Virgil looked at me again.

“Sounds right to me,” I said.

Virgil nodded.

“And I don’t want Pony taking care of us,” Allie said. “I want Pony to be with you.”

“Who looks out for you and Laurel?” Virgil said.

“Me,” Allie said.

“You?”

“I have a gun; I know how to shoot,” Allie said. “You taught me.”

Laurel stepped to Virgil’s chair and whispered to him. He listened. He nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “We don’t go to Del Rio.”

“We can pretend to,” I said.

“And where do Allie and Laurel go?” Virgil said. “Ain’t good tactics to leave them out for Pike.”

“No,” I said. “We need to hide them.”

“Where?” Virgil said.

No one spoke for a moment, and then I said, “Lemme go talk to my friend Frisco.”

“The whore?”

“Yes,” I said.

“In Pike’s Palace?” Virgil said.

“Where would he be less likely to look?” I said.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” I said.

“Take you that long?” Virgil said.

“No,” I said. “But I might have to wait my turn.”

Allie smiled at me.

“Not if I was Frisco,” she said.

I said, “Thank you, Allie.”

And I stood and walked back up toward Pike’s Palace.

FRISCO’S ROOM AND PLACE of employment was on the second floor at Pike’s. But I went boldly in. I had till morning to leave town.

“Come for a good-bye poke,” Frisco said when she let me in.

“Good-bye?” I said.

Frisco closed the door and locked it. We sat on her bed together.

“Heard you was leaving town tomorrow,” she said.

“Word gets around,” I said.

“Pike’s telling everybody he run you and Virgil Cole out of town,” she said.

“Proud of himself,” I said.

“Yes,” Frisco said.

She was wearing a short, thin nightgown and not much else.

“Before we get into farewells,” I said, “I need a favor.”

“You know me, Everett,” Frisco said. “I only do the regular things. I don’t do no specialties.”

“None needed,” I said. “I need to hide two women here, in this room, for a few hours tomorrow.”

“Two women?”

“Yep.”

“The ones with you and Virgil?” she said. “Allie and the kid, the one the Indian took?”

“Yes,” I said.

I had no problem lying to her, but who else would it be?

“Her mother, what was her name?”

“Mary Beth,” I said. “Mary Beth Ostermueller.”

“Yeah, her,” Frisco said. “Killed herself two rooms down from here. Drunk, put a forty-five in her mouth and blew the top of her head off.”

“I know,” I said.

“Awful mess,” Frisco said. “Pike was furious, but she was already dead, you know, so he couldn’t kill her. Took a couple days to get that room cleaned up.”

“Forty-five can make a big exit hole,” I said.

“I guess,” Frisco said. “Why’d she do that, anyway?”

“Life was too hard, I guess.”

“That hard?”

“She and her daughter had a bad time of it, ’fore we got them back.”

“Daughter didn’t kill herself.”

“No,” I said. “I think having her daughter watch what happened to her, and her having to watch while it happened to her daughter, right in front of her…”

Frisco nodded.

“Woman needed to be tougher,” Frisco said.

“She did,” I said. “And she wasn’t.”

“I take these two women in here,” Frisco said, “and Pike finds out, what happens?”

“He’ll kill them,” I said. “And you.”

“So why should I take the chance?” Frisco said.

“ ’Cause we plan to kill him,” I said. “ ’Fore he finds out.”

Frisco nodded.

“They can stay here; I’ll move down with Big Red,” she said. “You don’t kill him, I’ll claim I don’t know how they got in here, but I come back and found the door locked and figured one of the other girls was using the room for business.”

“Might work,” I said.

“When they coming?”

“Tomorrow morning,” I said. “You know Pony Flores?”

“No.”

“Breed,” I said. “Dark, kind of tall, works some for Pike.”

“Tall as you?”

“Nope,” I said. “More like Virgil.”

“High moccasins, knife in the top?” Frisco said.

“That’s him,” I said. “He’ll bring them in the morning.”

“Ain’t normally very busy in the morning. They come in; I go out.”

“Thank you,” I said.

Frisco leaned her head against my shoulder.

“I’ll miss you,” she said. “You’re a good guy.”

“You too,” I said.

“Want to do it ’fore you go?” she said.

“I would,” I said.

Frisco grinned and patted my crotch.

“I could tell,” she said.

IN THE MORNING, Virgil and I walked with Allie and Laurel down to the train station and got aboard the nine-o’clock train to Del Rio. Allie carried a carpetbag. Virgil and I just had weapons and ammunition. The train left the station on time, and when we were under way, Virgil got up and spoke with the conductor. The conductor shook his head and Virgil tapped the deputy star on his shirt and spoke again. The conductor looked at us and paused, then nodded, and moved on, toward the front of the train.

Virgil came back and sat, on the aisle, with his right hand free, where he could look at the door at the front of the car. I sat opposite, with the eight-gauge beside me, where I could look at the back door, same as we always did. We didn’t speak of it, we did it automatically, the way we always spread apart approaching a fight or entering a strange place. We’d been doing what we did for so long that sometimes we seemed to me like two parts of the same apparatus.

As the train came in close to the river, I could feel it begin to slow, and about a half-mile into the straightaway, it braked and came to a sort of muttering halt the way trains do. We stood and got off the train. Pony was there, with four saddle horses. The horses were grazing comfortably on tether. We walked to the horses, and the train started up and moved south with slowly increasing speed.

We got the women mounted without saying anything.

“You know how you’re going to get them into Frisco’s room,” Virgil said.

Pony nodded.

“Know all parts of Pike’s Palace,” Pony said.

“Including the whores’ quarters,” Virgil said.

“Them ’specially, jefe,” he said.

“You got the gun I gave you,” Virgil said to Allie.

“In my bag,” she said.

“And bullets,” Virgil said.

Allie nodded and patted the carpetbag that hung on her saddle horn.

“And you’ll stay in there and be quiet no matter what,” Virgil said.

“Yes.”

Pony pulled his horse up next to Laurel. He took a.45 derringer out of his coat pocket, broke it open. Took out the two bullets, closed it again.

“Chiquita,” Pony said.

He held the gun out and cocked it.

“Click,” Pony said.

He pulled the trigger.

“Bang,” he said.

He cocked it again and pulled the trigger again.

“Click,” he said. “Bang.”

Laurel nodded.

“Do that?” Pony said, and handed her the gun.

She cocked it.

Pony nodded and said, “Click.”

She pulled the trigger.

Pony said, “Bang.”

She nodded and dry-fired it again. Then she gave the gun back to Pony. He loaded it.

“Now,” Pony said. “Click-bang only when you mean it.”

He pointed to the middle of his body.

“Shoot here,” he said.

Laurel nodded.

“Shoot only to protect yourself,” I said.

She nodded and put the gun in her coat pocket.

Virgil said, “You get them settled, Pony.”

“Sí.”

“Nobody sees them.”

“Sí.”

“We’ll be along in the afternoon. We see you in the saloon, we know it’s all gone right.”

Pony nodded and turned his horse and rode a little way toward town, and paused and waited for the women.

Allie paused and looked at Virgil.

“I love you,” she said.

Virgil nodded.

Laurel pulled her horse close to him and bent down from the saddle and whispered to him.