Two Brothers Read Free Page B

week—she’d gone there to settle some business and buy a wedding dress, and apparently decided to surprise him by coming home early. Now she was lying on the ground, broken like a glass doll dropped from a great height.
    He’d knelt there, gathered her up in his arms, rocking her, making a strange, howling sound that seemed to rise up out of the earth itself, through his knees and belly and chest. Just remembering wrung his stomach and brought out a cold sweat all over him.
    “From the looks of you,” Tristan observed, “I’d say you recall it, all right.” He scratched his chin again. “I work for the man who owns that stage line,” he said, at his leisure.“There was a good-sized payroll on board, on its way to the bank in Silver City. My employer would like to know where that money wound up, among other things.”
    Shay rubbed his eyes angrily with a thumb and forefinger. “Five people were killed that day,” he said. “Was your ‘employer’ ever interested in that?”
    “There wasn’t a hell of a lot he could do about it,” Tristan pointed out coolly. “The money, on the other hand, might be salvageable.”
    “It’s scattered from here to Mexico City by now.”
    “You make any effort to find out what happened—Marshal? Or were you already a drinkin’ man by then?”
    Shay spat a curse. “I raised a posse and tracked those bastards from one end of this state to the other. We never turned up so much as a nose hair.”
    “Could be they’ve been right here in Prominence, all along, blending in with the town folk. They didn’t leave many clues behind, as I understand it.”
    “Just bodies and an empty strongbox,” Shay said bitterly.
    “You got a barber in this town?” Saint-Laurent shoved his .45 back into the holster and stood.
    It took Shay a moment or two to catch up. “What?”
    “If I’m going to live in polite company, I’d better get a shave and wash this walnut juice out of my hair. Do you have a home, Marshal, or do you just wear those same clothes every day and live right here at the jail?”
    Shay stood, hands raised to chest level, palms out. “Wait just a damn minute, here. You may be my brother, but you’re a might too free with your insults for my taste. And why in hell and tarnation would anybody put walnut juice in their hair?”
    Tristan reached for the pistol he’d taken from Shay and handed it over. Shay might not have spoken at all for all the mind his brother paid. “It’s going to be a shock to the town, I imagine, there being two of us. We’d best take things slowly. Roust the barber out of bed and fetch himover here. And borrow a washtub and some soap while you’re about it.”
    “If you’re through spouting orders,” Shay said, passing his brother in the open doorway of the cell, “maybe I can get a word in sideways.” He went to the stove, jerked open the door, and stirred the embers with a poker. The coffee in the blue enamel pot on top was two days old, by his reckoning, which ought to give it some kick. “First of all, if you want a bath and a barber, you just take yourself down the street to the hotel and hire a room. And don’t be trying to give anybody the impression that you’re me, if that’s what you’ve got in mind. I’ve lived in this town all my life and these folks know me. They’d see right through you.”
    “What good is being a twin if you can’t fool a few people now and then?” Tristan smoothed his beard, sighed and grinned again. “I imagine you’re right, though. They’ve probably forgotten what you look like sober. And when was the last time you took a bath?”
    Shay added fresh grounds to the moldering brew in the coffeepot, grasped the handle, and gave it a shake for good measure. “I’ve taken all the guff I want from you,” he said.
    “You got a woman?” Tristan watched him with interest, waiting for an answer.
    For no earthly reason, Shay thought of Aislinn Lethaby, over at the hotel dining hall, where he