He wasn’t happy with the thought that somebody might have picked him out already. It was bad enough that the saloon girl, Nancy, had a feeling about him. But what else
could it be? He certainly did not look like somebody who would be worth robbing.
He had already checked out the area around his hotel, the saloon, and in Hell’s Half Acre in general, so he knew there were some streets that would be pretty well deserted this time of the evening. He turned down one of those streets, mindful of the sound of footsteps behind him.
Fort Worth had not yet gone to concrete sidewalks, so the footsteps echoed nicely on the boardwalk. From the sound, Roper deduced that the person following him was slight, with short strides.
Eventually, he rounded a corner and came to an alley he could step into. The footsteps came closer and closer, rushing just a bit as the person came to the corner. As they came around, Roper stepped out, sneaked his arm around the person’s neck. As he’d suspected, they were short and slight and didn’t offer much in the way of resistance beyond some feeble struggling. Roper dragged them farther into the alley.
“Just relax,” Roper said, “and tell me why you’re following me.”
The person gurgled a bit, as Roper’s forearm was pressing against their windpipe. Abruptly, their hat fell off and Roper found his nose in a tangle of fragrant hair. It was then he also noticed some lumps that would be odd for a man to have.
He released the person and turned them around. The alley was dark, but he was fairly certain he was looking into the red and mottled face of Dol Bennett.
“What the hell—” he said.
“You almost choked me to death,” she complained.
“Dol,” he said, “I could’ve killed you.”
“It feels like you tried!”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Can we go someplace and talk?” she asked. “And where I can get some water?”
“Damn it—” he said. “All right. This alley leads to the
back of my hotel. We’ll go to my room so nobody sees us together.”
“As long as you act like a perfect gentleman,” she said.
“What the—”
“That means no choking.”
He glared at her, then said, “I don’t think I can promise that.”
Once they were in his room with the lamp turned high, Roper could see that Dol was dressed much as he was so that, when she was wearing her hat, she looked like a short, disheveled man. With the hat off, he could see her feminine features clearly beneath the soot that covered her face.
The room had the bare minimum, a bed that was too small for Roper with a thin mattress, a flimsy chest with one drawer broken and hanging out, threadbare curtains on the single window, which had so much dirt on the glass it was almost opaque. The walls were so thin he could hear his neighbors with the whores they brought home at night. When he returned to the room and lit the lamp, insects skittered away back into the walls.
“Now,” he said, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Can I have some water?” she asked.
He poured her a glass and handed it to her. She drank half of it down and rubbed her neck tenderly.
“You’ve some grip,” she said.
“I’m not going to apologize for that,” he said. “I had no
idea who was following me, or why. You sounded like a herd of buffalo.”
“I was just trying to catch up to you so we could talk,” she said. “If I’d really wanted to follow you, you never would have known I was there.”
He doubted that but decided to let it go.
“Just tell me what you want, Dol,” Roper said, “and why you’re trying to get yourself killed by walking around Hell’s Half Acre dressed like that?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. “This is a great disguise.”
He studied her critically. Despite the disheveled appearance, she still seemed feminine to him. Maybe that was just because he knew who she was. But she still seemed the type—small, helpless—who would become a victim in the Half Acre.
“Never mind,” he said. “What do you want?”
“I want to work with you on this assignment.”
“I don’t have anything for you to do,” he told her. “Does your boss know you’re here?”
She frowned.
“William fired me as soon as you left.”
“No connection to me, I gather?”
“No,” she said, “he just said there was no place for me in the Pinkertons.”
“So you want to prove him wrong.”
“Yes! And I want you to help me.”
“I can’t do that, Dol,” he said. “I have too much to do, not to mention keeping myself alive.”
“I can watch your back!”
“I don’t know that,” Roper said, “and I can’t depend on it. I think what you have to do is go home.”
“Home?” she asked. “Where’s that? I’ve got nothing left in Chicago.”
“Where are you from?”
She frowned, almost pouted, and folded her arms.
“There’s nothing for me there either.”
“Do you have a place to stay?”
“I have a hotel room.”
“Where?”
“The White Elephant.”
“Why would you stay there,” he asked, “when you’re trying to blend in here in Hell’s Half Acre? Why do you think I’m staying here?”
“I—I didn’t think—”
“And it’s that kind of not thinking that could get you killed. And me!”
“I’m sorry…”
“Go home, Dol,” he said. “Go back east anyway. You’re not going to do me or yourself any good here.”
She just stood there, miserable.
“Do you have money?”
“Yes.”
“Go back to your hotel, get yourself cleaned up, and have a meal. You’ll feel better. Then go to the train station in the morning.”
She nodded, turned toward the door.
“And go out the back, the way we came in,” he said.
She nodded again and left without a word.
* * *
Outside the hotel, two men stared up at the single lit window.
“According to the clerk, that’s his room,” Ed Hague said.
“Okay,” Dan Giles said, “we’ll wait for it to go out before we go after him.”
“You sure Nancy’s right?” Hague asked. “This don’t look like a place a fella with money would stay.”
“She’s a good judge of men,” Giles said. “She says the guy ain’t what he seems to be, that’s good enough for me. She ain’t steered me wrong yet.”
“What’s your deal with her?” Hague asked.
“She gets twenty percent,” Giles said.
“That seems like a lot.”
“This is your first job with me,” Giles said. “You’ll see that she earns her keep.”
“I hope so,” Hague said. “I need to have somethin’ that’s gonna pay.”
“Don’t worry,” Giles said. “This pays.”
They settled into their darkened doorway and waited for the light in the window to go out.
* * *
Dol went out the back door of the hotel, then used an alley along the side to get to the front. She was about to step out onto the boardwalk when she thought she saw something move across the street, in the shadows. She stepped back and waited, and sure enough, saw two men standing in a doorway, looking up at the hotel.
She had a feeling she knew what they were looking at, so she decided to settle in herself and see what was going to happen.
After Dol left, Roper sat down on the bed, which was so hard it barely sagged beneath his weight. The girl was lucky she had not already gotten herself killed. He hoped she would listen to his advice and leave Fort Worth.
He rubbed his hand over his face—actually “Andy Blake’s” face—feeling the unfamiliar rasp of stubble on his palm. Tomorrow he’d have to go ahead and make his contact with the stockyard workers, but maybe he needed to do it at a different saloon, one where a saloon girl had not shown such interest in him. But he’d already put three days of research into this saloon and this group of men; he hated to waste the time.
He got undressed, doused the lamp, and got into bed. He hadn’t brought anything to read, because it wouldn’t do for “Andy Blake” to have Mark Twain or Charles Dickens in his room, just in case somebody came up to take a look.
He put his gun on the flimsy night table next to the bed and tried to go to sleep.
* * *
“There,” Giles said, “the light went out.”
“Let’s go,” Hague said, stepping from the doorway.
Giles grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“We have to give him time to fall asleep,” he said.
“If he’s awake, we can just kill him,” Hague said.
“I wanna do this without killin’ him if we can,” Giles said. “We’re just tryin’ to rob him.”
“Killin’ him would be a lot easier.”
“And it would get the law on our asses,” Giles said. “So far all I’ve done is rob people, and the law just figures that’s the price of doin’ business in the Half Acre. But if we kill him, that’ll change.”
Hague didn’t appear to like the idea, but he said, “You’re the boss.”
Giles
was
the boss. The robberies were his idea, and he was starting to think that maybe Ed Hague wasn’t the best recruit. After this one maybe he’d cut the man loose and look for someone else. Someone not quite so bloodthirsty.
“Fifteen minutes,” he said to Hague, “we’ll give it fifteen minutes.”
* * *
Dol watched the two men, saw one step from the doorway and the other pull him back. They were planning something, something in that hotel. It may have had nothing to do with Roper, but she decided to stick around and make sure. If they
were
after Roper, maybe this was her chance to prove herself to him.
She touched the .32 Colt she had tucked into her belt. And hoped when the time came, it would be enough gun.
* * *
Giles nudged Hague, who actually seemed to have fallen asleep standing up.
“Let’s move,” he said.
“Finally.”
They crossed the street and entered the hotel. The lobby was empty except for the clerk nodding off behind the cheap, flimsy front desk. There was a threadbare sofa with a cheap
table in front of it, but that was it for lobby furniture. The hotel was mostly used by the higher-class whores who didn’t work the streets.
The clerk looked up as they approached.
“Room six,” he said.
“Thanks.”
As they went up the stairs, Hague asked, “How much does he get?”
“Five percent.”
“Yer givin’ away a lot of your money.”
“Yeah,” Giles agreed, “I think maybe I am.”
* * *
Dol watched the two men enter the hotel by the front door, then retraced her steps down the alley to the back door and let herself back in. She used the back stairs to get up to the second floor in time to see the men creeping along the hallway. When they stopped in front of a door, she felt sure it was Roper’s.
She took the gun from her belt and started her own way down the hall.
* * *
Giles and Hague drew their guns, and Giles silently indicated to Hague that he should kick the door in. Hague nodded, backed up so that he was flat against the wall, then launched himself at the door. His feet struck it just below the doorknob and the door slammed open.
There was a flash of light from inside, and a bullet struck Hague dead center in his torso.
Giles panicked and turned to run, but Dol fired twice, hitting him both times and putting him down.
* * *
Roper was a notoriously light sleeper when he was working, and the fleabag hotel had noisy, creaky floorboards. He was aware as soon as the two men began creeping down the hall.
When the door slammed open, he fired one shot. He heard the other shots from the hall, and rushed out to see what was happening.
* * *
Dol ran down the hall, just as Roper came out his door. For a moment they pointed their guns at each other, then backed off.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I got the other one.”
“Damn it, Dol!” he said.
“What?” she asked, wide-eyed. “I helped you out here. I saw them outside and followed them in.”
“I wanted one of them alive,” he said. “I needed to find out if they were after me, or ‘Andy.’”
“Who’s Andy?” she asked.
Roper stared at her and said wearily, “Oh, Dol…”
Roper didn’t have time to properly chastise Dol for what she had done. The truth of the matter was he would have been fine without her help.
“Get out,” he told her, “before the law shows up.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to have to explain who you are,” he said, “because I’m not going to explain who I am.”
“Oh, all right,” she said, “but—”
“We’ll talk later,” he promised her.
“Okay,” she said happily, but he added, “Right before you get on the train to leave.”
“But—”
“Go!” he snapped. “And use the back door.”
A few of the other doors had opened and nervous-looking men had looked out, but Roper said, “Don’t worry. It’s got nothing to do with you.”
So once Dol left, the hall was empty but for Roper and the two bodies. That made him suspicious. Why hadn’t the desk clerk come running to see what happened? Maybe because he thought he already knew?
Before long a man with a badge came up the stairs and
stalked down the hall. By this time Roper had no gun in his hand and had adopted his “Andy Blake” persona.
“What the hell happened here?” the lawman asked. He was tall, slender, with the ferret face of someone who never looked happy. In his fifties, the sheriff, Roper assumed, had been wearing a badge for a long time. That could take all the joy out of a man for sure.
“I don’t know, Sheriff,” he said. “These fellas kicked in my door, and I defended myself.” He hoped the man wouldn’t be good enough to be able to tell that one of them had been shot from the hallway.
The lawman walked to each man, turned him over with his foot, and took a look.
“Do you know them?” Roper asked.
“I don’t know this one,” he said, “but this one’s a two-bit bushwhacker, usually has different partners.” He looked at Roper. “He usually targets people he knows have money. Were you flashin’ a roll tonight at one of the saloons?”
“Not me,” Roper said. “I ain’t got a roll to flash. In fact, I’m lookin’ for a job.”
“What’s your name?”
“Andy Blake.”
“What are you doin’ in town?”