Graham Rowat

He had the chance to make some not insignificant money here.

The four men smiled, all at once, like they had rehearsed this.

They all wore the same thing, a suit of solid color, pointed leather boots, and a round bowler hat matching the suit.

They looked neither like merchants nor silvermen, but at least they didn't look like outlaws.

That was the least he could hope for when strangers rode to Halleck, especially when the constable was slumped over one of Jacob's chairs in the back room.

where the true drunkards went.

The suits they wore were each a different color.

The first man, tall and barrel-chested, wore a black suit.

The second, skinny and short, with stooped shoulders and hooded eyes, wore one of pale green.

The other two men could have been twins,

except that they dressed in suits of white and red.

However, despite these small differences, all four men looked like each other.

They had the same face, fleshy even though all of them were thin, with hooded, grayish eyes and an equally grayish pallor.

There was a strange neutrality to their clay-like faces, almost as if they were the faces of men who had everything else stripped away.

Perhaps they were brothers.

Eight identical eyes gazed at Jacob from above four identical horseshoe-shaped mustaches, and four smiles were cut into the clay.

The man in black spoke first.

The red one nodded.

Both of them spoke with voices that were so similar it was almost eerie.

They had a strange accent, a silky lilt drizzled over their words like syrup.