LITMIR.BIZ

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wrong, we’ll come back and pay you what we owe. Fair enough?”

      The false affability that Luke and Thad had been displaying vanished. Thad’s lips twisted in a snarl. Luke said sharply, “No, it ain’t fair enough. We’ve told you how it is, you danged old codger. Now pay us the twelve bucks, or you ain’t gettin’ into Mankiller.”

      “I thought it was six,” Scratch said.

      “Price has gone up to four dollars per horse while you been wastin’ our time with all that jawin’.”

      “This is ridiculous,” Bo said. “We’re not paying you. Now get out of our way if you don’t want us to ride you down.”

      Thad cursed and started to swing his shotgun up. “Why, you damned old—”

      Bo’s Colt came out of its holster and leveled before Thad could raise the Greener enough to fire it. Thad stopped short and gulped as he found himself staring down the revolver’s barrel.

      At the same time and with equal swiftness, Scratch drew his right-hand Remington and pointed it at Luke, who in his arrogance still had his shotgun tucked under his arm. “I wouldn’t be gettin’ any ideas if I was you,” advised the silver-haired Texan.

      Luke glared at them but didn’t try to move his gun. “Take it easy, Thad,” he said. “I ain’t quite sure how they did it, but these old mossbacks got the drop on us.”

      “That’s right, we do,” Bo said. “Now toss those shotguns over there in the brush.”

      “The hell we will!” Thad burst out.

      “It’s either that or toss them in the river,” Scratch said. “Choice is up to you. But if you think we’re gonna ride past you boys while you’re still armed, you’re loco.”

      “Not as loco as you are for buckin’ us, old man,” Luke said through tight lips. He jerked his head at Thad. “Throw your gun in the brush, like they said.”

      “But Luke—”

      “Do it.” As an example, Luke tossed his shotgun into the thick brush on the left side of the road. “Don’t worry, Thad. This ain’t over.”

      “No, it’s not,” Bo agreed as Thad grudgingly followed suit and threw his Greener into the brush. “Like I told you, if I find out we were wrong about you boys, we’ll come back and pay what we honestly owe.”

      “You were wrong, all right.” Luke sneered. “Dead wrong.”

      “Man could take that as a threat,” Scratch said.

      “Take it any way you want.”

      Bo motioned with his Colt. “Step aside now.”

      Luke and Thad moved to the side of the road. Bo and Scratch rode past after Bo holstered his gun so he could lead the packhorse. Scratch kept his Remington in his hand and hipped around in the saddle so he could watch the two men. They didn’t make any move to retrieve their weapons.

      “Looks like they’re gonna let it go,” Scratch commented.

      “For now.” Bo didn’t look around. “I’ll bet Luke meant what he said about it not being over, though.”

      “You believe they really had a right to charge us that toll?”

      Bo shook his head. “Not for a second. But if it turns out we’re wrong, we’ll settle up.”

      A humorless laugh came from Scratch. “I don’t think payin’ the toll’s gonna be enough. Not after we made ’em back down like that. We better keep an eye out for trouble.”

      “Just like always, you mean?”

      Scratch grinned. “Yeah. Just like always.”

      They started up the sloping main street. At the far end of it, sitting square in the middle of where the road would have run if it had continued past the town, was a large, ramshackle old house that looked older than any other building in Mankiller. It had a broad verandah along the front with a roof supported by thick, square beams.

      As Bo and Scratch rode along the street, Bo looked for the sheriff’s office. They passed a number of businesses, including a couple of hotels, a bank, a newspaper office, an assayer’s office, a pair of decent-looking restaurants, a hole-in-the-wall hash house, and more than a dozen saloons. In fact, there were so many saloons that each of the more respectable businesses seemed to be completely surrounded by them, as if they were little islands in a sea of debauchery.

      Tinny music came from each of the saloons, the competing tunes blending together to create a discordant racket. Men laughed and cursed. Women shrieked and cursed. A fat man in a derby and a gaudy checked suit stood outside the door of a gambling hall and bellowed, “Honest games! Honest games of chance!”

      Scratch leaned over in the saddle and asked Bo, “What do you reckon the odds are he’s tellin’ the truth?”

      Bo shook his head and said, “I wouldn’t bet a hat on it.”

      They passed a two-story frame building with a number of windows on the second floor where women in low-cut gowns leaned out and called obscene invitations to the men in the street. One of the soiled doves looked at Scratch and yelled, “Hey, handsome! You there in the buckskin jacket!”

      Scratch looked up at her and ticked a finger against the brim of his Stetson as he nodded. “Ma’am.”

      “Come on up here!” She squeezed her ample breasts together so that they seemed to be on the brink of spilling completely from her thin wrapper. “These’ll make you feel young again!”

      Bo and Scratch rode on, although Scratch sighed a little.

      “You’d be taking your life in your hands if you went in that place,” Bo told him.

      “Maybe so, but I’d be takin’ somethin’ else in my hands, too.”

      Bo laughed, pointed, and said, “There’s the sheriff’s office.”

      It was a blocky building made of the same sort of whipsawed planks that had been used in many of the other buildings in Mankiller. A sign nailed above the door read SHERIFF’S OFFICE AND JAIL. The sign was pocked with holes.

      Scratch frowned up at it as he and Bo reined in. “Those are bullet holes all over that sign, ain’t they?”

      “That’s what they look like,” Bo agreed.

      “Well, that don’t bode well. Seems like a lawman wouldn’t take it kindly if folks did that.”

      “Let’s go in and see if he’s there.”

      The Texans dismounted and tied their horses and pack animal at a hitch rail in front of the sheriff’s office. It was just about the only hitch rail in town that wasn’t already full up, Bo noted. In a boomtown like this, he was a little leery of leaving their supplies outside, so he said, “I’ll watch the horses. You can go inside and talk to the sheriff.”

      Scratch shook his head. “Let’s swap those chores around. You’re better at talkin’ to lawdogs than I am. I always feel like they’re suspicious of me, even when I ain’t done nothin’.”

      “That’s because you know you’ve gotten away with enough in your life that you always feel a little guilty,” Bo said with a smile.

      “Hey, if nobody saw me, they can’t prove I done it! And if I did, I had me a good reason.”

      Bo laughed and went to the door of the sheriff’s office. He opened it and stepped inside. The room was gloomy, choked with thick shadows. No lamp was burning, and the windows were so grimy they didn’t admit much light. Bo’s eyes adjusted quickly, though, and he stiffened as he spotted the figure sitting at the desk.

      The man was sprawled forward, his head twisted to the side and lying on a scattering of papers. Those papers were stained by the dark pool that spread slowly

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