“No, I left it in my lap.”

“Maybe you lied about both of them.”

“You got one quick way to find out, fat man.” Boag smiled amiably. “I got one in here with your name on it, Jackson.”

“What you got against me, boy? What I ever do to you?”

“Sure. Now you can tell me you weren’t one of those guns shooting at me from the riverboat when I went in the water.”

“What if I was? You asked for that.”

“’Course I did,” Boag muttered. “Now let’s talk about Mr. Pickett a while.”

Smith was sitting up. Groggy. Fingering his jaw. His Adam’s apple rode up and down his throat in spasms; his thin face looked sick. “Christ I think you bust my jaw.”

“No,” Boag said. “But it’ll hurt to chew for a week or so. You better stick to soft food.”

He went back to the fat one: “I said let’s talk about Mr. Pickett.”

“What about him?”

“I ain’t greedy, Jackson, I don’t want more than you got. All I want is the name of a place.”

“What place?”

“Where I can find Mr. Pickett.”

Smith snickered and winced and touched his jaw very gently.

Jackson said, “Listen, he double-crossed us the same way he double-crossed you. He tooken off with the gold, him and Ben Stryker and Gutierrez and a couple others. The rest of us scattered and hid out on account we didn’t want them gunning after us one by one.”

Boag smiled a little. “And you expect me to buy that right off the shelf”

“It’s the truth, I can’t hep it. Smith, you tell him.”

“I ain’t likely to believe him more than you,” Boag said. “Now why don’t we try it again. Pretend like I asked the same question and you get to answer it like you never heard it before.”

“Boy, the trouble with you, you don’t wear your hat square on your head. You think we’d be up here in this miserable hole if we had some of that gold to spend?”

“Why don’t you just tell me why you’re up here in this miserable hole.”

“I told you boy, we hiding out from Pickett’s guns.”

Boag sighed. “How long you been riding for Mr. Pickett, Jackson? Twenty years?”

“Twenty-three. And the thanks I get——”

“Let’s us go up in the woods a ways,” Boag said. “We’ll set and jaw.” He rammed one of the revolvers into his belt and plucked the jug off the table. “We’ll take this here for company.”

He stood up waggling the revolver in his right hand. “Back door, gents.”

They went out the door ahead of him and they were ready to jump him when he came through it but he jabbed the pistol-barrel hard into Jackson’s diaphragm and Jackson folded up on the ground and sucked for breath. Boag wheeled toward Smith but Smith wasn’t fighting, he was slithering back inside.

Boag whipped around the doorframe but Smith had reached the table just inside. Smith batted the table back at him and it hit Boag between the knees and the crotch. It didn’t knock him down but it pushed him back from the door and by the time he got in the doorway again and shoved the table aside Smith was diving at the chair where his gunbelt hung. He knocked the chair over with him and went sliding along the floor trying to fumble the six-gun out of leather. Boag was wary of Jackson behind him but he tried to sight a clear shot through the tables and chairs. He didn’t get one before Smith got hold of the gun; Smith was shooting through the toe of the holster and that was no aid to accuracy and after Smith’s second bullet punched into the doorjamb Boag got an unobstructed line on his neck and put a bullet into it.

He didn’t wait to see its effect; what he aimed at, he hit. He spun backward through the door and cocked the revolver and let his voice sing out loud toward the wide round backside of Jackson who was scrambling up toward the pines. “Freeze.”

Jackson stopped and turned. He looked unhappy as a soaked cat.

“Come on back here.”

Jackson started to waddle and Boag flattened his shoulder-blades against the wall beside the open door in case Smith still had enough blood in him to come after him.

Boag said, “Run, you fat trash. Run.”

Jackson started to lope. His belly flopped up and down and his arms pumped. He was short of breath by the time he came up; it had only been thirty yards. Boag said, “Go on inside ahead of me.” He pushed his gun into Jackson’s kidney and marched him inside with an armlock around Jackson’s fat throat.

The shield was unnecessary. Smith wasn’t dead yet but he hadn’t moved six inches from where he’d fallen. The three card-players and the proprietor hadn’t stirred; they watched Boag with no show of friendliness but no show of threat either. These were all outsiders to them and they didn’t care who killed whom, so long as no citizens got stray lead.

Boag hauled Jackson outside again. “You got a horse in that corral up there?”

“I reckon.”

“Let’s go saddle up then.”

“Wait a minute. Can’t we talk here?”

“I don’t think we want to be disturbed.”

“I’d just as soon not leave this town.”

“Well you ain’t got a vote, Jackson. Now let’s go get your horse.”

Boag picked a spot back in the mountains six or seven miles away from Tres Osos. He hobbled his horse and hobbled Jackson’s horse and then he unlashed Jackson’s wrists from the saddlehorn and let Jackson step down. While Jackson rubbed some circulation back into his hands Boag loosened the cinches and carried Jackson’s rifle over to a flat slab of rock. “Come on over here. Bring my canteen.”

“Canteen?”

“Just bring it, stupid.”

It was a clear night, part of a moon and plenty of stars. It took Jackson’s clumsy hands a long time to untie the canteen. He brought it with him. Boag pointed to a little bowl-shaped depression in the slab of granite. “Empty it in there.”

“All of it?”

“There’s plenty of springs up here. Nobody’ll go thirsty.”

Jackson emptied it into the bowl. The water gurgled ominously. It made a little pool of motionless liquid a foot in diameter and four or five inches deep.

Boag cut a six-foot length of rope and tossed it to him. “Tie your ankles together now. I’m going to check it afterward so you may as well make it good and tight the first time.”

“What the hell you up to, boy?”

“Quit calling me boy, Jackson. Just because you outweigh me by forty pounds of lard.”

“What you got in mind here?”

“Never you mind. You just do what you’re told.”

“Why?”

“Because I got this gun pointed at your ass, you stupid trash.”

Jackson sat down with a grunt and doubled his knees up under his chin and wrapped the rope around his ankles. Boag watched him cinch it up and tie a double bowline knot in it. Boag said, “You’re pretty good with knots.”

“I’ve hung a few nigger boys in my time.”

“You ain’t making friends with me that way.”

“You can go fuck yourself, boy.”

“Lay down on your belly,” Boag said. He took the rope he’d used on Jackson’s wrists before; he tied Jackson’s arms together, sitting on Jackson’s buttocks while he yanked the tie up tight. Jackson’s cheek was pressed into the rough surface of the rock; Jackson said, “Hey.”

“Well I’m sorry we ain’t got no feather pillows.” When Boag was satisfied with the tie he climbed off the man. “You can roll over and set up.”

Jackson showed his distress but he managed to heave himself onto his back and sit up without scraping too much skin off his hands. He glanced at the little pool of water a few yards off to his left.

“Now you’re hogtied and sweatin’ and you don’t know for sure what’s coming next. I’d tell you but it might spoil the fun. I’ll just tell you this much. You can save yourself whatever it is by telling me where I can find Mr. Pickett.”

“I told you, boy. You just don’t listen. I got no idea where he’s at.”

Boag decided to save the pool of water a while. Lead up to it first. He walked over to Jackson and hunkered down and put his palms flat against Jackson’s jowly cheeks. Held his thumbs over Jackson’s eyes and pressed slowly. Enough of it and it would crush in Jackson’s eyeballs. He kept increasing the pressure until Jackson screamed.