“To hell it wasn’t.”
“You took your sweet time, if it was.”
“I had just gotten to the house from the rig, and saw them coming down the road. I expected you to have the good sense to hole up in the barn and keep them back until I could get down here.”
“I like to hog all the fun.”
Hamish helped me to my feet and I threw my arm across his shoulders, glancing at the three bodies as we walked among them, and it was hard to believe that less than a minute before all of them had been alive. I wondered if any of them had expected that they would end up like that when they rode out of town, but I guess nobody ever expects exactly what they end up getting.
“I thought you gave up guns when you gave me your pistol back at that train station when you ran off back East to go to college,” I said.
Hamish looked down at Moon Lowe’s body. “I did, but I made an exception this morning. In law work, we call it jurisprudence.”
“Speaking of the law. You tell them I was the only one in on this.”
He shook his head. “We’ll tell the truth.”
“Always got to be difficult, don’t you?”
“I’m the big brother.”
“They might hang us both, and if they don’t, you don’t want any part of prison. I’d take a hundred days like this morning instead of one more day in Huntsville.”
“Don’t forget, I’m a pretty good lawyer.”
“You’re taking a risk. They find out you were in on this shooting and you aren’t ever going to get elected to office.”
“I’ve given up on politics. You and I are going to be oilmen.”
“I’m a rancher. You can keep your oil to yourself.”
“All right, I’ll be an oilman and you play cowboy.”
“I’m not taking any orders from you.”
“All right.”
“And if you let that sawbones in Destiny take off my leg I’m going to shoot you, brother or not.”
“Fair enough.”
“Quit being so agreeable. It throws me off.”
Hamish loaded me in his car and drove us toward Destiny. The thing bounced and bucked like a bad horse and I only thought my leg had been hurting before.
“First time I ever rode in one of these,” I said.
“You better hope it isn’t the last. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig.”
I grabbed at my hat when he sped up to keep it from blowing off. It was bad enough that I was going to have to ride into town in an automobile, but I would be damned if I would go bareheaded. A man has to keep a little pride.
We went through the gate at the east edge of the ranch and passed under the plank overhead with the $D burned deep into it.
“Hamish,” I said. “Are we good men?”
Hamish pondered that while he dodged a hole in the road. “I don’t know. There are a lot that are worse. No whining, no excuses . . .”
“And no saying you’re sorry.”
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2015 Brett Cogburn
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ISBN: 978-0-7860-3670-7
First electronic edition: August 2015
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Destiny, Texas Page 31