shooting as soon as Bo, Scratch, and Reilly got in the line of fire. Bo glanced over at Reilly and saw that the young man looked scared but determined.
“Just remember,” Bo said. “You’re a famous fighting marshal. You don’t have any reason to be scared of these hombres. They ought to be scared of you.”
Reilly nodded and looked a little more resolute. As long as he had a role to play, he was more confident.
The stocky, gray-bearded man who seemed to be leading the charge hauled back on his reins with one hand and lifted the other in a signal for his companions to stop. As the horses slowed, dust swirled around them for a moment. As it cleared away, Bo could see that the men were all hopping mad.
“What the hell do you think you’re doin’?” the gray-bearded man shouted, his voice fairly shaking with rage. “You’re lettin’ that damned rustler get away!”
Bo glanced over his shoulder. The buckskin-clad rider had slowed. Well out of handgun range now, he brought his mount to a stop before the poor, exhausted horse collapsed.
“He doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere right now,” Bo said. “How do you know he’s a rustler? Did you catch him with a running iron, or driving off some of your stock?”
“He was skulkin’ around on Rocking B range, lookin’ over our herd!” the leader of the group said. “Mr. Bascomb’s been losin’ stock right and left, and anybody who ain’t got no business here is suspect! For that matter, who the hell are you?”
Bo looked at Reilly, who was hanging back a little. Reilly urged his horse forward, so that the badge pinned to his coat was more visible.
“This is John Henry Braddock, the new marshal of Whiskey Flats,” Bo announced. “We’re his deputies.”
That took the men by surprise. They were all rugged-looking hombres in range clothes, but even though they had been blazing away at the fleeing rider, it was clear to Bo’s experienced eye that they were cowhands, not hired gunmen. Faced with confronting a representative of the law, they were suddenly a little nervous.
“Marshal?” blustered the gray-bearded man. “I heard somethin’ about a new marshal comin’ to town.”
“Whiskey Flats is close by then?”
The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “About five miles on down this trail.” He glared past them. “What about that thievin’ son of a bitch? I’ll bet he works for that damned North!”
“Well, it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t have any cows in his pockets,” Bo said dryly, “so I don’t think he’s done any rustling today. We’ll question him and find out what he’s doing on Rocking B range. I reckon this Mr. Bascomb you mentioned is the owner?”
“That’s right. Chet Bascomb. As fine a man as you’ll find in these parts…not like that no-good polecat Steve North.”
Bo let that pass. Not being familiar with the situation or the folks involved, he wasn’t going to waste time getting involved in an argument about the relative merits of either Chet Bascomb or Steve North, who was evidently a rival cattleman.
Instead, he said, “You hombres can go on back about your business. We’ll take care of this matter from here.”
The gray-bearded man frowned. “Mr. Bascomb ain’t gonna like it. Around here we stomp our own snakes. We don’t depend on no lawdogs to do it.”
“Things are different now,” Bo said, his voice and his gaze firm. “You can start spreading the word, friend. Law and order have come to these parts.”
Graybeard grumbled some more, but then he turned his horse and profanely told the men with him to get back to work. They rode off, casting a few hostile glares back over their shoulders as they did so.
“I thought for sure they were going to start shooting again,” Reilly said.
Bo shook his head. “Not cowboys like that. They may be pretty rough around the edges, but they’re generally law-abiding. They respected that badge you’re wearing, Jake.”
“People really do that?” Reilly sounded like he couldn’t quite grasp that concept.
“Honest ones do,” Scratch said. “I don’t reckon you’d know.”
Reilly grinned as they turned their horses toward the buckskin-clad rider. “Honesty’s like beauty, boys,” he said. “It’s only skin-deep. Put enough temptation in anybody’s way, and they’ll forget all about being honest fast enough.”
Bo didn’t agree with that, and he hoped that in time Reilly would come to realize that it wasn’t true, too. For now, though, he wanted to find out more about what was going on around Whiskey Flats, and the “rustler” seemed as good a place as any to start.
As they rode toward the man, Scratch said, “From the sound o’ what that varmint with the beard was sayin’, there’s a range war brewin’ in these parts, too, Bo, to go along with the other trouble the mayor o’ Whiskey Flats told Braddock about in that letter.”
Bo nodded. “Yeah, I’d say you’re right. Get a couple of fellas who fancy themselves cattle barons locking horns and you can have a real problem on your hands.”
“But not me, right?” Reilly said. “I mean, I’m the town marshal. I don’t have anything to do with what happens outside of the settlement.”
“According to the letter of the law, you’re probably right. But a good lawman will poke his nose into anything that has an effect on what goes on in his town, and if a range war breaks out this close to Whiskey Flats, it’s bound to spill over into the settlement, too.”
Reilly grimaced. “I think you’re taking this whole marshal business too seriously. I’m not really John Henry Braddock.”
“But you’ve got to act like him for a while,” Bo said. “Otherwise, people won’t believe what we want them to believe. From what I’ve heard about Braddock, he wouldn’t allow a shooting war to break out so close to any town where he was the marshal.”
Reilly sighed and shook his head. “All right, all right. We’ll get to the bottom of the rustling. Or try anyway.”
Bo nodded and said, “I think that would be best.”
They had almost reached the rider who had been fleeing from the Rocking B hands. His shoulders slumped and his head hung low, just like his horse’s. Both of them were clearly exhausted.
Even so, Reilly and the Texans were taken slightly by surprise when the buckskin-clad figure suddenly swayed in the saddle for a moment and then pitched loosely to the ground to lie there motionless.
“Good Lord!” Scratch exclaimed. “Maybe he was hit after all!”
Bo was already moving, swinging down from the saddle and hurrying forward. He knelt at the side of the senseless figure, grasped his shoulders, and rolled him onto his back. As Bo lifted the man’s head, the battered old hat fell off.
Long, red, luxuriously thick hair spilled out. Bo found himself staring down into the unconscious, unmistakably female face of a young woman…. and an undeniably
