LITMIR.BIZ

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hand on Scratch’s arm.

      After a second, Scratch gave an explosive, disgusted grunt and said, “Fine. I’m sick o’ this place anyway. It’s as unfriendly a burg as I’ve seen in all my borned days.”

      As the Texans started toward their horses, Gus Hobart called after them, “You fellas take care. Keep an eye on your back trail, if you know what I mean.”

      Bo knew exactly what the storekeeper meant. Harding might not let this lie, even after the deaths of two of his men. That might make him even more determined to exact vengeance on the two drifters who had dared to defy him.

      But there was no point in borrowing trouble. Plenty of it came to a man naturally.

      Bo rode a rangy dun with a dark stripe down its back, an ugly, nasty-tempered brute that didn’t look like much…but it was a horse that could and would run all day if you asked it to. Scratch’s mount, in keeping with his dandified nature, was a big, handsome bay, the sort of animal that impressed the ladies. But Scratch’s horse, unlike some that were pretty, had just as much sand and grit as Bo’s more unprepossessing mount.

      The Texans untied the reins of both animals now from the hitch rail where they had left them upon arriving in the settlement. They had intended to just have a quick drink and then tend to the horses’ needs, stabling them and seeing to it that they were unsaddled, rubbed down, and properly grained and watered, before finding lodging for the night themselves.

      Things hadn’t worked out that way, though, and as Bo and Scratch swung up into their saddles, Scratch said, “I sure hate to take these big fellas back out on the trail tonight. They deserve better.”

      “Folks don’t always get what they deserve, for good or bad,” Bo said, “and I reckon that applies to horses, too.”

      They rode out, heading south. The main street of the town became a narrow road, little more than a path. A wagon could negotiate it, but the driver would have to be careful. The horses had no trouble following it, though.

      Around them rose the thickly timbered hills of northern New Mexico Territory. The tang of pine and juniper and sage perfumed the air. Mountains loomed in the distance to both east and west, dark and mysterious in the night. What seemed like at least a million stars glittered in the heavens overhead, casting a silvery illumination over the landscape. A sliver of moon floated in the sky as well. It was a beautiful scene, although the sharp contrast between light and dark gave it a weird, otherworldly aspect as well.

      “You think Harding’s gonna come after us?” Scratch asked when they had put a couple of miles between them and the settlement.

      “No telling,” Bo said. “He struck me as just arrogant enough, and just mean enough, to do pretty much anything.”

      “Yeah, I know what you mean. I never did like that sort. Thinks he’s better’n ever’body else and likes to be the big boss o’ everything.”

      Bo smiled. “You never did care for anybody who thought he was the boss. Reckon that’s why you never spent much time working for wages.”

      “Huh,” Scratch said. “I could say the same thing o’ you, Bo Creel. Neither one of us was cut out for toilin’ like regular folks.”

      “That’s probably one good reason why we’ve wrapped up in our bedrolls hungry and without a roof over our heads so many nights.”

      “And you wouldn’t’a had it any other way. You ain’t foolin’ me.”

      “I wouldn’t even try, not after all these years,” Bo declared.

      They rode on, and as usual, their keen frontiersmen’s senses were fully at work. Their eyes never stopped roving over the starlit landscape around them, and their ears were wide-open for the sound of hoofbeats pursuing them.

      The night was quiet and peaceful, though, and the only sounds were the normal scurrying through the brush of nocturnal creatures, the swish of air as an owl swooped by in search of prey, and the faintly distant, long-drawn-out barking cry of a coyote.

      Tom Harding probably knew by now that the Texans had killed two of his men; the cattle baron no doubt had cronies in town who would have ridden out to his ranch immediately to deliver the news to him. If Harding intended to come after Bo and Scratch, though, it appeared he wasn’t going to do it tonight.

      As for what the future would bring, there was no way of knowing, but the Texans would mosey across that bridge when they came to it.

      Right now they were coming to a patch of shadow that was thrown across the trail by a stand of pines that crowded up alongside it. Bo kept an eye on that swath of darkness, knowing that it would be a good place for danger to lurk. Because of that alertness, he wasn’t surprised when a man suddenly stepped out of the shadows into the trail, blocking their path as he lifted a long, sinister-looking object in his hands.

      “Hold it, you two!” the man shouted. “Don’t try anything funny, or I’ll blow you right out of the saddle with this shotgun!”

      CHAPTER 4

      Bo knew that at this range, a double load of buckshot from a scattergun’s twin barrels would shred him and Scratch into something resembling raw meat. That was why, under normal circumstances, he would have reacted very carefully to a threat like that.

      These weren’t normal circumstances, though, and…

      “That’s not a shotgun,” Bo said.

      The stranger jabbed the object at them. “It damn sure is,” he insisted, “and if you don’t drop your guns and get down off those horses right now, you’ll be sorry!”

      Scratch looked over at Bo and asked, “Broken branch o’ some sort, ain’t it?”

      “That’s what it looks like to me,” Bo answered with a nod.

      The stranger tried to brazen it out. “I’m not fooling now!” he said. “I’m warning you—”

      “Give it up, son,” Bo said. “It’s not going to work.”

      “Nice try, though,” Scratch added. “That looks a little like a shotgun, I reckon, in bad light. If you hold your mouth just right, tilt your head, and squint a mite.”

      The man uttered a disgusted curse and flung down the thing in his hands. It broke in two with a crack, confirming not only that it was a tree branch, but that it was rotten as well.

      “All right, go ahead and shoot me,” he said. “I tried to hold you up and steal your goods and horses, so I guess I’ve got it comin’ to me.”

      “We’re not going to shoot you,” Bo said. “Come over here.”

      The man hesitated, then shrugged and walked closer to them. Bo had thought he recognized the would-be robber, but now he was sure of it. The man’s dark suit and hat and fair hair revealed his identity. His voice was even a little familiar from the pleading he had done back in the settlement.

      “We’re the fellas who saved you from that mob, you know,” Bo said.

      “Son of a bitch!” Scratch exclaimed. “It is him!” He urged his horse forward a step. “What are you doin’ out here, mister?”

      “What do you think?” the swindler who had called himself Charles Wortham said. “I’m trying to stay as far ahead of those crazy bastards as I can. I don’t want anything to do with hot tar and chicken feathers!”

      Bo said, “They might not bother with that next time.”

      “They might just take you straight to the nearest hangin’ tree,” Scratch added.

      “There’s not going to be a next time,” the stranger vowed. “I’ve learned my lesson. I follow the straight and narrow from now on.”

      “Sure,” Bo said. “That’s why you pretended to have a shotgun and threatened to kill us with it unless

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