Risk
By Doc
Part Five
Every man they passed had to shake Johnny's hand and pound Lester on the back, so it took a while to make their way to the cantina. Lester led Johnny through the main eating room to a patio out back. An awning shaded a few iron tables and chairs; well-watered flowers grew over the rims of the barrels lining the edge of the brick floor. After the colors and shine of the brick of the street, regular bricks looked dull, dusty.
Lester waved Johnny into a seat and sat down across from him. When Lester took off his hat, his thinning hair glinted red in the sun. The skin on his head was red, too. He touched it lightly with his fingertips and settled his hat back on his head. A serving girl swished by with two glasses of lemonade and a plate of bread for them. Johnny looked up to see her smiling at him. When he smiled back something split on his lip. He covered the drying blood with a hunk of bread from the plate, and the girl sashayed off, nose wrinkled.
Lester took a big swig of lemonade. "I saw you hit your lip on Jara's fist. What happened to your eye?"
Johnny fingered the wetness on the outside of lemonade glass. He rubbed the cool water on his lip, then wiped it away with his bandana. "Walked into a door."
Lester smiled and shook his head. "Sure."
Johnny sampled the lemonade. It was too sweet for his taste. He thought Lester was going to buy him a proper drink. He'd hoped so, anyway.
Lester grabbed a piece of bread and took a bite, but he mostly waved it around while he talked. "I'd like to hear the story of how you came to be standing with the Buttericks and their soldiers."
Junior said not to let on that they knew each other. Well, too bad. Neither of the Buttericks rated too high in Johnny's book just now, and they didn't deserve his silence.
"I was looking for a job, that's all. Someone gave me your name, Mr. Lester. I was asking around for you, and I came across Junior. We talked until he made a remark questioning my trade. So I put a bullet through his hat."
"Was he wearing it at the time?" Lester looked up with a little smile.
"Nope. Wouldn't've made any difference." Johnny smiled back. Then he skipped ahead—Lester didn't need to know about the ten dollars. "Next day he told me about a job guarding ore shipments, and I took it. This morning the office man had me come in to work for Mr. Butterick's private security. You saw the rest."
Lester looked down at the table, no smile left on his face. "You looked right at me."
"Uh-huh." Johnny sipped more lemonade.
"Would you have killed me?" Lester looked up.
Johnny met his gaze. "That's what I get paid for." He leaned back in his chair, wincing when his shoulder touched the metal. New bruises for sure. He wondered what his belly looked like. "But I don't shoot anyone in the back."
Where was this was going? He'd probably said too much already. His fingers tapped the butt of his Colt.
"Why'd you say no?"
Looking back, he wondered the same thing. Refusing a direct order from a man in a uniform wasn't very smart. Johnny couldn't honestly say he decided to defy orders; he just did it.
"Wasn't right." He dropped his eyes.
"It took guts to say no, Johnny."
"Yeah, well, more guts than brains, or so I've been told." He and Lester both snorted a little.
"I think you should know you made a formidable enemy today. That corporal you shoved is a nasty piece of work."
Johnny straightened up to lean his elbows on the table. "Yeah?"
"Jara's been pretty quick to work my miners over. I don't know if Butterick puts him up to it, but he sure doesn't stop him. "
"How quick is Jara to go to his gun?"
Lester considered his answer. "Today was the first time I've seen him ready to shoot."
"Hmm."
As Johnny drained the last of his lemonade, Lester pulled a cigar case from his shirt pocket. Choosing one, he offered the case to Johnny. Johnny shook his head. Lester clenched the Cuban between his teeth and puffed it to life. When Lester blew out the aromatic smoke, Johnny swallowed a catch in his throat. It reminded him of his stepfather. He'd been thinking about him a lot in this town. What would papa think of how Johnny was making his way in the world?
After a few good puffs, Lester looked at Johnny straight on.
"Johnny, if you're willing to use that gun of yours, I'm thinking I'd like it to be for our side."
"Meaning…?"
"Have you ever hired your gun to outright kill a man?"
Not exactly. Not yet, anyway. But that's what hired guns did. "I've killed a man or two."
One killing had been an accident. One had been a kid he'd run with who attacked him with a knife. Neither one set well with him, but a man did what he had to do.
"How would I go about hiring you to kill Corporal Jara?" A sheen of sweat broke out on Lester's forehead, but his voice was steady.
His heart pounded, but Johnny smiled the smile he'd been practicing, his working smile. "You give me an advance, I take care of the job, you give me the rest, and I'm gone."
A silence settled heavily between them. Lester stroked his beard. Johnny waited.
"Let's do it."
Johnny held up a hand. "Not so fast. You sure you want a killing? I could just hurt him, you know."
"Why wouldn't I want to remove the threat completely?"
Johnny shrugged. "It don't matter to me. Except killing'll cost you more."
Lester frowned. "You taking the job?"
"Maybe." Johnny sat back and folded his hands in his lap; his palms were sweating. "We haven't discussed my fee."
"I'll pay you the going rate."
Johnny flashed a quick smile. "Then things are lookin' up. What is the going rate around here?"
Lester sighed. "I have no idea. What's a man's life worth?"
It didn't seem like he really wanted Johnny to answer that one.
Finally, Lester shook himself. "How does twenty dollars sound?"
Better than Johnny had hoped, but he never took the first offer. "A ten dollar advance, and twenty five when the job is done." Brave words for a guy who rode into town on a donkey cart.
Lester didn't look at Johnny. "I don't know. That's pretty steep."
"Well, Mr. Lester, I'm pretty good." Johnny gazed steadily at Lester until he looked up. Lester was the first to look away.
After another few puffs of the cigar, Lester put his hand out, and they shook on it.
Johnny got to his feet and lingered where he stood. Lester looked at him blankly.
"My advance?"
Lester reached back into a pocket and pulled out a billfold. He counted out ten dollars. Johnny folded them and pushed the wad inside his belt. "Thank you, Mr. Lester. I'll find you when the job's done."
Lester nodded, already lost in his own thoughts. He didn't look up, and Johnny walked away.
Johnny headed to the rough side of town to find a cheap whorehouse, the kind where his black eye and bruises wouldn't matter. He stopped in his tracks when he realized he'd left his gear in the freight company's bunk house. Well, shoot. It might be tricky to get it back. He turned north toward Camino del Este, trying to come up with a plan to avoid anyone who worked for Butterick.
At least it wasn't dinner time; the other men should be out working. The cook might be there, but if Johnny timed it right he should be able to waltz right in, grab the bag, and waltz back out again. As he got close to the freight office he pulled his hat as low over his eyes as he could. He tried to keep to the shadows of the surrounding buildings. He wished he had a different shirt.
From the far corner of the bunkhouse he heard the cook rattling around in the kitchen. He slunk under the small window and stopped just before rounding the corner nearest the main door. Horse sounds drifted in from the corral next door. Could he make it in without being seen? The bunkhouse door opened and closed a time or two.
Busier than he'd hoped. He straightened up, readjusted the brim of his hat even lower, and walked with a confident air around the corner.
Was that Corporal Jara leaning against the corral fence? Damn it all. The man wasn't looking his way, but Johnny weighed the risk of being seen, and kept walking.
Okay, so he wouldn't be able to get his gear just now. He should have left it hidden somewhere, like he usually did. But he had intended to guard ore shipments. He'd settled in. He sure hadn't planned on screwing everything up his first hour on the job.
He walked a block or two, thinking Then he saw some dirty boys in peasant clothes, the kind of kids he knew well. They headed into an alley and he followed them. The kids were rooting around in the garbage, calling each other names. When they saw him, the bigger kids knocked the smallest one down and hightailed it out of there. Johnny knew that not all that long ago he'd have been the one on the ground. Shaking his head, he helped the boy up.
"You looking to earn some money?" The boy wiggled harder to get out of his grasp. Johnny could have kicked himself when he saw the fear in the big brown eyes. "No, nothing like that. Look, I need someone to pinch something for me." He let go and flipped a coin to the boy, who caught the money and moved an arm's length away.
"You know the freight office? You ever notice a bunkhouse behind it?"
"Si."
"I left my gear in a bag under a bed there. Can you sneak in and get it for me?"
The boy's eyes narrowed. "How much?"
"Twenty five cents."
"Show it to me."
Johnny had to smile. He pulled out some coins for the kid to see. "You know where I mean?"
"Sure."
"Okay. Now. You got a name?"
"Gustavo." There was nothing but suspicion on the boy's face.
"Well, Gustavo, it's under the first bed to the right when you go in the door. Grab it and bring it back." He tried to make a hard face. "Deal?"
"Deal," the kid said, and took off. Johnny grabbed for him as he passed.
"Hey! Don't take anything else. And if you get caught I never saw you."
Johnny leaned against an adobe wall, taking care not to jar any of his sore spots, and waited. For the first time since he got to this town things felt familiar. He remembered his own days on the street, just after his mother died. Altar, it was. Where Altar was compared to Prieto he didn't know. Didn't matter much. Most border towns were the same. The Anglo side had all the money, the Mexican side had all the fun, and poor kids with nothing to eat and time on their hands caused trouble on both sides. They were alley cats, hotfooting it out of the way of the law, if there was any; the drunks̶—there were always plenty of them—and the outlaws. The big kids used the little kids as sacrificial lambs, just like here, but they worked together as pickpockets and shoplifters too. And they beat the living snot out of each other at the drop of a hat.
At the time he was living that way, he didn't know any different. Now he was following his gun to a different place, a place where he didn't have to worry about where his next meal was coming from.
Mostly. He snorted softly at the thought of losing everything, going back to square one like he'd done before he got to Prieto. Good to know he hadn't gotten rusty when it came to being a pickpocket. It was a nice skill to have; too bad there wasn't any future in it. He felt bad about taking the redheaded cowboy's money, though.
One foot braced against the wall behind him, Johnny leaned forward to look for Gustavo. The kid was running down the narrow street, panting. He skidded to a stop in front of Johnny, a burlap sack behind his back, and held out his hand.
"Slow down, slow down. How do I know you didn't steal me blind?" Johnny forced a scowl.
The boy scowled too. He looked back the way he came, so Johnny did too. There was nothing there. Gustavo shoved the sack at him and Johnny made a big deal out of feeling around inside it. There was his spare shirt, socks, shaving and gun cleaning kits, his copy of Don Quixote, and his sewing kit. His box of ammunition felt full. He dug deeper until his fingers found the pocket sewn into the bottom seam with his mama's ring inside it. Everything was there.
"Hey. Where's my gold watch?"
Gustavo's eyes grew bigger. He glanced back again. "I never took it!"
"You never took it? It's not in there."
"Maybe…maybe some other guy took it. I swear I didn't do it!"
When Johnny saw real tears forming in the kid's eyes he dropped the joke. "Hey, now, I'm just kidding. I never had a gold watch in the first place." Johnny smiled. The boy still looked like he wanted to cry; he was sidling away, but his hand was still out. Gustavo sure was jumpy. Johnny gave him fifty cents.
The kid lit out like his feet were on fire.
With a little grunt Johnny threw his sack over his shoulder and headed down the street. A visit to the bordello still sounded good.
Until two men in brown uniforms with yellow scarves blocked his way.
TBC