Free Blood Duel by David Robbins, Ralph Compton Page A

well, the Mexicans agreed, so everything worked out as we wanted it to,” Chester said.
    “As your wife wanted,” Win said. “And they have names, you know.”
    “Who?”
    “Placido and Arturo.”
    “I know what their names are,” Chester said testily. “I just can’t ever seem to remember them.”
    “Ah,” Win said.
    Chester shifted in his chair. “Don’t take that tone with me, Winifred Curry. I resent what you are implying. I don’t think any less of them because they are Mexican than any other white man would.” He grunted. “Hell, the only reason you know their names is because they come in for a tequila every now and then.”
    “I like them,” Win said. “They mind their own business and keep to themselves, yet they were ready to help you when you asked them.”
    “Placido was. I’m not so sure the other one, Arturo, liked the idea.”
    “To keep four bodies in their stable until the bodies are ready to rot?” Win said. “I can’t imagine why he had to be persuaded.”
    “You are much too critical today, do you know that?” Chester shifted away from him and gloomily regarded the expanse of prairie that surrounded Coffin Varnish.
    “If I am,” Win said, “it is only because I can’t ignorethe truth any longer. I have finally come to terms with it.”
    “With what?”
    “Coffin Varnish won’t last another year. You and I will be forced to close. Placido and Arturo, too. What good is a livery in the middle of nowhere? Without a store handy to meet their needs, the Giorgios will be forced to move, too. That will leave Anderson and his wife all alone. They might stay on a while, given they can live off the land. But they will be all that’s left. The buildings will slowly rot away. Five years from now Coffin Varnish will be a ghost town.”
    “God, you are depressing.”
    Win stood. “My glass is empty.” He started to turn but stopped, his keen eyes narrowing. “Can it be? Maybe that harebrained plan of your wife’s will bring in some business, after all.”
    Chester shot out of his chair and moved from under the overhang. He squinted against the glare, but all he saw were heat waves. “What do you see? A rider?”
    “A wagon.”
    Chester strained his eyes until they hurt and still did not see it. “You must be part hawk. Instead of running a whiskey mill, you should scout for the army.”
    “I’m allergic to arrows in my hide.”
    Winifred went in and Chester sat back down to await the wagon. But he was so nervous he could not sit still. A lot was riding on his wife’s idea. They could hold out in Coffin Varnish longer if it worked. Or it could give them the money to buy freight wagons and move somewhere they could earn a living. So long asit was not Dodge City. He would live anywhere on earth but there.
    Chester yawned. The heat and the whiskey were making him drowsy. Summers in Kansas were too hot for his liking. It had to be one hundred there in the shade. It was almost enough to make him consider filling the washtub with water and soaking in it for a while to cool down, but he had had a bath a month ago, and filling the basin was a chore.
    Chester stared out over the sea of dry grass. At last he could see it, a spindly spider lumbering toward Coffin Varnish, or so it appeared thanks to the shimmering haze and the distance. How in God’s name Winifred had seen it that far out, he would never know.
    The spider grew and became a team pulling a carriage. A carriage, not a buckboard. Chester could not remember the last time he saw a carriage. The well-to-do owned them. City and town dwellers, as a rule. Farmers and ranchers made do with buckboards. You could haul crops and dirt and manure in a buckboard. All you could haul in a carriage was people.
    Winifred emerged, his glass refilled. “They aren’t here yet?” He took a sip, then asked, “Have you seen what it is?”
    “I’m not blind,” Chester snapped.
    “Your wife says you need spectacles but you are too stubborn