A woman’s voice said, “Hot water.”

Fenimore grabbed his revolver out of the holster lying on the bed, crept toward the door, waited a full minute with his back to the wall, then, setting his bare foot in the door’s path as a precaution, slowly turned the knob and pulled just far enough to create a crack through which to stick the revolver barrel and one of his bloodshot eyes. He saw the lovely back of the figure of a black-haired girl surrounded by several steaming metal pails. “Leave them,” he said.

For a second the girl was stunned—she froze. Then she turned to face the door. Fenimore had withdrawn the revolver from the crack but his eye remained.

He blinked.

The girl brought her smooth face so close to the crack that only the wooden thickness of the door separated her eye from Fenimore’s.

He licked his parched lips and swallowed the puddle of saliva that had gathered in his mouth. She batted the thick eyelashes of her brown eyes and smelled like honey and spiced Caribbean rum. It had been too long since Fenimore had smelled a woman.

“I was told to bring hot water and fill your tub,” she said.

“I can fill my tub myself.”

“I can fill it for you better than you can fill it yourself. I can fill it without wasting a single drop. I can fill it without any of it dripping on the floor.”

Fenimore felt his revolver harden.

There’d be time for women, he told himself. Maybe even tonight. Certainly tomorrow. The Starman had recommended a whorehouse. There was no point risking anything now, when his wits weren’t as sharp as they should be.

The girl pushed the door. He felt it stop against his ready foot.

“What’s the matter, you shy?”

Fenimore concentrated on keeping his foot planted. “Leave the water,” he said. It was a sentence that took more effort to say this time than it had the last. He imagined it would take even more effort if he were to say it a third time, and with each saying his engorged revolver would hate him just a little more.

“Don’t be that way, mister. I’ve been told to bring the water and fill the tub, and I sure do hate to disappoint. I always do as I’m told. Always. Truly, nothing makes me happier than to obey…”

A gruff voice said: “The girl’s got a point.”

It was a man’s voice. But, more importantly for Fenimore, it was a man’s voice behind him.

Fenimore sp—

“Drop the gun, then turn around. Nothing funny.”

Fenimore heard the click of a gun’s hammer being pulled back. “Drop it and kick it over with your heel,” the gruff voice said. The pressure against Fenimore’s foot grew by an extra pair of hands, magnified by two more hammer clicks from behind the door. Fenimore dropped his revolver and back-heeled it.

When the sound of the revolver sliding over the floor ended, he turned slowly around.

The man standing in front of him was short, squat and Mexican. He wore a large black sombrero that matched his immaculately waxed and curled moustache. In his right hand, he held a comically large pistol. In the background, a strong breeze ruffled the window’s heavy curtains and the top rung of a ladder was visible just above the bottom part of the window frame.

Behind Fenimore, the door to the hotel room opened and several figures poured inside.

The mustachioed Mexican looked at Fenimore’s face, then at Fenimore’s erection, then said, “Looks like you’re all cocked and loaded, stranger.”

Laughter erupted, which Fenimore didn’t share, followed by a rifle being dug painfully into the small of his back.

“Lola,” the moustachioed Mexican said, “be a good girl and show this gringo what he’ll be missing.”

The beautiful black-haired girl circled Fenimore, twirled a few times in her thin Spanish dress, which flared at the bottom edge, and assumed her position at the left side of the moustachioed Mexican. He wrapped his arm possessively around her waist.

“What do you want?” Fenimore asked.

“No entiendo, stranger. You ride into our town, take up in our hotel, and you ask us what we want. It seems to me that your gringo brain has it all mixed up. The question, stranger, is what do you want?”

Fenimore’s erection drooped, but he refused to let that, or the fact he was naked, lessen his glower. “I’m passing through.”

“He’s just passing through, Ezekiel,” Lola said. “We shouldn’t make trouble for passersby. They pass, and then they go on their way, isn’t that right?”

Ezekiel scratched at his smooth chin with his big pistol. He was pretending to be deep in thought. Lola kept her big brown eyes on him, pretending to be riveted. Fenimore hoped the pistol would go off blowing a hole through his jaw. The two other men who’d entered the room with Lola—goons, no doubt—chuckled at both performances like obedient henchmen.

“I don’t know,” Ezekiel said, before turning his attention and gun dramatically toward Fenimore. “Will you pass, and go on your way, stranger?”

“I will.”

“And passersby don’t cause trouble, else they wouldn’t be passersby any longer, but troublemakers.” Lola said.

“And you’re not a troublemaker, are you, stranger?” Ezekiel asked.

Fenimore said he wasn’t.

Ezekiel took off his sombrero and held it against his chest. He had a full head of almost artificially lustrous black hair. “Do you, stranger, swear to be a passerby and blablabla not cause any trouble in this here town of Hope Springs, and be gone and on your way by tomorrow’s sundown?”

“I swear,” Fenimore said, “on the memory of Rafael Rodriguez.”

Ezekiel shoved the sombrero back on his head and spat.

The goons spat, too.

“Gringo’s got a sense of humour.”

“Don’t got no gun, though.”

“And he won’t have his gun,” Ezekiel said. He brought his pistol to Fenimore’s face and started rubbing it against Fenimore’s beard. “Anyone swears not to make trouble doesn’t need a gun to not make trouble with, isn’t that right, Lola?”

“That’s right.”

If Fenimore wanted to grumble, he didn’t let his lips or vocal chords show it. He did still want that long hot bath and the water in the pails was cooling, and as much as he hated having ridden into town with two guns and being left, temporarily, with none, it wasn’t an insurmountable hatred.

“And when I leave town—before tomorrow’s sundown—where do I pick up my revolver?”

Ezekiel removed his pistol from Fenimore’s face, spun it twice, and shoved it expertly into his holster. “When you’re ready to leave, you come calling on la casa Picasso.” He extended his left arm and pointed. The arm was too long for his body, like a guerilla’s. “Walk that way. You’ll come to a big white house with red shingles on the roof. Hop up the front stairs, knock, and then get on your knees like a good gringo and say you’re the stranger passerby got his gun taken away by Ezekiel Picasso.”

“Entiendo?” Lola said.

“Yeah.”

“It’s good to come to common understandings,” Ezekiel said. He took a few steps toward the window and kicked the rungs of the ladder that were sticking above the bottom part of the window frame. The ladder crashed to the street below.

The henchmen chuckled.

Lola lifted her arms so that Ezekiel could put his arm around her waist again, and the four of them left the room.

“Also,” Ezekiel yelled from down the hall, “I slit your horse’s throat.”

They all laughed.

The laughter faded away.

Only the pails of water remained in the hall. They were still steaming as Fenimore carried them into the room one by one. Although he had felt no sentiment towards The Starman’s horse, something about the throat cutting riled him, and he had no need to look out the window to see if it was true. He’d been told enough by the timbre of Ezekiel’s laugh. Boys who roasted scorpions grew up to be men who slit the throats of horses. The reasoning behind both was the same: because they could.

Once all the pails were inside, Fenimore closed and locked the door and poured the hot water into the tub. Once the tub was full, he got in. He enjoyed the relaxing change of temperature, and reclined until his back rested against the curve of the tub. He then lowered himself until only his head and the tops of his knees were above the surface of the water. Then he submerged those, too.

Underwater, the world was silent and slower.