“I know you,” he said with a touch of pride. “You're Cap'n Tom Bender.”
Bender admitted it, looked at the driver and said he didn't remember him.
“Nope,” the driver explained; “but I was up to Denton seven or eight years ago when Willie Braun barricaded himself in that house and dared the cops to come and get him.”
It was a six-hour gun battle with a train robber and Bender said he remembered it all right.
“I was standing pretty close when Braun shot your legs out from under you,” the driver went on. “You laid flat on your belly in the street and blew his head off.”
Tom Bender didn't have to be reminded of that. He grunted and said nothing but the driver looked at him enviously and under the look Bender expanded and forgot all about the unpleasantness of a few minutes before. The driver asked him if he were in town on business and Bender said he had come up from the Rio Grande just to spend a vacation. He could tell from the way the driver laughed that he didn't believe it.
Bender asked him if he knew where Jeff Peebles lived and the driver said he did. He asked if Bender wanted to go out there.
“Later,” he said. “I got plenty of time. Take me to the hotel first.”
Up towards the end of the street they stopped before the hotel and a Negro bell-boy dashed out and got the bag. Bender told the driver to wait and went inside. The lobby was narrow and small but it was filled. All the seats were taken and there were women sitting around with diamonds on their fingers as big as dimes. Rondora had about ten times more people than it could care for.
Bender signed the register at the desk and the clerk explained that the hotel was pretty crowded and asked him if he was particular about a room. Bender said he wasn't just so it had a bed and a tub and the clerk handed a key to the Negro and said: “505.”