S later was confused. The senator had left the hotel that morning, after telling him that he wanted this Hollister character killed. Slater knew the senator wanted him to wait, to let Hollister do the work, then step in and silence him. Clean it up like he always did.
Hollister was different though. Hollister was not scared of Slater. He had been in the war, in prison, fought in the Indian wars and he’d seen enough to believe Slater was nothing special. He might not yet know that Slater was a man with no soul. But Hollister would know Slater couldn’t be reasoned with, or bought off, or talked out of killing him when the time came. He wouldn’t beg or moan or piss his pants like most of the weaklings Slater had ended.
It would come down to who made the first move. Hollister was one of the few men Slater had ever met who would have no qualms about acting first. He would put Slater down if he had the chance.
Killing someone was harder than most people thought. Some men were easier to kill than others. The ranchers-the piss-poor, dirt-eating farmers he’d shot in the back of the head so Declan could buy up their land in an estate sale, those were easy. They tried to reason, they begged, tried buying him off, or made promises that couldn’t be kept, but in the end they got a bullet. Hollister wouldn’t go down like that.
And then there was this Sergeant Chee. Not many men unnerved Slater, but Hollister’s second did. He stood outside the window and never took his eyes off him, but at the same time, Slater knew Chee was watching everything around him. Leaning against the porch post in front of the hotel, so still Slater wondered if he was even breathing.
He needed to know more, so he left the hotel and followed them, giving Hollister and Chee a good head start. Not because he wanted to know where they were going, he was sure they were either heading back to the train yard or to the senator’s house to speak to James, but because he wanted to study them both. They were prey and he was the hunter, and before he moved in for the kill, he needed to learn their habits.
Keeping fifty to sixty yards between himself and them, he followed them as they strolled along the Denver streets like they didn’t have a care in the world. After about fifteen minutes the two men split up: Hollister heading right, Chee to the left. But before he disappeared from sight, Chee turned around, his eyes focusing directly on Slater, giving him no time to even make an effort to hide.
He pointed his fingers at Slater like they were a gun and mimed pulling the trigger. Then he touched the forefinger of his right hand to his hat brim, and disappeared around the corner. Slater fumed, angry with himself for being so obvious.
By the time he reached the corner and looked down the street, both Chee and Hollister were gone.