They didn't head back to the town.
Side by side, the horses plodded through the dissipating heat of the desert evening. The wind had picked up, tossing bits of sand and sagebrush to sting the eyes and get caught in the teeth. Vin had already worked his matted bandana up over his mouth; Chris, though considering the same, made no move to retrieve his from his saddlebags.
Three days had passed since that last adios on the borders of the village. Chico would do well, staying there—better, at least, than he would have done anywhere else, anywhere Chris could have led him.
"Think we'll make that town before full dark?" Vin's voice was muffled behind his kerchief. Chris glanced over at him, took in the dirt-lined creases around his eyes, the weary droop of his horse's head. Felt the grit in his own skin, his own horse's tired gait.
"Yeah."
They reached the edge of the town just as dusk fell. Chris leaned forward in his saddle, squinting through the dim light and kicked-up dust for any promisingly lit buildings.
"Chris."
Chris turned. Vin had pulled the bandana down, now; his voice sounded clear. His face was shadowed under his battered Stetson, but his eyes were bright and a grin pulled at the corners of his mouth.
"Been good ridin' with you."
They were on the edge of town, but the desert wind was tenacious, driving through the thin defenses of leather and cotton into weathered skin. Chris turned into it, away from his companion, feeling the grit in his throat.
"See you 'round, Vin."
The grin on Vin's face twisted slightly into something wry—mocking, perhaps, or self-mocking, the double-edged admission of you're not the only sucker in town.
"Around, then," he returned, nudged his horse toward the buildings, and didn't look back.
For a while Chris remained, unmoving, tasting dust on his tongue. Eventually his horse snorted in impatience, and, with an apologetic stroke, he, too, gently spurred around. Vin had disappeared in the dust, or the dusk, or around a street corner. Chris did not look for him.
Vin rode into the town slowly, his lips still curled wryly. Pretty clear dismissal, that.
A job was a job for men like them, and a companion a companion only as long as a job lasted. If this job and these companions had so clearly been different for both of them, well, Vin had tried to drive that point home once before. No reason to keep beating that horse.
Seeing lighted windows, he dismounted, tied off the reins to the hitching rail, and paused. What he had assumed was a saloon appeared to cater to a much more posh clientele than he had originally assumed. He certainly wouldn't complain about hot water and clean sheets, but the twenty dollars in his pocketbook wouldn't go far here.
He glanced up and down the street but nowhere else seemed open, so he pushed into the place, intent on asking, at least, where he might find cheaper lodging.
Entering, Vin found it, as indeed it had seemed from the outside, very well lit. There was a fire made up in the grate against the nighttime desert chill but not yet lit; the light came from the brass sconces that lined the walls. But it was empty.
He removed his hat—this, like the farmers' houses, was clearly the kind of place you did that—and hung it on the stand by the door. He moved to lean against the bar, prepared to wait until the proprietor returned. But not much time had passed when he heard a strange sound echoing up from the iron spiral staircase nearby.
…whh—IT! …whh—IT!
It was something like a reverberation, but starting soft and growing quickly louder until it ended with a sharp crack, nearly that of gunfire. Vin listened, curiously. Then—
Crack! Crack!
That was unmistakably gunfire. He straightened, readying his revolver and moving quickly. Whoever owned this place may not appreciate his interfering, but gunshots in a building always warranted investigating, no matter what.
He stepped down the staircase with silent, deliberate steps. As his head cleared the ground level he braced a hand on the stair above him and ducked, peering into the cellar below—
—and froze.
Cellar was nowhere near the right term. He stepped down the last few spiral steps onto a railed platform that surrounded the cavernous space; floor level, reached by a set of straight stairs off to the side, was still a good ways below his feet.
…whh—IT! …whh—IT! Crack! Crack!
The strange sound came from a walled-off area on one of the long sides of the room, followed again by gunshots from the same direction. Vin focused; preposterously-sized cellars filled with unidentifiable equipment aside, someone was shooting down here.
A fleeting thought—he could have done with a friend, not to mention another gun to watch his back.
He made his way as quickly and quietly as he could to the lower level. As he rounded the partition wall, hand ready but not touching his revolver, he froze—looking straight down the barrel of a weapon he had never seen before, and behind that a dark face, darker hair and beard, and sharp black eyes.
For a long moment, neither man moved. Then the stranger, with a snort as of acknowledgement or acquiescence, lowered the gun. Vin, still wary, still wishing for Chris's backup, stepped deliberately sideways, looking more closely at both the man and his surroundings. A shooting range, he immediately determined, though indoors. And the man, dressed entirely in black, carrying gear Vin had never seen before, could not identify…
"Practicing your shooting, friend?" he asked.
The man perused him a moment more, then nodded a little, turning back toward his target. "I know it's not what this place is for, exactly, but…" He shrugged.
"What is it for?"
The man shrugged again. "Rest, they told me. Help, too, I guess. What, didn't you get the rundown when you came in?"
"No—no one there."
"Hmm."
Vin relaxed further, leaning back on his heels. "You probably don't have to be worried about the shootin', though—" he gestured behind the man—"looks to be made for it."
The man did not reply. Vin stood a while longer, hoping to discover the source of the other strange sound he had heard, but the stranger merely emptied more lead downrange. Eventually, Vin turned to leave, intent on finding someone to rent him a room for the night. But as he turned to away, leaving the shooter to his practice, the other man spoke again, not turning from his target.
"You look like him—a little, anyway."
Vin paused. "Like who?"
"Neil." The stranger cleared his gun of any unspent rounds, laid it down, then turned and crossed his arms, leaning against the shooting bench. "My partner and friend."
"He's dead?"
"Yes—and no." The man half-turned again, unlacing his arms and picking back up the unloaded gun. He aimed, pulled the trigger, and—
…whh—IT!
—a bullet flew out of the target to re-embed itself in the gun's chamber.
"His life is over. But I haven't met him yet."
Vin stared as the man calmly laid the gun back down, incredulous, bemused, but strangely understanding. "This last job," he said, slowly shaking his head, "I sure don't disagree with Chris, that we gunslingers always lose. But I thought, maybe, this time we'd also won something, the two of us. But no such luck."
The man raised his eyebrows in response, eyes glittering. "You sure about that?" He gestured, with his chin, to the walkway above them.
Vin looked up, though he didn't need to. It was Chris.
Riding through the town as the night grew darker, Chris stopped at the first and only place to show any sign of life. The Rock and a Hard Place said the sign, and he pushed through the doorway, removing his hat. He was unsurprised, with the lack of other options, to see Vin's Stetson on the rack as he hung up his, but regretful all the same.
He had catalogued the room as he entered it. It was empty except for a man behind the bar. He was dressed in rough, tan-colored clothes not entirely dissimilar to what the Mexican farmers wore, and his face was lined as any man's became out in this desert, but his hair was a gray-streaked red-blond.
Chris approached the bar. The man smiled, a gentle smile, and his eyes, though worn, sparked with genuine pleasure.
"Hello, there."
Chris nodded in response. "I'm looking for lodging for the night, if you have room, and not too high a rate."
"We have both," the man said with an accent Chris couldn't place. "Will you be staying with your friend?"
Chris tilted his head. "No. Did he say so?"
"No—I haven't actually spoken with him yet. He's downstairs. I just wondered, as you seemed worried about rate, whether you'd planned on splitting."
Chris peered at the man more closely. "How'd you know he's my friend?"
He didn't reply except to raise an eyebrow and gesture toward a writing desk on the other side of the room. Chris walked over, bemused, half his attention still on the bartender until he bent over the desk and found a guest roll. Vin Tanner, Chris Adams it read, two names sharing a line, marked as cleared, with two different arrival times. He didn't need to check to know the second matched the moment he walked in the door.
"You're expected, that's all," said the man from behind him as Chris stared at the page, unmoving. "Everyone—or most everyone, anyway—who comes here is expected, and welcome. And there isn't, actually, a reason to be worried about rates. It's all covered, from the rooms to the drinks."
Chris turned back around. "Who are you?"
"Obi-Wan Kenobi." The man bowed slightly, a well-practiced motion. "I was once a Jedi Knight; now I live alone in the desert, helping where I can, and guarding the last of our legacy until the time is right. This place—" he gestured around the Rock and a Hard Place—"has been a solace for me." He paused, seeming to consider his next words carefully. "And, Chris Adams, I would offer some advice, from one man who knows solitude to another: don't give up your friend so easily."
"What do you know of that?"
Kenobi smiled. "Very little. But I have had companions, and I have been alone—and, as I think you know, you cannot really escape loss either way. I would take my family back today, even if I had to grieve them again tomorrow."
Before Chris could reply, he started to attention as the unmistakable sound of gunshots echoed through the building.
"Don't worry—Vin's not in danger," Kenobi said quickly. Chris paused in his instinctive movement toward the sound, but he didn't relax his stance. "There's a shooting range downstairs. He's talking with the man practicing. But go," Kenobi continued when Chris remained alert, senses trained on iron staircase, "see for yourself."
Chris moved quickly, walking down the stairs. He registered, in a peripheral way, the incongruity of the room he was descending into, but most of his attention was on what direction the noise was coming from. The shooting had stopped, replaced with indistinct voices; Chris walked quickly around the platforms he found himself on until he could see Vin below, speaking with a man dressed in bulky black, and their words grew understandable.
"Yes—and no," the other man was saying. Then he did something with his gun that made a noise like no weapon discharge Chris had ever heard. "His life is over. But I haven't met him yet."
Out of context, Chris was unable to parse that for any identifiable meaning. Below him, Vin was silent for a moment—perhaps having the same difficulty even with context. But then he spoke, his tone the same mix of understanding and confrontation that Chris had heard in a farmer's hut when his private hopes had been dragged into the light, to be smashed alongside Vin's. "This last job…I sure don't disagree with Chris, that we gunslingers always lose. But I thought, maybe, this time we'd won something, too, the two of us. But no such luck."
The regret that Chris had tried to escape on the edge of town caught up with him, a blow to the gut. Vin looked up at a gesture from the other man; Chris, unmoving, caught his friend's eye and held it. He still didn't move as Vin gave him a nod and turned to say something too low to hear to the other man. Then he was turning sharply on his heel, ascending the stairs, and approaching Chris on the landing.
"Buy you a drink?" His eyes gave nothing away.
"It's not 'buy' here."
"That's why I can afford it," Vin returned. "Won't get another chance like this." He turned toward the spiral staircase. Chris followed.
Kenobi was still at the bar; Vin relayed their order and they settled at one of the tables.
"Vin," said Chris. The other man faced him, forehead creased interrogatively. "It's been good—ridin' with you." He met Vin's expressionless stare, lifted the glass Kenobi had just set down in front of him, and smiled at his friend. "Suckers?"
Vin's answering grin was slow but true, creasing dust lines through weathered skin, carrying the grief of the last few days and yet, despite that loss, the knowledge that this time they might have gained something. He raised his glass.
"Suckers."