Free City of Widows by Loren D. Estleman Page A

illegal.”
    â€œThe only reason to chase a man at night is to get back what he has taken, no?”
    â€œWhat’s to stop him from trying again? We don’t even know who he is.”
    â€œOh, we know his name.”
    â€œWe do?”
    The toothy smile behind his handlebars was eager to please in a way that made me want to push it in. “I apologize, señor. I forget you are new. The man with the hole in his hand is Abel Freestone. The man you have killed is called Dutch Tim. Everyone in this country knows who they favor with their company.”
    I glanced toward the door the man with the Springfield had gone through. I remembered the vaguely familiar set of his features. “For a twin, Ross Baronet doesn’t look that much like his brother, does he?”
    â€œThey are not, how do you say, identical.”
    â€œLike hell they’re not,” I said.
    The man on the floor had stopped squirming.

8
    T HE BELL IN the mission tower began to bang out Mass a few minutes before seven Sunday morning. The sun wedging its way over the San Andres was pretty but the color reminded me of the corruption we’d had to scrape off the floor of the Princess Friday night. The planks would still need sanding and a fresh application of sawdust to remove Dutch Tim’s final traces. As for the rest of him, I’d given five dollars to the little Mexican who sheared hair at the barbershop to scratch a hole in the cramped patch of unconsecrated ground east of town and erect a board. He doubled as town undertaker.
    He weighed the gold piece on his palm. “A board for a bandit?”
    â€œI want his friends to see what his line of work got him.”
    â€œYou wish an inscription?”
    I thought. “‘God’s finger touched him and he slept.’”
    â€œMore like a full load of double-ought buck,” said Junior when he heard about it.
    That was Saturday morning. Now, after four hours’ sleep on top of the Saturday night crush, I was in front of the Princess lashing my bedroll across the claybank’s big rump. Junior came out yawning bitterly in his morning sheepskin and wideawake hat.
    â€œYou got a good day for it,” he said, leaning against a porch post.
    â€œYes. I can cook my noon dinner on a rock without having to make a fire.”
    â€œDamn shame sending you back out into it. You just got here.”
    â€œNo help for it. Your feelings about the sheriff are too strong to negotiate with him and I doubt Colleen’s purse pistol shoots far enough to keep her out of some three-legged buck’s wigwam.”
    â€œBaronet’s bound to think Ross scared you into offering him a cut.”
    â€œI disagree. Ross is out two men because of us.”
    â€œThink he knew what Ross was up to?”
    â€œMaybe. If he did he’ll offer me special protection before I even bring up our proposition.” I checked the magazine of the Winchester and scabbarded it.
    â€œHere come las viudas.”
    I turned in time to see the last of perhaps a dozen old women step off the boardwalk on the other side of the street and turn in the direction of the mission. They were dressed all in black from bonnets to shoes, their dark hems dragging like crows’ wings in the dust of the street. One or two fingered rosaries; the rest clutched their shawls at the throat and stared straight ahead as they walked, moving with a kind of bicycling gait that raised a yellow plume in their wake. The group swept along like some low-hanging cloud and seemed to drain the life from everything it passed.
    Junior said, “California has its swallows and we have our magpies. They gather at one or another’s house at first light and go to Mass in a flock. That’s how it’s been every Sunday for as long as anyone can remember.”
    â€œI thought it was just some leftover legend. I didn’t think the widows were real.”
    â€œIn a few years they won’t be.