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“Okay, then — you’re welcome. Now move on.”

“I’d heard you was prickly.”

“Oh, I am that. But I s’pose now you’ll tell me how you like ’em that way, right?”

Charlie smiled, as if to say: Pricks’re good. And suddenly, it was all Chess could do not to snicker.

Been so long since he’d flirted with anyone out of more than spite — a restless urge to mess with men’s minds, along with everything else — that he could barely remember what it felt like, let alone whether the result’d be worth the effort.

What’m I gonna do with you? he thought, letting his eyes roam up and down, and Charlie — obviously well-able to tell what Chess was considering — shot him a hot look under lowered lashes in return, as though he believed he could suggest some options.

“Don’t think just ’cause we share the same tastes that makes me your patron saint,” Chess told the kid, at last. “I ain’t lived through . . .

all I did just to tour the West in search of fellow mis-mades, or save fools of any persuasion from their own mouths.”

“I told you I’m grateful, Mister Pargeter. Don’t want no more’n that.”

“So you say.”

“Well . . . might be I’d like to buy you breakfast, you was amenable, ’fore you ride off yonder.”

“Who says I’m leavin’?”

Now it was Charlie’s turn to hike a brow. “Who’d want to stay here, he didn’t have to?”

A good question, and one which came into even clearer rel

ief when Chess saw the Widow waiting for him in her doorway, youngest child braced dozing between her and him like a shield.

“Don’t do nothin’ in my house, Mister Pargeter,” she asked him, “if you’d be so kind. Please.”

Nothin’ like magic, or nothin’ like ridin’ young Charles here ’til he pops? Chess thought, sourly. But he tipped his hat and agreed to her terms, which seemed to disappoint Charlie somewhat. That ain’t the Chess Pargeter I heard tell of!

Chess shrugged. Probably not, he thought.

Must’ve got over his dismay by morning, however, since he turned up back at the same not-quite-a-saloon done up twice as elaborate as the night before, like he was trying to show Chess who could shout “Lock up your sons!” the loudest.

“Don’t see Sam Holger,” Chess noted, glancing ’round, as he tucked into his eggs.

Charlie shook his head, coaxing a rippling run from his instrument, far prettier than most pauses. “Naw, don’t expect him to show his face for some time yet; he’ll want to make sure everybody who was there when you laid him low is elsewhere, so nobody’s ’round to cry lie on him when he starts in to claimin’ he kicked your ass.”

“So let him.”

“Couldn’t live with myself, if I did.”

“So you’ll risk getting killed over nothing, instead? Believe me, kid, Holger’s the exact type someone like you should keep away from, they want to stay upright — sort who won’t learn his lesson no matter how many times it’s repeated, or how hard.”

“Aw, he’s full of wind, is all. Been after me since we was knee-high, for reasons don’t stand lookin’ at. What duds I wear, what songs I play: be sort of funny, it wasn’t so damn sad.”

“That ain’t the sort of joke you laugh at, not ’less you got a gun to back your taste in humour up. ’Course, you bein’ somewhat of a fop probably doesn’t help, either.” Adding, gently, as Charlie stared up at him in utter confusion: “A clothes-horse, a dandy, like they said . . . fashionable beyond the proper bounds of sense, is what that means.”

“You get all your clothes store-made, or so I heard.”

“Don’t get ’em made at all, anymore — but yes, I used to. Still, you’ll note I ain’t the one of us wearin’ orange cowhide pants with brass buttons all up and down ’em, or a shirt embroidered with roses.”

Charlie shrugged. “Thought it’d suit me better to stand out as much as I can, since I don’t have no hope of bein’ passed over.”

“Now that, I understand. But if you’re gonna spend your whole life pickin’ fights, you need to know how to end ’em, not just start ’em.”