clamped one end of it between his teeth, and left it unlit as he said, “If I was you, Marshal, I’d keep a close eye on these saddle tramps. If you do, you’ll see that it’s them who are the real troublemakers.”
With that, he turned and stalked out of Sharkey’s, slapping the batwings aside with such force that they swung back and forth several times after he was gone.
Marshal Harding shook his head. “That’s a stiff-necked man,” he said, and the comment seemed directed as much to himself as to anyone else. “Lots of mad in him, and not much back-up.” He turned to Bo and Scratch. “I’d keep an eye out behind me if I was you boys. Those three don’t take kindly to anybody gettin’ the best of ’em, especially Cal Langdon. When he wakes up he’s gonna be touchy as an old grizzly.”
“Are you saying he might try to shoot us from a dark alley or something like that, Marshal?” Bo asked.
“Well, no, I don’t think he would…I’m just sayin’ you ought to be careful, that’s all.”
Scratch grunted. “If we wasn’t careful, we wouldn’t have lived as long as we have.”
“That’s for sure,” Bo agreed with a faint smile.
Harding turned to the bartender. “Claremont, when I ask you a question, I expect a straight answer, savvy?”
“I told you the way I saw it, Marshal,” Claremont answered stiffly. “I’m working here. It’s a busy night. Can’t expect a man to see every little thing that goes on.”
“Uh-huh.” The dry sarcasm in Harding’s curt answer made Claremont flush angrily, but the bartender didn’t say anything else.
Harding turned back to Dave Sutherland, glanced past the young man to the table where his two friends still sat, and went on. “I’m a little surprised you’d stick up for these two, Dave. I heard you and Angus and Culley had a run-in with them yourselves a while ago.”
“That was mostly Angus and Culley, Marshal. And we’d all had too much to drink.”
“That don’t surprise me none.” Harding sighed. “Try to keep your nose clean, kid. Keepin’ the peace around here is hard enough without you three young hellions goin’ around stirrin’ things up.”
Dave didn’t respond to that scolding. He just asked in a surly voice, “You done with me, Marshal?”
“Yeah, go back to your friends.” Harding looked at Bo and Scratch. “You two…come with me.”
“Are you arresting us, Marshal?” Bo asked. He and Scratch had a rule about not tangling with lawmen—at least not with the honest ones. As a result, they had found themselves in more than one hoosegow, usually without any just cause. Things always got straightened out in the end, though.
“No, I’m not arrestin’ you,” Harding said. “I just want to talk to you, but not here.”
“That’s all right with me,” Scratch said. He threw a hard glance toward Claremont. “Ain’t the friendliest place I ever been anyway.”
The two drifters followed the marshal outside. The sun had set and night was settling down over Red Butte now. Stars had begun to flicker into life in the deep blue sky that arched above the settlement and the butte that gave it its name.
“You say you’re working for Abigail Sutherland?” Harding asked as they began strolling down the street.
“That’s right,” Bo said. “We signed on as drivers, guards, or whatever else she needs us to be.”
“Hired guns?”
“We’re not gunslingers, Marshal,” Scratch said. “That don’t mean we can’t handle these smokepoles when we need to, but we don’t hire out to go gunnin’ for folks.”
Harding grunted. “I’m glad to hear it. Rutledge claims those hombres who work for him are just teamsters, but you saw ’em for yourselves. They haven’t done a whole lot of honest work in their lives.”
“And you thought we were more of the same, hired by Mrs. Sutherland to take her side in this little war that’s brewing between her and Rutledge.”
“I ain’t sure how little it’s gonna be,” Harding said with a sigh. “But if it breaks out, it’s gonna be pretty one-sided, that’s for sure. Miz Sutherland’s got one boy who means well but is green, one that’s not worth much of anything, to be blunt about it, and a crippled-up old-timer.”
“And us,” Scratch said.
“Two more old-timers,” Bo added.
That brought a laugh from the marshal. “You boys may have some years on you, but based on how you handled those three gunslicks, I wouldn’t want to tangle with you. What are your names anyway? I may have heard ’em, but I disremember.”
“I’m Bo Creel. This is Scratch Morton.”
“Creel…Morton…” Harding mused. “I don’t recall seeing any wanted posters on either of you.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” Bo said.
“We’re peaceable men,” Scratch said.
“Yeah, I could tell that when I came into the saloon and found you standin’ over a fella with a busted nose and two more who were out colder’n mackerels.”
“That wasn’t our fault—”
Harding held up his free hand palm out to forestall Scratch’s protestations of innocence. “I know that. But you strike me as the sort of gents who just naturally find trouble, whether you want to be peaceable or not.”
Neither Bo nor Scratch could deny that.
So instead, Bo said, “Rutledge was quick to hint that Mrs. Sutherland might be tied up with Judson’s outlaws.”
“Foolishness,” Harding snorted.
“What about the other way around?”
The marshal shook his head. “I don’t get your meanin’.”
“What are the chances that there’s some connection between Rutledge and Judson?”
Harding stopped and stared at Bo in the light that came through a window in one of the buildings they were passing. “That don’t make any sense either,” he said after a moment. “Rutledge’s freight wagons have been held up, and so has that one stagecoach he runs back and forth between here and Cottonwood every week.”
“Did he lose much of value?”
“Well…I don’t know about that. And I can only go by what Rutledge tells me.”
“Exactly,” Bo said. “Has anybody been hurt in any of those holdups?”
Harding thumbed his hat back and scratched at his thinning hair. “Now that I come to think of it, I don’t believe there has been.”
“Then maybe
