Savage Texas: The Stampeders by William W. Johnstone, J.A. Johnstone Page B

face mostly turned away from Perkins.
    “Well, a gent down the street said he thought he saw Jimbo coming in here just a few minutes ago, so that’s why I’m here. I’m thinking of buying an Arkansas toothpick knife he’s trying to sell.”
    “I had some young cowboys in here to get a photograph made, but I don’t know if one of them was the man you’re looking for.”
    “Wouldn’t have been any of them. Jim Hale’s three hundred pounds or more, and above forty years old. Not likely to be mistook for a young cowboy.”
    The front door opened and closed behind Cross. Julia had just surreptitiously exited the shop. Cross glanced over his shoulder, puzzled she had abandoned him here.
    “Mr. Cross,” Perkins asked, “can you tell me who that young woman is?”
    “Her name’s Julia Pepperday Canton. Came here from Georgia real recent. Mighty pretty young woman, as I figure you noticed. Everybody does.”
    “Canton?”
    “That’s right.”
    “You are certainly right regarding her beauty. Rather breathtaking, I must say.” He paused, thinking hard. “Are you sure, though, about her name?”
    “I got no cause to believe her name is other than what she says it is. Why? You know her as somebody else?”
    “I believe I have seen her before, yes. But just where, that I can’t say. In my line of work I see very many faces and hear very many names.”
    “And some of them are bound to resemble one another, I’d think,” Cross replied.
    “I can’t dispute that.” Perkins looked across Johnny Cross’s shoulder and through the panes in the top half of the door. The lovely lady was still out there, apparently waiting for Cross to come out. Perkins struggled to remember where he might have seen such a face before, but could not.
    Cross leaned in closer and scrutinized Perkins intently. “Know what, sir? I believe maybe I’ve run across you before.”
    And at that moment Perkins knew with a jolt that it was true. Cross was correct: they had met. And Perkins knew exactly where and when. This fellow Johnny Cross had been among the pistol fighters Perkins had photographed along with the infamous Bloody Bill Anderson, Confederate guerrilla. There was a certain keenness in his gaze that made him memorable, along with the fact that Cross bore a resemblance to Anderson himself, though the latter was whiskered while Cross was clean-shaven both then and now. It was actually Cross’s face that Perkins’s eye was drawn to each time he looked at that old photograph of Anderson and his pistol fighters.
    Perkins wasn’t about to mention any of those details here and now, however. Anderson and his men were considered murdering criminals by much of the nation, and despite his and Cross’s shared Confederate background, Perkins didn’t know if Cross’s affiliation with so controversial a wartime figure was something generally known. Best to just hold silent.
    What Cross said next revealed he was experiencing some memories of his own.
    “You took photographs during the war, I recall,” Cross said. “Some of them up in Kansas and Missouri.”
    “I . . . I did. Is that where you saw me?”
    “Don’t really matter where it was. It’s just interesting that we’ve crossed paths before. And that you believe you also saw the same lady I’m walking about town with today.”
    “As they say, it’s a small world.”
    “You betcha. Let me call her in and see if she might remember you, too.”
    “Please, sir, don’t. She stepped outside so there must be some reason she did not want to be in here. Perhaps she just needed fresh air.”
    “Whatever you say. I don’t know about the fresh air, though. To me Hangtree air always smells like dust and horse poop.”
    Perkins gave an obligatory chuckle. “Mr. Cross, let me ask you, if you don’t mind: Do you and the lovely lady have a, er, formal association? Are you her beau?”
    “We have no such understanding with each other. I have befriended her as a newcomer to town, mostly