LITMIR.BIZ

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and his deputies. He paused outside, “I thank you for what you did. I sure wish I could stay longer.” He half turned, then, “Whatever anybody says, I didn’t do anything that I knew was wrong.”

      Belle was too filled up to say anything. Hank just stood there and watched the sheriff close the door. Their feet clumped down the stairs and they could be heard walking up the boardwalk along Main Street. Then there was no sound except Belle’s soft sobbing and her words, “He—he was like my son—would have been.” She stared up at Hank. “We got to think of something, Hank.”

      “I’m thinking,” he said. “What the devil was wrong with that poster I saw?” He said it savagely. Then, suddenly, he grabbed his hat and stamped out and down to the street. He went across and looked at the poster in the dim light of evening and he studied it until it grew dark, until he heard the soft clop of hoofs on the back street leaving the livery stable in the dark.

      He walked up the stairs and Belle was waiting for him in her doorway. He came in, shook his head. “Once, about ten years ago I had a streak where I figured I was a business man. I went into the print shop business, with another fellow who knew about it. And there’s something on that poster that didn’t come out of a—” he stopped and was staring at Belle with his mouth open. “I got it!” he said. “The edges, they been cut crooked, like with a hunting knife. And now I remember the posters below were bigger, more white around the edges.”

      “What difference does that make?” Belle said, trying hard to understand him.

      “A heap of difference!” Hank barked. “These is posters that were hanging up down near the Border and this bearded hombre took ’em down and, so nobody would notice they’d been tacked up before, he trimmed the edges, and he didn’t get them even and square like they do where the posters are printed.”

      Belle Driscoll stared at Hank blankly, her eyes anxiously searching his face.

      “But I don’t see,” Belle said.

      “It means this man with the beard ain’t a U.S. marshal at all. Otherwise, he’d come bringing posters square and even and right off the press. This buzzard is”—Hank gaped at Belle, his eyes wide open. “You don’t figure the skunk who hired the boy to drive the cattle where he might get caught crossing the Border—you don’t figure that pole-cat would follow the kid up this way, after he’d broke out of jail, and take him back to get the reward?”

      Belle Driscoll’s face was hard. She said, “If he was a man like the man I married, he might.”

      Hank Shard had turned away, thinking hard. He whirled back. “What did you say? About the man that left you? Your husband? What he could do? And this man, the kid said—I didn’t tell you but that’s how come the kid headed for here.”

      Belle stood motionless glaring at him. “What did he say?”

      “He said one night the man he worked for was drinking heavy by the fire and he got talking about Bowie being a nice town and if the kid ever got into trouble, to come look up a woman named Belle in Bowie.”

      Belle’s mouth was wide. She said, “Did you see this man? Tall with broad, heavy shoulders. Wide set black eyes?”

      “That’s him,” Hank said. “That’s the man with the beard.”

      Belle was out of the door and heading down the stairs. She said, “He’s no U.S.

      marshal! That crazy sheriff is taking his word for it in order to get something on me.”

      Sheriff Rance stepped through the door from the bar.

      He said, “Were you mentioning my name, Belle Driscoll?”

      She told him she was and why. She said, “And you let him bluff you that he was a U.S. marshal. Why you locoed idiot!”

      “Wait a minute!” Sheriff Rance roared. “I saw his papers and his badge!”

      “Then,” Belle said savagely, “I’ll lay you a ten to one there’s a dead U.S. marshal somewhere down south of here.”

      She turned then and ran out of the hotel and Hank Shard rushed after her. She ran down the side of the hotel and across the back street to the livery stable. She called the stable boy for horses saddled and she said, “I want a Winchester. A loaded one!”

      Hank got his horse saddled and led out another horse for Belle. He said, “Hadn’t you ought to let me handle this, Belle?” but she wouldn’t listen and made him help her up and she sat like a statue of vengeance with the rifle across her lap.

      “They’ll be likely taking the same trail we came up,” Hank said.

      There was a moon rising. Belle reined her horse and made a sharp turn, “If Dan Colton hears us coming, he may shoot the boy,” she said. “That reward is for dead or alive. If he does, the boy won’t be able to name him as the boss that made him ride with the cattle. That’s what he’d figure on doing eventually, kill the boy.”

      “I’ll follow you,” Hank said.

      She gigged her roan into a wild run around a butte and down a gulch and up a steep bank and they came out onto a plain with clumps of jack pine here and there. And they reined their panting broncs over behind a pine bush and waited. The two horsemen should be along any time now. They’d be moving slow.

      Hank lifted his guns in their holsters and let them settle back again. He swung his arms a couple of times to limber them. They waited and listened and then, far off, there came the sounds of wild galloping and the thunder of hoofs was coming nearer the valley.

      The moon rose higher and it was full and bright, like the light of a dull day. The thudding hoofs came nearer and Hank Shard braced himself for the stop.

      A man was yelling now, yelling, “Kick that sorrel or I’ll shoot you where you sit in the saddle. Kick her, I say.”

      “That devil,” Belle said. “That’s him. I’d know Dan Colton’s voice anywhere.” She reined her horse out into the trail.

      * * * *

      They could see the horses coming. The kid on his sorrel and the bearded man on his horse. And down the valley three other riders came, running their animals hard.

      “Must be the sheriff figured he’d better look into it,” Hank said.

      “He’s going to be late for this party,” Belle said through clenched teeth.

      “Whoa!” The bearded man yelled and tried to rein both horses and swing them. The sorrel wouldn’t swing. They came on toward the waiting pair by the jack pines.

      Belle Driscoll raised her rifle and her voice was shrill and commanding. “Put up your hands, Dan Colton!”

      “Belle!”

      “Put up your hands, I said!”

      Colton swerved his horse and went for his right hand gun. It came out and swung to finish the kid.

      Belle’s rifle barked and Dan Colton’s right arm dropped and the gun fell out of his hand. He put spurs to his horse and the horse ran like a wild stallion for the brush.

      Flame spat from the sheriff’s guns.

      There was a moment while Dan Colton swayed like a drunk in the saddle. Then all the life went out of him and he pitched headlong out of the saddle and crashed into the mesquite, and the sheriff and his men raced in.

      When they left, Hank got the kid on one side of Belle and he rode close, on the other side. He held Belle’s arm to steady her. She rode with bowed head and now and then she shook a little, as if she might be weeping.

      Sheriff Rance came riding up as they were getting down at the livery stable. He said, “You were right, Belle. Colton wasn’t a U.S. marshal. I was mighty careless looking over his papers first time. I just looked again and they describe a smaller man than Colton. I reckon the cavalry’ll be up directly to investigate.”

      Belle

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