The table was still for a moment; then, everyone looked at Houndstooth. Archie addressed him directly, ignoring Cal and Hero.
“I trust ’im, Winslow. The boy knows where ’is loyalties lie. Plus, ’e knows that if ’e ever betrays us, I’ll gut ’im like a one-legged ’op. Isn’t that right, Neville?”
Neville nodded strenuously, looking only at Houndstooth.
“Well, if you trust him, Archie, then I suppose he can stay.”
Archie ashed her cigar onto the floor, satisfied.
“Well,” Houndstooth said. “Let’s all get to know each other. You all know me, so I’m not going to introduce myself—forgive me, Neville, you’ll just have to figure me out on your own time.” Neville nodded again, with vigor.
“Archie,” Houndstooth said, gesturing with the stump of his cigar, “is the finest con either side of the Mississippi. Her meteor hammer can take down a charging bull faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. She’s saved my life nine and a half times.”
“Ten,” Archie said, grinning around her cigar.
“Nine and a half,” Houndstooth responded with a smile. “Also, she’s got a connection to a certain U.S. marshal of whom we don’t want to run afoul.” Cal looked as though he had a comment to add. Archie levelled a pitiless stare at him, and he thought better of it.
“Hello, Archie,” Hero said, extending their hand. “I’ve heard so much about you.”
Archie shook Hero’s hand. “Charmant,” she said, and to the surprise of everyone at the table, it sounded for all the world like she actually meant it.
“From what I’ve been told,” Houndstooth continued, “Hero there could blow up a bank vault using a pile of hippo dung and a cup of water, and they could make it look like an accident. Plus, they could poison a hummingbird and it would dip its beak twice before it dropped. They’re smarter than I am, which is saying something. And they’re—” He coughed, took a sip of his drink. “They’re, ah, they’re just a great team member.”
“What kind of a name is ‘Hero’?” Cal muttered around his mangled toothpick.
“It’s my name,” Hero responded.
Cal spat splinters into the sawdust on the floor, then selected a fresh toothpick to maim. Archie raised her eyebrows. “And who is this charming young man?”
“Calhoun Hotchkiss,” Houndstooth said archly. “He’s the fastest gun in the West.”
“I’m the fastest gun anywhere.” Cal responded with the speed of deep-seated bitterness over the title.
“He’s also the only one of us that’s ever dealt with ferals,” Houndstooth added. “Aside from Adelia Reyes, if we can find her. He’s spent years working on the Harriet. He knows everything there is to know about it. He’s stupider than he looks, but he shouldn’t hold us back too much.”
“And what about you?” Cal retorted. “What do you bring to the table, you smug fuck? Who made you the boss?”
Houndstooth was evidently ready for this question. His hand flicked, and before Calhoun could flinch, there was a tiny click on the table in front of him. All the eyes at the table fell on the sliver of wood that suddenly lay in the puddle of condensation left by Cal’s beer.
Cal reached up and felt for his toothpick, which had been sliced cleanly in half.
Houndstooth rested both his hands on the tabletop. One of them held the same stiletto blade he’d drawn on the riverboat.
“I’m the boss, Calhoun Hotchkiss, because I’m faster than you. I’m smarter than you. I’m better than you. And I’m the one who can send the telegram that will get you paid at the end of this. So here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to get us into the places that only your reputation can get us into. You’re going to shoot fast and you’re going to shoot straight. You’re going to be helpful and respectful. If you don’t do those things, then you don’t get paid. Is that clear?”
Cal drew a fresh toothpick from his pocket and inserted it into his mouth, saying nothing.
“Good,” Houndstooth responded. He glanced around the bar. It was empty but for them and the bartender. “Now, we need to find the fifth member of our crew.” He slid a photograph into the center of the table—the same photograph that Gran Carter had left sitting on the felt of the poker table earlier that day. Adelia Reyes stared unsmiling out of the photograph. Everyone at the table examined the photograph, but it was Cal who reached for it first. He looked at it for a long time, swallowing hard; then he set it back in the center of the table and stared at his hands for a few minutes, clearing his throat every few seconds.
“You’re all familiar with Adelia Reyes. She’s been missing for seven months.”
Cal coughed. “Seven and a half.”
“Right,” Houndstooth said, frowning at Cal. “Seven and a half months. She rides two hippos: a Standard Grey and an Arnesian Brown. She switches between the two so she doesn’t have to rest either one—so we’ll probably find her near the water somewhere. Can’t travel overland with two hippos for long.”
Neville, who had been silent until that point, raised his hand. Archie gave him a quelling look, but he kept his eyes fixed on Houndstooth, who, after a long minute, waved a hand at the boy.
“Sorry to interrupt, Mr. Houndstooth sir, but I’ve seen that woman.”
All eyes at the table swivelled toward Neville.
“You’ve what?” Hero and Archie said at the same time. Cal looked at the boy with an intensity so sharp it put Winslow’s knives to shame.
“I’ve seen her. Just now, outside. She was . . . well, she was at the tobacconist, sir. She looked . . . a little different from how she looked in that photo, sir. She spotted me ’n Archie, and while I was putting Rosa up in the pond out back, she came by the water to visit, and she—” He met Cal’s eyes and paused.
“She what, Neville?” Hero asked gently.
“Um, well.” Neville turned to Houndstooth. “She came by the pond, and she took a look at Ruby—that’s the hippo with the gold tusks, right? She looked inside Ruby’s mouth and asked if I knew who rode her here, and I said I didn’t, and then she looked at the other grey in the pond, the one with the nasty scars? She talked to that one for a while.”
Cal sucked in a breath at this and looked back down at his hands. A little blood had started to soak through the bandage over his ear.
Houndstooth sprang up from the table and made for the door. Archie gave Neville a little shove. “Go after ’im, now. Show ’im where you saw ’er.”
But before Neville could get up—before Houndstooth made it across the bar—the door burst open. A woman walked in and stood, silhouetted in the doorframe until the door swung closed behind her.
She took a few steps forward, into the light, and took in the crew assembled around the scarred old table.