“Just a headache.”

“Good. So you didn’t stink the place up.”

“Smells fine in there.” It smells like you, he thought. He rubbed her mussed hair. She stepped past him and shut the door.

In the bedroom he found Jean still asleep. He closed the door, hung up his robe, and crawled into bed. The sheets on his side were cool. He rolled, and curled himself against Jean’s back. He slipped an arm down across her belly. She was warm and smooth. He eased his face against her hair. The smell of her was like those that had kept him company through the night.

She and Lane must use some of the same stuff, he thought, snuggling against her.

“Time to get up?” she mumbled.

“Not yet.”

“Good. Hold me for a while.”

Thirty-three

“Try not to shoot each other,” Barbara said through the van’s open window. She gave Pete a kiss, then stepped backward.

Jean, by the passenger window, frowned at Larry and said, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m okay.”

Ever since getting up, he’d been plagued by stomach cramps and loose bowels. Jean had suggested he phone Pete and cancel the outing. He’d been tempted. But he knew that his problem was caused by nerves. If he called off the trip to Sagebrush Flat, Pete would insist on trying it again tomorrow. Better to get it over with.

“What’s the problem, pardner?” Pete asked.

“A little indigestion,” he said. He didn’t want to discuss his runs. Not with Barbara standing there. “I’m fine now.”

“Okey-doke. We’re off.”

Jean kissed Larry and moved out of the way.

Pete turned the ignition key. Click-click-click. He twisted it again. Nothing. “Shit!”

“Must be the battery,” Larry said.

Pete tried again. Again he said, “Shit.”

Larry felt like celebrating.

“Do you want to jump it?” Jean asked, approaching the passenger window.

“No. Damn it!” Pete whacked the steering wheel with his palm.

“Calm down,” Barbara told him. “It’s not the end of the world. Why don’t we jump it, and you can stop by the service station on the way out and have the problem taken care of?”

“It’s probably gonna need a new battery.” He pounded the wheel again. “There goes the rest of the morning.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Barbara insisted.

“Maybe we weren’t meant to go shooting today,” Larry said.

“We’ll take your car,” Pete told his wife.

“Oh? Terrific. And how am I supposed to get to the grocery store?”

“You can walk, for all I...”

“Oh, sure thing. Why don’t you...”

“Wait,” Jean interrupted. “Hold it. Why don’t you guys just take one of our cars?”

Thanks a heap, Larry thought.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d hate to take a chance on the Dodge overheating...”

“Take the Mustang.”

“Maybe Lane has plans.”

“Don’t worry about it. If she wants to go someplace, she can take the Dodge.”

Larry nodded. Why argue? We’re meant to go after all, he thought.

They climbed from the van. They transferred the VCR camcorder, their firearms, food, and beer to the red Mustang. Larry settled in behind the steering wheel. Pete harnessed himself into the passenger seat.

“Let’s hope this one works,” Pete said.

“Yeah.”

He knew it would work. Nothing was going to save him from his rendezvous with Sagebrush Flat.

He turned the key. The engine grumbled to life.

The wives stood side by side, smiling and waving as Larry backed the Mustang onto the road.

“Is this exciting, or what?” Pete said, grinning.

“Or what.”

“Should be just around this next bend,” Pete said.

Larry hoped he would find the town occupied. This was a Saturday, after all. Maybe some folks on an outing had stopped to explore the “ghost town.” Maybe some kids had dropped by to decorate the walls with grafitti or shoot the place up. Even a biker gang would be a welcome sight. Anyone would do. Just so the town wasn’t deserted and they had to give up their hunt for Uriah.

But he rounded the bend, and the broad main road through Sagebrush Flat stretched in front of him, glaring in the sunlight, empty except for a tumbleweed rolling lazily past the saloon.

“Stop the car,” Pete said. “I’ll get us some footage.” He climbed out with his video camera. Standing in the middle of the road, he turned slowly from side to side, panning the area ahead. Then he stepped closer to Larry’s window. “I’ll get you driving in. Head on up there and park at the hotel.”

“Seems kind of dippy to me.”

“Hey. Did Doug MacArthur complain when he had to wade ashore at Bataan?”

“I don’t think it was Bataan.”

“Wherever. This is usreturning, pardner.”

“Right,” he muttered.

He drove the rest of the way alone, swung off the road in front of the hotel and got out. Pete, still about fifty yards away, was walking slowly forward, the camera to his eye.

“Open the trunk!” Pete called. “Strap on your shootin‘ iron.”

He opened the trunk, lifted out his holstered Ruger .22, and strapped the belt low around his hips. Squinting at Pete, he tugged the brim of his battered old Stetson down across his eyes.

“Terrific!” Pete called. “Now, slap some leather!”

“Get real,” he said.

“Well, at least loadit.”

He supposed that wasn’t a bad idea. If they somehow did manage to run into Uriah, he didn’t want to be standing there with an empty gun.

He sat on the rear bumper, dumped some .22 magnums into his hand and started feeding them into the cylinder. By the time he finished, Pete was only a couple of yards away.

“Gimme an Eastwood sneer.”

“If Uriah’s watching all this, he’ll think we’re clowns.

“Good. Give him a false sense of security.”

“False, huh?” He dropped a handful of cartridges into the pocket of his shirt and set the box down inside the trunk. “Should we have a beer before we start?” he asked.

“Not yet. Here, take this. I don’t want to be left out.”

He gave the camera to Larry and showed him how to work it. Larry stepped away from the car, picked up Pete in the viewfinder and recorded him strapping on his gun-belt.

“A couple of real hombres, huh?”

“Yup,” Larry said.

It felt good, he realized, to be dressed up in his boots, faded jeans, old blue workshirt, and cowboy hat. It especially felt good to have the holster against his leg and know it held a real six-shooter with live rounds in the cylinder. Like playing cowboys for real.

Pete, though smaller than Larry, looked twice as tough. He wore scuffed and dusty combat boots. The cuffs of his jeans were frayed. The sleeves of his plaid shirt were turned up, revealing his thick hairy forearms. The shirt, too tight across his chest, bulged with the push of his muscles. His dirty straw hat, sides curled up and front swooping low, looked like something he might’ve swiped off a drunken old-timer in an alley behind a saloon. But the best part was the black handlebar mustache, sprinkled with flecks of gray. The mustache was more than dress-up. It was real.

Leaning back against the car, Pete fed ammo into his revolver. His bullets looked about three times the size of Larry’s.

“I’m gonna have to get me a forty-five or something,” Larry said.

“Yeah. Get yourself a piece with some real stopping power.” Pete holstered his magnum. Squinting into the camera, he poked a cigarette into the corner of his mouth. He lit it with a Bic. “Ready to go after our man?” he asked.

“How about a beer before we start?”

“Reckon that’d hit the spot.”

They leaned against the side of the car while they drank. Larry kept looking up and down the road, hoping someone might show up and ruin their plan.

Pete finished his cigarette. He tossed it down and mashed it under his boot. “This’ll be great in our book,” he said, “the two of us coming out here to kick ass.”