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  “The truth I know,” said a voice that sounded strangely familiar and caused Buckhorn’s ears to perk up, “is that Wainwright did you a favor by buying your failing ranch from you. And now, since he’s got cattle grazing just fine where you couldn’t, you been doing nothing but bellyaching and making excuses until everybody’s sick of hearing it.”

  Hampton straightened up at the bar. His whole body went rigid and his meaty hands balled into fists. “Who said that?” he demanded. “Step up here, whoever you are, and I’ll call you a damn liar right to your face!”

  Some men shuffled this way and that and a chair or two scraped on the floor from the middle of the crowd. When the bodies had parted a bit, Buckhorn got a clear look at the man Hampton was trading words with and it became evident why his voice had sounded familiar. The man was Conway, who’d been pulling some of the same taunting tactics earlier in the day out front of Justine’s place.

  There was no sign of the punchers who’d been with him then, but he appeared to have other allies in their place. Enough for him to feel confident in rising from his chair, body poised snakelike, mouth twisted in a sneer.

  “You,” Hampton said, like the acknowledgment left a bad taste in his mouth. “I should have figured as much, Conway. Everybody knows you’re a born liar.”

  “Make up your mind,” Conway replied. “Am I a born liar or a damn liar?”

  “The meat of it is that you’re a liar. You ain’t worth fancying it up with any extra.”

  “Leastways I ain’t some no-account whiner who spends his days looking up a mule’s rear end and making accusations he can’t back up.”

  “I can back up plenty when it comes to you, you weasel,” Hampton said, raising his melon-sized fists a little higher. “But since you got half the Flying W crew backing you, is this a discussion between just the two of us? Or are you gonna flick a couple girlie punches from behind your pals and then hang back to let them carry the rest of the load?”

  A man who’d been sitting at the table with Conway rose also. He was tall and lean, almost freakishly broad through the shoulders, and had unusually large hands encased in tight black leather gloves. Limp yellow hair fell to his shoulders from under a high-crowned hat, and a walrus mustache of the same color drooped around the corners of his mouth. He wore a matching pinstripe vest and trousers, the latter tucked into high black boots. A nickel-plated Colt with gleaming white grips was prominently displayed in a silver-studded cross-draw holster.

  “What if the load turns heavy under the sudden weight of lead, mule skinner?” this man said to Hampton. “You and them fat ham hocks you call fists up to carrying it then?”

  “Everybody knows I ain’t no gunman. I ain’t even heeled,” Hampton said, not backing up but straining to hold his voice level.

  “Fella starts calling other fellas names and goes blowing wind about how he’s gonna do this and do that, it seems to me he oughta be ready to face the consequences of his words whatever shape they take,” the blond man said. “Doing otherwise makes you look pretty damn stupid, wouldn’t you say, mule skinner?”

  “Just to make things clear,” Conway said, squeezing the words in around a nasty chuckle, “I should make sure you know who my friend here is.” He gestured to the blond man with a flourish. “This is Jack Draper. Dandy Jack Draper, as he’s called. I do believe he would qualify as one of those Flying W gun wolves you referred to earlier, Hampton. Although I’m not entirely sure he’s fond of the term.”

  “I know who he is,” Hampton said tightly.

  “I don’t care if you do or don’t, and I don’t much sweat what mule skinners and other kinds of trash call me neither,” Dandy Jack muttered.

  An older man standing at the bar near Hampton said, “There’s no call to be so offensive and turn this into—”

  “Shut your piehole, you!” Dandy Jack cut him off. “Unless, that is, you’re heeled and you’re offering to step up and carry mule boy’s load for him.”

  “Nobody has to shoulder my load for me,” said Hampton.

  Dandy Jack’s cold eyes shifted and his gaze settled on Buckhorn. “Not even him?”

  Heads turned and necks craned and all of a sudden everybody in the joint was taking notice of Buckhorn. He remained exactly as he was, unmoving, leaning back calmly, for a long count. Then, slowly, smoothly, he straightened up and let his arms slide off the bar and drift down to his sides.

  “Hello, Jack. Been a while.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Every time I see you in your suit coat, matching vest, and string tie, I think you might be trying to outdo me in the dandy department.” Dandy Jack paused, gave a faint wag of his head, then added, “But then I get to that god-awful derby hat and it all goes south. You ain’t never gonna shade me when it comes to being a dandy, Buckhorn.”

  “Guess that must be why nobody ever took to calling me Dandy Joe.”

  “Wait a minute! You two know each other?” Expressions of surprise, confusion, and annoyance wrestled back and forth across Conway’s face. Strictly addressing Dandy Jack, he added, “This is the hombre I was telling you about before, the one I tangled with earlier today.”

  “From the way you described him, I had a hunch who it might be. When I saw him walk in a minute ago, that sealed it.”

  “I never noticed him come in.”

  “That’s because you work harder at running your mouth than you do at paying attention to things.”

  Conway let the remark slide. “You two ain’t friends, are you?”

  Dandy Jack’s eyes stayed on Buckhorn as he said, “Fellas like us don’t have friends. But in the case of me and Buckhorn here, our trails have crossed a time or three.”

  Hampton’s expression grew conflicted. “So does that make you another gun wolf Wainwright has called in?” he asked Buckhorn.

  “All I am,” Buckhorn replied, “is a fella passing through who stopped to catch some rest in what looked like a nice, quiet little town. Just incidentally, though—much as I hate to agree with a gasbag like Conway about anything—you might want to tug back on the reins a trifle when it comes to tossing around that gun wolf stuff.”

  “Hey, bub,” Conway piped up. “You’d best watch your own mouth when it comes to tossing out how you describe people.”

  “Hackles down, boy,” Dandy Jack said easily. “If you want to worry about something, stick to what I was trying to get out of the mule skinner when I first called attention to Buckhorn. Since Hampton is the one who seems so hung up on the general hiring of gun wolves, makes me wonder if him and other bellyachers like him ain’t put feelers out for a gunny of their own.”

  “I ain’t ever felt the need to hire somebody else to do my fighting for me,” Hampton responded.

  “And if you’re talking about me, Jack,” Buckhorn said, “I just got done explaining how I only happen to be in the area on account of I’m passing through. If I pondered very long on you questioning that, it might cause me to wonder if you were calling me a liar. Was I to decide that, I gotta think it’d probably piss me off.”

  The men lining the bar nearest Buckhorn did some none-too-subtle shifting and shuffling to create a bit more distance between themselves and him. The Flying W bunch gathered around Dandy Jack did the same. Even Conway.

  After also edging down from the line of fire, the bartender said, “C’mon, fellas, there ain’t no call to commence shooting over this. We already had three shot-up fellas show up in town today. Ain’t that enough? And if you are gonna go to shooting, can you at least take it outside?”

  “You said your piece, mister. Now shove a sock in it,” Dandy Jack told him. “If me and Buckhorn take a notion to shoot up this rathole of yours, then shot up is what it’s gonna get and your blabbering ain’t gonna change things a bit.”

  “Don’t recall you being so prickly in the past, Jack. But for some reason you’re awful quick to be proddy this evening,” Buckhorn said. “First you go out of your way to get in the face of the mule skinner, then you �
��bout bite the head off the bartender. You even did some crowding on me.”

  “What of it? You having any?”

  “That’s not especially what I came here for, but it could be arranged, I reckon.”

  Dandy Jack’s lip curled nastily. “You always did rankle me, Buckhorn. Wearing those uppity duds the way you do, trying to copy me.”

  “Like you try to copy Bill Hickok, you mean?”

  “Hickok’s dead. I ain’t.”

  “Not yet.”

  The tension that had been building throughout the room suddenly tightened all the more.

  “Now that for damn sure sounded proddy,” Dandy Jack said. “You decide you’re wanting some of it after all, breed?”

  Buckhorn sighed. “All I really want is what I came in here for in the first place—to have a cold beer and be left to drink it in peace. I got one over here right now, as a matter of fact. Be my ’druthers to get back to it before it goes flat.”

  “You’re welcome to do just that . . . as long as you do it somewhere else. If you’re bent on finishing that particular beer, you’ll have to take it with you. I’ll even pay for the glass. So go on, pick it up and carry it on out.”

  Buckhorn’s eyes went narrow and cold. “No. I don’t believe I’ll be doing that.”

  For a long, ragged moment, most of those watching couldn’t really believe it was going to happen. That bullets were actually going to be traded over the mere handful of spoken words. And then, when it did happen, it went so fast it was like an eyeblink and it was all over.

  Most agreed that Dandy Jack had gone for his gun first. And his hand streaked fast, blindingly fast.

  But Buckhorn just stood there, amazingly relaxed, and seemed to do little more than shrug his right shoulder. That was enough. Just that simply and quickly his Colt was in his fist, gripped at waist level and extended only about a foot toward Jack. It roared once, planting a bullet alongside the bridge of Jack’s nose, a quarter inch under his left eye.

  Jack’s head snapped back, his eyeball popping out to dangle by gooey wet fibers as his body toppled away. He got his own Colt drawn and also managed to get off a shot, but it didn’t come until a second before his freakishly wide shoulders hit the floor, the slug doing nothing more than tearing a long gash in the saloon’s wooden floor.

  Buckhorn took a step back, leaning against the bar once more. He made sure no one was behind him and raked his eyes warningly back and forth over the crowd to make sure no one else looked ready to try him before he reholstered his gun.

  After the Colt had returned to leather, he reached for his unfinished beer. He took a long swallow and, as he was lowering the glass, he heard the voices and boot heels clumping on the boardwalk outside the batwing doors, signaling the arrival of the sheriff and his men.

  CHAPTER 15

  “Since when do you throw a man behind bars for acting in self-defense?” Justine York demanded.

  “You weren’t there,” Sheriff Banning barked right back at her. “How do you know what happened when he shot Jack Draper?”

  “Because a whole saloonful of men are saying that’s the way it was. Just because you’re turning a deaf ear to their claims, I’m not! I can hear loud and clear what they’re saying.”

  “You’re conveniently choosing to listen to only half the saloonful of men who were there,” the sheriff pointed out. “The other half saw it different. They’re claiming Buckhorn here kept egging Jack on and then drew on him first.”

  “That’s a lie!” Amos Hampton said. “I was there and saw how it happened. Wasn’t nothing like you just repeated, Sheriff. It was Draper who did the egging on and who went for his gun first.”

  Conway jumped into the argument. “I was there, too. Dandy Jack did everything he could to avoid that shooting. And when he least expected it, this stranger—the same damn half-breed who pointed a gun at me for no good reason earlier today, if you remember, Sheriff—whipped out his Colt and plugged ol’ Jack.”

  The spirited exchange was taking place inside the sheriff’s office. In one of two adjoining cells built into the south wall of the room, Buckhorn looked on from behind the bars but held back from joining in. He had two pretty good champions in Justine and Hampton, he figured, so for the time being he was willing to let them do the talking on his behalf.

  Other voices not showing so much restraint when it came to being heard, however, were making a steady rumble outside the squat adobe building that housed the sheriff’s office and jail. It was a mix of Flying W riders taking the side of Dandy Jack faced off against others who’d been present in the Silver Dollar but leaned in favor of Buckhorn.

  Banning’s two deputies, Pomeroy and Gates, were stationed out there trying to maintain control of the crowd while the sheriff was trying to do the same with the three people he’d allowed inside. Justine was supposed to be there as an impartial member of the press but so far had done little to hide her personal feelings on the matter.

  “Come on, Paul,” Justine said, personalizing her plea to the sheriff. “You’re surely aware of Dandy Jack’s reputation. He killed nearly twenty men and was the first one to brag about it. He craved the notoriety. Does anything about that sound like a man who’d innocently, reluctantly allow himself to get pushed into a gunfight he wasn’t itching to take part in?”

  “He was itching all right,” confirmed Hampton. “I was the one he started in on. I don’t like to admit it, but I was doing some shaking in my boots at the thought of having just my fists to go up against the likes of Dandy Jack. Lucky for me this stranger—Buckhorn, as I now know him—was willing to step in for my sake.”

  “Yeah, he was willing to step in. Like a dirty coward,” Conway said. “While Jack was distracted by this blowhard mule skinner, that’s when Buckhorn made his play!”

  That brought another burst of protests from Justine and Hampton until Banning held up his hands, palms out, and shouted, “Cut it! Jesus Christ, this is getting us nowhere! We might as well go stand in the middle of that crowd outside if all you’re gonna do is holler back and forth at each other.”

  “What about that crowd outside?” Justine wanted to know. “There’s the sound and smell to them of a lynch mob. How far are you going to let this go, Sheriff?”

  “Nobody’s lynching any prisoner out of my jail, if that’s what you’re driving at,” Banning said. “Which is exactly one of the reasons I hauled Buckhorn in here in the first place. For his own protection. The Flying W had already lost three men today, even before Dandy Jack went down. Those first three were just common wranglers, fellas a lot of those men out there had worked and ridden with for months, maybe years. Good pals to some of ’em.”

  “Dandy Jack didn’t have a friend in the world,” Justine said. “Unless it was some starry-eyed fool who was impressed by his rep, or some floozie whose time Jack was paying for.”

  “It’s rotten to talk like that about the dead,” Conway said. “Not to mention unladylike.”

  “I save my ladylike talk for those who deserve it.” Justine’s eyes blazed. “The point I was trying to make is that whatever’s got those men out there whipped up, it’s got nothing to do with feeling the loss of a friend, not when it comes to Jack Draper. He was a cold-eyed killer who would have thought no more about squeezing the trigger on any one of them than on a jackrabbit. The only thing anybody in that bunch had in common with Dandy Jack was being on Wainwright’s payroll.”

  Sheriff Banning puffed out his cheeks and expelled a gust of air. “I never said those men’s feelings of friendship were for Draper. I said it was for the three who’d been brought in before, and that partly explains what has them feeling so frustrated and edgy.”

  “Hell,” said Conway, “for all we know, that quick-trigger breed might be the one responsible for gunnin’ those poor cowboys, too.”

  Justine rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Now let’s get even more ridiculous.”

  “For Chrissakes don’t be starting in with wild talk like that,” Banning s
aid. “Such a notion starts to spread, it could turn this whole thing into a powder keg.”

  “But you can’t just ignore it as a possibility,” Conway insisted. He jabbed a thumb toward Buckhorn. “This gunny shows up out of nowhere and all of a sudden Wainwright men start dropping right and left with cases of lead poisoning. I damn near was one myself.”

  “And that makes Buckhorn a gunny?” Justine asked.

  “You were there. You saw how fast he pulled on me,” Conway said. “And he beat Dandy Jack, didn’t he? Even if he got the jump, that still proves he knows his way around a gun pretty damn good. And him and Jack knew each other from the past, from being in the same trade. They indicated as much before the guns came out. Even Hampton has to admit that.”

  When everyone swung to look at him, Amos Hampton dropped his eyes and frowned. “Yeah, he’s got it right. Buckhorn and Dandy Jack didn’t leave much doubt they knew each other from being in the same line of work.”

  “See?” Conway practically crowed. “And that’s from a man who’s been grumbling and complaining all over the county about how General Wainwright has hired what they’re calling gun wolves to protect his business interests. Starting to appear clear enough to me that some among the complainers decided to hire a gun wolf of their own. And you’re looking at him, right over there behind those bars!”

  Justine turned to Buckhorn. “Is that true, Joe? Are you a hired gun?”

  Buckhorn, no longer able to stay out of it, met her eyes and held them as he said evenly, “Hired gun, gunslinger, gunfighter, shootist, a fella who does gun work . . . Yeah, I’ve been all of those things at one time or other in one place or other. But nobody around here has hired my gun. What happened between me and Dandy Jack happened because he pushed for it to happen. I’m not sure I understand why.”

  “You’re the one who did the pushing, the prodding,” Conway said. “And the reason why was because you had Hampton there splitting Jack’s attention so’s you could pull your sneak move on him.”