ain't going to drive that bucket of bolts?" I asked.

"Hell no! I want to get out of the city."

Now Cochecine was a long, lean of a man with a shrewd face on him. And he was stubborn as a rusty nut with no oil. But I had never known him to be so downright skittish before.

"You look like hell," I said. "What's the trouble?"

"I'm leaving out of here. And if I was you, I would too. This is the least safest city I know of."

And he dusted out of there.

Jaquan, he took hold of some luggage. "You fixing to stay?" He asked.

"Hell. That's what I came for. If you want to leave, I'll not hold it against you."

So we unloaded the ride and moved in. But by the time I'd unpacked, I'd done some thinking. Cochecine Neiden was a good hand. And a nervy man. I'd known him too long to think he'd scare easy. And I thought that if he was so all fired to ride out of here, there was real trouble starting about, and not just talk.

This is New Jersey. And until just a few years ago, it had been the heart of the Puertoricans.

There was good coverage and there was plenty of clientele and most years it was as fine a place to grind as a man could want. If Johnny Santini could stick it out, he could be a rich man.

The apartment was all swept up and clean as a man could wish. There was an iron cooking range, a mess of pots, bunks for six, some benches, a couple of chairs, and a table. A few books and some old magazines were lying around and everything looked snug and ready for a hard winter.

There was even a stack of logs and a lot of cut firewood.

One thing I didn't like the look of, somebody had worked loose an upright split log in the back of the lean-to so it was a place that could be used to go or come from the apartment.

On a sudden hunch, I went out the front door and turning around, studied the doorjamb and the heavy door itself.

Jaquan watched me for a moment and then he asked, "Something out of the ordinary, Pacino?"

I pulled out my belt knife and dug into the logs near the door. Took me a minute or two, but when I dug around enough, I extraverted a chunk of led.

Hefting it in my hand, I noticed four or five more holes in the walls and showed Jaquan the bullet in my hand.

Somebody had been shooting at that door with a mighty big gun. Jaquan went over the stove and lifted the lid. After a glance inside, he picked up a handful of wood chips and twigs from the wood box and started to kindle a fire.

"You want to look around? Hop to it. I'll cook some grub."

There was some noise in the streets an I had taken my pistol and walked out there.

A couple of fiends.

Jaquan had come to the door.

He handed me the rifle an I went into the trees.

Instead of dropping down to the crossing to see who had been using it, and how many, I circled to the back of the apartment and went up the ridge undercover of the trees.

Most of the apartments and houses were run down and there was a good bit of loitering and along the bum streets within here and there. A patch of youngsters drifting down the the road, I cut back and forth for signs... lots of onlookers and several fleets of vehicles. I started down the street not seeming suspicious, blending in.

A time or two I came on a few onlookers. One set was two riders traveling together, cutting across city toward the west. A bit later, coming on a set of youngsters, they were posted up.

Streets were very quiet and poorly lit and that very fact bothered me. Somehow all my instinct told me the streets should be sharply lit. Turning aside, I trailed the streets for a couple of miles until the shadows were growing. At that moment, I were headed for the spot, so I swung off. I had learned a few things.

The rider of that vehicle had waited for some time in a small lot clearing at the head of a garage covering the scenery at the spot.

"See anybody?" Jaquan asked.

"Slums."

Jaquan fixed us a bait of grub that I never tasted the like of. That man could really cook. I had been throwing stuff together for so long, eating biscuits, beef, beans, and pork, that I didn't know what real grub tasted like. When I pushed back from the table, I broke a piece of straw off the broom and used it for a toothpick.

I looked up at Jaquan. "You're wasting your time," I said.

"Why cooking like that, you asked? At any restaurant in the city, you could order take out or dine in. If you want to keep good hands, the best way is with good cooking," Jaquan said.

I walked over toward the door, which was standing open, and looked out. I didn't walk right up to that door, I stood in it and I looked out from well back in the room. But I could see the car and three riders were in it coming towards us.

It was after sundown and I couldn't make them out of who they were, but I could see the water where it dripped around the doors as they splashed through a puddle.

"Company. You take the SK and stand back there besides the window. If it comes to shooting, you take whoever's on the left."

I had taken a .30-06 and stepped out with it held firm in the hollow of my arm. With practicing by the hour getting the .30-06 into action every which way, I could throw one from the hollow of my arm into shooting position mighty fast, or the way I preferred it, the .30-06 hanging from a sling, the butt level with the top of my shoulder.

So I stepped out front and waited, watching them come up the slope to the apartment.

Right away I knew these were no average niggers riding.

Their clothes were better than any remuda would be likely to have, maybe one would have such a thread, but not three in a bunch. I said as much speaking over my shoulder to Jaquan. Three men suited like that... if they weren't hit men, likely way out here, they were likely to be a posse hunting outlaws or the outlaws themselves.

When they saw the .30-06, they pulled up some fifty feet off, an I asked, "You guys hunting somebody?"

"You alone?" One of them asked.

"No, I ain't alone. I got me a .30-06."

"What's the matter, you expecting trouble?"

"I was born to trouble. Never did know anything else, so I'm spooky. Why I'm so spooky, that if anybody was to come prowling around, I'd be apt to start shooting without asking questions."

"Were hunting."

When a man has been toting pistols and shooting goons since he was knee high, he doesn't have to draw pictures.

"Ain't seen nobody meddling. If I do, I'll shoot and ask questions later."

One was sitting in the passenger seat and the other were sitting in the back and I wished I could see his face better. Nobody seemed to be paying much mind to the apartment so it was likely that they believed I was alone. If they had been tipped off by somebody in town, that might seem possible, with clients and wandering mouths.

"That kind of talk won't get you anywhere." The speaker was a tall niggga with broad shoulders, and he carried his gun in his hand like some of the hoodlums were starting to do. "You got a long winter ahead of you, friend. I'd figure on lasting until spring if I were you."

"You know," I said confidentially, "that's a good thought. That's a thought that should be in all our minds. Why when I came into town and found they lynched Henson and run Roundtree out of town, I decided folks around New Jersey were changing."

Right then I lied right threw my teeth, but I had a hunch that I wasn't far off the track. "Especially after I heard Grandville McNamara talking to Nuru.

Now, McNamara being one of the wealthiest weed supplier in the state, and Nuru being a lawman who had been one of the vigilantes who cleaned up New Jersey, I figured those names would carry weight and they did.

"What did you hear?"

"Well nothing. When it comes to that, only they were talking mighty confidential and McNarmara wanted to hire Vein Strychnine for some kind of a job. And after what had happened in New Jersey, I just had an idea they were setting up a new spot or a new connection."

I knew no such thing.

"I think he's lying Cermain." The man who spoke was a stocky, barrel chest man. "This here's Barns Mussolini, and he thinks he knows it all."

"Lay off, Blaricum," Cermain said. I could see him gather his gun with a tighter grip. He looked over at me. "Mussolini, you stay close to that apartment this fall and winter, and you might find yourself a nice road stake come spring."

They turned their vehicle and drove away only as they went off, Blaricum in his seat said, "One of these days."

And I asked, "You want to go to war?"

Backing into the house, I closed the door. "Stay away from the windows," I said to Jaquan. "They might come back."

I was thinking about those three men.

Cermain Oaks was a Vice Cript from down in the Nation. The last I heard of him, he'd killed a police officer in Atlantic City and was supposed to have caught out for Colorado. He was said to be a pro with a .45.

Blaricum Rourke was a tough expendable who had a reputation as a shit starter. He was said to be vicious with his hands. He sure seemed to be sparking for trouble now.

The third man hadn't said a word, but I noticed that he was a big man, mighty big.

"What did you mean about those pounds?" Jaquan asked.

Mr. Johnny Santini said earlier somebody's been shorting him on the hundreds of pounds of weed and he needed a few eyes and ears and to handle them. And at the same time, I and Jaquan were getting work from him. Mr. Santini's words were, 'I never had no shortage on the green or no one's noses in it.'

An in the course of the drop-off, a lot of weed were missing. 79 pounds were missing, Mr. Santini had said.

I stood by the stove, whipping a batch and studied about the situation. The more I studied, the less I liked it. Aside from the police, I've done few shooting at people, and really didn't care if they died.

This here was different. It looked like I'd sure enough bought myself a ticket into a shooting war. And worst of all, I'd brought Jaquan Vessey along with me.

I kept thinking back to Cap Hobes.

Was he mixed up in this?

I didn't want him to be...

He'd been my friend, and was still my friend so far as that went.

Those bullet holes in the door meant somebody had been trying to run Cochecine Neiden out of here. Would they try that on me? That was a question I needn't ask. If they would try it on Cochecine Neiden, who was a good hand, they would try in on me. And I was too damned stubborn to run.

Something told me I should pick up and light out, and get out of whatever I was in, but something else went against it. I'd never learned to run from a damn thing. I just bowed my back and went in swinging with both hands.

Well, there was work to do if I were going to stay. And I knew I was. If we didn't want to be riding all over the state we best get prepared. There was plenty of weed to sell unless the FEDS rolled us.

Those missing pounds-- I wanted the rest of them and whoever responsible D.O.A.

The chances were, it were someone with their noses dirty, or someone who wanted their pockets fatter. And who'll jeopardize the organization and somebody who couldn't be trusted, or working with the police, or are the police themselves.

A man that picked his crew could takeover the league quite a ways easily without any hassle. There were places he had to be careful, of course, and he would need some good hands and some good organization. If he shipped east he wouldn't dare hold much long near the railroad. He'd have to drive them in, load up, and ship out.

Of course a man could operate at Deadwood and in the camps around, but that was a small operation handled by pushers close to the Black Hills, or in them. All in all, I had a far idea that the missing hundreds of pounds of weed were being driven to the railroad.

When I finally dropped off to sleep that night, I was thinking of what Jaquan had said. That Johnny Santini never had short on the marijuana shipments.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

When I came out of the apartment in the freshness of daybreak, it was right nippy. It was early for frost, but you could feel the coming of it in the air. It made a man feel glad he'd a snug place to hole up in, with winter coming on and all.

One thing I could say for Santini, he didn't stint any on the grub. We had cases of tomatoes and peaches in cans, a sack of sugar, plenty of flour, beans, dried fruit, rice, some big cans of Arbuckle, and cans of pork and beef.

When I'd kindled the stove I said to Jaquan, "We can take turns cooking if you're a mind to, but after you taste mine, you may feel you'll like to take over. I was never a good cook."

"I don't care if I do. Only I want to and I'll never learn how in this here apartment."

"You got any good woman? Make love too?"

"Never heard of love."

"Love...romance...main woman? Or whatever you're a mind to call them."

"I never loved."

So if I got shot, life is life.

But I wasn't harboring any illusions. Nothing in life had given me cause for hopefulness. A man went ahead doing the best he could, but it always seemed there was more shit lurking just around the bend of the road. I had seen some folks to whom it didn't make a difference, but that wasn't the way it was with me.

One time I was telling some young bucks about life on the street. A young buck, he was a fat, comfortable guy eating three big meals a day, had a fine family, and he said to me that he wished he could live my adventurous life. Me, I just looked at him. Then said to him, "If you're there on the street hustling, you should crawl out of bed on a chilly morning, suit up to the corner in sneakers, and your work, and a pistol that would take the head off somebody's shoulders and then post up. Then you should get off your work and re-up before the cops get on to you. Then go buy yourself and something for your family and hustle up what you will and get out before you get addicted to the cash flow."

"You should work yourself half dead, and come dragging up to the 24hr restaurant long after dark, eat food that you wouldn't feed your dog, and then roll up in that same cold bed."

Jaquan I could understand. He would get a better shake out west than almost anywhere. He might find some folks a bit standoffish. Some people believe because a man looks different that he feels different, but out in the world, a man is judged how he does his job and stands up to the world.

Me, I wasn't going to do him no favors. If he did his job well and good, I couldn't care what or who he was or even if he had two heads, so long as both of them didn't eat. I'd already seen him shape up on that trip across country and I liked the way he did things. He was a stand up man with pride and strength.

That first day we rode out and around getting aquatinted with the community. Moving a little. For most of that work, we were riding out twenty miles or better, but now we were just getting the cream of the crop. As we rode, I talked to Jaquan telling him what being a part of the squad was like.

"Winter is a time when a member if he isn't out of a job and lollygaging, is supposed to catch up on his quality time, holidays with the family. I never got that lucky. Seems to me I always were in a category where I worked harder than ever.

"Now Santini put us out here to find out where he's been missing weed and to bring in as much money through the winter. And as much as we can. Mainly we'll have to keep warm and gloves and barrel fires to warm our hands. You scatter newspapers and wood in the barrels and a few pieces of firewood keeps a long barrel fire."

Jaquan was listening as I went on talking.

"The ground here is mostly firburish and dirt. And there's nothing like the concrete. It'll stand a lot of grip and track shun. If you can get to the grass, it will do all right when dumping the work and running from the cops, even in the winter."

"First we will start across town, day and night moving work closer to the apartment. There's many vehicles we use so we won't be recognizable so easily. Pay attention to the scenery. We may need to bail out."

"But most of all, you never stop looking. You look for old faces and new faces. You look for junkies, and you will look for solicitors. You will look for anything different or out of the ordinary, for strange activity, lights on all night, vehicles with occupants, out of state license plates.

"Left to themselves, no one would notice or walk far to suspicious vehicles... they duck around here and yonder, or they will lye down in the vehicle. If they move and drive off, they are suspicious. If not, they are simply another drunk sleeping a drunkenness off."

It was long after dark when we got back to the apartment. And we came up on it mighty slow and careful. But everything was as it should be when we left the apartment. After I took inventory and counted the cash, I looked around a bit.

Not that I was looking for anything special. I simply wanted to get the feel of things after nightfall. Everything has a way of looking different at night. So I walked around sizing up the layout from all angles studying the outlines of things against the sky testing the night smells.

Something about those smells worried me. There was the smell of stale air, exhaust fumes, smoke... but there was another faint, hardly noticeable smell. Whatever it was brought a feeling of loneliness almost of homesickness, and that I couldn't figure. I'd had no home that really felt a home in so many years that I...

For the next five days we had time to think of anything and anybody. We worked the state west toward Camden, and north as far as Hopatconge, far Point Pleasant, toward Wildwood. It was early for snow.

Jaquan was a rider no question about that. And he was a fair hand with a pistol, so it took him no time at all to get the hang of it. Of course know the turf comes with experience, and no man is going to get that overnight, but I told him what I could and the rest, he'll have to learn.

The clientele were in good shape, although it could pick up. We found no trouble that day except the few junkies who were short.

Along in the late afternoon we pulled up on a ridge near the head of Trenton and looked down the Delaware River.

"It's a booming spot," Jaquan said softly.

"It is that," I agreed.

The bright glare was gone, the shadows softening the distance and the coolness of evening was coming on. Far off a sex-fiend approached a hooker... soon he will be going on with her somewhere and getting it on. I saw a stray cat sloping along through the trees, head down, nose reaching out for the scent of game.

We stood motionless and patient, just taking in the money of the evening time. Finally Jaquan said, "It was no wonder they fought for it."

"Yeah," I said. And they fought too. Not many could beat out the Sioux or a Cheyenne for the spot when it came right down to it.

We turned our hides of the rise and headed toward the apartment.

"Out here, a man gets away with murder. I mean, out here, there's money," Jaquan said.

"Tons if it," I said, "And many chances. But a man can't get all money. You can get rich, but you can't be a dead man and rich. Money makes the world go round and so does pussy."

Yet what he said worried non at my mind. Was that why I was here? Was I afraid of something? Not being rich? I wasn't sure about that. Even when I thought about it, it sounds ridiculous. Afraid of not being rich. Ha! More and more I thought about it, it's absurd. We just plain kept getting money with no angry thoughts towards nobody...unless a man tried to arm rob or disrespected. Odd thing...I had a whale of a temper, but I couldn't remember when I'd been mad to remember to kill em'.

Maybe what I was afraid of and avoiding was the need to try and better myself, and really better myself. That had never seemed so all-fired important. I'd heard a lot of talk about success, but I never seen a successful person, what people called successful, who was happy as if happy.

Jaquan had a way of starting me to thinking like when he said, 'A man gets away with murder.' Well, he was right. A man gets away with murder. And there was money.

I had a plan. Get money. I knew street conditions, and had learned a lot from the men I worked for and some of them could have learned a lot from me.

Bullshit is what they'll say when it's really just to talk you out of doing something or going for something. If a man said something was bullshit, he's a liar.

It was time these days to start establishing another spot. Not to thinking of so much of owning many spots, but of owning good spots and quality work. The old days on the streets were gone. A man needed less negative now. What thought were positive were negative to others.

Needed a disguise, the best in the world.

But who were bonkers, me or them?

Quality were better than quantity. A man could hustle quantity, but a man needed to work much longer for the amount compared to quality, because the clientele wanted quality. The steady regulars will accept quantity or quality, because they were regulars.

It was thoughts like these that were in my mind as we rode back, but a gunshot broke in upon them.

There's a lonesome sound to a gun shot in the evening. It sounds then sorts of echoes away and die off somewhere against the hills.

We both drew up and stood there listening to it dying out.

"That was close by," Jaquan said.

"They weren't shooting at us neither," I said.

No answering shot sounded.

We listened for a minute or two and then we started down the road.

Riding slowly for we didn't know what might lay before us.

"It might have been some junkie murdered," I said. And Jaquan agreed, but neither of us believed. From that moment, I think we were sure of what had happened. Somebody, though we didn't know who, had been killed.

And that somebody had been shot from ambush.

Reaching down, I slicked my pistol from its place. And afterward Jaquan did the same. We rode carefully down the road ready for what might await us.

During the last few days, I felt a change taking place within myself. Not that it was unfamiliar, for I'd experienced it once before, a long time ago, and I knew it was something that happened when danger impends.

All my senses, every part of me was becoming more alert, more watchful, and more careful. Where before I might have hurried, might have brushed by a lot of things. Now I was listening, I was watching, and every bit of me was wary of danger.

Part of it was the warning from Santini from Zian back in New Jersey, and from Cermain Oaks at his spot. But it was more than that.

What alerted me, what changed me, and well I knew it, was a feeling of death and danger in the air. I was never the contemplative type. I knew how to get somewhere, and a few other things any guy needs to know to get by, but of course any guy out in the world, or a solicitor, a junkie, a pusher, orphan, a pimp, any one of them is likely to become thoughtful. And sometimes I've wondered if danger doesn't actually have an almost physical effect on the atmosphere.

I've little to explain such on idea. I'm a man with few words, and most of those picked up in reading whatever came to hand and listening. There's times when the air seems to fairly prickle with danger. This here was one of those times.

The apartment buildings were black now except on the far side where the last of the sun was tipping them with fire. The grass was taller moving a mite in the wind, but everything else was still, and we rode in silence.

We could hear the engine twining as it moved through the street and glass shattered. Every second we looked for a gun shot, but we heard nothing, saw no one. Only pedestrians lurking around, only the sky darkening overhead.

And then we saw a man standing head down, gazing.

The dead man lay close by. The wind ruffled his shirt and touched the edge of his silk handkerchief. There was no need to get down, for I knew him at once. Aileen Enrique had been a good hand repping for an organization from over toward Ekalaka when I'd last seen him.

The bullet had gone in under his left shoulder blade and ripped out the pocket of his shirt. From the angle of the shot and the place it hit, I judged he had been shot from fairly close up.

He had been a man of integrity and he still was lying there with the dark curls ruffling in the wind. He had folks somewhere back east, I recalled.

We weren't talking much when we got back to the apartment, and we didn't ride up to the door until it was close to noon.

Nobody in his right mind takes a man's death lightly. And Aileen Enrique had been young and full of living. It worried me, seeing him like that, but it worried me more when I scouted around, for I found the tracks of blood.

Aileen had been shot in the back while running away from somebody or something, and my guess is he was shot at a range of no more than seventy feet or less. Studying out what sign I could find, it was plain enough that Aileen was in a hurry wherever he figured to go or who he was running away from.

After a lifetime of reading sign, a man can see a lot more than appears on the ground. And although I hadn't much to go on, it was my feeling that the last thing Aileen Enrique expected was to get shot. He had stopped once he had walked away, maybe to say something, and then four or five steps further.

Whoever had fired that shot had pulled off about as cold blooded a killing as I ever did see, nailing him with the first carefully aimed shot, and killing him dead.

There was nobody at the apartment when we got back, and no sign that anybody had been there. Neither of us felt much like talking.

Standing there in the apartment pacing, I suddenly realized that Jaquan and me were fairly up against it. This was no scare.

This was the real thing, and we were facing up to trouble sure enough.

It gave a man something to think about, realizing of a sudden that he might go the way Aileen Enrique had. There was a good man, a rider, a hand, an if ever, there was any, he was one. And surely that was why he where dead. Or that was how it shaped up.

If it so happened that I was to go like Aileen, there was nobody to mind, nobody that would give it a thought after a few days had passed.

CHAPTER TWELVE

When I went back to the apartment, Jaquan was reading an old newspaper. He looked up at me. "You think the one who killed that man was the same one who's been shooting at the door?"

"No. There isn't a chance of it. The person who killed Aileen wouldn't have wasted led. He would've laid out and waited for that perfect shot. And at fairly close up range."

"Jaquan, we got to face it. We're up against sure enough killers. You see anybody riding slow, creepy and spooky, don't you turn your back, no matter what."

He got quiet for a spell. And then he asked, "You going to take the body in?"

"Uh huh. And I may have to stay for an investigation. Looks to me you're going to be maybe a week or more on your own."

"Don't worry about me. You just ride along about your business."

There were people standing along Main Street when I rode in with Aileen's body. One of the first men I saw was Grandville McNamara, another was Johnny Santini.

Johnny was surprised when I named the dead man. "Aileen Enrique. The last I heard of Aileen, he was hitting it off with some lady friend."

Breefly I went over of how I found his dead body. And as I talked, several men gathered around listening. Standing on the walk some distance, but within earshot, was a man who looked familiar, but I couldn't make out who he was. McNamara asked me a question an after I answered him, I looked around, but the man was gone.

Suddenly it came to me who he looked like. There'd been something about him that made me think of Karl Kellen.

The next day, the investigation. In my own mine, I was sure whoever rode in that drive by was the guilty party. Aileen Enrique was obviously shot by somebody he knew and had talked with. That he was shot down without warning at fairly close range. One thing I didn't say were, I and Jaquan'll find whoever was responsible and severely end the responsible life of that drive by and visit their funerals.

One thing I did say, that I was immediately sorry for, they asked me could I identify the track of the killer if I saw it again, and I said I believe I could.

And with those words I stood myself up right in the target rack of a shooting gallery.

There were two of three strangers at the back of the room where the investigation was held, and I didn't get a good look at them. And there was somebody else in the room who was no stranger. Price Hilmore was there.

The place I got for myself was a one room hotel room, where they had a few rooms for rent. That night, on a hunch, I shifted the bed as quietly as I could, moving it to the opposite side of the room. No more that a cot it was, and it was no trick to just pick it up and move it. I had pulled off my boots and was getting undressed when I thought of those strangers at the inquest, and it came to me that one of them was Jarez Claymount in Jimtown, the man who was supposed to be Hobes Izumi's representative.

If I hadn't been so hog on tired, I'd have gathered up and lit out for the hills right then.

I'd been carrying both a revolver and a .30-06. When I finally stretched out on the cot, I had both of them in my hand.

The night noises slowly died away. Boots sounded on the boardwalk, a door down the street slammed, then somebody tripped over a board and swore. At last all was quiet and I drifted off to sleep.

Suddenly the night exploded with gunfire and I jerked up to a sitting position, gun in hand. Even as I sat up, I heard the ugly smash of another bullet that came through the wall, and promptly I fired through the wall in return.

Then there was a moment of stillness followed by a sudden uproar of voices. In the hall angry questions were called out followed by a pounding on my door. I swung my feet to the floor and went over an opened up the door. The proprietor was there, and the night personnel? Behind them crowded half a dozen people.

"What happened?" The night personnel guard asked.

"Somebody shot at me," I said, "an I jerked up out of a sleep and fired back."

They walked across the room, holding a flashlight high. Two bullets had come through the thin wall, an if I hadn't moved the bed, both of them would have hit me.

"You moved the bed," the proprietor said. "Did you figure on this?"

"The person on the other side of the room snores," I said, "so I moved over here."

Funny thing were, they believed me.

After they left, I moved the bed back across the room and went to sleep, but before I dozed off, I laid there thinking that maybe this was my time to see California. Somehow I always wanted to go there, and they say it can be right pleasant in the winter.

Only this was, I left Jaquan Vessey out there at the spot, and he would need help to get through the winter.

The more I thought of it, the madder I got, and I never been one to back up from trouble. Maybe I would've been better off I had.

Came daybreak, I went up the street to the Macqueen House and ate a first rate breakfast with the works.

I was still there when Johnny Santini came in and sat down with me.

"What's up?" He asked. "I mean, how's your family?"

"They're breathing," I said.

We talked family for a few minutes and the Grandville McNamara came in and walked over to the table. He said good morning to us and sat down.

"Mussolini," he said, "there are some of us believed it is about time to make a clean up of state."

Me, I just looked at him, although I was pretty sure I knew what was coming.

"You've got the reputation of being a fighter."

"Maybe."

"A fighter is a fighter. I want a few good men, Mussolini, and we've got a few." He named a couple and when he did I looked at him and shook my head, Grandville McNamara was a fine man and a good sharpshooter, and he was on the map, but I'll never put much stock in vigilantes.

"I'm not good with a peashooter," I said. "And when it comes to the cleanliness, it's an obliteration. You've best to know what you're up against."

"They aren't peashooters," McNamara said.

"You're right in the middle of the storm," McNamara said, showing his irritation. "You've got them all around you out there." He paused. "You ever been shot at?"

"Looked like it," I agreed. "And we got to get the fuckers. I'll fight for any I'm riding with, an I'll do as good a job as I know how, but I'm not a man hunter."

After that, they left me. I finished my meal and ordered more coffee.

I was paying no attention to anything around me when suddenly a girl spoke to me.

Well, I've been so occupied with listening to McNamara and Santini, that I hadn't noticed that girl before. She had come in after I had and was sitting at the next table. Now I saw that she was a right pretty girl.

"I beg your pardon Sir. Could you tell me how to get to Otter Street?"

"Where? Otter? That's a long stretch from here Ma'am." And then I said, "And nothing out there a lady could go to."

"I want to go to Arnold Dowel's place."

She was slender, and got up mighty stylish, and she had the look of a thoroughbred

"Are you kin?" I asked.

"Kin?" She looked puzzled, but then her face cleared. "Oh yes! He is my brother."

Turning around in my chair, I said, carefully as I could, "That isn't much of a place, Ma'am. I mean, Dowel is doing alright...or was last I saw him, maybe a year ago.

"He needs help." The way she said it was matter-of-fact, no nonsense about it. "If I can help him, I shall." And then she added, "There is no one else."

"Is he expecting you?"

"No. I knew he would tell me not to come, so I just came anyway."

"I'm going that way, Ma'am. I can take you out there, but I suggest you stay here in town instead, and let me ride over and tell him."

"That's rather silly, isn't it? Why should you make a trip there for me? If he needs help, that would be time lost. An I am sure time is important to him."

Now when a woman gets that look on her face, there's not much point in arguing with her, but I made one last attempt to get the straight of things.

"Did he tell you he was in trouble?"

"No. But from the tone of his last letter, I knew he needed help."

She did not have to convince me of that. Arnold Dowel was a slim young Irishman from the old country, a good man too. He had been a soldier on the northwest frontier of Ireland. He had came to the United States four of five years ago.

And after looking around, had packed that site near after and stayed there. And he had trouble.

There were a couple of them over that way that didn't take favorably to nesters of any kind. And then there were a stream war through of young bucks who had decided he was fair game.

The Khyber apparently had taught him a few things. And the Sioux lost a warrior and two with another buck wounded, before they decided to let him alone.

As for them, they had done nothing, but I knew they weren't taking kindly to his staying there, and they had made the usual comments about loosing product. Such comments were occasionally based on fact, but often as not they were just preliminary to some action against the nester. What had followed, I had no idea, for I'd been gone from the city for some time.

I left the girl in the restaurant and went on the sidewalk.

Johnny Santini was there, talking to Romen Bohlen.

Bohlen was a big pusher, a rough, hard man, too autocratic for me to work for, although I'd worked beside him on round up crews. He was a good hand, fed his organization well, paid top wages, but he was a brusque, short spoken man whom I never enjoyed. However, he was probably the most successful pusher around and he carried a lot of weight.

He looked at me, a straight hard look. "Didn't know you were a ladies' man, Mussolini. Who is she?"

Sort of reluctantly, I told him, "She wants to go out to her brother's place." It wasn't until I said it, that I remembered Bohlen had been one of the men who had said a lot about Dowel. In fact, he had done everything but flatly accuse him of rustling.

"Don't take her out there," he said. And then that brusque way of his fired me up. Anyway, he wasn't my boss.

"She asked me and I'm taking her," I said.

Roman Bohlen's eyes turned mean. "By game, Mussolini, I told you..."

"I heard you," I interrupted, "and what I do is none of your damn business!"

For a minute there, I though he were going to take a punch at me, but he just shrugged and said, "Take her and be damned."

As I turned away I heard him say, "If he worked for me Santini, I'd fire him."

"I'd pay hell getting anybody else for that spot. And you damn well know it. Besides, he's a good man."

"Maybe. I just wonder why he's so willing to take the job. And he must be kind of thick with Dowel to be taking that woman out there."

Whatever was said after that I didn't hear and didn't want to hear. I was afraid I'd go back and take a punch at Roman Bohlen. And if I did, I'd have too cripple him and explain to the authorities.

Bohlen was a big Quirk Zainuddin, but a whole lot faster, but he were no match for me. Fact was, he had whipped Zainuddin a year or so back, and whipped him beautifully. I'd seen the fight.

When we rode out of town, I wasn't completely thinking about the woman beside me. I was worrying some about what Roman Bohlen had said about Dowel. Bohlen was a good hater. And when he made up his mind to believe something, there was no changing him.

Bree Dowel drew a deep breath. "Oh, this air!" She exclaimed. "It's no wonder Arnold loves it. It's such a beautiful city."

"Yes sexy," I said. But I wasn't thinking about the air or the city just then. I was thinking about her.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

She was slim and tall, and she had the kind of red hair they call auburn, a lot of it. Her eyes were almost violet, and there were a few freckles over her nose.

"You come clear from Ireland?" I asked presently.

"Yes."

"You must think a sight of him?"

"He's my brother," she said. Then she added, "Although he's almost like my father. For he always took care of me."

"No other kinfolk?"

"Oh yes. There's Robert. He is the oldest, but he's never been well. He was thrown from a car when he was a boy, and he's been crippled ever since."

We rode on, putting the miles behind us. She sat her rump well, and I was not surprised, for the Irish have many good rumps among them and Arnold was a fine hand with any kind of woman flesh too. He had courted some bad ones, and I really mean courted. He was not given too rough breaking them the way we did.

She was a lady, every inch of her, I could see that, and there was something clean and fine about her that made a man look twice.

"You took a chance," I said, "speaking to a stranger that way."

She flashed me a quick smile. "But you are not exactly a stranger, Mr. Mussolini. You were pointed out to me. And when your name was mentioned, I remembered my brother had written about you."

"Who pointed me out?"

She hesitated Breefly, and then said, 'It was Mr. Hilmore."

"Price Hilmore?" I was plain astonished.

"He...he works...worked for a firm our lawyer employs when our lawyer discovered I was coming to Miles City. He suggested I look him up. Mr. Hilmore would have taken me himself, but he was busy. He pointed you out as I've said."

We went on talking and somehow the miles elapsed away quicker that ever before. She got me to talking about myself and I told her about Jaquan and how we met and what he had advised and what I had been thinking about a place of my own.

"It won't be no use though. I ain't got the cash, and ain't likely to get it."

"But you know the hustle. Couldn't you pull your connection and arrange conditions with somebody who has capitol?"

"How would a simple rouge meet somebody like that?" I asked.

But then I commenced to think about it. All of a sudden, I was getting all sorts of ideas in my head that had never been there before, and each one make me think of others.

It was true that a lot of the biggest organizations in the state were furnished with foreign financing and managed by local ex cons and dealers.

We talked about that and she began asking questions about the city and where her brother lived and more. And she had a way of hitting on the right question every time. So telling her about it was easy. First thing I knew, I was telling her what was wrong with her brother's operation and the trouble he was in with the big organizations. Most particularly, I told her about Roman Bohlen.

She asked about the cultivation of canabus, and how it went. And I explained to her the use of a gun and gave her some examples of how to hold it, aim, and fire.

Whilst I was explaining this to her, it came over me how easy it would be to turn this ride into the nearest hotel and fill her with some hard dick and cum. It looked to me as if that thoroughbred had been maintained with a good deal of care.

When the sun went down I headed into the hotel along the Tongue. When we got down, it took me only a few minutes to pull our clothes off and fuck.

I unplugged the phone before we did. Nobody was going to bother a man with a girl alone, not at this hour of the day.

If you bothered a man with his woman, you stood a good chance of getting put in a Hurst...even outlaws had been known to murder a man for that.

If I had a camcorder, we could've made a DVD sex flick.

We laid in the bed talking a long time after we finished fucking. Seems there's nothing like a pretty woman to inspire a man to talk a lot. One things for sure, I decided after we rolled in the blankets, she was learning a whole lot more about me than I was learning about Ireland or her.

This woman, she was a super sucker on the head job. And she was quick enough to make you cum in five minutes.

After the hotel, we decided to go to Arnold Dowel's home.

"That must be Arnold's car." Bree said. "He mentioned it in a letter. And the color of the home and the neighborhood."

"Yes sexy."

"He said he was in some trouble."

"Not entirely. A good part of it is because no one likes a residing nester. What he hates is the no gooders."

"There's a plenty. They tarnish the neighborhood. You get set for trouble if you figure on staying and cleaning the neighborhood."

She looked at me. "You ride for a big marijuana farmer and you don't have anything against him?"

"No. I like him. He goes his own way, persistent an a good influence and he stands up for what's right. But that's all the more reason they don't like him."

"That sounds absurd as you're in conspiracy."

"It ain't for no, Miss Dowel, and I'd better tell you something. In New Jersey, they are fixing to set up some vigilantes, and if, when they do, Roman Bohlen will have his say about them and what they do. There's nothing halfway about Bohlen. He'd rather lynch two honest guys than miss one thief. And anyway, vigilantes have a way of getting out of hand. They start out to make the city under they control and then they carry on to settle old scores. You tell Arnold he'd better stay close to home if Bohlen has his say, Arnold will be on the list."

"That's absurd! It's ridiculous!"

"Tell that to Bohlen."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was only an hour later when we rode up to the house.

Arnold came to the door and stood there shading his eyes at us. He was a wooly hair man, taller than me, lean and wiry looking. He had a quick way of walking, a manner a man might think was nervous until you knew him better. Whatever else they might say of him, I don't think Arnold Dowell had a nerve in his body.

He came a couple of steps toward us as we rode to the apartment, looking as if he couldn't believe what he saw.

"Bree?" He spoke her name in a startled, unbelieving tone. "Bree."

She was off and running and in his arms quicker than you could say scat. So I swung around to leave.

He looked up suddenly, pulling back from her. "Mussolini don't ride off that way, and come in."

"Got to get back," I said. "I'm overdue and Jaquan will be worried."

"Is that your buddy?"

"You seen him?"

"He was by this way." He gave me an odd look. "I had no idea there were two of you over there."

"I'll be going," I said. Yet I held my breath. "Anything I can do you must call on me." I said that to her, to Bree Dowel. And then I rode away.

But at the edge of the yard, I almost vomited. My eyes were on the ground and I saw it plain as could be. A piece of shit.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The moon was bright and a cat was meowing when I splashed through the street and came up to the apartment. There was no light in the apartment and I drew up suddenly scared.

"Jaquan?" I called it low. "Jaquan Vessey?"

His voice came out of the darkness near the woodpile, close by but so soft I could hardly believe he was there.

"Man, am I glad to see you!"

I could sure hear the relief in his voice.

"There's been trouble, trouble enough."

When I locked the door, I went into the apartment, where Jaquan was coming and using a candle hooded by a tomato can.

"I can trip the proper from under it and it snuffs the candle. Mostly I been on guard before dark, then laying out until late. I sure enough knew why that Neiden had him a back door rigged."

Jaquan had told me there had been several shots at the door. They had shot the stove and they had almost set the apartment a fire.

And then a few nights ago, there had been night riders.

"Night riders?"

"Uh-huh. A motorcycle click riding. I guess they figured I'd scare," he chuckled. "I ain't been afraid since I was young and was scared by an owl."

They had come the first night. When Jaquan drew the AK-47 and unloaded, he called out when they recoup he'd be ready again. At that, they really got mad and warned him to leave before I got back, or they'd fix both of us.

That didn't sound like Cermain Oaks or Blaricum Rourke. Oak's could have gone to shooting right off. It sounded more like some of Bohlen's hands.

For the next few days we worked hard, staying together most of the time, separating only when necessary, and never for long.

Day by day the weather grew colder. Frost came, and the leaves turned from green to slim golden candles, shimmering in the slightest breeze. There was white frost on the meadows, and the tracks of vehicles left dark lines across the streets until the sun took the frost away.

We hustled more in, working dark to dark, up before the sun and slept until after the sun was down. And all the time we rode with our pistols closer.

After we had a few warm days, we took some time off and cleaned the yard and the apartment.

And Me and Jaquan, we started boxing and he taught me a few, how to punch straight, to jab, and a crossover punch, how to work in a clinch, how to tie the other man up. And he added a few wrestling moves, no good in a boxing ring but very good in a street fight.

That Jaquan was as smooth as you ever saw. He never seemed to hurry or take any pains.

But I took to it right from the start. Fighting was something I had always liked, and Jaquan knew how to teach.

"All scientific boxing is, is just a bunch of things men have learned over the years. A straight blow is faster than a swing because it's the straightest line to what you're aiming at. And you don't punch at something, you punch through something or somebody," Jaquan said.

Our work was hard, rough, and cold, but we stayed with it. Once in a while we'd take a day off, and sometimes we'd box or practice for an extra hour or so. But all the time I had an uneasy feeling that we were living in a fool's paradise.

I were aching to ride over to Dowel's. But I held back. I had sense enough to know why I wanted to go, but sense enough, too, too know that such a woman as Bree would never be interested in a 39 year old, even if I spoke proper grammar, which I didn't.

Nobody had shot at the apartment since I'd got back.

Everything stayed quiet, until one morning we rode out and found that during the night somebody had boarded the windows with plywood.

"We better pack some ammo," I said to Jaquan.

"We going after them?"

"We going after them," I said.

The sun wasn't a hour older when we rode out of there and headed north following a trail of vengeance up the street.

Riding south along the street gave me time to do some thinking. The street was enough and plain enough and it was obvious the goons wanted a turf war. In either case, Jaquan and I were likely to find ourselves in all kinds of trouble.

Yet that was not what kept me studying. I was trying to pull together all the loose threads, some of which were plain enough.

The starting point had to be Price Hilmore. If he was a rebel, that would account for Bree Dowel's lawyer knowing about him. He had been hunting Karl Kellen, but the last we'd seen of Karl Kellen was back in the next state, unless that was him I glimpsed on the street in New Jersey.

That accounted for Hilmore anyway.

And if he was a rebel, he might have been trying to figure where the missing weed went to.

There in Jimtown, I had come across Jarez Claymount, and he was working for my old friend Hobes Izumi. He were booming and Izumi, according to what I heard, were booming. And it had come from somewhere.

Thinking back of what I knew of Izumi, I decided it wouldn't surprise me none if he took some of the green for himself.

No thief ever knows when he's well off and every one of them thinks he is going to be the one who gets away with it.

These fellows had been stealing the magic green plant and they were getting self confident. And when a man gets over confident, he invites trouble. He basically gets his head chopped off.

They always make light of what they're doing, but what they never seem to realize is that there are others. The truth alone really never will get you anywhere. And from what the way McNamara, Santini, and Bohlen were talking, I surmised the time had come.

But none of my thinking explained the drive-by, although it was a hunch that drive-by was somehow involved. Of that I was sure.

This was some of the finest spots in the world when the season was right. If you had rain or good winter snows that could melt and sink in, you had gross, and a lot of it. I began to ride a first rate hunch.

They're headed for the Delaware River and from there they'll drive across to the Jersey Hotel," I said to Jaquan.

"How many do you think there is?"

"Four. Maybe five. The way I figure it, they'll hustle the work."

We got our guns and some clips and ammo and some grub and a nights rest before we went after them.

What were on my mind and what tingled me were the killing of Aileen Enrique. And Bree Dowel's face stayed with me. Some man was going to be mighty lucky to get her. Thinking about that, I took myself to bed.

We cut out before sun up, riding fast toward the Delaware River. It was on my mind that they would hold up there overnight. And be in no hurry to start out at dawn. They would have reached the hotel and spend the night. The hotel were a known spot and a popular spot to role out of. You couldn't boom too long because it were a hot spot and the police would often hit it from time to time.

As the sun was topping out on the far off hills, we reached the shadows west of the Delaware River. If they were smart they would have had somebody up there on the Delaware River watching their back, but by now they must feel pretty sure of themselves. And even if they had somebody up there, I had an idea we'd made it into the deeper shadows before it was light enough to see movement out on the open view.

We worked our way up the side of the Delaware River, keeping under cover of the trees and the bushes as much as we could, although in places the cover was sparse. When we topped out on the ridge we were under cover of the trees and bushes and we could see them getting off some work.

We worked our way towards them and I seen a pothead buy a sack of weed.

Pointing it out to Jaquan, four others were down there also, but I couldn't tell who they might be at this distance, and that made all the difference. There's some who will get spooked at anything suspecting and open fire and then there's some who will check into things, and at that, surprise and ambush you.

I somehow got a glimpse of Blaricum Rourke. And he were trying to get a pothead to buy more weed. And when he laid eyes on me, he was looking right into the barrel of a gun.

Now, Blaricum Rourke was a cocky, belligerent man, but he was no damned fool. He drew up quickly and reached for his gun. He was a dead man. I pulled the trigger and his head jerked from his shoulders as looking he had whiplash and his body anvil to the concrete.

Jaquan opened fire on the other three and so did I. They pulled there pistols and took for cover gunning at us.

Jaquan, Me, one of ours or their bullets hit the pothead in the neck and blood went to gushing outward faster than an exploding drainpipe. The other three fired from around a building hoping to hit something. Me an Jaquan did the same opening and firing behind cover.

One peeped his head around the corner as I fired at him and sparks flew from the impact of the bullet hitting the corner of the building.

Another guy took off running towards the car to get away and Jaquan shot him in the arm and he collapsed to the ground crawling on his knees and Jaquan finished him.

Me, and Jaquan then shot it out until the very end.

They were gunning believe that. A bullet whizzed by my car that I thought I were shot. Jaquan rushed over too see if I were okay. A little bit closer and it would've taken my head off.

That brought a rage in Jaquan and he went mad insane on gunning them down to the ground. He took careful aim of a trained specialized marksmen, a sharpshooter, a sniper and picked the other two off one by one. When they were dead and stinking, I looked at Jaquan and asked him, "Did you work for a special OP's for the service?"

Jaquan said, "No. I remembered the days when I were at the arcade with the video game with the machine gun attached to it."

I chuckled, but there was no humor in it.

We recollected ourselves and went to see who the other three guys were. A nigga named Outlaw, his real name were Clarence Bipod, Jerreld Darden, and Curtis Flemming. All three of them were handling the drop-offs and shipments at one time or two.

Figures, after looking at who they were. All of them were greasy slime niggas.

We retrieved the pounds of greeny green where they stashed it. And got the hell out of there before the cops came.

"Roman Bohlen," I said, "is going to sweep this city, and he'll be carrying extra guns."

"Who rides a sedan with leather interior and hubcaps, grayish silver? Whoever rides that car killed Aileen Enrique."

Jaquan and I didn't know who rode that car no more that how God created the universe from thin air.

Ice frozen on the ground that night.

There followed a pleasant a time as any. On the second day, Jaquan stayed in and bar-b-que steak, hamburgers, sausages, wieners, and onions and buns.

It was clear, cold, and still most of the time.

We saw no cops our way looking for or halting us.

Jaquan was a good lad as ever.

Had this spell in my life come to me sooner, I've enjoyed it a whole lot more. Maybe it wasn't Jaquan alone, for from time to time, and more often of late, I'd been somehow discontented. Now the idea of going back and beating the hell out of Shalhoup Cleveland didn't seem the way it had. Neither did the thought of holed up warm and snuggly for the winter please as much as I expected. I kept thinking of...

Maybe the realization of that Bree Dowel was just over the rise worried me too. Supposing I met a girl like that, supposing I wanted to ask her to have me, what could I offer? A life of hustling?

So all the time I rode, my mind kept continuously worrying me of the idea of what to do. From time to time, I remembered what Jaquan had said of about getting rich, but that idea did take stick in my mind, and I'd no sooner think of it than I'd throw it out and think of something else. But how else was a man to get ahead?

Late one afternoon, guess who came riding in, Hobes Izumi.

"Pacino. I hadn't planned on coming back anyhow and now that I'm here, I need a favor."

"What is it Izumi, spit it out. You've favored me a time or two."

"Well,"

"Come out your mouth."  
"Well, it's not good for me in Miles City right now. Kats take notions, like you advised when I were here before. I can go into town, and I'm bone dry of Vegetable Balsam, and if I don't get some, I'm likely to kill myself and die."

"We got some Gardner's Horse Liniment. You tried that? Good for a man or a beast."

"I got to have the Balsam. And I don't take anything else. Don't let them talk you into no cheap untried medicines. I don't want nothing but Dr. Godbold's Vegetable Balsam of Life."

"We got some Dr. Robertson's Stomach Elixir. My momma swore by it," Jaquan said.

Hobes Izumi eyed him suspiciously. "I don't know. That there Balsam is the best I've seen, and nobody's tried more patient medicine than me. Isn't that correct Pacino?"

"Damn correct. You ain't said shit! Back in the days, Hobes had his own shelf right over his bunk. You never did see a collection of medicines as his."

"Hell, Pacino, I'm a sick man! You know that. I've always been ailing and might have died years ago if it weren't for that home medical adviser I found in the spot that winter. Why, I were coasting down towards the graveyard until I learned what were wrong with me."

"That's right, Jaquan," I spoke seriously. "You've have thought of picturing him of a health nut, never a sick day in his life, ate enough for two men and work as hard as any man, or half as hard, we might say. And then he found that book."

"Deceiving, that's what it is. Could've been dead right now and you visiting my grave. Thing that saved me was calcium pills, that, and bourbon. Even so liked not made it until spring."

"I say, nobody ever had more symptoms than me. Used to stay up some of the night studying that adviser. I had nothing to read but that, a mail order catalogue, and a naked girl magazine next to the bed. And at the end of the night, if nothing were popping off, bourbon and a naked girl magazine got me to sleep. I've heard of folks talking of Shakespeare, but for sheer writing, the man who wrote that adviser hat it all over him. When he described something he were something fierce. And he had a list of that would curl your hair."

Izumi took a gulp of bourbon. 'That Shakespeare, now, a lot of people say he wrote the Bible. I think he borrowed a lot here and there. Once in a while I'll come on things in his plays that I been done heard some saying for years. All he did was write them down."

"And for blood thunder and money! He killed more folks in one story than was killed in a horror movie," Izumi said.

Izumi looked over at the table. "What's that I see? Don't tell me you've got a bear sign? I could eat a horse and my weight."

"Do you really think you should?" Interrupting a bit. "You're bone dry of Balsam, and I've heard bar-b-que is hard on your arteries."

Hobes Izumi's hand hesitated while his poised above his appetite and lost. The hand descended and came up with a rib. "I ain't had one of these in a minute. I think my arteries can handle it."

When Izumi pulled off into the night carrying him a plate of bar-b-que, he had the bottle of Dr. Robertson's Stomach Elixir also, from years of standing on the shelf.

Jaquan, he listened to the engine of a passerby vehicle until it died out. "That man's a greedy eater," he said.

That man's a greedy eater," I agreed.

However, when Hobes were gathering his que, I had mentioned it in a way.

"Hobes, your company is welcome, but if you know anybody who might still be thinking of riding on Santini, you tell them to stay clear away."

"The first time I'd taken that lightly. The second time I'll come gunning. And if I have to come again, this here and the previous ride are all the warning I needed. We'll shoot to kill anybody who looks near suspicious."

He just grinned at me, Hobes did, and then he burped.

"Sorry, excuse me," Hobes said. And then added, "Any word I hear, my advice will be to lay off." He gave me another grin. "I wouldn't want to cut off the supply of bear sign."

Right before I went inside, something cold and wet touched my cheek, feeling like a sprinkle of rain. It were a snowflake. I looked at my shoulders and at the snowflakes and the snowflakes on my sleeves. It were starting to snow.

It were freezing cold in the morning. Inside of the spot, with a burning fire, it were cold. You'd think sometimes it's warmer outside than it is inside, and vice versa in the summer.

I were bundled in a bubble coat under some blankets, and cussing because I were the first awoke. And I stayed under the blankets trying to decide how many steps to take to cross the cold room to use the bathroom and how long to piss, and how many steps back to the warmth of my cocoon where I were and how long it'll take to get to the warmth before I got up.

No use in procrastinating, so I raced to the bathroom.

In a few steps, I were across the room and in the bathroom. The piss steamed of the cold winter. Then finished pissing and then to warmth again.

Back into bed, I rubbed my hands together to feel them again, and then I piled on heavy pieces of sheets and blankets.

When I looked, Jaquan grinned at me. "Were figuring you'd hop into bed again," he said. And I cussed at him.

I looked out the window, and it were cold and the snow were at the minimum six inches deep, and steady snowing.

I saw no tracks against the snow.

No sooner had I thought, I asked myself whether it was necessary to ride by the Dowel place. But all the time, I knew, necessary or not, I was going to ride over.

The ride would be long and cold, but with a good breakfast under my belt and a breakfast along with a bottle of gin, gin will make you sin, I started off, riding a route that I thought would be a good route.

It were after 7:45 when I rode away from our place, and shy of 42-45 minutes after, guessing by what I could see on my fogged steamed watch, when I topped out on the rise above Dowel's home. Twice I had taken a swig of gin.

The wind had started to rise, winding the snow. I came up on the street and paused there looking for Dowel's home. And then suddenly I realized that Dowel's apartment wasn't there anymore.

For what must have been a couple of minutes. I sat behind the wheel starring down into the land unable to believe it. Had I made a mistake in the snow and chosen the wrong street?

No. What remained of the pluming were there, although covered with snow. And the apartment was gone, no question about it.

My heart began to pound and my mouth felt dry. Without hesitating any further, I started down the street.

When I rode into the clearing I could see the snow covered ruins of the apartment's foundation, and when I got down and kicked away the snow, I saw the roots of the foundation. A section of bricks lay flat on the ground, and I knew what that meant. It had been pulled down by a bulldozer either something plowed the complete apartment away. And looking of a vacant land for sale.

Right then I was scared. I was scared of what I would find next. But when I looked the place over, I found no bodies. Whatever had happened to Arnold Dowel and Bree Dowel, I had to find out.

And just then, voices.

Two individuals were coming down the street opposite to the one down which I had ridden. When they saw me, they spread apart a little, and I grabbed my pistol and looked right and left for shelter. There was none. I started to run for the car and get in and leave and come back around the block against the white of the new fallen snow.

True, the snow that was falling now blurred the air between us, but it wouldn't stop a bullet. I chilled as though I just got there.

Both of the men were known to me. Johnny Whiffs was a youngster with a reputation as a gunfighter. He was said to have killed a man in Kit Carson, Colorado, an another at Doan's store on that Texas trail. The man I actually knew of him killing, was an old man up near Glendive.

The man with him was a bad one, known around as George Woll. Somebody had said that Whiffswas working for Roman Bohlen.

"Kind of off your usual aren't you?" Whiffs said.

"Don't know. My usual has always been wherever I wanted to make it."

"Like down at a petting zoo?"

Whiffs had the safety off his pistol but I had my pistol in my hands.

George Woll were motionless.

"I don't know," Whiffs said. "Only you might have been down there."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

Whiffs was grinning unpleasantly. "Bohlen's looking for you."

Gesturing at the remains of what were Dowel's home, I asked, "What happened here?"

"Fuck, do you need a map? Dowel was a goddamn hoax. He got what was coming to him."

Like I said, I've got a temper, and right then it got away from me.

"If you say Arnold Dowel had something to do with what's going on, you're a damn liar!"

Wiffs face went angry and he started to grip the pistol tighter, and my pistol had him dead center in the belly, at no more that fifteen yards. "Go ahead goddamn you!" I said. "Go ahead and shoot!"

Oh, he wanted to shoot in the worst way. And Woll, looked at me as if his face was frozen from the cold, but he kept his hands in sight and didn't make a move or say a word. I decided to watch my back when George Woll were around.

I were angry as a maniac. "Arnold Dowel," I said, "if he has been murdered, I'll lay a bet every damned one of you will die for it!"

"Die?" Whiffs repeated. "For killing Arnold Dowel?"

"If you killed him, you killed the wrong man. Arnold Dowel was a former officer in the Ireland Army, a man of a good family, a man with connections, and if you killed him, you've blown the roof off this whole city."

"Really? He wasn't that important," Whiffs said. "An if he were so, what difference does it make?"

"I can name you five names, an all of them friends of the Dowel family, and family."

I were stretching the point, but Bree had said they knew some of his family and so I might be more right than I could swear.

"What about her? What did you do of her?" I asked.

"Her who?"

"Bree Dowel, Arnold's sister."

Whiffs shot a quiet, scared look toward Woll. Then he said, "He didn't have a sister as I recall."

"He had a sister. She recently arrived a few days ago. I rode out with her myself."

They were really scared now. And Whiffs gave an apprehensive look at the what were the foundation of the remains of Dowel's home.

Woll spoke for the first time. "You seen him?"

So Dowel weren't dead. Either he were, they weren't sure of it.

Their urge for trouble were, it were gone for now. They were gonna need the time to try and figure if I were lying about Bree Dowel and they'll want to ask Bohlen about Arnold himself also.

Woll and Whiffs rode for their clicks, and the big clicks hated a settler. At least they lived off the neighborhoods, somewhat, or it were generally believed. They supported a few of the homeless, and organizations for better health and science.

It was a war for the land, with the initial odds all on the side of the big organizations, but as time went on, the numbers were on the side of the nesters. It was not that they were organized, but simply that they kept coming. They were murdered, starved out, or driven out, or they simply couldn't take the hard work, the cold winters, and the endless struggle to make a living that was necessary to homestead in, and therefore many of them left. But others came, and continued to come.

Some, like Arnold Dowel, resided small residents of their own and some came because of the great state, and the rugged life out at the end of creation. The average was contemptuous of the nester, but in that he was often wrong. Many of those who came were just as tough, just as enduring, and just as able to fight for their rights as any.

Arnold Dowel was born to the wild lands, and when he got a taste of it on the northern part of New Jersey, he knew he could never settle for anything less. I had a feeling that Bree was the same sort. Or maybe I was just talking, thinking toward myself what I wanted to believe.

Not many of the riders for the big organizations knew Dowel, although he was well known among business people in New Jersey and Cheyenne, and he had friends among the backers of the big organizations, and among those from England who had themselves settled.

Actually, I was one of the few who knew him well. Most of them thought him were a foreigner, but I knew better. He was a strong, rugged man, a dead shit with any kind of weapon. He learned quickly.

Roman Bohlen, who had the largest organization of any of Dowel's neighbors, simply did not like him. He didn't know him, but to a man of Bohlen's temperament that was not at all necessary. Had he known Dowel, he may have liked him even less, for Bohlen's nature would have crossed routes with Dowel.

Now I'd done been here a while, but I stopped by his place when riding through, grubbed with him a few times, and drunk a few with him.

Woll and Whiffs had plenty to think about now. It was no small thing to kill a woman, an if they had done that, they were in for a real challenge. They'll ride off and they'll think about it, and might see Roman Bohlen.

So what was there for me to do? Standing there as they turned away from me, still holding my gun, no one turned their back on a loaded gun. No real nigga, in his right mind, no sane man. I fired at them. Each of them. They were so self confident thinking that they could turn their back and Arnold's home were gone. They tried to whiz around and retaliate, time then, it were too late. Their bullets hit the snow and parked cars.

If Arnold or Bree was wounded or hurt, they'd freeze to death in the cold. It had to be a few degrees above zero and forecasted below zero before nightfall. Anyone who has lost blood is in no shape to survive under such conditions.

The snow had covered all tracks and was still coming quietly down, not a thick snow, but steady. The snow will cover my own tracks and their bodies within a few hours.

Dowel and his sister Bree, they were unsure if they were alive.

Where did they held them or taken their bodies?

Santini's spot?

Woll and Whiffs evidently believed that Dowel was dead or dying, so they must of shot him in his head, either wounded him and knocked him unconscious. Bree didn't quite know were Santini's spot were, but she had an idea, and she might of found the spot and rescued Dowel while under fire, possibly.

Standing there in the cold, I tried to figure where the two might be. They were somewhere out there in the snow, a woman an a wounded man, perhaps a dying, if not dead as of now.

It were a long, cold ride back to the camp. There were few cars there when I got there. Grasping the pistol, anyone that jumps off or acts stupidly, anything, I am going to put the pistol to them.

Jaquan Vessey sat inside, his back against the wall. He wore a gun belted on, the first I've ever seen him wear and his guns in his hands.

When I stepped into the room, I found myself facing Johnny Santini and three of his goons. I knew each of the goons, whom I worked with before. There were no friendliness to their tone.

"Hello Santini," I said. "Weren't expecting you here."

He shifted uneasily.

"I'm cutting you loose. Windy and Morris handling things now."

"What the fuck? What's the word? What do you mean you cutting me loose? For what?"

"You're getting too hot. The cops around. You're drawing heat and a lot of commotion."

Santini looked uncomfortable, and then Morris spoke up. "You were seen with Hobes Izumi and..."

"You think I had something to do with it! So you're suspecting me?"

"Hobes Izumi were an acquaintance of mine. He dropped by, a chit chat."

"You cutting me loose, fine then, I'm going to get the hell out of here. But before I catch fire, you listen to me and you listen hard and loud and clear! And you others too! And every else in the click. I don't have anything to do with it! I put in hard work! You saying we blowing the spot up, we hot! And you say you seen Me and Hobes Izumi and think I got something to do with it? I am going to say this, If you or your click gets the notion in their peony peon brains and thinks, talks, spread rumors that I've got something to do with it, I'll kill em'! And any and everybody!"

Not one of them opened their mouths. An I were getting angrier and angrier every second. Jaquan gathered our shit, an I didn't loose eyesight of neither one of them.

Then, I said towards Santini, "If you're in that shit with Bohlem, you better get out. They might've killed Arnold Dowel and his sister, and Hell is going to break loose!"

"What you mean, his sister?" Santini asking and looking startled and shocked.

"The woman from Ireland."

Santini seemed frightened and he started to bluster. "Dowel was nothing but a rouge. He..."

I said, "Mr. Santini, Arnold Dowel was a former officer in the Ireland Army. He belongs to one of the finest families in Great Britain. He just liked this country and the life here. Most the men and the money behind the others are friends of his. When this hits the surface, it won't be big enough to hold Bohlen and those tied in with him!"

His face were dead white as I finished. Uneasy before, he was really scared now. Bohlen'll have him high tide and hung if he weren't cautious.

Windy came outside with us as we gathered our shit.

"You meant what you said?" Windy asked.

"Goddamn right I meant what the fuck I said!"

His trap was fucking shut. But when we stepped in our rides he had the nerve to say, "Pacino, you better fucking run and run hard and hide better than Osama Bin Laden!"

"So what you saying? You saying I'm supposed to be scared or something?"

"If you said what the fuck you said Bohlen's gonna want me, and to attend your funeral. You know of that bitch Bree, and that bitch and what you know is gonna be the death of you because Roman's gonna want to kill you!"

He didn't say anything new, or of I didn't hear of or thought of.

Bohlen will be looking for me and only me.

If they didn't kill Arnold, they'd need too and dump the body.

And they'd need to kill Bree also.

It were nighttime and cold, and we needed to find a place to rest.

At the end, Johnny Santini got flustered and said we didn't have to go so soon. I wouldn't let myself stay there any longer than needed. I know when it were time to go.

When Jaquan grabbed the grub, Morris reached for him, but Jaquan put the pistol towards him. "You'll be the next paraplegic."

And then everybody reached and grabbed their pistols.

Morris looked at that pistol and Jaquan, and he said, "Reconsider, I'm just helping you gather your things because you seem to be in a hurry."

Windy said toward Jaquan, "If you don't want our courtesy..."

"Courtesy? You call this courtesy?"

"Hospitality."

"Your hospitality isn't shit!"

After Me and Jaquan were riding away from the spot, Jaquan said, "We're we going?"  
"You got anything in mind?"

First thing I though of were that hotel with Bree Dowel.

The streets were snowed, a good twelve inches deep on the curbs, and were three to four times deep near the residents, and not a sight of letting up. It looked like it were gonna be a blizzard. If you haven't seen a blizzard, it's ugly.

Me, I were wearing a pair of jeans and shirt, a bubble fur coat, and a pair of suede boots.

Jaquan were wearing a pair of jeans and shirt, a pair of boots and a trench coat, and a leather coat underneath the trench coat.

With the heater on and driving, it were cold and I were thinking of Bree. What a time I and Bree had. Bree were special to me in a short amount of time.

Bree was a freak.

My face grew stiff from the cold and my fingers were numb and my feet were cold also. Jaquan didn't look too warm either. He were holding his hands to the vents too warm his hands.

"Jaquan, I think we better find us an abandoned house or an empty apartment and set up the shop for a while, because they may be stirring about and right now we don't need any surprises. We need to have an advantage."

"You really think so Mussolini?" Jaquan asked.

"Don't it make sense to get out of sight for a while without a trace? Especially after the shootout, and Santini saying he don't need our clientele any further. We're suspects as of now."

"I am not the one to go running nor hiding from no one, Mussolini. Whatever beef there is, I'm usually wanting to get it done with and finished," Jaquan said politely.

"Jaquan, it'll be better if we get the blood pumping and warm and prepare ourselves for the war."

Jaquan were silent, and then he said, "Yeah, we should prepare for the war."

That son of a bitch Santini seemed too nonchalant and at calmly ease. He were planning something and whatever it were, weren't gonna be pretty.

At an abandoned apartment, I said towards Jaquan, "It's shelter from the wind and cold."

At the abandoned apartment we unloaded a few gear and parked the ride at another corner. I stayed in the ride a moment and surveillance the area, then went on in after Jaquan approached the ride and said, "You going to stay out here?"

Inside the apartment were cold, and a fireplace. Jaquan had the fireplace kindling. Jaquan kindled the fire with some firewood and garbage that were around.

An abandoned apartment with a fireplace. Why nobody else didn't stay in it and kindle a fire? I checked the entirety of the apartment to get familiar of the place.

Some furniture were in the apartment. In a bedroom, a bed, dresser drawer, few clothes, linens, and shoes. In another room, a folding bed, a lamp, linens, and canned goods. In the kitchen were a few chemicals. The living room, there were a sofa, a arm chair and a recliner.

Afterwards I and Jaquan were deciding what we should do. First we checked our guns, and oiled and cleaned them so they didn't jam in the cold weather.

It's best to be ready and prepared for the unexpected.

Shit were building and I and Jaquan best be ready for anything from the ground. Shit! And this wasn't no Kansas or...

Jaquan and me took turns and stayed woke on shifts. While Jaquan slept, I stayed woke. Jaquan snored lowly. A few times he grumbled and rolled side to side cussing obscenities time to time.

Something startled me as I was kneeling on the floor peeping through the window outside toward the streets.

Jaquan were sleeping quietly now. I could hear his steady breathing.

I grabbed my pistol then eased from the floor and stood looking outward the window peering to the streets of the white expanse of the snow.

As I looked, something flopped in the snow, lunged a couple of paces, then flopped again. There were a muffled groan. Then silence.

For a long minute, I waited. There was no further sound, no movement, but something was out there, something that must be human.

I woke Jaquan.

"Jaquan," I whispered. "Jaquan, there's something outside, somebody."

"What?"

"There's someone walloping in the snow."

"I'm going to check it out. Stay inside and cover me, you hear me?"

"Wait. Lets go check the rear and make sure it's not a trap. They maybe surrounding us."

We crouched at the doorways and were sure to stay shy of view of the windows and crawled through the apartment and peeping outside to see if anybody were out there waiting for us.

No one.

For a long minute, I waited. There was no further sound, no movement, but something was out there. I gripped the pistol tighter as Jaquan eased the door open and I stooped low to see and made an unsuspecting cautious move toward the figure.

It were human.

Kneeling, I caught him by the collar and rolled him over on his back. The face was indistinguishable in the vague reflected light of the snow. Taking him by the collar, I dragged him to the apartment.

"Jaquan! Jaquan! We got to get him inside! Come on and help me drag him in!"

Me and Jaquan dragged him in the doorway.

We stared down into the face of the injured man. It were Jarez. Jarez Claymount.

What were Jarez doing out in the snow? And most of all, why?

And finding Jarez in the cold snow were near where Me and Jaquan were laying low. And that at all didn't seem coincidental. More of a statement. 'We know where you're at.' And finding Blaricum were a warning and the taunting shit were not cool. Not cool at all.

While Jaquan built the fire, I peeled back Jarez's clothes to see where he was hurt. He were shot twice in the back. And the two bullet holes were two inches apart. His clothing were stiff with frozen blood. And of one thing I was sure, the cold had saved his life causing the blood to coagulate, but I wasn't giving him much chance.

Jaquan put his hand on my shoulder. "Pacino, you leave him to me. I done patched a few niggas. Some of them I ought of let died."

I got some gin, took a gulp, a swig. Gin can be death to a man who's out on a cold night. The reason, when you're driving on a cold night and you might decide to pull over and think you're going to sleep it off, huh, you'll go to sleep and wake up dead. You'll be dead. And a man full of gin will freeze to death faster than a sober man, because the gin brings a temporary warmth, brings the heat to the surface of the skin, where it disappears into the cold air, and colder than before. On the other hand, a man who has come in out of the cold can take a drink to warm himself up - if he is not going out again.

After a few minutes Jarez began to mutter, and then his eyes opened. He looked up at Jaquan, stirred at him for several minutes, then turned his head and looked at me.

"Hello, Jarez. You just lie quiet," I said.

He seemed to relax, staring up into the darkness where the firelight flicked, then his eyes closed.

After a moment, they opened again.

"Jarez...who shot you? What happened?"

He looked puzzled. "Shot? I've been shot?"

His brow puckered in a frown and his lips seemed to feel of the words before he spoke them. "I thought...something hit me...something...I don't know?"

Jaquan put a drink of gin towards his lips.

It were freezing cold outside, and the wind were blowing hard.

He were saying something about meeting somebody. Then he went unconscious.

Did you see Bohlen?" I asked.

"No," came the answer.

His eyes were opened, and there for a minute or two he looked at me and Jaquan and the fire.

"Who was it that shot you Jarez? Damn it Jarez! Don't die on me! Snap out of it! What do you remember? Remember."

"I'm shot?" He spoke again in that puzzled way. "I thought somebody hit me from behind, but there was nobody around except..."

Jarez was about to pass out and die. I kept trying to keep him breathing. He died right there when Jaquan were trying to get the bullets out of him with a knife.

Clyde Orum was what he gasped, his last words.

Clyde Orum.

Somebody had shot Jarez Claymount in the back. Shot him at close range, somebody he knew but did not fear. It had been just the same with Aileen Enrique. And Clyde Orum's name were mentioned before he died.

"Why, I haven't heard that name in years, or thought about him."

"You know him Mussolini?"

"Yeah, Jaquan. Hate to say I do. Clyde Orum's a hit man. The best, so they say. If Clyde were around, you damn well fucking believe somebody wanted you dead."

And that Izumi organization had been wiped out. Did that mean Clyde killed Hobes too?

Discouragement and depression settled on me. Clyde Orum were a hired hit man and he knew where to find you and how to get you when you least expected it.

I'd come here to set up shop, been accused of doing business with the traitors, wound up in a drive by, shoot out, men tried to help were dead, and the whole Hobes gang gone. Strangers were riding over the streets killing folks without anybody knowing who they were, or even that it happened.

That was the thing that troubled me. It were all pretty sly. If we hadn't found Jarez before he died, we might've been did too by Clyde.

I wasn't going to let Clyde spook me at all. And Bree. Was Bree alive?

"Come daylight, we'll have to get going," I said.

"It's daylight now. It's been daylight for a minute," Jaquan said.

It were daylight, and with the realization of it I got to my feet.

"Mount up Jaquan. We've got a ride to make."

And we packed our gear and stuffed our ride with the supplies that remained and leaving Jarez's body in the abandoned apartment.

In Jarez's pockets we found five dollars, and a letter.

See you in hell is what the letter read.

On the other side of the letter were written:

If you want Bree, the top of Hillcrest.

It wasn't signed by anyone.

Whoever it were, were waiting for us.

When we had come riding up from the spot from Miles City and had left the Tongue, we had taken a path over Poker Jim Butte, and we'd seen a tumbled down apartment. Bree said it reminded her of some she'd seen in Ireland, it were at the top of Hillcrest.

And it was Hillcrest where a man had been robbed, who robbed him back, and they became jack men.

How you going to rob the robber?

This seemed like a set up from the very start. A fucking set up. And who were the bait?

Realizing now, Bree might not of been Dowel's sister after all.

As we took the trail toward Poker Jim, I tried to study out what Jarez Claymount had said.

Claymount himself had not even realized he was shot, and he must not have realized how badly he were hurt. Fuck, he were in the damn freezing cold.

And the last thing he had said, Clyde Orum.

Cermain Oaks was an outlaw, and he operated in this city for years. He was said to have run with Clyde.

We rode around Hillcrest checking out the scene to see if anybody were laying waiting to ambush us, or if anybody were aiming at us in apartment windows with the beam on us. We didn't see nobody out the ordinary.

I told Jaquan to ride around the block and then come after me, after then, in 15 minutes.

So Jaquan let me out at the corner of the block and I walked to the getup on Hillcrest and rapped on the door and there she were. Bree Dowel. She had a gun in her hand, and from the look in her eyes she wouldn't have hesitated to use it.

She said, "Step inside."

And I bent my head to enter the low doorway. Inside you stepped down several inches to floor and there was standing room.

Across from the room lay Arnold Dowel on a bunk.

"Pacino. I'm glad you're here." It was Roman Bohlen. He looked at me, and the expression in his eyes changed.

He gestured to indicate Bree. And she reached over and grabbed my collar and hurried me right across the room.

And as she did, Roman said, "Frisk him!"

"We knew you'd come meddling in our territory. We sent Bree here," pointing to Bree, "to occupy you and drive you away. Bree works for us. And Arnold too. We pulled the house from the ground too clear any evidence or trace."

"That was a little extreme wasn't it?" I asked.

"Maybe, maybe not."

"We're working on relocating and on a underground lab and drug distribution," said Roman Bohlen, and we happened to meet you, hopping we could exterminate some of the loop holes in our project. Though you persistently stuck around a little bit long and we had to find something, someway to get rid of you or either fill you in on what was going on. And some said another body might blow the lid off the whole project and you, there'd be a lot of catching up to do."

"So you decided too..."

"We decided to either fill you in, although that Jaquan of yours, we don't know about him. We might need to pop him," said Roman. "He's unstable."

Now all my life I've had a temper. Not that I ever got mad when I was fighting, but it could explode into real trouble from time to time.

I was mad, with a cold, ugly anger that shocked me and curious wonder that shocked me. And this didn't make no damn sense.

My hands were shaking, my whole body was quivering with fury, and I fought myself into calmness to hear them out, there opinions and mine and were wanting more rage. At the same time that fury gripped me, another part of me seemed to be standing by in surprise that Arnold worked for Bohlen.

Suddenly I wanted answers, answers to how this were possible. And I wanted to hurt them, smash them, break them, tear their fucking limbs from limb to limb, shatter open their skulls, and show them what real hatred could be.

A saner part of me kept warning me, I'm surrounded an I have no chance, and what you see on TV, the single action hero, coming out on top, that was fucking TV, fucking Hollywood make believe.

"I knew you would come, Mussolini. I knew you would," Bree said. "I told Arnold you'd come."

All the while, I were standing there and they were filling me in on what were going on and if I chose to join them. I were thinking and I were watching for anyone coming our way, Jaquan. Jaquan, is my buddy; my pal; my ace boon coon. I'm not going to sale him out.

And at that moment, Roman asked, "Where is that Jaquan of yours? I'm surprise he didn't come busting the fuck in here on a surprise attack."

My answer came out so quick.

"Jaquan's going to bust in here like Rambo!"

Now that I said that about Jaquan, Bohlen's eyes widened with a twisted smile.

"Arnold, go check outside and see if you see anybody around. Mainly that guy Jaquan."

Arnold followed instructions and went to go check outside.

I studied the building; the entrances and places to take cover.

Arnold. I talked about Arnold.

"So you mean to tell me Arnold endured the bullshit for years and years as part of a front, a decoy for your operation?" I asked.

He gave me a sharp look.

"You know Mussolini, living out here gives a man different standards. Education and position seem the most important things, but here, it is what it is, and not that a man should under estimate education and position, positioning the crew is an ideal necessity, and skills and tolerance. Arnold's a tolerant man. Mussolini, you have what this crew needs. What it will always need."

"And what is that?" I asked.

"You have stamina, courage, and a strong sense of character."

I wasn't surprised of anything anymore.

Bohlen looked up at me. He looked drawn and pale, and I knew he was taking a beating on this. He looked at me and said, "I'm giving you a great opportunity."

As he said those few words, shots were fired.

Moments later, the door opened and Arnold's body were being used as a shield by Jaquan as he opened fire on Bohlen and his crew.

"Jaquan," I said.

Jaquan were the nigga, if you were caught in a tight spot, you'll just know he was there, doing the fuck what needed to be done.

Bree opened fire and tried to take cover. Jaquan shot her in the arm and the pistol flung towards me. I picked it up, took cover behind a crate, and shot at Bohlen as he dodged bullets seeking shelter.

Jaquan shot Bree till she died.

"Put that nigga in the snow and cover his fucking body and make sure he's dead!" Bohlen said to his crew.

"The same way you did Jarez Claymount?" I spoke towards Bohlen.

"Precisely," Bohlen said.

"He got to us before he died."

There was not as so much a flicker in his eyes.

"You ordered Aileen Enrique killed."

"Now you're putting the pieces together."

"Arnold took care of Jarez Claymount."

If Arnold knew anything at all of the deaths, he was better at hiding it than I would have of fucking believed. Arnold didn't even seem damn capable of such. And here he was, and working for Bohlen.

"And Clyde, Enrique."

"And Clyde, Enrique."

"Where's Clyde?"

"Clyde's handling some business."

When Bohlen looked at me, there were no expression on his face, and his eyes flicked a flicker of impatience in his eyes.

"What do you say of my proposition?"  
I chuckled. I shot at Bohlen. "The answer is no, I won't join your crooked clan. I'm going to kill you."

Bohlen laughed.

"Is that anything to laugh about?" I asked.

All my life I'd been fighting one way or other, and here and there I'd used my brains, such as they were. Mostly I'd just waded in swinging, and the thing that kept me winning, for I'd won ninety percent of my fights, was simply that I'd never been willing to realize when I was licked. A time or two it had seemed like it, only something kept me swinging and I'd finally won.

The thing a man has to realize is that it is never too late.

He swore. Then Bohlen said, "That's a hell of a thing to say to a man. I think you're a damn fool! I were expecting you to join us Mussolini. You're a fucking fool. Now I'm going to give you something you've needed for a long time, a bullet in your fucking brain!"

A blast of gun fire roared the spot where Bohlen hid.

Bohlen slowly came full into sight. Jaquan had put a bullet in his torso. Blood spurred from Bohlen's mouth as he was smiling and walking toward me, with his gun gripped in his hand.

The room were mighty quiet now.

Bohlen lifted his pistol.

I looked him in the eyes and shot him dead.

There is something to be said for hatred under such circumstances.

Jaquan came into full view. As I neared him, a tear dripped from my eye. I walked toward Jaquan and I put a hand on his neck, and pulled him toward me, "Thanks."

At about that time, I struck my first streak of pay, paper, real paper. Big money.

I searched my pockets again and they were filled with more than a hundred thousand dollars. Me and Jaquan's each were. We had tooken Bohlen's weed supply and money.

It's a mistake to think that a hungry man bolts his food. He does nothing of the such. His stomach has shrunk, and anyway, he wants to chew, to taste, to savor every bite.

He eats slowly, and that first time after he's been a long time hungry, he can eat very little. This time I hadn't been hungry really long, but it had been too long.

When I had eaten the sirloin steak, I rustled around and found a small piece of cut potatoes and took to it. I ate so eagerly that I knew I had found a great savoring taste to my taste buds.

Roman Bohlen, Bree and Arnold were dead.

Jaquan checked the cuts on my face, which was several and he said, "You carry a couple of scars."

After the restaurant, Me and Jaquan started off that night to the Inter Ocean Hotel.

What a man needs in this world, if he's any kind of man, is somebody to do for, to take care of.

I had Jaquan and I never was going to be quite so alone again, no matter what happened.

I laid back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.

Everything inside me just seemed to let go.

I went to the window and got my cigar and smoked a couple of minutes then rubbed out the cigar again and went to bed.

I looked at Jaquan in the other bed next to me.

"What did you call it Jaquan? Put the pistol to them."

THE END

