The Cassidy Posse by D. N. Bedeker Read Free Book Online Page A

wrong.”
    “Regulator - that’s a fancy name for a hired gun. You’re just a paid killer!”
    Billy turned towards her with his hand raised but Rosita quickly rolled across the bed, putting an obstacle between them.
    “Damn it, I won’t take no shit off a whore. It’s just not gonna happen.”
    “I told you I am not a whore no more!” she screamed. “I do laundry. I do laundry just like my mother did. I am not a whore.”
    “Hey, okay, settle down,” Billy said mockingly. “I keep forgetting you changed occupations.”
    “Why you got to always say and do things to hurt me,” her eyes narrowing on Billy. “I know you since we are kids but I can’t remember when you got so mean.”
    “Well, it just must have happened real gradual like.” He reached into a narrow closet and pulled out a Winchester. “Where’s my duster at? I know I put it in here.”
    Rosita sighed and walked into the backroom of her unpainted two-room shanty. She returned in a moment with the full-length leather coat dragging on the floor. “I packed it away. I think you don’t need it till next winter.”
    “Well, spring in Wyoming is like winter around here.”
    “How you know? You never go any farther from this God forsaken place than me.”
    “Well, I guess I know a few things more about the world than a Mexican whore.”
    “Now I am a Mexican whore,” she said challengingly. “If I were a gringo whore, I would know a little more. I would know what the weather was in Cheyenne and Denver and maybe New York City.”
    “Maybe so,” said Billy, looking at her with a malicious grin.
    “Why you always try to act like you are better than me? Now you turn your nose up at Mexicans and you are part Mexican.”
    He reached out suddenly and grabbed her by the throat and raised her up precariously on her tiptoes. “Where’d you hear shit like that?”
    She looked at him sullenly and without fear. “Old Juan Hildago told me. He said your grandmother married his brother the day Texas became a state. That was back in 1845. He said she was a fine lady.”
    “You don’t have to tell me about my grandma being a fine lady. She raised me til I was twelve. She’d have lived a lot longer if she didn’t burn herself out worrying about my useless mother. There weren’t no use worrying about trash like her. If she wasn’t making someone’s life a misery, she just didn’t feel right. She’d have went to bed with a damn coyote if it had two bucks.”
    “Maybe that is why you are so crazy, Billy Fayre. You are part coyote. I guess you’d think that is better than being part Mexican.”
    Billy’s anger suddenly subsided and he looked very solemn. “No, Rosita, I surely don’t think that. At least you know who you are and who your people are. My mother said she married a guy named Fayre. Probably another one of her stories. I wouldn’t know my ole man if I bumped into the sonavabitch on the street. For all I know, he could have been a damn coyote.”
    He folded the duster over his arm and picked up the Winchester. Next to it was his trail-worn cowboy hat with the red lone star on the side. He discarded the black gambler’s hat with the satin band and placed the familiar old Stetson on his head.
    “Guess I wasn’t cut out to be no fancy gambling man,” he mumbled as he walked out the door.

CHAPTER 6
LOVE THY MOTHER

    Mike McGhan strolled casually down the wood sidewalk into Bridgeport, the section of Chicago the old timers called “the patch.” It was the sixth ward, the only place on earth Mike knew of where the Irish were the masters. Their domain was row upon row of dismal one-room shanties and tenement houses. Each had a carefully-cultivated vegetable garden and usually a goat tethered in the back yard for milk and garbage disposal. As depressing as it looked, it always comforted Mike with its familiarity. Everywhere he looked there was a memory. He glanced across the street and he pictured his younger self and little Johnny