"You mentioned that horse in the corral. When I stepped to the door I nearly got myself killed."
"If you think I'd set you up--" he began.
"I do think you might if you had reason enough.
Now I got to decide what stake you have in this."
He came across to me. "Mister, my name is Bob O'Leary, and I've tended bar from Dodge to Deadwood, from Tombstone to San Antone. You ask anybody, and they'll tell you I'm a man of my ^w. I've done a few things here and there, and I ain't sayin' what they might be, but I never murdered no woman, nor had anything to do with those that would. Like I told you, you find your man, or men, and I'll lend a hand with the rope ... no matter who they be."
"All right, Mr. Bob O'Leary, for the time being I'll take your ^w for it. All I'll say is your timing was right."
"Nobody needs timing for you, Sackett. You give it some thought, and you'll see your number is up. You stand to be somebody's favorite target.
"Put yourself in his place. Suppose somebody who can command a lot of men did murder your wife.
What's he doin' now? I'll tell you. He's scared ... he's scared to death. He's not only scared of you, he's scared of what his own men will believe.
"He's told them a story. He's told them, judging by what that puncher said this evening, that you tried to kill him. They accepted that story. They are all trying to kill you, and you'll have to admit it's more exciting than punching cows.
"Only now you're talking. You're telling a different story, and he's got to shut you up fast.
"Look at it this way," he went on. "That man is riding through the rough country alone. He sees your wife waiting in that wagon. She's a young, pretty woman. Maybe he hasn't seen any kind of a woman in weeks ... maybe months. He talks to her, he makes advances and she turns him down. He gets too brassy about it and they start to fight. Upshot is, he kills her. Chances are he had no mind to do such a thing when it all started, but now where is he?
"Mr. Sackett, you got you a scared man. He knows how western folks feel about women. He knows some of his own men would pull on the rope if they knew what he had done. He's sweating with being scared, so he dumps your wagon off a cliff into a place where he doesn't think it will ever be found.
"He's all scratched up, so he calls in some of his hands and tells them you tried to kill him, and he wants you dead. He probably offers a good price, but he wouldn't need to, for riders are loyal--they ride for the brand."
Well, I was listening to all he said. This O'Leary seemed to have it pegged right.
Now he was saying, "He hurries back, he wipes out all the tracks, he goes down and sets fire to your outfit, making sure the wind will take the smoke away from the hunting party. He not only has to wipe out any trace of your outfit, he has to be able to convince anybody that you were just a drifter."
He refilled my cup. "Sackett, let me tell you something. I don't know who he rides for, but I know this Dancer. He used to come up the trail to Dodge, and he's square.
He's a tough man, but he's one to ride the river with."
O'Leary stood there, holding the coffeepot.
All the lights in the room were out but one. There was a lamp burning with a reflector behind it, just back of the bar. The light threw dark shadows into the hollows of O'Leary's cheeks.
"I'll tell you something else. He's got Sonora Macon, who is as fast with a gun as any of them, and he's got Also Zabrisky and Rafe Romero ... and any one of them would just as soon kill you as not, no matter who you are or what you've done or not done."
I got up and taken my rifle from the table beside me. O'Leary, he went over to the light, cupped one hand at the top of the globe, and then blew into it. The light went out, and the room was in darkness.
"All right, Sackett," he said, "you can go when you are ready."
At the door I stopped. "Thanks," I said, and then I asked, "You don't think I've got a chance, do you?"
"I was always a sucker for lost causes,"
O'Leary said. "But no--ffbe honest, I don't think you've got a Chinaman's chance ... not with all that outfit against you."
The wind was making up, and dust skittered down the street. It was long past midnight, and the town was dark and silent. When I stepped to the saddle, my horse turned willingly away.
There was no sound but the clop-clop of my horse's hoofs as I rode past the last building and away from town toward the mountains.
Avoiding the trails, I took to the mountain slopes and rode away up under the trees. When I was a few miles out, I unsaddled, picketed my horse, and pulled off my boots.
Sitting there on my blanket, I rubbed my tired feet and wondered how a man's life could get him into such a spot.
Three weeks back I had me a lovely wife, a brand-new outfit, and I was driving west to settle. Now I had nothing, and was a hunted man.
With my head against my saddle, I leaned back and looked up at the stars I could make out through the pine tops. Right then I found myself wishing I wasn't alone. I kept thinking back to Tyrel and Orrin, wishing for them to be here with me. With those two brothers to side me, I'd tackle hell with a bucket of water.
Sometime about there I dozed off, and in my dreams I was wandering the Tennessee hills again, just as when a boy I had gone picking pods from the honey-locust trees for the making of metheglin, or hunting the wild hogs that ran free along the ridges. In my dreams, there was Ma in her old rocker, a-watching us boys as we worked in the fields, thinking of Pa, she probably was, who had gone off to the westward many a year before.
Gone with the mountain men, with Carson, Bridger, Joe Meek, Isaac Rose, and John Coulter.
The long riding had taken it out of me and left my bones with an ache and my muscles sagging with weariness. I was so tired that I slept sound ... and then a boot toe took me in the ribs and I was awake, and knew I had awakened too late.
When I looked up, I looked into the blackness of three rifle muzzles, aimed at my head. Three hard men stood over me, no mercy in their eyes.
Chapter seven.
Oh, they had me all right! Dead to rights, and not a chance to fight back, for even if I could knock one rifle aside, the others would kill me for sure. Yet there was no give in me, for I'd nothing left to lose.
So I lay there without moving or giving them excuse to shoot, and then when I did move it was to lift my hands slowly and clasp them behind my head.
"Cigar in my vest pocket. I'd like to light it," I said.
"Have at it." The speaker was a square-shouldered, well-set-up man of twenty-four or comfive. "I'd give any dog a chance for a last smoke."
"If you didn't have that gun on me you'd not call me that. Courage comes cheap when you've got a man hog-tied."
He started to reply, then shut up, but he was mad, I could see that. So I taken my time with the cigar, thinking hard all the while. They looked to be good, solid men.
"You don't look like men who'd murder a woman," I said.
You would have thought I'd laid across them with a whip.
"What's that? What do'you mean ... who murdered a woman?"
"Your outfit," I said, "maybe some of you.
You murdered my wife, and burned everything I had. Now you want to kill me so there won't be anybody to ask questions. That wraps it up, all nice and pretty." I looked up at them.
"Except you yellow-bellies will have to live with it the rest of your days."
One of them jerked his rifle up to smash the butt into my face, and if he tried that they were going to have to kill me quick. One of the others held up a hand to stop him ... and me, for he saw what was coming.
From the way the others reacted I knew I'd hit a nerve, and I waited.
"What's all this about a murdered woman?"
"Who you tryin' to buffalo?" I put all the contempt I had into it. "You know damn' well there ain't five men within a hundred miles, leaving your outfit out of it, who wouldn't pull the rope on a woman-killer. And this was my wife, one of the prettiest, finest women alive."