Free The Crack in the Lens by Steve Hockensmith

years it got to be like a second skin—a skin I’d been happy to shed. The thought of slipping back into it made me itchy.
    “You know,” I said, “if you’re gonna give me a coronary sneakin’ in like that come morning, the least you could do is bring me what I really want.”
    “Which is what?”
    “Whadaya think?” I popped the hat on my head. Its tall-peaked top made me feel like I’d just put on a dunce cap. “Doughnuts.”
    “Don’t worry. We’ll fill that tub gut of yours before we go.”
    I patted my stomach. It did jiggle a bit, I admit, but I still felt myself wronged.
    “This ain’t no tub. It ain’t even a chamber pot. Why, I could work it down to…hold on.” I looked up at my brother. “Go?”
    “Yeah, go. I thunk up a new plan. If we can’t get anything outta the gals at the Phoenix, I figure we should try the next best thing. Their clee-on-tell.”
    “Meanin’ punchers? So we’re headed out to a ranch?”
    “ The ranch. The one I used to work for—the Lucky Seven. What with Ragsdale and Bock and all the law around here set against us, it’s about time we rounded up some folks for our side.”
    I nodded.
    “Makes sense.”
    “Oh, I’m so pleased to hear you think so.” Old Red snatched up the Levi’s and pushed them against my chamber pot. “Now stop jawin’ and get dressed. I thought you was hungry.”
    He thought right. So when we got to the little hole-in-the-wall lunch counter Gustav had picked out for our morning repast, I ordered everything on the menu. Which wasn’t hard to do, actually: The menu, written on a chalkboard the approximate size of a handkerchief, was only three lines long.
    BAKIN & EGGS —5¢
    FRY’D TATERS —5¢
    COFFY —5¢
    The little hash house was of a kind with a thousand others you’ll find attached like ticks to a cowtown outskirts. It was spitting distance from the stockyards and railroad depot—which was appropriate, as spitting was exactly what a man was wont to do after taking a sip of the gritty black sludge slopped into his COFFY cup. Yet the dozen or so other customers weren’t complaining, them being cowboys or railroad men long accustomed to Arbuckle the color and consistency of axle grease.
    I was pleased to see my new clothes were already paying off in one regard: I received nary a sneer from our fellow diners…for a couple minutes, at least.
    “Mornin’, Ike!” the greasy old coosie who ran the place called out, and within seconds nearly every other man there had taken up the call. The exceptions being my brother, who opted for a hissed “Shit,” and myself, who nearly spit out a mouthful of half-chewed BAKIN .
    I peeked over my shoulder to find a tall, lean man with a star on his chest sauntering into the cookshack.
    There was a red splotch high up on his left cheek the exact size and shape of a shoe heel.
    In San Francisco’s Chinatown just a few weeks before, I’d run across the notion of yin and yang: two things that are equal though entirely opposite. Taking my first good look at Ike Rucker, I got the feeling I was seeing Milford Bales’s yin. Or maybe his yang, though that sounds vaguely vulgar.
    Where the town marshal was baby-faced and soft-bellied, the county sheriff was as sinewy as a rawhide whip. While Bales had to work hard to put up a tough front, a layer of sweat glistening over the nerves all a-jitter just under the skin, Rucker looked like he’d been born wearing a badge. He seemed at ease, amused, but with an air of command that wasn’t so much haughtiness as complete and utter confidence.
    Rucker and Bales may have both been the Law thereabouts, but the men—and the Law as they embodied it—couldn’t have been more different.
    “Boys,” Rucker said to the customers lined up along the sagging plankboard counter, and he smiled and touched the brim of his hat.
    “What’ll it be this mornin’, Ike?” the cookie asked.
    “Oh, just a cup of coffee and—”
    That’s when Rucker pretended to spot