The Calico Kid

by Sevenstars

An attempted holdup leaves temporary shotgun guard Slim wounded—and leads to the presence of two fugitives in the Sherman barn, whose part Daisy unexpectedly takes.

The Calico Kid

by Sevenstars

SUMMARY: Daisy, somewhat against the better judgment of "her boys," takes the part of a fugitive young outlaw suspected of attempting to rob the stage line. But the fugitive turns out to be a bundle of surprises... Takes place after the four canonical seasons, two or three months prior to "Missing" (also on this site).

Grateful acknowledgment, as always, to Noelle for everything.

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Denver, Wednesday, 5:45 A.M.:

Slim Sherman was waiting when the driver brought the stage up to the door of the ticket office, his canvas jacket pulled tight and buttoned against the sharp chill of a late-April morning in the Mile-High City. He threw his leather satchel up onto the roof and stood back, watching, as the passengers got on, four of them; eyeing each one with the insight of an experienced relay operator, making guesses as to their character and what they might be carrying in the way of valuables—and hidden armament. Not, he thought, that that was much moment: the Fargo box being carried out after them, by the ticket agent and his assistant, would be bait enough for any outlaws who happened to have found out about it.

He'd come by last evening, before he went to supper, to make sure there'd be space for him on board—he didn't need a ticket, being an employee (or more accurately a contractor) of the line—and it had been then that the section super had asked him if he'd be willing to ride guard that trip; the regularly scheduled man, it seemed, had caught himself a case of whooping-cough from his youngest, and there hadn't been time to reshuffle the duty roster and work out a way to replace him. All the line personnel from Denver up to Medicine Bow and out to Cheyenne and beyond knew Slim, knew his face and his reputation, in part because, being also a cattleman, he was likely to turn up almost anywhere east of South Pass on stock-buying or -selling trips. "I'll pay you the regular rate, Slim," the super had said— "two dollars a day, and a dollar bonus for your trouble."

"It's not the money, Mr. Hanaway," Slim had told him. "I just want to get home, the sooner the better." He'd been down here on stage-line business for five days, and by his reckoning that was four too many. Slim might not have the wanderlust of his best friend—though that had been much tamed these last few years—but he wasn't a city man. Born on a farm on the Illinois prairie, tested on cattle drives up the Shawnee Trail, and almost seventeen years an inhabitant of the wide, wild spaces of Wyoming (except for his service in the war, and even most of that had been spent in the open), he simply wasn't comfortable in his skin around big buildings and seething traffic and thousands of people—something he had good cause to know, from visits to Denver and San Francisco and once, memorably, during the war, to Brooklyn. And he was a homebody at heart, a man who needed roots, a place that was his, a foundation, who didn't mind being fixed in one spot, with all the implications of that choice. He missed his own sturdy little house, the outline of his mountain against the morning sky, the bantering of Jess and Mose and Mort Corey, the delicious smells of Daisy's cooking, the familiar contours of his mattress and pillow, the faint iron tang of the water from his pump.

"Well, you might earn it, all the same," Hanaway had told him. "There's a fat cash shipment going out in the box tomorrow, for the Laramie bank. Cattleman name of Henry Kirby just bought some land up your way, and he's sending in operating capital for the ranch he'll have on it—you know, supplies, wages, that kind of thing. Twenty-five thousand, give or take, half in double eagles and half in gold certificates."

Slim had whistled softly in astonishment. "That is fat," he admitted. "First I heard of it. Where's he settling?"

"Oh, not right close by you. About halfway between Laramie and Medicine Bow, by what I hear. Likely you won't see much of him—if anything. He mostly lives south and east of here; got a spread above Colorado Springs, a good hundred thousand head, besides horses." That was about as big as most ranches ever got. "And he's diversified—interests in lumber mills, coal mines, tanneries, banking, railroad stock, mining. The town where he does his trading was on his land once; most of the buildings there are still his property, if the land they sit on isn't. He owns the best saloon there. Getting into Territorial politics now; there's some talk they might run him for Governor, if we ever get to be a state, dad-blast them people in Washington."

An injection of $25,000 into his local bank, even if it was somebody else's money, was something Slim would be happy to see, and he'd agreed to do the job. Now he watched as the driver leaned down to receive the box and drop it into the boot under his seat, signed the receipt on the clipboard passed up to him, and turned to check that the passengers' luggage was secure. The ticket agent handed Slim a Winchester and a bandolier of shells. "You sure you don't want a shotgun?"

"No, my partner and I are more comfortable with rifles," he said. "Longer range, harder punch, more shots." He draped the belt crosswise over one shoulder and scrambled up the tall side of the coach. "When you're ready, Ed," he told the driver.

Ed Price checked his watch, nodded, unwrapped the ribbons from the brakehandle, sorted them out properly between his fingers, then kicked off the brake and yelled at the team. The coach lurched into motion. I'll be in Laramie in two days, Slim thought, and I can hire a horse, or borrow one of Mort's, and get out to the ranch in time to get some of whatever Daisy's planning for supper, and maybe see Mike put to bed. It'll be good to be home.

**SR**

They skirted the Front Ranges for most of the day, pausing to discharge and take on passengers and express at Fort Lupton and Greeley and Fort Collins, where they stopped for the night, then turning west, into the higher country, passing Clark Peak, and finally bearing north by a little east as they picked up the upper reaches of the Laramie River. Snow still lay in the depressions, but the trail was clear; maybe up in Montana you couldn't get a coach this high yet, but in Colorado spring was usually settled in by early April, chilly nights (and dawns) notwithstanding. The mountains provided plenty of good ambush sites, and Slim kept alert, but saw nothing more threatening than a black bear—a male, most likely; the sows usually stayed in their dens longer—rearing up out of a berry thicket a good quarter-mile away to watch curiously as the coach rumbled past. It roared down the widening valley of the river, making good time as gravity helped it on its way, and a little after two-thirty in the afternoon crossed the Territorial line. Slim checked his watch—they were on schedule; they'd get into Laramie in another five hours or so.

They changed horses at Lambert's, some two and a half hours out of town, and now Slim ratcheted up his alertness just a bit, remembering what Jim Bridger and his foster-son, Flint McCullough, had taught him about Indians, those masters of ambush, when he and his folks and Jonesy and baby Andy had been on their way west, all those years ago. When you approach a dangerous place, like the narrows of a valley, they'd said, your attention is directed ahead, toward what seems the likely place for an attack, and you overlook the apparently innocent ground you're about to cross; and after passing it without incident, your tendency is to let down, to relax your vigilance. Indians knew this, and therefore generally laid their ambushes just before or just after a dangerous-looking place. So near to town, in a country pretty fairly thick with ranches and homesteads, a man might well begin to think he was safe, and a smart outlaw might take advantage of that.

The stage road passed a tongue of pine timber and aspen flowing out of a draw and sweeping toward it, just the kind of concealment road-agents liked, and Slim brought the Winchester up, ready to swing the barrel in any direction; but nothing happened. Now they were coming into the last long home stretch, a broad expanse of open ground with no cover in sight except a little bluff about four hundred yards off to the west. Slim was just about ready to relax when the shot came, a single rifle shot, its echo flat and menacing in the prairie air. The near lead horse screamed, stumbled, and collapsed in its traces, hopelessly snarling its mates. The rancher's head snapped around, in time to see the knot of horsemen pouring out of the timber they'd just passed, thundering after them. Ed Price was fighting the team, trying to settle and control them, knowing that if they stampeded with their dying leader to drag, they'd jackknife and the whole coach would go over. There was no way to make a fight of it; their pursuers would be on them in minutes.

The riders split, swirling around the coach as it lurched to an unsteady stop, without mishap, thanks to Ed's skill. There were seven of them, all wearing dusters, which made a handy cover-up and prevented witnesses from being able to describe distinctive articles of dress, and big silk bandannas pulled up over their faces. Slim wondered why they hadn't bothered with sacking hoods, which usually went with dusters and had the great advantage of concealing skin tone, hair color, scars, and so on. One of them, nearly as tall as he was and forking a strawberry roan, pulled up directly in front of him and aimed a Smith & Wesson at him. "Drop it," he ordered, in a deep east-Texas drawl, nodding briefly at the Winchester.

Slim hesitated just an instant, then obeyed. "Now the sixgun," came the next command. "Unbuckle and toss it."

Down below, two or three of the road-agents were chivvying the passengers out of the coach and lining them up. Slim heard more hoofbeats and looked up, as he began undoing his holster's tiedown, to see another rider cantering toward them from the bluff, towing a packhorse behind him. As he pulled up, the rancher saw that he was holding a .44-90-400 Remington Rolling-Block single-shot buffalo rifle with a telescopic sight, the buttplate braced against his thigh, Apache-fashion, barrel canted skyward. Slim didn't own one, though he'd looked at them from time to time, thinking they'd make good hunting weapons. They hadn't the power or carrying distance of a Sharps Big Fifty, but they weren't as heavy either, and they could boast half again the range of the common Winchester and greater accuracy. That would be what had killed the horse: the man would have been hidden on the bluff, far enough off that Slim hadn't been expecting any trouble.

The passengers were out now, standing quietly under the covering guns of the robbers on that side. Slim unfastened the buckle of his rig and slipped it off his lean hips, giving just an instant's thought to swinging it at the nearest outlaw and knocking his revolver out of line; if he did, he could make a jump for the Winchester—but, no, there was too much chance of Ed or one of the passengers getting caught in the crossfire. He let it fall, his throat and belly tight with anger at being so easily taken on what was very nearly his own home ground.

A cream-colored buckskin horse pulled up alongside the man covering him. The rider, unlike his fellows, hadn't buttoned his duster shut; he wore a blue flower-print calico shirt and dark serge trousers, the latter cinched at the waist by a Chinese silk sash of vivid raw colors. Twin holsters with shining Mexican silverwork were strapped at just the right professional height around his hips, snugged down so that the belt supporting them crossed his belly at an almost perfect level. The wide, curling brim of his soft, plain black hat swept down in front to shield his face; the crown was creased, not flat-topped like Slim's own. He wasn't a big man; the rancher estimated him at five feet six, and small-framed besides, somewhere between 130 and 140 pounds. His friend with the S&W towered over him and outweighed him by fifty pounds or so, yet Slim caught a quick glance of deference passing from the bigger to the smaller man, and he thought, This is their boss.

"All right, shotgun," said the man in the calico shirt. "Nice and slow, reach down in the boot and pull out the box, balance it on the side of the seat and let it fall. Then you can sit, but keep your hands where we can see 'em." His voice was a light tenor, his accent vaguely Midwestern. He had one sixgun out—it was a Colt Navy, lighter weight than the common .44 and well suited to a small hand, but at this distance equally as deadly—and his other palm spread against the middle of its twin's holster.

Silently fuming, Slim did as he was bid. The box tipped and landed with a loud thud as the two men quickly pulled their horses back; the rancher noticed that neither animal flinched at the impact. Quiet horses, well-broke, maybe Indian-gentled, not likely to jump at a sudden gunshot or run away on some real or imagined fright; just the kind outlaws would choose. The man with the Remington thrust it into a boot under his stirrup leather and dismounted to bring the packhorse up; Slim noted that it was rigged with a sawbuck and two panniers, perfectly adequate to carrying Henry Kirby's $12,500 worth of gold double eagles, which would weigh in at around 125 pounds—it would sit heavier on the animal than a human of the same weight, being dead weight and therefore having more resistance, but would still be well within standard carrying capacity.

Calico, leaving his partner to keep Slim covered, lowered his Navy and trained it on the padlock securing the box's hasp. In another half-second he'd shoot it off, and then they'd empty the box, pack the coin in the panniers and the paper in a gunnysack or somebody's saddlebag, and be away.

That was when the whole thing went wrong.

There was a scream from one of the female passengers, a curse, a yell, a sound of struggle, and Calico's head snapped up. "Roy!" he shouted. "Leave her be!" And before Slim quite understood what was happening, the scene was ablaze with gunfire.

He dived off the seat, partly to get below the line of fire and partly to get his rifle; hit the ground tucked and rolling, the way Jess had taught him, and came up, picking up the Winchester on the way, losing his hat, still trying to get a handle on what was going on. One of the male passengers was tussling with a bandit, rolling to and fro on the ground; another had drawn a pistol from some hideaway holster and was covering him, blazing away at the other two on that side, and the rest, thank the Lord, had had the good sense to drop flat. The outlaw with the Remington jumped for his mount, and Slim turned and fired; saw the man jerk, but he still got his leg over the horse's back, swaying a bit as it struck leather. Calico's buckskin squatted back as he hauled on the reins, firing toward the pair on the ground. Slim heard shots behind him as Ed pulled his Colt and began squeezing off suppression fire at the bandits on his side; saw the passenger's opponent suddenly rear up, blood blossoming on the back of his duster, and fall sideways with a sprawling limpness that plainly said he was finished; cranked his rifle around with some vague thought of taking down the boss-man, and felt a sharp blow across the front of his left upper arm; dropped the Winchester reflexively, threw himself backward, scrabbled for his gunbelt and Colt, felt the cool ivory buttplates under his hand, the solid familiar weight of the gun in his grasp. He couldn't seem to see quite right, everything was getting shadowy. He located the pale shape of the buckskin, raised his gun toward what he hoped was the rider, and just as he squeezed the trigger felt a second blow, this one above his right ear. There was an instant of red blazing agony, a crimson curtain seemed to fall across his vision, and that was the last thing he knew.

**SR**

Sherman Ranch & Relay Station, next morning (Friday), 9:30 A.M.:

"Yer late, Mose!" Jess Harper shouted mockingly, as the first coach of the day rolled into the yard. "Wha'd ya do, stop and pick flowers? I been waitin' on you this half an hour!"

The veteran on the box didn't rise to his bait. "I'll make it up on the next leg," he said. "Got a special package for you, Jess. Inside."

Jess frowned. As far as he knew, they weren't expecting anything that would come straight to the door by express, and if they had been, it should have been in the boot, or up on the roof. He strode across to open the door—

and his stomach lurched. There was only one passenger—his friend, his pard, his brother, Slim Sherman. The big man was crammed into the right rear corner of the compartment, held in place mainly by the strength of his long legs braced against the opposite seat and by the tug strap to which he grimly clung one-handed, eyes closed, lips pressed tightly together, face pale and beaded with sweat, the muscles over his jaw-hinges standing out where his teeth were gritted against his pain. His left upper arm was heavily bandaged almost from elbow to shoulder and bound tight against his side, forearm in a sling, most of his shirt cut away and his short rider's jacket draped over his shoulders; another bandage was fastened around his head. "Aw, pard..." Jess groaned softly, and pulled himself aboard. "Slim? Hey, pard, you with me?"

"Huh... Jess?" Slim opened eyes dark with pain and looked up at him dazedly. "Am... am I home?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you're home. Take it easy, now, let me see to you." He stuck his head out the door a moment and hollered, "DAISY!" Pulling back, he added, "Scrunch over, pard, so's I can get in alongside you."

Slowly, as if he'd cramped up some since he'd been sitting there, Slim inched himself to the left on the seat, his breath hitching as he moved. Jess dropped down where he'd been and drew the rancher's good arm gently across his own shoulders, sliding his left arm behind Slim's back and around his waist to provide added support. He noticed that Slim's skin didn't feel unusually hot, and realized with relief that he wasn't fevered—not yet, anyway. "C'mon, now, let's get you up..."

Mose was at the door to help as Jess turned sideways and eased the wounded man down the hanging step-irons. Daisy, standing at the kitchen door, gasped at the sight of her "oldest boy," his head drooping wearily against his shorter partner's shoulder, catching his breath sharply as his boots touched the ground. "Slim! Mose, what happened to him?"

"Him and Ed Price had a set-to with some road-agents yestiddy, about halfway betwixt Laramie and Lambert's Station, Miss Daisy," the driver explained. "Slim was on his way home and ridin' substitute shotgun, and by what Ed told me there was a pretty fair bit of shootin'."

"Well, why in perdition didn't somebody make him stay in town?" Jess demanded hotly. "He ain't in no shape to be ridin' one of these old rockers."

Mose snorted. "Count it lucky Mort Corey managed to talk him into stayin' overnight and havin' hisself bandaged up, 'stead of gettin' a horse and comin' on, which was what he wanted to do. They put him in the hotel and he was waitin' outside it when I pulled up to start the run. I told him he ought to stay put, but he wasn't havin' it; home he wanted to be, so home I fetched him—figured better he was with me than tryin' to ride it and maybe endin' up in the ditch. But it ain't as bad as it looks, it's just a flesh wound. Bled considerable, and hurts like the devil, I reckon, but Doc Phillips says he ain't in no danger, 'long as he don't get infected. T'other's a crease, knocked him out for a spell."

"I'll turn his bed down," said Daisy, and vanished inside.

Jess's temper cooled a bit. It hadn't been Mose's fault. "Sorry, Mose," he muttered. "Look, I'll get him settled and then be out to help with the team—"

"Day I can't hook and unhook a few trace chains, that's the day I hang it up for good," Mose told him. "Ain't got no other passengers, so I can lay it on between here and Cheyenne and make up lost time. You go."

Jess ducked his head. "That's why you was late, ain't it? You took it easy for him. We're obliged to you, Mose."

"Go," Mose repeated. "Take care of him. Mort said he'd be out later, maybe try and get a statement out've him—he was kind've out of it when they brought him into town last night."

"Thanks again," said Jess, and: "C'mon, hardcase, let's get them big feet trackin'... right this way, that's it..."

The stage journey from town, short as it was, had clearly taken a lot out of the rancher; his weight lay heavily against his partner's shoulders as Jess maneuvered him across the porch, in through the front door, and into the bunkroom, where Daisy was waiting. Carefully Jess eased him down onto his bed and knelt to remove his boots. Slim lay without moving, eyes half shut as if the light hurt his head, breathing labored. "Are you in pain, dear?" Daisy asked him.

"Yeah..."

She nodded briskly. "I'll make you some poplar-bud tea, then. Jess, try to get him to drink some water, he needs it for the blood loss." With that she was gone. Distantly aware of the sounds of Mose unhooking his team (not that they'd be very tired after that easy hour-and-a-half jog from Laramie) and installing the new one, then hoorawing them into motion and clattering out of the yard, Jess lifted Slim's legs up onto the mattress and set to work getting his clothes off. There was a gravel burn on his cheek, raw and angry-looking, but clean; Doc had probably left it open to the air to speed healing. Apart from that, and the two bandaged wounds, the ex-gunslinger could find no further hint of injury, and he concluded that Slim was suffering as much from exhaustion and pain as anything else. That made sense: Doc would have offered him laudanum, but Slim wasn't a whole lot fonder of the drug than Jess was—why, the Texan wasn't sure; maybe it was something he'd absorbed from his Cheyenne friends—as far as Jess knew, he'd never been hospitalized during the war, as Jess himself had. Daisy's concoctions, like Jonesy's before them, he'd take willingly enough, though he might sometimes complain of the taste; drugs he wouldn't, unless you kept an eye on him every second. Like as not he'd dumped Doc's potion into the spittoon the minute the man's back was turned, and that meant he probably hadn't slept very well; flesh wounds, as Jess knew from his own experience, could be very painful, besides their prospect of giving you a good case of poisoning. And you wonder why I call you hard-rock, the Texan thought with bitter amusement. Stubborn fool Yank. Having gotten Slim down to his longjohns, he fetched a tumbler of cool water from the wash shelf and slid his arm behind his partner's head to lift it; Slim accepted the liquid and drank slowly, carefully, as if he didn't quite trust his stomach, which wouldn't have surprised Jess one bit—he'd been creased a time or two in his life and knew the kind of nausea it could bring.

"What was you doin' ridin' shotgun anyhow, pard? Ain't that my job?" he asked.

"Favor... for Hanaway," Slim got out. "Big shipment... coin and paper... to our bank... he couldn't let it go... unguarded..."

Jess grunted. "Wisht he had, you mightn't'a' got so shot up. That one to the head could'a' killed you, y'know that, don'cha?"

"Feels like it's... still tryin' to," Slim told him, voice tight.

"Okay, you rest," Jess ordered. He drew the quilt up, tucking it in close. "I gotta see to the team..."

"Sure, I... I know. Thanks for... the help, pard."

Jess grinned. Suddenly Slim's "fool behavior" didn't seem that way any more. Home was where a man belonged when he was hurt. His pard had done the right thing. "You've done the same for me, plenty of times. I'll be back later."

Daisy came in with a steaming mug of resinous-odored poplar-bud tea just as he was going out. He stopped long enough to set a chair by the bunk for her, then headed out to the yard. He'd been thinking about taking a look at the north fence line, up by the Old Laramie Road, after the stage had been, but he decided now that it would wait. A convalescent Slim was way too big and heavy for Daisy to take care of by her lonesome. He'd chop up some wood instead; that would help him exorcise the demons that threatened his self-control when he thought of how close he might have come to losing the most important person in his life.

Daisy called him in to take over while she got started on midday dinner, and he sat with his partner, who was sleeping now, his pain apparently much reduced by the tea. She brought another cup, pleasant-tasting peppermint this time, to ease Slim's tendency to nausea, then thick beef soup and bread pudding, which the big man took willingly but sparingly, not having much appetite. Jess wanted desperately to know who had left his pard in this condition, but knowing that Mort was planning to come out presently, he decided to spare Slim having to tell the story twice.

The sheriff finally arrived around four o'clock, with Mike, released from school, beside him on his gray pony Giant. Daisy cautioned the boy to stay quiet so Slim could rest, gave him his midafternoon snack, and sent him out to the yard. Then the three of them gathered around Slim's bed with coffee and listened as the rancher, propped up against a stack of pillows, told them what had happened. Most of his color had come back, and he seemed stronger and much less weary; the rest and the tea had done him good, and he was able to relate his experience clearly and coherently, if sometimes hesitantly.

"Well," said Corey when he'd finished, "that tracks with what Ed and the passengers told me. You probably didn't see it, Slim, but one of the robbers pulled a brooch off a woman passenger's dress—jade and gold, it was, a pretty thing and likely worth something—and then tried to steal a kiss too. That's when her husband jumped him and the shooting started. The one robber's dead, laid out over at Elbee's; one reason I took so long getting out here was I thought he looked familiar, so I had to go through my dodger file and see if I was right."

"Was you?" Jess asked.

"Yeah, I was. Roy Hankins, stage robber and small-time rustler; you'll be getting three hundred for him, Slim, if you want to claim it. We think another one or two may have been wounded, including the leader, but they got away; Ed said they looked to be hightailing it east, toward the mountains."

"What about the box?" Slim wanted to know.

"Safe and sound," Corey assured him. "Funny thing, though. We found two bullets in Hankins's back, either of which might have killed him; one .44-caliber, probably from your Winchester, and one that looked like a .36. Who had a .36?"

"That would've been the boss, most likely, the one on the buckskin, wearin' the calico shirt," Slim guessed. "He had a brace of Navies at his waist. He must've been tryin' to get the passenger Hankins was wrestlin' with, only Hankins ended up on top just as he squeezed the trigger."

"Might be," said Mort. "A calico shirt, you said?"

"Yeah. Blue flower-print; I noticed 'cause it looked like somethin' a woman might make a dress out of." He went on to describe the robber in as much detail as he could. Mort listened, frowning thoughtfully and nodding now and then.

Jess's instincts bristled; he knew Corey wasn't telling them everything. "This all means somethin' to you, don't it, Mort?" he challenged.

"Well, it might," the sheriff allowed. "By Slim's description, it sounds a lot like a fellow who goes by the name of 'the Calico Kid.' Always wears print calico shirts, like the one you saw, Slim; said to carry twin Navy revolvers, and last reported riding a buckskin. Small-framed man, below average height, and, yeah, one of his gang is about your size. First I've heard of him operating north of the Colorado line, though; there's sure no wantson him from this Territory that I'm aware of. He's been active down there, mostly Denver and southward, and in Nebraska and New Mexico, these last five years. Cattle-stealing, stage robbery, now and again a bank knockover. Always plans it out, takes good advantage of the ground, the weather, whatever he can find that might give him an edge, and never known to have killed anyone in the commission of a felony. And yesterday's the first time I know of that he or any of his gang have ever touched a passenger. They don't bother the mails, either—just the box, which is insured, as you know."

Jess frowned, not quite sure what Corey was implying. "Outlaws go where there's loot, Mort. You oughtta know that. Look at Calvin Hawkes and his bunch when they had me. They'd mostly stuck to Colorado up to then, but when they heard about them cattle buyers on the Medicine Bow run, they decided to branch out some."

"Yeah, I know," Mort agreed. "It's probably nothing... still..." He shook his head. "Well, that should do it, Slim, I won't have to bother you again unless and until we can run the gang down. I maybe should've taken a posse out as soon as the stage got in yesterday, but it was dark by then, and besides I wanted to talk to you first. We'll ride down that way tomorrow; the weather's been dry and clear, we might be able to pick up a track or two. Don't suppose I could talk you into riding along, Jess?"

The Texan glanced at his partner. "Not this time, Mort. Not with Slim laid up and chores and relays to see to."

"That's about what I expected, and don't apologize for it," said Corey. "Being as the money wasn't taken, I probably wouldn't even bother if it wasn't for the assault beef against Slim. Well, I'll keep you all up to date, one way or another. Thank you for the coffee, Miss Daisy."

"Next time you come out," she said, "I hope it's a more pleasant occasion than this."

Jess and Daisy saw him off, and then Daisy headed for the kitchen to start supper. Jess returned to the bunkroom, where he found Slim leaning back against his pillows with a thoughtful frown on his face. "You hurtin' again, pard?"

"No... a little, but not near as much as before. Daisy's poplar tea helped a lot. I'm just thinkin'..." He trailed off.

" 'Bout what?" Jess asked, settling in his chair.

"What Mort said, and somethin' I heard. Just before the shootin' started... there was a scream—that would have been the woman with the brooch, I guess—and a curse and a yell, and the boss—the Calico Kid, if that's who he was—he was just about to shoot the lock off the box, I told you that—I remember now what he said. 'Roy... leave her be.' Like Hankins goin' after that woman was more important to him than the money or me, or... anything."

Jess tilted his head, studying his partner's expression. "What're you sayin', pard? That maybe that .36 bullet in Hankins's back wasn't no accident?"

Slim smiled at him wanly. "Can't fool you, can I?"

"Not no more," Jess agreed evenly. "Know you too good, after all this time, hardcase."

"Five years," Slim mused, and looked up. "He wouldn't be anyone you ever met, before you came to us, would he?"

"No," Jess assured him at once. "No, he must'a' started in after I come here, or maybe right around then. If he ain't wanted in Wyomin', I likely never even read of him in the paper. Never met up with him, that I'm sure of, unless he wasn't usin' that name at the time, and I can't say's I recollect ever crossin' trails with a slight-built hombre carryin' twin Navies, no matter what he called himself."

Slim nodded cautiously, mindful of the crease on the side of his head, then yawned suddenly. "I think I'd like to take another nap before supper," he said. "Tryin' to recall all those details and arrange 'em so Mort could make best use of 'em... it kind of wore me out. You don't need to stay with me, pard. There's the last stage to get ready for, remember."

"A'right, I'll see to it," Jess agreed. "You want company when you eat?"

"Wouldn't mind. I'm feelin' a lot better than I was when Mose brought me in."

"Okay. I'll see you in a while, then."

**SR**

The mountain, that night, around midnight:

"You're bleedin' again, Jake," Dallas Trelagen told his best friend.

"I thought so," the younger man agreed calmly. "Can you stop it?"

Dallas shook his head. "I reckon not. Not for long, anyway. You need a doctor, amigo."

"No doctors," Jake insisted.

"They won't tell," said Dallas. "Ain't you the one told me that? That a doctor's got legal protection? What'd you call it...?"

"Physician-patient privilege. It's in the oath they take. Law recognizes it, too. Doesn't matter. Wouldn't have to tell. There were too many on that coach; somebody must've seen that big fella's bullet hit me—you did. They'd tell, as soon as they got to the law, and then it'd be keeping an eye for any stranger needing a doctor."

"Not at this hour, it wouldn't be."

"Can't take the chance," Jake stubbornly insisted. "All I need is someplace to hole up and rest... it's the ridin' that keeps breakin' the wound open."

"Then why don't we go into Laramie?" Dallas demanded. "Nobody'd think twice on it if they sent for a doc—"

"No!" and Jake's voice was as forceful as his weakened condition allowed. "Maybe if we'd taken the box, if I hadn't stopped a bullet, I'd'a' dropped by. But I won't make them choose between me and the law."

"That no-account Hankins," growled Dallas. "If he hadn't decided to get greedy—"

Jake chuckled weakly. "Even I can't be right about men all the time, Dal."

"Maybe not," Trelagen allowed, "but bein' wrong could be the death of you."

"Not yet," said Jake. "Too much to do. You and me, we'll break Kirby and his lot yet, and get our own back."

Out of the dark came a low whistle and the steady thump of hoofbeats. Dallas looked up. "Here's Kyle. Maybe he's found that hole-up place you say you need. You be all right here?"

"I'm okay. Go talk to him."

Dallas pulled the blanket closer around his friend and chief, and stalked over to the firehole around which the other men were gathered. Kyle was the youngest of the band, barely nineteen, fair-haired and lanky. "Anything?" Trelagen asked him.

"There's a ranch spread just down the mountain from here," Kyle reported. "You cross the Horse Creek Pass trail, follow the Old Laramie Road about five miles, drop down over a ridge, and there it is. Small one, but it looks sound and well-kept. House, barn, corral, big home pasture, no bunkhouse that I could see. Got sight of a man makin' a round of things around sundown—dark-haired fella, sixgun on his hip, rifle. That's the only human critter I made out, and I stayed watchin' till the lights went out in the house, about ten. There's a ravine just this side of the ridge, should be some place in there we can cache the extra saddles."

"Where there's a barn, there's a loft," mused Trelagen, "and where there's a loft there's hay. That'd make a lot better bed for Jake than where he is now. Got any idea how far this place is from Laramie?"

"Yeah, I found a signpost. Twelve miles is all. You still want us to go in without you?"

"That's where that box of Kirby's money was goin', ain't it?" Dallas challenged. "Jake ain't give up on it yet, nor should the rest of us. But we don't know this country. We need to scout first, get a picture of the town, the law, the way the bank's laid out, the best routes out, where we can hide the loot if we have to. That's what you all have to do," he said, including the other four survivors of their group in the command. "Go in singly or by two's, and do it the way we always do—quiet and easy, and keep your heads down. Find a spot where you can get together without anybody seein' you—Case, that'll be your job." Case Northcott nodded solemnly; he was thirty, older than Dallas by three years, the seniormost member of the gang, steady and not easily spooked. "I'll take Jake and hole up in that barn."

"I don't like it," grumbled one of the others. "Be better if we could find someplace didn't have folks livin' on it."

"Not sayin' you're not right," Dallas told him, "but we can't spare the time to search half the Laramie Basin to find one. Jake's got to get warm and rest, and I've got to see if I can get that slug out of him." He stood. "All right, saddle up. Kyle, you come help me with Jake and tell him what you found."

**SR**

Under the chill stars the band moved out quietly, Kyle in the lead to point the way, Case and Dallas in the middle riding on either side of Jake, to catch him if he started sliding off his buckskin, the others in a loose formation all around, Pen, the marksman with the Remington single-shot, still leading the packhorse. Pen had been the only other one of them wounded, and he'd been lucky: the bullet had skinned along his thigh, from hipbone halfway to knee, as he was swinging his leg over his horse's back; it hadn't lodged, had been more like a crease than anything, and while he'd probably limp for a week or so, it wasn't likely to be fatal, not after being thoroughly and painfully irrigated with whiskey. They followed the line of the mountain flank, dropping slowly toward the floor of the basin, until, just at the edge of it, where the heights broke, they found Kyle's discovery. Jackson, the black member of the outfit, scouted the ravine behind the ridge and found an old coyote hole where they could hide Hankins's saddle and the sawbuck and panniers, with rocks piled up in front to keep out weather and prying eyes. He and Pen took care of that, and Case and Kyle, having carefully tested the wind in case of dogs, went with Jake and Dallas to the barn, circling in to keep its bulk between them and the house. Boston, the last of them, took lookout.

They found a side door from the corral into the building. Horses shifted drowsily at the small sounds of their entrance, but didn't set up a commotion. They got Jake's and Dallas's saddles and gear into the loft, along with what food they had. "You come back tomorrow night, Case," Dallas ordered, "and fetch us some more, whatever you can find that don't need cookin'. I'll look for you around this time."

"I'll be here," Case promised. "Just you be sure you are. Boston was right, you know. Hidin' out right under folks' noses—"

"And that's why it'll work," Dallas insisted, "because even if there's a posse after us, it'll never reckon on men on the run doin' that. Help me get Jake up that ladder. Kyle, take our horses back to the others."

**SR**

Slim woke, his arm like an aching tooth, and swore quietly to himself; Daisy's camomile tea, though it made a good soporific, apparently wasn't strong enough to serve as a sedative. He turned his head cautiously on the pillow. In the other bunk Jess was between dreams, though he didn't have them as often, or as violently, as he'd used to do back when he first came to live here: over the years, revealing his past traumas a little at a time, he'd managed to defuse many of them, and now his loud nightmares only came once or twice a month, probably mostly inspired by the war or the fire; like as not he'd have those for the rest of his life. Slim could make out the hands of the bedstand clock, bold black against its white face. Nearly half-past two. He lay there wondering if it would be worthwhile waking his partner and asking him to get some more tea.

Outside, one of the dogs—not Buttons; ever since he'd given warning of that attempt by Best and Samson and Billy Watkins to run off some of the Sherman cattle, he'd had hundred-per-cent house privileges—gave out a volley of short, uncertain yaps. Slim cautiously levered himself up on his good arm, wondering what had disturbed it. Jess grumbled sleepily and turned over, but didn't rouse. That, too, was like him: out on the trail he'd be fully awake and have his Colt clear of leather at the faintest crack of a twig; here, in his home, where he knew he was safe, he could sleep through just about anything, including thunderstorms. The dog called out again, questioning the night; it sounded as if it was in the same place as before. Maybe it had put up some little varmint in the yard and chased it up a tree or onto the chickenhouse roof.

Still...

With difficulty Slim pushed himself up, eased his legs out from under the covers, and reached out his good arm to grasp Jess's shoulder. If he'd done that out on the trail, he'd have had Jess's gun barrel halfway up his nose before he could blink. Inside here, he felt a ripple of lean muscle under his hand, a stir, and then a pair of blue eyes blinked open slowly. "Slim? You okay, pard?"

"Yeah, I'm all right. But there's a dog out in the yard settin' up a fuss. I just thought—"

"Mmm... coyote maybe, after the chickens. Weasel... I'll go have a look."

"Sorry I woke you. It's just—"

"I know. That conscience of yours, or whatever it is, don't ever sleep. I'll go." The dog sounded off a third time; Jess tilted his head, listening to it, as he reached for the iron-gray pants hung over the foot of his bunk. "I hear it. He's in the side yard. I'll go out through the kitchen."

"I'll be here when you get back."

Jess snorted softly in amusement. "Where else?" And that quickly, he was gone, silent as a ghost in the deerskin slippers Andy had given him, his first Christmas with them. Slim wasn't bad at scouting—Flint McCullough, and later the Cheyennes, had taught him that—but Jess was the best he'd ever seen, and that included the professional scouts, some of them former mountain men, that the Army had on its payroll and that they'd worked with a few times when the Indians got restive.

Jess stopped in the main room long enough to pluck his rig off the coat rack and buckle it in place, then padded across to the kitchen, noticing by the way that there was no sign of the dog's noise having roused Daisy or Mike—not that the latter surprised him, especially; their ward could sleep through a cyclone, just about. He eased back the bolt on the side door and eeled out. The dog heard him and came over, whuffling, tail wagging—the breeze, what there was of it, was coming from the far side of the house and had carried his familiar scent to it. Jess stood still, letting his eyes scan the side yard—chickenhouse, woodshed, tool shed, shower, the hutches and cages that had originally been built for Andy's pets and now served the same function for Mike's, the shaded work space alongside the barn and the projecting oblong of the bunkhouse room behind it. There was no moon tonight, which was good in one way—it meant no shifting, confusing shadows—but bad in another. He shivered a bit: even in July the nights got chill at this altitude, and this was only late April.

When Slim had told him about the dog, his immediate assumption had been something prowling around the chickenhouse, but he'd have seen a coyote—for that matter the dog would probably have taken at it—and there wasn't any panicked racket from inside the little building, such as you might expect if a weasel had gotten in; weasels were mostly beneficial critters, keeping down the numbers of rats and mice and garden-raiding rabbits, but times one would enter a coop through a knothole and make a pest of itself by killing fowl. He frowned to himself. Had his pard just been dreaming? No—no, he'd heard the barking himself. He checked the wind again. The dog, when he came out, had seemed to be facing toward the barn. Had it seen something, but not quite been able, in the absence of scent, to figure out what it was? At this time of year they usually let the stage teams stay in the pasture, haying and graining them there, but inside the barn there was a good deal of valuable heavy Hill Brothers "fast-hitch" harness, line property that cost $120 a set...

I'll have a look, he decided, and moved toward the side door, using the fence and the small structures to break up his outline till he could get up alongside the bunkhouse, then following the line of its wall, his hand poised over his Colt.

**SR**

The barn's loft covered only about half its area and was lower than most, but it was still a good quarter full of sweet cured hay. Dallas had found a good heap of the stuff way back in the far corner and put Jake there, sandwiched between two blankets and covered over by the feed. The building was black as the Pit, but the moonless night had mostly accustomed his eyes to the darkness. A barn cat appeared out of nowhere, sniffing curiously at them. It nudged up against Jake, then crawled up on his hip and settled down. Dallas eyed it, at once troubled and amused. It was probably attracted by the warmth of his body, by the developing fever. Well, it wouldn't hurt anything.

A hinge creaked, bringing him alert. He crowded back into the darkest corner of the loft, close alongside Jake. Watching, he saw the foreshortened figure of a man moving out from the covered side of the barn, stepping silently. He noticed the dark hair and guessed that this was the same fellow Kyle had seen. Remembering the tentative barking of the dog a little while ago, he hazarded that the sound had awakened the rancher and he was doing a quick check of things. He observed the balanced position of the man, the light, graceful strides, the darker blotch of a low-tied holster against the pant leg. Rancher, yes, but maybe something more. Too late to do anything about it now...

Jake shifted restlessly, making a small, distressed sound. The man down below checked, face turning up; if Dallas had been a little closer to the retaining rail, they'd have looked each other full in the eyes. He reached out blindly with one hand to muffle any further outbursts, the other hand sliding toward the Smith & Wesson in his holster. Jake's rule had always been no fighting in the gang and no murder outside it, but this was about survival.

The rancher hadn't moved. He was listening, watching, every sense at full stretch. Would he come up the ladder? The cat stirred, disturbed by the emotional byplay it sensed, its fur brushing Dallas's sleeve. In that moment he saw his way clear. Sorry, tabby, he thought, and pinched its tail hard.

The cat let out an indignant blurt, part yowl and part mew, and sprang away from the assault, bounding out of the hay to the top of the rail. The rancher tensed, hand sweeping to his gun, then stilled as he made out the lashing tail, the sinuous form. Dallas heard a soft chuckle, and the man relaxed visibly and turned to making a quick circuit of the floor area below.

**SR**

Jess counted the horses, checked the cows and the harness hung neatly on its pegs. All there, all as it should be. He grinned up at the cat, still perched on the loft rail. Maybe that was what had roused the dog—maybe she'd slipped out through a crack or a rat-hole to forage in the yard, and the dog had gotten a sight of her; their dogs and cats were reared together and usually got along well—Mike saw to that—but in the dark, even the best-behaved canine could make a mistake.

He yawned, breathed in the not-unpleasant barn smell, and then paused as he came to the door that let out into the corral. It hung two or three inches open, not moving on its hinges thanks to the protecting bulk of the barn and the almost nonexistent breeze—but it shouldn't be open. He frowned. He'd carried in the harness through the front, after the last coach left; that he was sure of. Mike would have gone out a little later with the evening milk, but he'd have used the front door or the house-side one. Had Jess simply forgotten to check that door when he did his last circuit? He must have; nothing seemed to be missing or disturbed. It was understandable, he decided; he'd probably been a little worried still about Slim, and more than a little angry at whoever had shot him. Gettin' careless in your old age, Harper, he rebuked himself. But it don't seem like there's anythin' here to fret about.

He slipped out into the corral and swung the bar into place, then scrambled over the rails to likewise treat the door he'd gone in by. He'd reassure Slim, who he knew would be waiting up till he came back in, and then they could both get the rest of a night's sleep.

**SR**

Double Heart ranchhouse, southeast of Denver, about twelve hours earlier:

Nelson Garrett, the Double Heart foreman, strolled into Henry Kirby's office to be met by a lowering glare. "What took you so long? You should have been back last night."

"You won't think so," Garrett replied, "when you find out what stayin' on gave me the chance to learn."

Kirby was thirty-eight and looked very much as his father must have at that age—only average height, but heavy through the shoulders, with a tough-looking, meaty face scored and reddened by much exposure: Garrett handled the home ranch now, mostly, Kirby being too busy with paperwork and politics to do a lot of riding, but he still put in ten to twenty miles every morning for the sake of the exercise, and never missed a roundup. He wore a short beard and mustache instead of the old man's long, square-edged, old-fashioned semipatriarchal beard, a well-tailored light-gray suit, rich yellow brocade waistcoat over a pleated and ruffled white shirt, a Dickens chain to moor his watch. But anyone who thought to dismiss him as a dandy was making a grave error. He still favored cowman's boots, beautiful cherry-colored ones, to townsman's shoes, a silk bandanna with a thick silver slide ring, inset with a pale and excellent turquoise, to a conventional necktie; still wore a pearl-gray hat with a four-dented crown bringing it to a sharp peak, and never left headquarters without a gun at his waist, not to speak of what Garrett suspected was a hideout or two. "All right," he said now, "I'm waiting."

Garrett sauntered casually over to the cellaret, lifted the lid, scanned the rows of bottles within, and pulled out his favorite, Old Crow. He poured himself a man-sized tumbler full, doing his best to keep Kirby from seeing the twinkle in his eyes. Garrett knew his own power, and he knew Kirby knew it—it wasn't every foreman who could coordinate a crew that tallied fully 165 men during the high season, and even in winter ran to a good fifty-five, which was more than many ranchers kept all summer; but he also knew—as well he should, having worked on Double Heart since he was a down-at-the-heels twelve-year-old horse wrangler—just how far he could push, and when he had to stop. He was taller than his boss by three or four inches and looked even taller than that because he was so lean-built. His relationship with the slightly older man was an odd one: they'd all but grown up together, but they weren't friends; neither were they master and servant. Two sides of the same coin, you might almost say.

"You remember that box of operating money you sent up to Laramie by the stage, day before yesterday," he began. "Well, somebody made a try for it. Want to guess who?"

Kirby flushed. "Calico?"

"No other, by what I hear," Garrett agreed. "Kellogg—" that was the marshal of the town just at the edge of the ranch boundary, the town that could legitimately have been named Kirbyville, but Henry had modestly insisted that it be called Bluestone— "got a wire from the sheriff up at Laramie. Witnesses got a decent look at him—not his face, of course, but the shirt and the twin Navies and that buckskin he's riding now."

"The money?"

"In Laramie, in the bank, safe and sound," said Garrett. "Seems there was a substitute shotgun guard on the stage who took advantage of his opportunity, got hold of his rifle and started shootin'. One of Calico's men was killed, and the Laramie law thinks there were a couple wounded; Calico himself, maybe."

Kirby was hooked now, Garrett could see it. "Tell me more. Who was this shotgun?"

"Fellow by the name of Sherman, Slim Sherman. I checked into him some; he runs a relay station for the line out of his ranch. He'd been in Denver on some kind of official thing, and the super there asked him to take over for the regular guard; I don't have a lot of details about that. I did ask, and he took a couple of bullets in the confusion, but he's back home now and expected to be fine in a week or two."

"But they don't know that Calico was hit," guessed Kirby. "Do they?"

"Not for certain, no," Garrett admitted.

"Pour me one of those, will you, Nelse?" the rancher requested, and stood to look out the wide bay window behind his big mahogany closed-front desk. "So," he went on, "Calico found out about the Laramie money. I wish to perdition I knew what his source is."

"I think you might better ask what his sources are," Garrett corrected, bringing the second tumbler over. "I doubt he's got just one. And, you know, a man who casts as big a shadow as you do, it's not awfully hard to keep track of what you're up to; plain gossip will do it."

"That stubborn little nuisance," growled Kirby, bolting down half the bourbon at once. "He's never going to forgive us, is he?"

"Would you have, in his place?" Garrett challenged, mildly. "To you, that claim was just another little piece in the jigsaw you've been putting together ever since the old man died. To him and his partner, it was their ticket to the big time. You took that from them. They've been trying to get its worth out of your hide, ever since."

"If I could get my hands on him—" Kirby began.

"If I were you," Garrett interrupted, "I'd stay as far away from him as I decently could. You may hate him, but not everybody does. He's got a thousand friends in this country—not people like you and me, but poor people, small ranchers, Mexicans, squatters, sheepherders, hard-luck prospectors and nesters. Half the money he's stolen he's given away to people who need it. Kill him and you buy yourself a slug in the back. You wouldn't live a month."

"So what am I supposed to do?" Kirby demanded. "Just let him go on peckin' away at me the way he's been doin' these last five years? A lot of what he takes is insured, of course—the money on the stage would have been; but a lot isn't, the cattle especially. A wound doesn't have to bleed a lot to kill you, Nelse. It just has to go on leakin' steady." He gestured to the huge buckram-bound ledgers scattered over the desktop. "By my guess, we've taken a ten per cent loss from him every year since he started, just in beef alone; that's as much as weather and predators and general die-off account for put together. Natural increase doesn't run more than sixteen or seventeen each year. He's bleeding us dry. We need to stop him."

"Well," mused Garrett, "always supposing this Sherman hasn't done the job for us..." He trailed off.

Kirby looked at him sharply. "What are you thinking?"

"He missed the money, but he'll know where it was headed. He won't pass up a haul that big. But he's out of his regular country; he'll need to scout around, get the lay of the land, and that'll take time. Time enough, maybe, for us to get up there." He grinned. "What's more natural than you'd want to pay a call on this part-time shotgun and thank him for savin' your money? Perfect excuse for you to be in the neighborhood."

"I thought you said I didn't dare kill him," Kirby said.

"I don't reckon you do," Garrett agreed. "Even outside his usual range, the word would get around, and everybody'd know if you'd done it, or hired it done. That's why I've always stopped you from offerin' a reward on him. But there might be some way to make it look like somebody up that way had done it."

"Find Johnny," said Kirby at once, "and pick a few men to go with us."

**SR**

Sherman Ranch & Relay Station, next day (Saturday):

The alarm on Trelagen's watch woke him at four-thirty, in the silent darkness before dawn. Quietly he slipped down the ladder, lit a lantern, turned it just high enough to see by, and milked two teats from one of the two cows—like most Western men his roots were in the country, and in his boyhood he'd done this chore many a time. Having done that, he carefully snuffed the light and clambered back up to the loft, where he dipped out the warm, fresh milk by the tin cup full and let Jake drink as much of it as he wanted. Milk was good, nourishing food, and he had to build up his partner's strength so he could try to get that bullet out.

When the milk was gone, they ate some of the supplies the boys had left with them—canned wieners, Sea Traveller crackers, canned sliced pears with their refreshing, delicious juice—and lay quietly in their concealment until, a bit after half-past five, the front door of the barn creaked open and the dark-haired man from last night entered. Dallas observed that his movements were less graceful and coordinated than before, and concluded, with a faint grin, that he was still about half-asleep. He came up to the loft long enough to throw some hay down to the stock, but didn't come near their corner, and then descended again and began feeding and milking. Dallas heard a querulous curse as he discovered that the one cow wasn't giving as much as she should, but he didn't seem to think it in any way suspicious. Cows did hold back, sometimes.

He took his buckets and went out, and after a few minutes returned and started mucking out. They could hear the rhythm of his work, brisker than before; he was waking up. He'd left the doors open for the sake of the growing light, and there was a faint, enticing aroma of coffee and bacon somewhere. About six-thirty a woman's voice was heard: "Jess! Breakfast!"

"Comin', Daisy!" he hollered back, took a last few strokes with his rake, and went out. So there were at least two people here, him and the woman. If there had been any more men, Dallas guessed, at least one would have been helping him, or if not that, there would have been some sound from without to hint at their presence, perhaps a remuda being brought in so they could choose mounts for their day's work. He remembered Kyle describing the place as small, without a bunkhouse. Family spread, likely; if it was fenced, even only around the perimeter, a single hand could work six to seven hundred head most of the time without undue strain, and it did seem to Trelagen that he'd seen a line of rail fence on the other side of the Old Laramie Road as they worked their way down the mountain last night.

Jake was asleep again, which was probably the best thing for him. Jess had left the doors open and light was beginning to pour in strongly as the sun cleared the shoulder of the mountain. An hour or so passed, and then he came back, moving with the easy, confident grace of the night before—he'd had his food and his coffee, he was fully awake—and began carrying out what looked like sets of heavy harness from somewhere at the back of the barn. Dallas watched curiously; it took him four trips, not two, and most folks only needed a single span for their regular work. His view through the open door was necessarily circumscribed because of his angle, but he made out that Jess seemed to be bringing over some haltered heavy horses, perhaps from another nearby corral, and buckling the gear onto them, one at a time. He heard a lighter, shriller voice—a child?—and Jess's deeper, gravelly rumble, as if the youngster were helping out. Three people, then; maybe Jess and a wife and son, the small figure that crossed the doorway occasionally was wearing britches.

The woman's skirted figure appeared, going up to Jess as he worked; he paused, an exchange took place, and then they turned back to the house—maybe she needed something heavy lifted. He was gone fifteen or twenty minutes, then came back and finished harnessing the horses. He spoke to the boy, who entered the barn, vanished into a stall, and presently came out leading a bay horse with a bridle on it. Suddenly a great racket of hoofbeats and creaking wood and jingling harness arose from outside, and Jess's voice could be heard hollering a greeting. Dallas inched closer to the retaining rail. A stagecoach was pulling into the yard, the driver bearing down on the brake and hauling in on the ribbons; he swung down off his high seat and opened the door on the house side, and two or three men got out, town types by their dress. They walked around, stretching their legs, while Jess and the boy and the driver unhooked the four-up, led the animals over to be tied to the corral rails, and replaced them with the ones Jess had harnessed up earlier. A light dawned for Dallas: the place wasn't just a ranch, it was a relay station. He grinned to himself. Jake would appreciate the irony of that—here they'd tried to hold up one of Overland's coaches, and now they were hiding in the loft of one of its change facilities. All the better—the law wouldn't think that anyone would try to escape it by seeking sanctuary on the property of the would-have-been victims, although on second thought the ranch had probably been here before the station was; a lot of farmers and ranchers, if they were the right distance from the last stop, would contract out to provide team changes and sometimes meals—it was a steady monthly injection of cash that could make all the difference to a small and sometimes struggling family-owned place.

The changes completed, the passengers got back on board and the coach took off up the slope; Jess and the boy watched it go, and then Jess picked up his small assistant, set him on the top rail of the corral, and seemed to confer with him. Dallas could hear his questioning voice and the bright, positive note in the boy's responses. Finally the two of them headed off toward the putative other corrals and came back, presently, leading another two quartets of horses by neck-ropes. Jess haltered and tied them, squatted down on his heels and talked briefly with the boy again, and finally nodded and began saddling up the bay from the barn. The woman came out with what must be a packet of food, and he stuffed it in his saddlebag. Dallas guessed he was off for a day's work on the range. There'd be more coaches along as the day progressed—two, judging by the number of horses—and Jess was perhaps planning to be in some distant part of the spread, far enough from here that he might find it difficult to get back in time to take care of them; he'd been concerned with whether the boy could handle the changes, but the boy wasn't—he was completely confident of his ability to do a "man's work." Dallas grinned. He liked the little scut—reminded him of himself around that age.

Jess mounted up and spurred his horse, cantering briskly off up the road. The woman headed back to the house. The boy came into the barn and got what was probably chicken feed out of a big bin; the squawking and clucking that followed made it clear that, yes, that was what it had been. Next he returned and went to the back of the barn, where Jess had fetched the harness from; Dallas heard a scraping sound, then a rumble, and the boy reappeared pushing a barrow piled high with gleaming leather and metal. Dallas nodded. Smart kid—he knew he wasn't strong enough to carry heavy draft harness as Jess had done, and he knew better than to drag it, so he'd lifted down a barrow-load of it, probably by standing on a box, and was taking it outside.

For the next couple of hours Dallas watched through the door as, with the help of a second box to stand on, the kid stripped the team that had just come in, rubbed them down and watered them, led them off out of sight, and then returned and slowly and carefully rigged up four of the tied horses—a man could have done it in, probably, forty minutes, but the boy was taking his time, checking everything twice, very much aware of the trust Jess, and by extension the stage line, had placed in him. He tied a nosebag on each of the animals so they could grain up before their strength was called on, then vanished to presumably go about other chores. Dallas took advantage of this to quietly ease down and outside and answer nature's call behind a big shed that had a stout padlock on the door. A feed shed, maybe; if this was a relay they'd use a lot of grain—horses at hard work needed more of it than they did of hay—and the barn clearly wasn't big enough to hold anything like a week's supply, let alone a month or more's worth. That tended to support his guess that the ranch had been here for a while before the stage company came along and offered Jess (or maybe Jess's pa—he didn't walk like he was even thirty, yet; maybe, on reflection, the woman was his ma—or more likely his step-ma, he called her by her name, after all—and the boy a kid brother) a contract.

A quick peek around the barn's front corner showed him the boy sitting by what was probably the kitchen door (there was a big iron roundup triangle hung nearby), working the crank of a barrel churn and talking to a dog and a couple of cats that were sitting nearby. Chickens wandered around, pecking up whatever they could find. The front porch, which wasn't very big, was all but buried in climbing roses, not in bloom yet but thickly leafed; more of them overhung the kitchen door and crawled up the house walls. The house itself was part log, part whitewashed board-and-batten, low-built and sturdy-looking, no showplace, just a cozy, comfortable family home. What appeared to be a pasture sprawled along the roadway across from it, and nearer, in between it and the barn, were the small ancillary buildings any family place would have, filling a yard whose rear boundary was defined by a tall whitewashed board fence. The fence turned a corner just past what looked like a couple of rough-made gravity-fed shower stalls, and there was a solid gate in it at the back corner of the house, with a low slanting roof visible beyond—outhouse, likeliest, or maybe a couple of them—and past those again a line of trees that suggested a stream. Satisfied that he now had a good idea of the layout, Dallas pulled back, eeled in through the side door, and rejoined Jake in the loft. His pulse seemed stronger, and the wound had quit bleeding. Maybe tonight, after the family had gone to bed, Dallas could fire up a lantern and get that bullet out of his partner. He still had most of a pint of whiskey, that would do to clean his hands and knife with, and he ought to be able to find a hunk of leather somewhere around for the younger man to bite down on so he wouldn't holler.

He yawned suddenly, and fished his watch out of his vest. A little past eleven. He'd been shorted on sleep last night, and he didn't want to be drowsy when he went to do the surgery. Jess probably wouldn't be back to milk again till past five. He could take a long refreshing nap and still be ready when the man returned.

He woke Jake briefly and they shared a can of tomatoes, savoring the juice. Then Dallas covered his friend up again, set his watch alarm for four-thirty, and stretched out in the hay beside him. He was asleep in less than fifteen minutes.

**SR**

It had worried Mike some when Sheriff Corey had met him at the schoolhouse yesterday and said he'd keep him company out to the ranch; he knew the sheriff was a good friend to Slim and Jess and often stopped by when he was in the area for some of Aunt Daisy's coffee and baking, but for him to be heading that way a-purpose might mean trouble. It had worried him even more when Aunt Daisy had told him that Slim had come home on the morning stage, hurt and worn out; he remembered too keenly that time when Slim had been shot by that outlaw Greevy and left out by Wind River Canyon in the cold—he'd have died there, maybe, if Jess hadn't gone and found him. But today he felt much easier about the whole thing, and what was almost more important, he knew Jess and Aunt Daisy did too. Slim had slept late, it was true, but before the morning stage came he'd asked to have Jess help him out to sit on the front porch. Slim didn't get as antsy when he was hurt as Jess did, but he loved the good smells of spring, and he got tired of just looking at the four walls of the bunkroom if there was any way he could sit outside. So Jess had helped him get dressed and settled in one of the chairs, with the rich new leaves of the climbing roses to keep the sun off him and break the force of any breeze off the snowfields up the mountain, and then the two of them had talked, and Slim had told Jess that he ought to go out and get some of the range work done, that if Slim needed anything Mike and Aunt Daisy could see to it. Jess hadn't been quite sure, and he'd asked Mike a couple of times if he was sure-and-certain he could take care of the next couple of team changes. But Mike had seen it done many times now, and he knew what to do. Jess had roped the fresh horses and brought them out of the pasture—they knew the routine as well as the family did and tended to come down toward the gate automatically—and then he'd taken the dinner Aunt Daisy had packed for him and ridden out on Traveller, and Mike had set to work using his "human smarts"—that was what Jess called it when he talked about the way a man had more brains than a cow, and worked out ways to make the cow's size and weight work for him instead of against—to make up for his lack of size and strength as he saw to the tired team and got a fresh one ready for the noon inbound. He was resolved to make Jess—and almost more important, Slim—proud of him, to show that he could handle a proper man's work; if he did that, maybe they'd let him go on the fall roundup. After all he'd be eleven by then, and Jess had been younger than that when he'd started in wrangling horses, down in the Panhandle Country; and as for Slim, why, Slim had been just about in full charge of his family's farm every spring and summer and fall from when he was seven, because his pa—Mister Matt, who was buried on the hill beyond the corral—had been off driving trail herds to market from Texas, till he took Slim along when Slim was thirteen. Mike was glad today was Saturday and he didn't have to go to school. Over the two days of the weekend he could find a lot of opportunities to prove his worth.

Mose was on the inbound and praised Mike's work extravagantly as the boy led the horses to and fro and helped hook the trace chains in place; he went over to the porch to see how Slim was coming along, and Mike heard laughter from over there, though Slim's was cut off suddenly when it jarred his hurt arm. He saw the coach off, stripped the tired horses, rubbed them down, and led them over to the pasture, where he turned them out, forked some hay in from the stack yard alongside, fetched oats from the feed shed (using the barrow again, because of the weight) and poured them into the long trough. After that it was dinnertime; Mike carried a tray out to the porch so Slim could eat there, and cut up his antelope steak for him because he couldn't, not with his left arm still tied up. He fetched his guardian a book, and then Aunt Daisy needed his help in the vegetable patch, and then he decided to rig up and grain the horses ahead of time for the next team change, so he'd have it done and not need to rush, and so it went until about two-thirty, when he had a spare moment and figured he'd whittle out some picket pegs—an elementary process that Jess had taught him last winter; he could sell them to the saddle shop in Laramie for a cent and a half each. But when he reached in his pocket for his jackknife, he couldn't find it.

He made himself stop and think, the way Slim always told him to do. He'd had these same pants on yesterday, so it wasn't that he'd left the knife in a different pocket. When had he last seen it? Usually he emptied out his pockets every evening before he went to bed, particularly on school days or if he'd been off on some kind of excursion with Slim or Jess; Jess always said things just natch'erly growed in a boy's pockets, and especially at school the boys were forever swapping stuff around at recess and dinnertime. Last night, though, he remembered now, he'd been worried about Slim, and hadn't. He'd definitely had the knife around five, because Aunt Daisy had needed him to make some shavings for kindling. Could it be that when he went up into the loft afterward to hay the stock, it might have fallen out? He decided to look there first. If he couldn't find it, he'd ask Aunt Daisy if she'd seen it; she always seemed to know where everything was.

Standing as it did in full sun, the barn became drowsy-warm at this time of day. The stage horses were all out in the home pasture, except the four he'd made ready for the three-thirty outbound; the cows were there too, enjoying the good green grass—he and Giant would fetch them in later when it got nearer time to milk; Slim's Alamo had been turned out in the far pasture when he left for Denver last week, and Traveller was with Jess. Mike clambered lightly up the ladder and paused at the top, closing his eyes for a minute or two to get used to the dimness—of course lanterns were strictly forbidden up here. Then, as he opened them and swung his leg over the top rung, he saw the man. He was lying over near the back wall, facing it, on his side—a tall man, almost as tall as Slim, with the lean hips and broad shoulders common to men who'd spent their lives riding. Mike stood very still and forced himself to look the stranger over carefully—panic, Jess always said, killed more men than bullets ever would. His hair was dark, maybe not as dark as Jess's, but certainly a very deep shade of brown, at least, though it was hard to tell for sure in the shadows; his head rested on a clay-colored Stetson with a tooled-leather band. He wore a blue-checked shirt, a black vest over it, brown wool pants tucked into boots adorned all around the top with Texas Lone Stars. His holster, black from years of saddle-soaping, was worn high at his belt, on the left, the butt to the front and wedged against his hipbone; that, Mike knew, was the Texas cross-draw, and it could be incredibly fast, because with a regular side holster you had to bring your arm up and then level it before you could shoot, but with the cross style the gun came level almost as you pulled it.

Looking back on it later, he knew his error had been in looking so long at the man: one of the first things Jess had taught him when they began to go deer-hunting together was that men and animals alike often seem to be able to feel it if you stare at them. Suddenly the man rolled over, his eyes opening as he moved, and they looked straight at each other. Mike lunged for the ladder, but the man came to his feet in one jackknifing surge, shot out an arm, grabbed him around the waist and plucked him off his feet, clapping his other hand over the boy's mouth. Mike kicked and writhed, though he knew it was no use.

"Be still, boy!" the man hissed in his ear. "I ain't here to hurt you or yours—range word on it!"

Mike quit kicking immediately. Slim and Jess had both emphasized to him, over and over, that a man's word was his most sacred and precious possession and was never to be given unless he meant to bide by it. And Jess had taught him that "range word" was one of the two greatest pledges a cowman could give, the other being if he said he was "speakin' for the brand."

"You know what that means, don't you?" said the man, and Mike nodded against his hand. "All right, if I let you go, you give me your range word you won't holler or run till we can talk some?" Mike thought it over for a moment, then nodded again. The man gently set him on his feet, uncovered his mouth and turned him so they were facing each other.

"What are you doin' in our barn?" Mike demanded. "If you needed a place to sleep, you'd oughtta come to the door, we'd'a' fixed you up."

"Well," said the man, "I got in pretty late last night, and didn't want to disturb nobody. I growed up on a place a lot like this, and I know the day starts early. What's your name, boy?"

"Mike Williams." He didn't quite believe the excuse—the man certainly could have made his presence known by breakfast-time, if he'd really wanted to. Having seen—and, almost more important, heard, from Slim and Jess and Sheriff Corey—quite a bit of outlaws, he was pretty sure he was dealing with one now. But he thought it smartest not to say anything yet.

"Mine's Dallas." He offered his hand, and Mike shook it cautiously. His accent was kind of like Jess's, only deeper and drawlier, like maybe he came from East Texas where folks grew cotton. Mike knew better than to ask his last name, unless Dallas was his last name; Jess had told him that there had been a man, once, by that name, George Mifflin Dallas, after whom the city was called. "Where am I exactly, Mike?" he asked.

"This is Sherman Ranch. Laramie's twelve miles that way," Mike told him, waving toward the west wall of the barn.

"Yeah, I saw that stagecoach come in, this mornin'," Dallas said. "You're a relay too, ain't you?"

"Uh-huh. Four stages every day, two outbound and two in. Next one's due just about any minute, I better go..." That wasn't true, but he didn't think Dallas would know it, and he hadn't given his word not to lie—or to tell, either, come to that.

"Mike! Mike, where are you?"

Mike saw Dallas's eyes sharpen and his face get kind of cold and wary, the way Jess's did when there was trouble brewing. Thoughts flew fast through the boy's head. Most outlaws, he knew, weren't vicious, at least not where women and kids were concerned, not the way Indians could be; they might take one as a hostage, but they seldom harmed them. Still, Slim was over on the porch, and if Mike or Aunt Daisy hollered he might think they were in trouble and try to help, and with his arm tied up and hurting he wouldn't be as good in a fight as he usually was. It would be better to keep Aunt Daisy out of the barn altogether. After he was clear himself, he could decide whether to tell. "That's Aunt Daisy," he explained. "I gotta answer her or she'll come in here lookin'."

Dallas hesitated, and Mike could see that he was thinking too. Then he glanced back over his shoulder, and as Mike followed the direction of his gaze he saw that there was another man lying almost right against the wall, half covered in hay. There was a dark stain on the side of his shirt, a kind of stain Mike had seen before.

Mike had given his word not to run, but that had only been for the moment—even Dallas had qualified it; he'd never said he'd stay here for good. He seized his opportunity in both hands and bolted. He shot out the door and full into Aunt Daisy, who, as he'd warned, was coming to look for him. "Aunt Daisy, Aunt Daisy," he gasped, "there's two men in our loft and one of 'em's shot!"

"Heavens, Mike, watch where you're going, you nearly ran me down. Slim's fallen asleep, I need you to help me get him back into bed before the stage comes— What did you say?"

He babbled the story of his encounter. She listened, and he saw the way her face got firm, like when she meant him to have a bath whether he wanted one or not. She looked back toward the house, thinking, perhaps, as he had, of Slim, hurt and not up to snuff. "Get around behind me, Mike," she said, her voice very steady, "and if anything happens, run and wake Slim—but not until then, do you understand?"

"Yes ma'm," he whispered, and did as she had told him.

She squared her shoulders like a soldier on parade, lifted her skirts by a couple of inches, and walked into the warm dimness of the barn, where she stopped in the middle of the centerway and called out, not loud, but clearly. "I know you're here," she said. "I don't mean you any harm. I don't have a gun. I want to help you, if I can. Won't you come out where I can see you?"

For a long, long minute there was no answer. Mike thought he heard a murmurous exchange up in the loft, though he couldn't have sworn to it. Then, slowly, Dallas's tall shape appeared above the top of the retaining rail; he had his hat off. "Yes, ma'am," he said in his deep drawly Texas voice.

"Mike says there are two of you and one is hurt," Aunt Daisy told him, still evenly. "During the war I was a nurse. I may be able to help him. May I come up and see him?"

Dallas hesitated; his head lifted a moment, as if he were looking past them, to the open doors. Then he sighed and said, "I reckon so, ma'am."

"Stay here, Mike," Aunt Daisy ordered, and she tucked the front of her skirt up into her apron tie and began slowly ascending the ladder.

**SR**

The stranger met her at the top, offering his hand to help her get over the uppermost rung. She looked him over, seeing all the same things Mike had—and something else: a quiet, unhappy tension, a look of concern, the same that she had seen so many times on one of her two older boys when the other was late or missing or hurt. "I am Mrs. Daisy Cooper, the housekeeper here," she said. "Will you tell me your name, sir?"

"Dallas Trelagen—your servant, ma'am." She caught the accent immediately, and the deference as well; she'd heard it from the wounded Southern boys she had tended. "Reckon I should'a' made the boy give his word not to tell on us. Might've, if we'd had more time."

They're on the run, she knew. "And what about your friend?" She could just make him out, now, half hidden in the hay over by the wall.

"Jake would understand," he said. "I had it in mind to see to him myself, tonight maybe."

"Here?" she demanded. "Mr. Trelagen, a barn loft is no place to care for a wounded man! Let me see him. Please."

He hesitated, and then a soft voice, lighter, spoke up from the shadows. "Fetch her over, Dal. We've come this far..."

"Jake—"

"Dal, now you do as I tell you," and Daisy heard the steel in the voice. "Takin' chances is what we've been about these five years; this is just more of the same."

Crestfallen, Dallas offered his hand to help her if she stumbled, and led her to his friend. She somehow wasn't surprised to see the blue-flowered calico shirt, the slightly built form, the twin-holstered gunbelt with the shining Mexican silverwork that lay within easy reach of his hand. "You'll excuse me, ma'am, if I don't get up," he said, with a tight but amused smile. He looked very young, almost not more than twenty, though his reference to "five years" made her think that was deceptive. His hair was a sort of sandy blond—probably he'd been a towhead when he was a child—and his eyes a clear turquoise, though muddy now from pain. "Miz Cooper, is it? You might's well call me Calico, most folks do."

She knelt beside him. The bullet had gone in between the fifth and sixth ribs, she estimated—not a good place; the lung was at that level. But there was no blood on his lips, and there certainly would have been by now, if the lung had been holed; indeed after almost forty-eight hours it was unlikely he'd have been alive. "It's still in there, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am. The way it kinda grinds when I shift, I've a notion it's stuck under my shoulderblade. I was hit at an angle, you see, not straight on."

Daisy looked up at Dallas. "Then you're very fortunate Mike found you, because you, Mr. Trelagen, couldn't possibly have gotten it out with only a knife, which I assume is all you have." She stood, accepting the tall man's hand. "Mike!"

"Yes, Aunt Daisy?"

"Mike, run to the house and get the satchel from my bedroom, and some sheets and blankets out of the closet in your room. Bring them to the bunkhouse. And be careful not to wake Slim!"

"Yes ma'm," the boy agreed, and she heard the soft thud of his boots against the packed surface of the yard.

Dallas squinted at her suspiciously. "Who's Slim, ma'am? I know about Jess—seen him come in this mornin', and heard you call to him when breakfast was on, but I figured he was the only man on the place."

"No, Slim is his partner. He's... not well, just now. Don't worry, Mr. Trelagen. I don't see a reason to disturb him by telling him about you. You'll help me with—with Calico, won't you?"

She saw his features tighten with resolve. "You just tell me what to do, ma'am."

"We'll need to get him down from here," she said. "If I go down the ladder before you, I think I can guide his feet. Then go out the left-side door, the one facing the house, and around to the ell on the side; we use it as a bunkhouse at need."

Dallas proved to be both strong and deft. He got Calico to the main floor, then scooped him up like Slim or Jess lifting a sleeping Mike and carried him the rest of the way. Mike met them at the bunkhouse door with Daisy's satchel and an armload of linen. "Thank you, Mike. Now get some wood and a kettle of water, and then go out in the yard and stay there till I call you."

He vanished. She quickly dressed one of the bottom bunks, and Dallas lowered Calico into it and drew a chair up beside it for her. Mike brought wood and she had Dallas fill the little stove and get a fire going while she checked to make sure she had some bandages ready-torn and rolled; she always tried to keep a supply of them at hand, knowing how prone her boys were to hurting themselves. She began laying out her instruments on the little table, with one of the plain tin washbowls to be filled once the water was hot. Mike brought the kettle and withdrew. "You don't want him to see, do you, ma'am?" Dallas guessed.

"Mike saw—well, he didn't quite see it happen, but he got there right after his parents were killed by Indians, three years ago," she explained. "We—Slim and Jess and I—have an agreement that we'll try to shield him from any more such ugliness, until he's old enough to bear it better."

"He ain't yours?" Dallas asked, sounding surprised.

Daisy laughed softly. "No. We're none of us related. Slim calls us 'a little family of strays.' " Wanting to distract him, she said, "Trelagen... that's a Cornish name, isn't it?"

"Why... yes, ma'am, it is. My daddy was a tin-miner, come over to work in the coal fields in Pennsylvania, but somebody told him about Texas, and he made up his mind he wanted to own some land of his own, not spend his life diggin' in somebody else's. So he worked his way west and got there just in time to fight in the War of Independence, and that got him a land grant, and he married an East Texas girl whose family'd come from Tennessee, and had us, three girls and four boys."

"Jess is from Texas too. The Panhandle country," she said. "Slim was born in Illinois, but he's lived here since he was fifteen. Mike was born in Parke County, Indiana, and I—" she smiled up at him— "I was bred in Chester County, Pennsylvania, not far from the Amish country, though I have relatives from Delaware and Maryland out to Ohio." The kettle began to whistle, and she sobered. "There, it's time. There should be a bar of soap on the washstand, Mr. Trelagen, if you'll bring it here so I can wash up."

**SR**

The three-thirty stage woke Slim when it came roaring in past the porch; still somewhat muddled from his nap, he didn't seem to realize that Aunt Daisy wasn't in view. Mike hadn't been asked not to tell him about Dallas and his friend, but he thought it wiser to keep still for a while. He helped change the teams as he had earlier, refreshed the pitcher of ice-water that sat by Slim's chair—Aunt Daisy said that when people had been shot they needed plenty of water—and asked if there was anything else he wanted. Slim smiled. "No, I'm okay, Mike—I'll just sit here and try to stay awake while you take care of the horses. Maybe then we can play some dominoes."

"Okay," Mike agreed, and went about the task of stripping down the team, rubbing them down and watering them, turning them out and giving them hay and grain. He didn't try to get the fourth team out; Jess had promised that morning to make a point of getting home in time for that. But he brought out the harness for them, and while he was in the barn he went up to the loft and found the two men's saddles and gear. He brought them down and hid them in the bin where the chicken feed was kept. Dallas and his friend would want them, he was sure.

Aunt Daisy must have been in the bunkhouse at least an hour when she finally joined them on the porch. She smiled to see them at their game. "I was going to ask if you wanted to go inside and finish your nap in your own bunk," she told Slim, "but I don't suppose you do, now."

"No, Daisy, I guess I'm good till supper now. How's Mike been doin' all day?"

"He's been a great help," she replied. "Really, I don't know what we'd have done without him. Do you mind if I borrow him, just for a little while? I need him to peel some potatoes."

"Sure. Are you okay on supplies? I should've asked before..."

"No, I have enough for the next two or three days. Perhaps we could send Jess in on Monday—I'd rather stay here as long as you're convalescing."

"Sounds like a plan," he agreed.

At the kitchen door, Mike hesitated, looking toward the bunkhouse. "Are they... is everything okay, Aunt Daisy?"

"I think so," she said. "I told Mr. Trelagen that if he doesn't show a light, there'll be no reason for Jess to look in. I'm going to send you over with some food for them later, and I promised him I'd leave the side door unbolted, just in case he feels he needs my help in the night."

"I kinda thought you wasn't gonna want me to tell about them," Mike said. "Aunt Daisy... Slim'n'Jess're deputies for Sheriff Corey a lot, aren't they?"

"Why, Mike, of course they are. You know that's true."

"And they chase people who rob banks and stagecoaches, and catch 'em and put 'em in jail."

"Yes, they do."

"Well... I'm just wonderin' what they're gonna say about you helpin' a couple of maybe outlaws."

He's guessed, Daisy thought, and chose her words carefully. "First of all, Mike, no one has proved that these men, Mr. Trelagen and Jake, are outlaws. Have you seen any posters about them? Have you heard Slim or Jess or Sheriff Corey say that they're wanted?" She knew she was fudging—if Mike had been in the room when Slim told the story of his "set-to," it wouldn't have held water for a minute—and she wasn't at all sure Slim would approve, though Jess had a more elastic, pragmatic view of such things. "Second, there's a higher law than the laws made by men. It's the law that says, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If Slim and Jess were away from home, in a country they didn't know, where they had no friends, and if one of them were hurt, wouldn't you hope that someone would take them in and help them?"

"Well, sure I would."

"And that's what I'm doing," she explained, "only not for them; for two men I think are very like them. Dallas and Jake care about each other very much as our men do." She didn't mention how Dallas had held his friend down while she probed for the bullet—the younger man had absolutely refused chloroform, asking only for a piece of wood or leather to bite on, until at last the pain became too great to bear and he passed out. Afterward she had irrigated the wound with listerized lard, sewn it up with catgut soaked in carbolic-infused hot water, and bandaged it over. Dallas had helped to turn and hold his friend so the dressings could be placed correctly, his genuine concern plain in every line of his face. "There," she'd said at last, "the rest is up to him. Sometime over the next few hours the swoon should pass into sleep; that will mend the shock. If he wakes, give him all the water he wants; there's a barrel just outside the door, and you can boil it on the stove if you want to. I'll leave you some valerian and poplar bud to make tea; they're very good for pain."

"We're obliged to you, ma'am," he'd said. "Only—don't take this wrong, only—why'd you do it? This ain't our country. Folks where we come from, down Colorado, a lot of 'em are our friends 'cause they been raked over the coals same as us; if this'd happened there, I'd known just where to take him. I just never reckoned on a stranger—" He shrugged.

"The Good Samaritan was a stranger too, Mr. Trelagen. I'm sure you've heard of him," Daisy observed. She made a mental note to ask him—or perhaps Calico, when he was stronger—what that reference meant.

"Yes, ma'am. Just... well, Bible times was different."

"Not really. People haven't changed that much in eighteen-odd centuries. Some are good, some are bad. And some... some, like you and Calico, are very, very fortunate, because they've found their—their brothers. My two boys, Slim and Jess, are like that. I did for you what I'd want someone to do for them, if they were ever in a similar situation." Then she told him about the food she'd send over, and the side door, and left him to keep vigil over his friend.

Jess rode in about five and he and Mike saw to the last coach and the barn chores. Then he sat with Slim and reported on his day and his observations of the range while Daisy and Mike got supper on the table and Mike slipped out to the bunkhouse with a tray for Dallas and Jake. Slim still needed someone to cut his food for him, but his appetite was much improved, and he tucked into his meal with evident enjoyment and the ravening hunger of a convalescent. There was cold roast beef, potatoes and cold ham fried together, squash baked in the shell, canned tomatoes with cheese melted in, baking-powder bread with raisins in it, and the usual assortment of "put-ups," as Matt Sherman had called them—fresh horseradish "relish" for the beef, pie-melon preserves, piccalilli. "Slim, dear," Daisy ventured, "do you think tomorrow—since it's Sunday—you and Jess might take Mike to the lake and try to catch some fish? Are you feeling up to it?"

Mike looked up eagerly at his guardians, the prospect of a fishing trip momentarily banishing his uncertainties about the two men hiding in the bunkhouse, though on one level he knew they were exactly the reason she was making the suggestion. Slim for his part was surprised—Daisy was pretty firm about all of them going in to services on Sunday for as long as the weather allowed—but not unwilling. "I guess I can sit on a horse, if somebody saddles it up for me," he agreed. "What do you think, pard? Wait till after the morning stage, leave the teams for the next two harnessed, and get back in time for the five-thirty?"

"I reckon we can do that," Jess confirmed. "Bugs're gettin' active, so the fish should be bitin' on just about anythin' they see. I'll fetch Alamo in first thing in the mornin'."

"And I'll make corn salad and hot potato salad to go with what you catch," Daisy promised. "And I'll pack some dinner for you to take along."

Both men perked up even more: they'd never tasted these traditional Pennsylvania dishes until Daisy came, but both had quickly become favorites. "Sounds mighty good," Jess told her. "What's for dessert tonight?"

"Jam tart and cinnamon custard. Mike, help me clear off."

**SR**

After she'd seen her boys off the next morning, Daisy knocked gently on the bunkhouse door. "Mr. Trelagen? It's Daisy Cooper. May I come in?"

He opened the door cautiously. He'd been cleaning up; he was bare to the waist, his Smith & Wesson tucked through his waistband. "Is it safe, ma'am?"

"I sent everyone up to the lake to fish. It's two miles or more, and they have a lunch. They probably won't be back till some time this afternoon. How is Calico?"

"I can... talk for myself, ma'am," came the younger man's voice. "I hurt, but that's to be expected, I guess." Dallas had stacked some pillows behind him so he could sit up, and beside his bunk was a pile of inexpensive paperback reprints, dime novels, and story papers (Andy's) that Mike had brought down from the attic. A small barrel stood there too, perfectly positioned for cards.

"Would you like a set of dominoes or checkers, Calico?" she suggested. "I can bring them over, though I'll have to take them back before the boys get home; Slim may want a game before supper."

He shook his head. "We're good, ma'am. In our business you always carry a deck of cards for times when you've got to hole up, and the boy fetched us some readin'." He nodded at the stack of cheap literature by the bunk.

She sat down on the edge of the mattress and tested him for fever. His eyes were clearer now than yesterday, though still edged by lines of stress. There was no hint that the wound had started bleeding again. "You're doing very well, all things considered. Did Mike bring your gear over from the barn?"

"Yes, ma'am, after our supper. Ma'am, I'm grateful, but... I don't, we don't, want to get you in dutch with your men. A friend of ours came out from town last night. Dal told him to fetch our horses about midnight. We'll be goin'."

"You most certainly will not!" she retorted. "I already told you, as long as you don't show any lights between about five and sundown, there's no reason for them to know you're here; Jess might take a turn around the yard just before the light goes, but if the stock doesn't start fussing in the barn, he'll stay inside afterward—and if it did you'd hear it and have enough warning to blow your lamp out. That was a serious wound, Calico. You mustn't think that because you feel so much better lying here quietly, you're ready to go riding off to... wherever."

His lips tightened, and it suddenly seemed to her, looking at him, that she'd seen his face before—and not on a Wanted poster, either. "We've got some... unfinished business, Miz Cooper. Been goin' unfinished quite a spell now. Gettin' kind of tired of havin' it that way."

"Five years?" she guessed. "Was that when... when you went into your current 'business'?"

He looked around at Dallas. "You haven't been talkin' behind my back, have you, Dal?"

"I ain't told her a thing, except that we'd come up out of Colorado," the bigger man protested. "You was the one said five years, Jake, when she first come up to the loft."

The younger outlaw considered that. "Guess I did at that. Sorry, Dal, wound's got me jumpy—that and bein' stuck inside like this."

Dallas smiled crookedly; it changed his whole face. "No blame, amigo." Daisy almost expected him to say 'pard.' Once again she felt, as she had her very first day at Sherman Ranch, that she was in the presence of men who, unrelated though they might be, cared as much for each other as if they were blood kin.

"Perhaps," she suggested, "you'd both like to sit out in the side yard for a while. You ought to have something to eat; I can fry up some ham and eggs, and the sun and fresh air may help you. And—" she dimpled— "I can use an expert potato-peeler or two. I promised the boys hot potato salad for supper."

The two men looked at each other, a silent message passing between them as she had seen it do between Slim and Jess. We can trust her, their eyes said. "We'd be pleased, ma'am, to do whatever we can," Dallas told her. "Potatoes ain't hardly enough, after what you done for us, but they're a start."

**SR**

"Here you go, Miss Daisy," said Dallas a couple of hours later, appearing at the side kitchen door with a bucketful of peeled spuds. "Had to do most of 'em myself, Jake dozed off a little while ago."

"Rest is the best thing for him," Daisy assured him. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, ma'am, that'd be fine."

She poured it, cut some bread, and brought out butter and the last of the black-raspberry jam. "You're from Texas, you said."

"Yes, ma'am. Wood County, on the Sabine." He pronounced it say-bine. "Lived there all my life, till the war. Signed up when I wasn't quite fifteen—reckon you can guess it wasn't hard for somebody my size to pretend to bein' older."

"And Calico?"

He squinted at her. "I shouldn't tell you, ma'am. We owe you, but..."

"I just want to understand. Maybe I can help," Daisy suggested. "Being a relay station, we have a good many... dubious characters... call on us here. You and Calico... you're not like most of them. I can't believe that... that outlawry... was the only route you could have gone."

He looked suddenly grim. "If you was to bet on that, ma'am, you'd lose. But it wasn't altogether our choice, that I'll grant you." He shook his head. "A lot of men in our line, they're badmen, or they come out of the war hardened to killin' and couldn't stop, or they was local bushwhackers that used the war as an excuse for terrorism and didn't dare go home once it was over. And a lot of others went bad to run the fightin' longer, or 'cause they hated what Reconstruction was doin' to their states. But out here, in a wild, lawless country, plenty of men that ain't otherwise bad get into the wrong company, and after one wrong step it's hard to turn back. They get a bad start and can't get untracked, or they find they druther take the easy way out than make an honest livin', or maybe they just like the danger and excitement of a life lived outside the law. Most ain't criminals at heart, I reckon; they're just wild young cowboys, lots of 'em out of work, or sometimes young fellers of good family, who drift into it out of carelessness, or to help a friend or make up a temporary shortage of money. They're drove to it by the urge for excitement and adventure, the same that fetches 'em out here to begin with, plus maybe a boost from John Barleycorn."

"And which are you two?" she asked, thinking of the "wrong start" that Jess, her favorite, had gotten, though not by any fault of his own.

He gave her a half-humorous look, and she suddenly had a sense of what he might have been, if he hadn't taken the wrong trail. "Me? I'm a born follower, I reckon. Took me a spell to find the man to follow, but when I met Jake I knew. He started out in Pennsylvania—same as you, ma'am—but he didn't stay there; his daddy was a preacher, and they moved around a lot. He wasn't a bad boy, from what he's told me—just kind of wild, like a lot of preachers' sons are, and restless too, what you might call a natural pioneer. He was the baby of the family, his big brothers was all shinin' stars of rectitude, and when he turned out not to be, his daddy started in tryin' to tame him to be like them, and the more he pushed, the harder Jake fought. Ridin' hogs in the street, makin' friends his folks didn't approve of, playin' hooky, explorin' caves, gettin' in fights—always with boys bigger'n he was, not that it would'a' been easy for him to find many smaller ones, as I reckon you can guess. Times he'd slip off into the woods and camp out for days, even a couple of weeks, livin' off the land. Oh, but he was smart—never had trouble keepin' up with his lessons no matter how much school he skipped. And a reader to this day—it ain't the learnin' he hated, it was the discipline, and the bein' told when and what and how to learn. When he was twelve his daddy packed him off to boardin' school. He ran off. The old man tried another school, then another. You can't raise a boy on too tight a rein, ma'am, all he ends up doin' is fightin' his head and buckin' harder. Finally—this was just after the war ended—he just give up, decided not to go back home. Found his way to Kansas City—near got drowned gettin' over the Big River, too—and joined a wagon train out to Colorado, to the diggings around Denver. He was fifteen then, worked his way wranglin' stock. That's where we met, out there, about a year later; when I got out of the army I was too restless to go back to Texas and settle down, and maybe I thought, too, that if I could get a piece of all that Colorado gold and silver, I could do somethin' to help my state, where everybody back then was broke. Been partners ever since—nine years now."

"Didn't he ever... let his family know he was all right?" Daisy asked.

"No, ma'am. He kept track of 'em... he knows where they are. Knows him runnin' off like that made a big difference to his daddy, I reckon on account of him bein' the youngest, like I said. The old man went through what Jake says they call a crisis of faith—done a lot of prayin', a lot of questionin' whether maybe there couldn't'a' been some other way he could'a' handled it. Finally broke with his church over it, went into one of them all-denominational ones. You got to be more middle of the road in them kind, I reckon—strict enough so's the old-schoolers'll accept you, but not so strict you scare everybody else off."

"Yes," said Daisy, "we have a church like that in Laramie. Some of the—the conservative element—think there isn't nearly enough hellfire in the sermons, but it's attend or not have any church to go to at all."

Dallas chuckled, and seemed about to go on when a knock came at the front door. Instantly he was on his feet, his sixgun leaping into his hand with a speed she had seen equaled only by Jess. "Who'd that be on a Sunday?" he hissed.

"Put that away!" she scolded. "Unless it's Sheriff Corey, I can't imagine they're any threat to you or Calico. It's not the boys, they'd just barge in—this is their home, after all. Sit down." She crossed the main room and opened the door. "Why, Dr. Phillips!"

"Good morning, Mrs. Cooper. I had to make some calls out this way, and I thought I'd drop in and see how Slim is coming along. I'm not worried about him, not as long as I know he's in your hands, but it won't hurt for me to look at his wounds and see how he's healing. I might even be able to untruss that bad arm of his and just leave the sling."

"Oh, dear," said Daisy. "If I'd known you were coming— the boys all went fishing up at the lake. They probably won't be back until three, at the earliest." Then she looked around, at Dallas. "On the other hand... I do have a—a guest who should be properly examined. I took a bullet out of him yesterday."

Dallas stood up, looking grim. Phillips studied him with the eye of an experienced country doctor. "Not this gentleman, I venture to guess."

"No, not Mr. Trelagen. His partner. He's in the side yard, getting some sun. Will you look at him?"

"Why, of course," said Phillips. Then: "If you'll allow me, sir."

Dallas hesitated. "I wanted him to go to a doc," he admitted, "but he wouldn't. Said even if you wouldn't tell on him, the law might be keepin' an eye for strangers lookin' for that kind of help. Only... only you comin' here, that changes things. Nobody'd ever expect you'd come across us here like this. Let me go out and wake him up and explain, Doc, then you can come out when I call you."

**SR**

"A remarkable job, Mrs. Cooper," said Phillips some time later. "I've always said that when I find you in a home where there's distress of any kind, I know the odds are that I will save my patient. With this young man, you've just proved me right again. I don't wonder that Slim and Jess value you as they do."

"Is he gonna be all right, Doc?" Dallas demanded.

"He's very lucky, Mr. Trelagen. Lucky in how the bullet entered, lucky in being young and strong and healthy, lucky in that you happened on this place and Mrs. Cooper. He has a slightly elevated temperature, which is hardly surprising, but getting the bullet out of there and the wound closed up betters his chances by at least fifty per cent. He'll need rest—no riding for at least a week—and good food, and fluids to replace the blood he's lost. But as long as he doesn't do anything foolish, I think his chances for a normal recovery are good—perhaps even better than good." He turned to Daisy, ignoring the tall man's sigh of relief. "You know what to do, Mrs. Cooper—just keep on as you've begun. I'll go on about my rounds and swing by later to have that look at Slim."

"And... and you won't mention their being here? To anyone?" Daisy inquired.

"Not if you, and they, don't wish me to. Confidentiality—as your partner told you, Mr. Trelagen—is one of the primary principles of medical ethics."

"Then we're obliged to you," said Dallas. "And Jake and me, we don't forget what we owe—or what's owed us; so you need somethin', you let us know."

**SR**

Slim, Jess, and Mike got home about half-past three with a good catch of trout. Mike was sitting outside the kitchen door cleaning them when the doctor returned. He and the two men retreated into the bunkroom and Phillips carefully unwound the bandage from Slim's arm. It was the first time Jess had seen the wound. The bullet had hit directly above Slim's elbow and gouged its way, slantwise, up to the shoulder, following the line of the muscle but not touching the bone, leaving a shallow but ugly furrow in the flesh. The Texan felt a chill at the base of his spine. Looking at the angle the slug must have taken, it couldn't have been anything but blind chance that it hadn't gone on to pierce Slim's neck—and if it had done that, it probably would have killed him.

"It's healing very nicely," Phillips declared. "No sign of infection; I think we can go to the sling alone, but don't use the arm for a while yet. Is it hurting you?"

"A little, now and then," Slim admitted, "but nothin' like the first twenty-four hours or so."

More shaken than he wanted Slim to know, Jess watched as the examination and rebandaging proceeded, then headed out to the woodpile. He'd told Daisy and Mike more than once that there were "just two things in this world that I'm afraid of—a decent woman, and bein' left afoot." But that was half a joke, and he thought they knew it. The one true and great fear he had was of losing Slim, the man who had led him into this new life, this family, the man to whom he owed every good thing he had, except for Traveller. He'd come too close more recently than he liked to remember, with Greevy. He hadn't realized, till now, how close he had just come again. It took him a good half-cord of sawed, split, and stacked wood to work the sick feeling out. Sweaty and a little unsteady, he got fresh clothes out of the bunkroom and headed for the shower. By the time he finished, Daisy was almost ready to call them in to supper.

He knew he'd have to eat or she'd think he was coming down with something, so he did his best. She had rolled the trout in cornmeal and broiled them, and besides the promised salads there was buttered rice, boiled onions, and buttered squash. Crisp-crusted hot biscuits spilled from a napkin-lined wicker basket, and there were wild-cherry preserves and plum butter to go with them. Jess took as small a portion as he could get away with and made it last as long as he could, making it look as if he was savoring it. He didn't think he was fooling Slim, though to his surprise Daisy didn't seem to notice anything amiss. He begged off the lemon sponge cake, saying he was full up and would get some later, and went out to do a circuit of the yard and visit with Traveller, which he found often eased him when he was troubled. By the time he came back, he had himself in hand, and when Slim asked if he'd be willing to take the buckboard into Laramie tomorrow and do the shopping, he was ready to agree to it. "Want me to take Mike in and wait for him?" he asked. "Or should he just take the stage back?"

Slim hesitated over that. "I think, this time, he'd better stay home. I'm still not much good for the relay work, and you won't be here for the noon stage. He can make up; he did it after he was wounded in that bank robbery. You might stop at the school and ask if there's anything he should be payin' particular attention to. I don't like keepin' him out so close to the end of the term, but we really will need him here for a few more days."

Jess, who hadn't had much better than a third-grade education himself (until the first winter Daisy was with them, and helped him get through the next three McGuffey's) and had had to make a good deal of his own way from the time he was nine or ten, made no objection to the plan. "I'll wait till after the mornin' stage," he suggested, "so's I can help get the teams out." Mike was a good roper—Slim had taught him that, had said from the first that he had the arm and the rhythm, only needed to get the eye—but he just wasn't strong enough yet to rope out big coach horses on foot, without a trained full-size mount of his own and a saddlehorn to help secure them.

"That's fine," Slim agreed. "Daisy, can you make up a list for him to take? And if there's anything you need from anywhere besides the general store, don't forget to put it down." That was Slim: organized to a fare-thee-well. So the evening passed, and it came time for bed.

Jess woke with a gasp and a violent start, half sitting up in his bunk almost before he knew where he was. He stayed very still for a minute, two, three, staring into the silent darkness and listening to the runaway hammering of his heart. Gradually he got himself oriented. It had been a long time since a dream had brought him up fully awake and terrified—a couple of years, at least; Slim insisted he used to do a lot of dreaming, and a lot of talking in his sleep, too, and Jess could believe it, but here, for possibly the first time in his life, he had come to feel, after the first year or so, that he was completely safe, and since then his nighttime flashbacks had lost much of their power over him. He still had them occasionally, mostly connected to the fire, or so he assumed, because he seldom remembered them clearly afterward; his knowledge of their subject came chiefly from Slim telling him what he'd been talking about before he woke. This time, even though his recollection of the dream was imperfect, he knew it had been there, and he knew more or less what it had been about. He shivered and wrapped his arms around his upper body, glancing quickly sideways to confirm that Slim was still there, lying on his right side to keep his weight off the wounded arm, deeply and quietly asleep. Reckon I wasn't yellin' this time, or I'd'a' waked him sure.

He peered at the bedstand clock; it was about twenty after midnight. He tried to swallow and couldn't; his mouth and throat felt dryer than that time he'd walked across the desert to Rawlins after the stage was held up. I need a glass of water, he decided, and slid silently out from under his covers. He padded around the end of Slim's bunk and gently opened the door. As he eeled out the crack, he thought he heard another door open and close, not as quietly, and immediately his instincts woke up and he was fully conscious and alert. He heard a creak from the kitchen as a floorboard was trodden on. He slid his Colt out of the rigging hung on the coat-rack and moved softly that way, circling around the perimeter of the room where he'd be less likely to raise any creaks himself. Easing around the shoulder of the fireplace toward the archway, he lifted the sixgun to level, squeezing the trigger as he eared the hammer back, to prevent a telltale click. He stepped around the frame of the arch, drawing in breath for a challenge—and stopped short, snapping the weapon back and up. "Daisy! What in—what're you doin' up?"

She stared a moment at the gun in his hand. "I... I needed a glass of water," she said, a bit shakily.

Jess took the Colt hastily off cock, opened the loading gate and hooked it over the waistband of his longjohns. " 'M sorry," he muttered. "I heard the floor creak—I di'n't know it was you..."

"Of course you didn't," she agreed with her usual briskness. "You've nothing to apologize for. You thought I was someone with no right to be here. Did I wake you?"

"No," he said at once. "I... I needed a drink too. You sit, I'll get 'em."

She hesitated just an instant, then crossed to the table. She was wearing a quilted pale-blue mull wrapper over her nightgown, and soft, close-fitting slippers. Jess was usually painfully modest about letting her see him in his longjohns, but that was when she was dressed; en negligée, as she'd once called it, it didn't seem so scandalous. He went to the sink-and-counter unit he and Slim had built just two springs ago and gave the counter pump a few vigorous strokes—he had to admit it was handy, not having to go outside every time you needed water, and he wondered a bit that it had taken Daisy's suasion to get Slim to agree to install the inside plumbing; usually that kind of efficiency was natural to his partner. When the water started gushing out of the spout, he scooped up first one, then another, of the tumblers Daisy usually left on the counter for just such times (mostly so that Mike, if he was the one in need of a drink, didn't have to try, half-asleep, to reach them out of the glass-fronted cabinet alongside), and filled them with the cold, tangy well water. "Here y'are," he said, handing one to her.

"Thank you," she said, and he pulled out a chair and joined her with his own. They both sipped in silence for two or three minutes. The complete stillness was somehow soothing; there was no sound without or within. "Are you all right?" Daisy asked presently.

He hesitated, then: "Dreamin'," he admitted.

"About Slim." It wasn't a question.

He nodded. "Hadn't realized till today how... how close we come to not havin' him. That wound on his arm..."

"That's why you didn't eat," she said.

"I did so eat!" he objected.

"Not the way you usually do, dear. Especially when there's fresh trout on the menu."

He sighed. "Should'a' figured I couldn't fool you. It wasn't no reflection on your cookin'."

"I know that. In some ways Slim will always come first with you. I'm not offended. A little jealous, sometimes, that I never had anything like that, not even with my sisters or my husband. But not offended, because I know how good it is for you that you have him for a... brother."

"I owe him, Daisy," Jess told her quietly. "More'n I can ever tell him, more'n I can ever pay. And yet... it don't trouble me, like some of my old debts've done—some of the ones that come up before you got here," like Roney, he thought, or Dixie.

Her hand came out and settled gently over his wrist. "There are debts you can't wait to settle," she said, "and others you're almost happy for."

"That's just it," he agreed, astonished that she would be able to see it so clearly. Women so often couldn't understand how it was, about a man and what he owed. "I reckon... maybe that's how you know you're where you belong."

"I think so," she said with a nod. And, smiling: "Would you like some of that sponge cake now?"

"I don't sleep too good with food fresh on my stomach," he said. "Maybe you could put some up for me to take along when I go to town tomorrow?"

"I'll do that. Are you going back to bed?"

"Yeah. I'm okay now, I reckon. Way I recollect it, I don't dream about any one thing more'n once a night."

She watched as he turned his tumbler upside-down to be washed tomorrow, then quietly padded off toward the bunkroom. In the deep silence of the sleeping house she could hear the faint creak of leather as his Colt settled back into the holster, the click of the door latch, the squeak of a hinge.

She looked back over her shoulder at the side door. He hadn't noticed that the bolt wasn't pushed home, although even if he had, he probably wouldn't have connected it with her being up and about. She was glad she'd waited until Jake and Dallas's friend with the horses—Case, Dallas had called him—had gone before she came back to the house. Glad, too, that Jess's dream hadn't roused him any earlier than it had; she'd have had a much harder time explaining being out in the yard at this hour than being in the kitchen. But she'd had to make certain the two men didn't leave. It was true that keeping them hidden out under Slim's very nose was stressful and not the easiest thing she'd ever had to do, but for Jake's sake, until his wound had had time to heal, she had to go on doing it. The thought of his dying somewhere out on the trail distressed her almost as much as that of losing one of her boys.

She swallowed down the last of her water and stood. Morning would be here before she knew it. Now that she was certain of her two clandestine guests—and her troubled middle boy—she could sleep.

**SR**

Laramie, next day (Monday):

Jess brought the buckboard down the hill onto Laramie's Front Street about a quarter to eleven, as a glance at his silver-plated watch showed. Knowing that school would let out for morning recess at the top of the hour, he drove past the building and on down to the store, where he pulled up, swung down, and clipped the team's anchor weight in place before striding inside.

"Morning, Jess," Ezra Watkins greeted him. "Missed you folks on Saturday. Everything all right out at your place?"

"We're okay," Jess said shortly. "Slim's kinda laid up, is all. I got a list here, stuff Daisy says she needs—she don't want to leave 'long's he ain't quite himself." He hadn't had a repeat of his dream—in that his recollection had been accurate; but the drive in from the ranch, with nothing to do but watch the road, had given him time to brood, and the reminder of his pard's condition didn't improve his humor any.

Ezra accepted the paper and glanced over it. "Well, I should be able to fill this all right. Take me half an hour at most."

"That's okay, I got an errand or two. Take your time. Buckboard's outside," Jess told him, and went out again. He walked back up the street and waited until the kids poured out of the little log-built schoolhouse and scattered out over the hard-packed play-yard, then strode inside and took off his hat. "Miss Flora?"

The teacher looked up from the flat-topped kitchen table that served her as a desk. Laramie's schoolhouse had only been built about four years ago and was still in the elementary-facilities stage; it couldn't even accommodate all the school-age youngsters in town, not that that was necessarily much moment—in any town there were kids who didn't go, usually because of frail health or parental disapproval of teacher or pupils: the more conservative Protestants, like the Reformed Presbyterians, were especially likely to resort to at-home schooling in an effort to keep their progeny "unspotted from the world." And well-to-do and professional people, too, frequently preferred to send theirs to private classes or teach them at home. "Why, good morning, Mr. Harper. Is Mike not feeling well? I missed him this morning."

"No'm, he's fine. That's why I come by—it ain't him that ain't up to snuff, it's Slim. We'll be needin' Mike at home to help out, all week likely. I got a note here Slim wrote for you—" He dug it out of his vest pocket and handed it over.

She read it quickly. "I understand. I'll just turn it over and write down on the back the things Mike needs to keep up with—he'll have time to do that, won't he?"

"I reckon, ma'm. It's just somebody's got to do the team changes, and I got to be out on the range, what with it bein' spring, and Ben, he's down with the aguer—we sent in and asked, Saturday—so Mike gets elected. He can do schoolwork in between coaches—Daisy'll ride herd on him." He waited while she wrote, took the note back and nodded. "Obliged, ma'm." And went out again. If it had been dinnertime he might have stayed, but the kids would only be out for fifteen minutes or so.

Regaining street level, he hesitated a moment, then headed down toward the jail. Mort would want a bulletin on Slim, and Slim would want to know whether the posse had found anything.

When he opened the office door, he was surprised to find that Corey wasn't alone. In the chair facing the sheriff's flattop desk sat a man of about Mort's own size and build, equally as erect and well-set-up, but considerably older, with a mane of white hair, a thick mustache that turned up at the ends, and a neat double-breasted blue suit teamed with a silver-gray Stetson of straight and modest brim and hand-tooled black boots. His flowing dark-blue tie had a pearl stickpin in it, and he wore a Masonic ring. His eyes were a light blue-gray, not unlike Slim's, shrewd and keen behind oval silver-rimmed spectacles. On the floor at his feet sat a black leather valise, and Jess observed that the desktop was two or three layers deep in a shoal of papers, but he didn't associate the two—lawmen always seemed to be drowned in paperwork whenever they were in the office—and he was too mannerly, and too disinterested, to check them out.

Mort looked up from the stove, where he was replenishing a couple of cups from the perpetual office coffeepot. "Well, hello, Jess," he said. "What brings you by?"

"Just in to pick up supplies," Jess told him. "Thought you'd want to know how Slim's gettin' on."

"So I would. Coffee?" Mort offered. "You remember my pa, don't you?"

"Sure I do. Good to see you again, Mr. Corey," Jess greeted, with genuine if brief pleasure. He'd met Mort Senior back two or three years, when Tom Wade came to town. What would the old gent be now—eighty-five? -six? He lived in Denver, in modest comfort, off the proceeds of a life spent as a soldier, frontiersman, miner, lawman, and speculator in livestock and land. "Mort didn't tell us he was expectin' you to visit, or Daisy would've insisted you come out and have supper with us one time."

Mort Senior shook hands. "I surprised him. Parent's privilege, as you'll find out one of these days, boy. Came in on the stage last night." He chuckled. "No, I haven't given up horses, just that five-day ride over the mountains."

"Reckon I can't blame you," Jess agreed, accepting the cup Mort handed him. He didn't ask how things were in Denver; didn't have to, Slim having been there so recently.

"I heard about the holdup," the old man said. "Everybody at the Denver office sends best wishes. How's Slim doing?"

Sipping his coffee, Jess felt a little quiver in his belly. "Doc was by yesterday. Took off the strappin', just left the sling. Said he was healin' good, just to not use the arm a while yet."

Anyone else might have missed the look that passed between the two Coreys, but there was a part of Jess that would never stop being a gunslinger, never not be alert to anything unusual in his surroundings. What's goin' on here that they don't want me to know about? was the first thought that popped into his head. He wasn't sure where the thought came from, only that on some level he knew the perception was true. "You take out that posse you talked about, Mort?"

"Yeah, we took a ride down that way," the sheriff agreed. "Found the gang's tracks—they headed for the mountains, just like the witnesses said, but they found a belt of pines with a nice carpet of needles to hide their sign, and then a shale slide, and that did us in. They probably broke for the Colorado line, anyway—they know the country better down there, and we wouldn't be able to follow them."

"I reckon," Jess agreed meagerly. He set the coffee down, barely tasted. "You two'll be wantin' to visit, so I'll be goin'. If Daisy wants you to come out, we'll send a message in by the stage."

Outside, he checked his watch again. Ezra should have his order just about filled; he could go up to the store and pick it up and be home before two. But he didn't want to; didn't even want to take a break and enjoy the lunch Daisy had given him, cold beef and biscuits, corn pudding, mango peppers, pickled green tomatoes, a couple of hard-boiled eggs, the promised sponge cake and a jar of stewed berries. He looked across the street toward the Stockmen's, then shook his head. It was his and Slim's resort of choice when they came to town, but he needed a different kind of place just now. He turned downstreet and headed for Ben Dooley's Demon Rum.

**SR**

Slim was just beginning to think that he should send a query in to Mort with the last stage when, half an hour before it was due, Jess brought the buckboard into the yard at a hard trot. Frowning, the rancher got up from his chair and left the porch, walking out to meet it. "What took you so long?" he demanded. "And what are you doin' pushin' these horses that way? You know better."

Jess grunted neutrally as he hauled in the reins, then turned his back, swinging down on the far side of the seat. "Jess!" Slim insisted.

"Yeah." The Texan didn't look up; he was leaning over the wagon's tailgate, reaching for the nearest crate of groceries.

Slim swallowed down the urge to push, the way he would have done when Jess first came here, and consciously modulated his tone. "Jess? You all right, pard?"

"Fine," Jess responded, his voice flat, and Slim instantly knew he wasn't. He strode down the length of the buckboard bed and reached out with his good hand to catch hold of his friend's arm. Jess's head snapped up, and Slim saw the fresh bruises, the drying cuts at his brow and lip.

"What happened?" he demanded.

"Got in a fight," said Jess.

"I can see that," Slim replied. "Where did you find a fight on a Monday?" Monday, and Sunday before it, were likely to be the two quietest days of the week in any cowtown, just as Saturday was the liveliest.

"Dooley's," Jess told him.

"Dooley's! What were you doin' there?" Slim well knew his partner's low opinion of that particular bar.

"Havin' a drink," said Jess meagerly.

"You could have had a drink at the Stockmen's, or the Casino, or even Windy's," Slim pointed out. "You don't go to Dooley's. You hate that place."

"First time for everything," Jess retorted.

"Yes, like you goin' out and lookin' for a fight," Slim said. "Talk to me, pard. What happened?"

"Like I said. Got in a fight. Mort hauled me in for a few hours, filled me with coffee, made me pay the fine, then sent me home. Said he reckoned you'd need me, though he'd be blamed if he knew why."

"Sounds like he wasn't very happy with you."

"His pa's in town for a visit. Reckon he wasn't."

Slim knew from the brevity of the responses he was getting that Jess wasn't in a mood to explain himself. Take it easy, he cautioned himself. You know he has to be under a lot of strain, with you bein' hurt, and all the extra work. And he's probably got a hangover, too; Dooley sells the worst rotgut in town. Give him a few hours. "You'd better get Daisy to patch you up," he suggested. "Vaseline or iodine on those cuts, at least, and arnica or witch-hazel on the bruises."

"Gotta get these groceries in," was all Jess said.

"Groceries can wait," Slim told him. "Get yourself cleaned up—please, Jess. You look terrible."

For just a moment Jess's vivid-dark eyes met his, only to flick away before he could fully read what he saw in them. "A'right," the Texan gave in, a bit sullenly. He let the box slide back where it had been and pushed past his friend without another word, heading for the kitchen door.

**SR**

Slim was by nature more patient, longer-tempered, than his partner, but it wasn't easy, not pushing for an explanation. It wasn't like Jess to go out deliberately seeking trouble, for all his quick anger; he knew it found him often enough. Swift though he was to defend himself when threatened or provoked, he wasn't quarrelsome: only when he perceived something as unjust or a threat to his adopted family did he become as easy to touch off as a powder train.

Jess for his part allowed Daisy to treat his injuries, taking her motherly scolding without a word, though once or twice his eyes flashed and the muscles twitched in his cheek; then he carried the groceries in, and—the stage having by then been and gone—went out to the barn to help Mike with the chores. All that evening he was quiet and withdrawn, setting up an invisible wall around himself; even Mike sensed it and kept his distance. Slim worried about him; this moodiness was something he'd thought Jess had grown past. Talk to me, pard, he pleaded silently. You know I'll do anything I can for you, but you have to tell me what's wrong before I can help.

He didn't get through. Jess turned in early; Slim guessed from the way he'd been moving that there were other bruises that he hadn't seen, under the Texan's clothes—he was probably sore, and that could tire a man. It might have been partly Slim's own uncertain emotions, disturbing his sleep, that made him truly aware of the way his arm was starting to itch. That was a good sign, of course; it meant the wound was healing. But since he knew better than to scratch it, it also made him supremely uncomfortable. He lay there in the dark, listening to the tick of the bedstand clock and trying to concentrate on anything but the itch, which naturally made him think about exactly that. Finally, about half-past eleven, he gave up. He was going to need something to occupy his mind or the wound was going to drive him loco. Quietly he eased out of his bed, pulled on his jeans (not without some difficulty), slipped his good arm into his shirtsleeve and draped the other with its counterpart. He didn't try to put his boots on; with only one good pulling hand it was almost impossible.

He had no idea that, even as he was dressing, the side kitchen door was quietly opening and Dallas Trelagen was creeping softly into the house to rouse Daisy and warn her that Jake had started a fever.

Moving quietly so as not to disturb his sleeping partner, Slim eased his way out of the bunkroom and into the dark main room. He'd light a lamp, stir up the fire a bit, find a book and distract himself with reading. He was just reaching for the lamp when he heard Daisy's bedroom door open.

I can't have waked her, he thought, turning, about to speak. He swallowed the unsaid words when he saw that she was carrying her satchel. It's not Mike, he thought— if she could hear him, I could too. What—?

She clearly didn't have a clue that he was there, in the deep pool of shadow near where the fireplace wall and the front wall came together. He watched as she circled the table and left his field of vision, heard the click of a latch—the side door, he thought. Why...?

Protective instincts aroused, he crossed the room in quick strides, swung around the table and leaned on the countertop beside the sink, peering out the window. He could see the light-colored blur that was Daisy's mull robe as she crossed the side yard in the light of the first-quarter moon; could see the yellow lamp-glow spilling from the open door of the bunkhouse. Somebody's in there...? And she knows it! Who... how—?

He turned on his heel, heading back to the bunkroom, striding fast. His hand fell on Jess's shoulder. "Wake up, pard. Somethin's wrong."

"Wha'?" Jess looked up at him, bewildered, not fully awake.

"Daisy just went out the side door with her satchel in her hand," Slim told him. "And there's a light on in the bunkhouse."

"Huh?" Jess sat up, frowning. "Pard? You sure you ain't got a fever? Ain't no call for no lights to be on in the bunkhouse."

"I know that! And I know what I saw!" Slim insisted. "Are you comin', or do I have to go out there alone?"

"No—wait, I'm comin'—" He nearly stumbled over his own boots, falling behind. By the time he got out to the front room, Slim was pulling his Colt out of the holster and tucking it into his waistband, the ebony-inlaid ivory butt turned right for a cross-draw, since strapping his rig in place with one usable hand was on a par with getting his boots on. "What's that for? Like enough she was just cleanin' in there and left a lamp on by mistake, is all."

"Not today, she wasn't," said Slim grimly. "Come on."

Jess didn't like a bit of this, but habit was strong; he hooked his own gunbelt down off its peg and slapped it quickly around his hips, automatically settling the holster at the precise height and angle he was accustomed to even as he followed Slim's long-legged progress across the kitchen to the window over the sink. The big man pushed the curtain aside, holding it back with his arm. "Look!" he ordered.

Jess did. "Be dadgummed," he murmured, "there is a light. Now what...?"

"I don't know either, but I mean to find out," Slim told him, and reached for the door handle.

The bunkhouse door had been closed again, but the warm glow of a kerosene lamp still shone through the high-set windows. Silently the two men crossed the side yard and eased up close. They could hear two voices fairly clearly—not the words, but the timbre and pitch: a woman—Daisy, of course—and the deep, drawling tones of a man. And faintly, a third, lighter, softer, barely audible through the stout wood. Slim reached for the door with his good hand, and Jess blocked him. "No," he whispered. "Let me, pard. You keep your hand free for your gun."

Slim shot him a look, then nodded. Jess slid in beside him, turning sidewise with his back against the door, wrapped his hand around the handle and held the other up, ticking fingers up in a signal they'd used before. One—two—three—now!

The door crashed back against the wall. A big, dark-haired man, half-dressed, whirled away from the bunkset at the narrow end of the room, and Daisy, sitting on the edge of the lower bed, looked around sharply. "You!" the man grated as the light fell on Slim's face, and both of them went for their guns, Slim just a tad slower—

"Hold it right there!" Jess snapped, his own Colt coming up in a blur of blue steel.

They held their places, all three of them, frozen in tableau: Jess with slitted eyes glaring at this stranger who had dared to threaten his closest friend; the stranger's blue-gray gaze alternating from one of them to the other, Smith & Wesson half out of his holster; Slim with his hand still wrapped around the butt of his sixgun, looking from the man who nearly matched him in size, to the woman sitting on the bed and the man in it with head restlessly turning on the pillow, to the blue-flowered calico shirt hung by a pair of clothespins on a length of lightweight cord in the corner as if recently laundered, to the Mexican silverwork on the buscadero gunbelt draped over the chair. He'd never gotten a look at either of the faces, but he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that he'd faced these two over sixguns less than five full days ago.

Then Daisy stood up and swept forward to stand between them. "Daisy—!" Jess began, a strangled croak of protest.

"Jess Harper, put that gun away this instant!" Daisy commanded. "Dallas, let it go. And you too, Slim. There's no need for guns here. Not now."

Slowly Slim eased his grip on his Colt, watching as the big man—Dallas, Daisy had called him—released his own and let the S&W slide back into the holster. Jess, body taut, eyes flashing, a muscle jumping in his cheek, hesitated a long minute before he slowly lowered his gun, then eased it into its sheath. "Daisy," Slim began, "what's goin' on here? Don't you know who these men are? How'd they get here? What are you doin', comin' out here with your satchel?"

"I'm helping a man with a fever, or at least that's what I intended to do before you interrupted me," she said, and he heard an unfamiliar note of annoyance in her voice. "Now, unless you want to do the same, you and Jess go back to the house, and I'll join you when I'm finished here."

"Daisy..." Jess began.

"You heard me," she said. "Either help me or get out of the way."

The ranchers exchanged glances, knowing that tone, and slowly, reluctantly, backed out the door. Daisy shut it firmly the moment they were out, blocking off the draft of cool night air.

"He knew you," Jess said quietly. "And I got a notion you knew him."

"Not by name," Slim admitted. "But we've met. Last Thursday."

"Thursday—?" It took the younger man a minute to make the connection. "You mean he's—they're—"

"The Calico Kid," Slim agreed, "and one of his gang."

Jess looked completely thunderstruck. He didn't ask if Slim was sure. "You reckon she knows?"

"She was there when I described them, just like you and Mort," Slim reminded him. "She knows."

"Huh," was all Jess said, words completely failing him. And then: "C'mon, pard, let's get you in out of the night air, and I'll make us some coffee. I got a notion we're gonna need it."

**SR**

Daisy rejoined them about an hour later, not looking the least bit guilty or ashamed of herself. If anything, Slim thought, she looked relieved. "Is that coffee?" she inquired. "May I have some?"

Jess got up and poured another cupful, then held a chair for her and sat down again, not saying a word. "Daisy," Slim began carefully, "you know who those two are, don't you?"

"Yes, I know," she said serenely. "And Dallas knows who you are, too—the man who shot his friend. That's why he tried to draw on you." She looked from one to the other. "Dallas and Jake are very much like you and Jess. That's why I knew I had to help them."

The two partners traded a look. "Maybe you'd better tell it from the beginning," Slim suggested.

So Daisy did, starting with Mike's discovery of the fugitives in the loft two days earlier. "Dr. Phillips was here yesterday morning, while you were at the lake," she said. "He said Jake—Calico—would need rest and good food and fluids, but he had a good chance of recovering. I'd hoped he'd get through this without any... incidents... but Dallas woke me about eleven-thirty and told me he was running a fever. I think I've gotten it under control, though I won't know for a while yet. Dallas will watch him."

Slim drew in a slow breath and let it out again, as if he was silently counting to ten. "Daisy... settin' aside anything else, don't you know the trouble you could get in? The trouble you could get all of us in? You're harborin' a fugitive. Two fugitives!"

"Oh, fiddle-faddle!" said she. "They didn't get the Fargo box. They're not wanted in Wyoming. You heard Mort. He wouldn't even have taken the posse out after them if it hadn't been for you getting shot. And you could always refuse to identify them, or to sign a complaint."

Slim lifted his good hand to gently rub his wounded arm. "Why would I want to? They know I was the shotgun on that stage, just as I know they're part of the gang that held us up."

"You might want to," said Daisy gently, reaching out to capture the restless hand in both her own, "because I ask you to. Because these aren't bad men. They may have made the wrong choices, but they're not bad." Seeing the doubt on his face, she demanded with sudden tartness: "Why should it be so hard for you to accept that? I was right about Bill Watkins, wasn't I?"

"Well, yeah, that's true," Slim agreed slowly. "But it's not the same. Bill was only seventeen, and—"

"—An' he hadn't been stickin' up stagecoaches!" Jess cut in sharply. "If that bullet'd taken just a little different angle—" He stopped, a quick shudder running across his shoulders again at the thought of losing his partner.

She turned to face him and spoke quietly. "And you, Jess. You of all people! Slim was right about you, wasn't he?"

"Daisy, that ain't the same thing neither!" he objected. "Yeah, I done some things before I come here that I ain't proud of, but I never stooped to stealin'."

"Didn't you?" she asked gently. "Don't forget I had a son in the war. He wrote me letters. Didn't you ever... forage?"

"That was different! That was war! That was about survivin'," Jess argued.

"And possibly, to Calico, so was this," said she.

Slim frowned. "What has he been tellin' you, Daisy?"

"He's told me hardly anything," she replied. "But Dallas has told me enough to make me think that either this is a case of youthful high spirits ill-directed, or they were forced into it."

"That's what Jesse James claims too," Slim observed. "It doesn't make it true."

"But it's possible—isn't it?" she insisted. "Isn't Robin Hood one of your favorite books? They're your guests, Slim; they've been eating your food these last two days. Don't you owe it to them to at least hear them out?"

He sat back, skepticism plain in his expression. "Maybe if I had invited them here, I would. But you did this on your own, Daisy. What kind of example is that to set for Mike?"

"It's an example of the Golden Rule," she replied. "Oh, Slim, they're so much like the two of you—men like that can't be wicked!" She launched into an impassioned recapitulation of what Dallas had told her and what she had deduced from her observations of the two outlaws.

Jess listened intently, saying nothing, watching his partner's face. Perhaps because of the fight he'd had in the Demon Rum earlier that day, a good deal of his anger at Slim's despoilers seemed, to his surprise (or maybe not entirely—it was, after all, relief from that anger, and his renewed fears and worries, that he'd been seeking), to have run out of him, making him more receptive to what Daisy—or, through her, Dallas and Jake—had to say. He didn't even feel angry, any more, at Dallas for trying to draw on his pard; if Daisy was right about their relationship, it had been no more than the same automatic response Jess would have had in a similar situation.

Jess knew that to Slim, things basically tended—or at least had tended, before a certain dark-haired Texan rode into his life and showed him that very little in this world was all one thing or all the other—to be either wrong or right, black or white, separated by an exceedingly narrow margin of gray to allow for errors, uncertainties, and occasional honest mistakes and misunderstandings. And though he'd been to a large extent "broken" of this very restricted worldview over the last few years, lawbreaking was still something he regarded sternly, seeing no justification for it. Vigilantism, which he'd taken a part in himself, was a different matter: if there was no law, or the law was corrupt or incompetent, then the people—from whom the law came, in the final analyis—must remedy the situation. But if there was, it must be obeyed. That had been at the root of many of their early conflicts, because to Jess, the situation was exactly reversed: in his view, the gray took in just about everything. There were a few absolutes—things that were pitch-black (like shooting a man in the back, killing an unarmed man, or doing any kind of harm to a woman or child) or snow-white (like sticking by your word, standing by a friend when called on for help, or paying your just debts—all of which were really just variations on a theme). The entire remaining spectrum of human conduct and ethics was covered by the simple maxim that "everything was relative." In that "relative" state Jess operated (or at least had operated, up to a few years ago, since he too had undergone some major shifts in attitude since settling at Sherman Ranch) strictly according to his own personal idea (which varied according to the situation he was in) of what the situation seemed to require and how best to achieve whatever end he happened to be aiming for. He had himself been wanted a couple of times, and in jail even more; did that make him a bad person? He didn't think so; no one would ever take him for a saint, but he knew Slim and Daisy, Mike and Mort, Andy and Jonesy, Marshal Ives and the sheriff in Cheyenne, even Branch McGarry and Trim Stuart and Jim Tenney—honest, well-respected U.S. Marshals—all thought highly of him, and he had rarely felt guilty or ashamed about anything he had done, which, to the best of his knowledge, was the way a man knew wrong from right.

Apart from that, he thought he could safely say that he'd known a good many more outlaws and badmen than Slim had, and while some were consistently vicious, many others were genuinely moral, according to their own lights, when they weren't "working." He remembered Matt Grundy—sure, Matt had set him and Slim up to protect him from the Kerrigans till he could rob the bank, but he'd also given Jess warning when that jacked-up stagecoach was about to fall on him (" 'Cause'a you I'm walkin' around on two good legs," Jess had said afterward), and he'd drugged Jess to keep him quiet about the truth when he could just as easy have held a pillow over Jess's face and smothered him. Even Calvin Hawkes, though ruthless enough to offer Jess a choice that was really no choice at all—join his gang or die—had been a loving husband and father, deeply concerned for the welfare of his womenfolk. For that matter, Jess thought, lifting a hand unconsciously to the barely visible scar on the right side of his neck, he knew himself what it was to be on the receiving end of a frame or a case of mistaken identity; had come close to dying for it more than once. And Daisy was right: all along he'd had it in him to leave all the bad things behind, to make a new man of himself. Here he was, honest and respected, a full partner in a promising ranch, a man so well thought of that he'd acted as a deputy sheriff and a stagecoach guard more times than he could well count. If it was possible for him to change, why would it not be possible for basically good men to go down the wrong trail, yet still remain decent at heart? "Slim," he said softly, "pard, maybe we oughtta just listen to what the Kid has to say—or his pard, if he ain't up to talkin'. What can it hurt?"

Slim turned in his chair, studying the younger man's intense, yet somehow imploring face, seeing the impassioned light that shone behind the Texan's midnight eyes. He knew that Jess had seen a lot more of life and people—though admittedly often the wrong kind of people—than he had; not only did he have range experience and service in the war behind him, as Slim did, but the prison camp and a wide spectrum of gun disputes, trail drives, and other situations during which he'd had to learn to estimate human character accurately. The fact was that Slim often depended on Jess's perceptions, perhaps more than Jess knew. He also knew that justice mattered far more to Jess than law did. He abided by the latter as far as he could, but often there came times when he had to choose, and invariably his choice would be justice as he perceived it. He didn't have the education to express it, but Slim suspected that if he had, he'd have put it that law was created and interpreted by men, who were often flawed, and justice wasn't; that it was higher and greater and deserved the more attention of the two of them. And maybe he'd be right, the rancher thought. And so is Daisy. Calico and Dallas aren't wanted in this Territory. What they've done elsewhere really isn't my business. Even if it were, if they were to be put on trial for it, a smart lawyer would try to establish the existence of extenuating circumstances, to get them off with lighter sentences. The law allows for that. Why can't I?

"I guess it can't hurt anything," he said slowly. "All right. Daisy, you go out and ask Dallas if he's willing to talk to us. Jess will go with you and wait outside the door. And maybe Calico should be brought in here. Now that we know about them, there's no need for them to hide in the bunkhouse. We can put them in the double bunk in our room; that'll make it more convenient for you."

She smiled warmly. "I knew you'd make the right decision, dear. You always do, in the end. I'll go now."

**SR**

Dallas was clearly uneasy; his eyes shifted from Daisy to Jess to Slim and back again. Slim suspected that an outlaw, like a gunfighter, had to develop a keen sense of human character and motivation; that he might sense that Jess was leaning toward him, but would know that it was Slim—whether from personal pique or devotion to his perceptions of right and wrong—who would most need to be convinced. "It ain't a pretty story," he began. "Miss Daisy said she already done told you some of how me and Jake got together. Three years after that, we decided to go take a look at Leadville. I don't know how much you fellers know about minin'. They been placerin' for gold up around there ever since 1860, when the strikes in California Gulch was made. Placer's fine, far as it goes, but comes a time all them surface deposits is worked, and whatever's left is buried deep in quartz lodes, or under tons of debris that's been pilin' up since who laid the chunk. If you mean to reach it, you got to dig tunnels and build mills to crush the ore. All that costs money, and it can't be raised close at hand; oh, you can sell shares to the local folks, like they done in Virginia City, but it ain't enough. What you do is take out the most you can on your own, which proves you got a producer and not just a flash in the pan, and then you sell out for the biggest price you can get. You try to hold onto at least a piece of the mine, but if that ain't possible, like I said, you just hold up the investors for the most you can get 'em to pay.

"Well, Jake and me, we got lucky. One of our first panloads was worth a thousand dollars. We started borin' back into the hill and hit blossom rock—that's decomposed quartz, streaked with stringers of gold that can be worked with a pick and shovel, then separated out with amalgam of quicksilver. We got it assayed and it come out sixty ounces to the ton, which is bonanza-grade ore—a touch less'n a dollar for every two pounds of rock. We reckoned we had it made. We figured we'd have to fetch in some outside money, soon or late, but Jake's had an education and it wouldn't be easy to slicker him, like it might some miners.

"Trouble was, there was a syndicate in Leadville, investors from back East and nearer, that didn't always care how they went after the good producers. The main local man of it was a feller name of Henry Kirby—that's right," he added off Slim's look, "that Henry Kirby. He'd got into it by way of inheritin' some interests his daddy had in the first strikes around Denver, and bein' as he knew the country and didn't have to do a lot of travellin' to get there, the Easterners was right happy to let him do the dealin' for 'em. When we started in tryin' to peddle our claim, we pretty quick found out that nobody much wanted to cross him by offerin' for somethin' as rich as it looked like we had. He let us get that figured out, and then made us an offer that was so low even a skunk wouldn't'a' took it. We turned him down, and he jumped our ground and robbed us. We tried gettin' it back by the courts, and Kirby either bought out all the best lawyers, bribed the judges, or some of both—ain't sure which to this day. Then somebody jumped Jake out of an alley in Denver and close to killed him. Even the doctors was scared to help us; I had to take him way back into the hills and look after him myself. Come to see, we didn't have much choice but to live as outlaws. So that's what we done. But we swore, me and him, we'd get back the worth of what Kirby'd took from us. Our mine's still producin', and you can check that out if you want to—it's called the Golden Cup, and it's turnin' out $20,000 worth of ore a week. So we decided, bein's Kirby was the man on the spot and most likely responsible for everything that'd happened to us, it was his hide we'd take it out of.

"The good thing about havin' an enemy like Kirby is he's spread out, invested all over the place, and that makes him vulnerable. Anythin' he's got that can produce money, or that needs money to run it—payrolls, like—can be a target, and he's got to guard all of it, which is a drain on his profits apart from what we get off with, and all we got to do is find one spot he forgot to cover. What's better, we ain't the first he's hurt, and the others'd be just as happy as us to see him brought down; they may not have the means for it themselves, but they're plumb glad to pass on any kind of news they pick up that they figure we can use. Ain't no way Kirby can plug every gossip leak in three or four counties, apart from his holdings down New Mexico or out the Nebraska Sandhills. So we been peckin' away at him these five years. We got a gang together—we keep it small, seven or eight men—and Jake's careful; he don't pick killers in recruitin' 'em. He checks up on their back trails and knows their stories, which is mostly all of a kind—a drunken brawl, a shootin', and flight; tryin' to buck a mean lawman; an accusation of a wet-cattle deal by a land-grabbin' rancher. At bottom they're decent men, who've played in hard luck. That Hankins was the first dud we've had in all this time, and I'll be plain to say I ain't altogether unhappy you took him down, Sherman—me or Jake likely would've had to eventually, otherwise. With Jake's fast brain and my fast gun, we ain't had to kill nobody yet, and you can check up on that too.

"Jake figures we could'a' held onto a quarter-interest in the Cup if Kirby'd'a' let us be. That's some over five million he owes us for these last five years. We've run off better'n two hundred grand of it in beef—us and our friends, that is—and we've lifted payrolls and shipments like yours and anythin' else we could find out about. 'Course we got expenses, and a lot of what we get we pass on to them others Kirby's hurt, but I can tell you, from what we know we're close to drivin' him plumb loco. I ain't crazy enough to think we can ever make him sue for terms—that's what Jake calls it; I call it coughin' up our due—especially bein' as express shipments are insured and he gets his money back soon or late. Jake says if we keep on, maybe the companies won't let him ship with 'em no more. I don't know if he's right, but showin' Kirby he can't always have it his own way is worth almost as much as the money. It's kept him from doin' anybody else like he done us, that's one thing.

"We don't go after the little folks, the ones that's like we used to be. One thing, they ain't worth it, and another, they're more use to us as news sources. Most of all, this here's personal—us against him. If you-all'd give us the chance, right at the end before we rode off, Jake would'a' told you the same's he always does: 'Tell Henry Kirby the Calico Kid sends his regards.' "

"Does he know who you really are?" Daisy asked.

"I reckon he suspects," Dallas agreed, "but he don't share it. We've seen some of the posters that's out on us. They never mention our real names, just describe us by height and such."

Jess shot a look at Slim, one eyebrow raised. His partner pondered what they'd heard. It was a lot to take in, and yet in a country like this, where law was thin on the ground and not all of it as honest as it should be, it was entirely possible for a powerful moneyman to bend things to his desires. You didn't even have to have a corrupt or venal lawman, just one who felt he owed the power-broker something—Slim remembered Jess telling, after he got home one time a couple of years ago, about the complex relationship between Judge Craik and Sheriff Cutter. And, of course, the more power you accumulated, the more people there'd be who'd fit that description.

"Are you going to tell them the rest, Dallas?" Daisy inquired gently.

"What rest would that be, ma'am?" the big man responded evasively.

She smiled. "You're Cornish, not Irish. Answering questions with questions is their way, and it doesn't suit you. The rest that Jake let slip a little while ago, in the fever, before Slim and Jess caught us."

Dallas hesitated; sighed. "Like he says, come this far, reckon a little more won't hurt." He looked up, to the watching partners. "If he hadn't been shot, he was thinkin' he'd maybe swing past Laramie for a little visit, 'fore the law had time to issue any new posters on us. See, his real last name—though he ain't used it since he run off that last time—his real last name is Thomson."

Jess's mobile brows shot up. "Like the preacher in town?"

"His daddy," Dallas agreed. "Like I told Miss Daisy, he's kept track of 'em. He always reckoned, from the start, that he'd make his fortune somewheres, and when he got that done, he wanted to be able to find 'em, to let 'em see he'd made it on his terms. If Kirby'd let us be, he'd figured on goin' back after we had a deal, showin' 'em the contract so they'd know, and maybe be proud of him. 'Course he couldn't do that in the end, but when we made up our minds to take that stage of yours, Sherman, well, bein's his name ain't on the dodgers, he reckoned that bein' in the neighborhood, he owed it to 'em to show 'em he was still alive, anyhow. Been close on ten years since they seen him or heard from him. He's had a lot of time to think; he don't blame 'em for tryin' to change him, he just wishes they could've tried to understand better, and him bein' the baby, like you know, it hurts him some that they likely think he's dead."

"I felt certain he looked familiar," Daisy told her "boys," "from the very first. It wasn't till tonight that I realized—he resembles his mother. There's just enough difference between a man's face and a woman's that it didn't hit me before that."

"Well, I'll be dad-gummed," Jess murmured, and looked to Slim. "So, what do you think, pard?"

Slim absently rubbed his wounded arm, thinking. "Sheriff Corey in town is a friend of ours," he said, "and he's honest. You botched the robbery, so he doesn't really have any grounds to try to arrest you. Even if he did, Jake won't be strong enough to move for a few days at least—and the worst you could be charged with, at least in Wyoming, would be an attempted crime, which would carry a much lighter sentence. He could send out inquiries and get confirmation of all you've said. Would you be willing to let us ask him to help?"

Seeing Dallas's hesitation, Jess put in quickly. "Wouldn't be the first time he's done the like, neither. Wasn't but about three years ago he finished up gatherin' evidence that showed another feller'd been made to take the fall for somethin' he didn't do—maybe you heard of him: Tom Wade. Took him some few years to do it, but he didn't give up till he was satisfied. Mort's a good man, like Slim says. He even deputizes me, time to time, and I been on a couple dodgers here and yonder."

Dallas nodded. "Seems to me I seen one, 'bout a year after we first tangled with Kirby. Willow, Colorado, wasn't it? Murder?"

"Yeah. Got cleared, finally. But you see, I know how easy it is for a man to get things pinned on him. Reckon I'm on your side, Dallas. Can't exactly forgive you for almost losin' me my pard here, but I see why you done it—reckon in your spot I'd'a' done just the same; and I can believe that if you made the wrong kind of enemy it could fetch you some right bad trouble. Made a couple myself over the years, like that time in Willow."

Slim's lips firmed. "And I trust Jess's instincts. If we can get Mort to agree to hold off on any official action till he can get confirmation of some of this—will you let him try?"

The big outlaw considered the offer. "I ain't as smart as Jake is, and it don't rightly please me to be the one that has to make the choice," he said after a while. "But I reckon I got to, and I know he trusts me, same's I do him—same's you two do each other. All right. You vouch for this Corey, I reckon I'll take a chance on him."

"We'll send a note in by the noon stage," Slim decided. "Now I think it's time we got back to bed."

**SR**

Laramie, next two days (Tuesday-Wednesday):

"So," mused Mort Corey slowly, turning over the last of the papers his father had brought up from Denver, "it looks like you've built up a pretty good case here, Pa. But why bring it to me? Why not just try to make contact directly with them, and show them that they've got a chance of getting their just deserts legally?"

"Because I know that here, with you in charge, they'll have protection," Mort Senior replied. "Kirby's money might still buy guns enough, but you'll be harder to intimidate than a lot of the officers down in Colorado; too many of them owe him favors. You don't—and you've got Slim and Jess besides. Apart from that, I don't think this territory's seen the last of them, not by a long shot."

The younger man's eyebrow went up. "What makes you figure that? Not that I'm doubting you, you understand; just about everything I know about the law trade—and the people who break the law—I learned from you. But they botched the holdup, thanks to Hankins, and Slim; the Kirby money's in the bank now."

"And they could rob the bank, too," his father pointed out. "From what I've found out, they've been very lucky up to now, and having a smart boss hasn't hurt. But remember, son, this is personal. I don't think they're going to give up so easily. I think more than likely they're somewhere close around; maybe some are even here in town as we speak. What's more, I think Kirby thinks so too."

"Kirby? What makes you say that?"

"He's on his way here. Him, and his brother, and their foreman, and three or four others."

The Laramie sheriff frowned. "You're certain?"

"My source was. And the coach passed them, early Sunday morning, on the road. They'll probably pull in tomorrow sometime."

The younger Corey's frown deepened. "Why would they be coming up here?"

"Supposedly, to thank Slim for preventing the holdup, and offer him a reward," his father explained. "But with a man who operates as much in the shadows as Kirby does, I'd be willing to bet there's another reason."

Mort Junior pondered that for a time, while his sire waited with the patience of experience. "You're thinking, maybe, they're looking for a showdown. You're thinking they don't figure the gang will let this big a purse slip by them, any more than you figure it."

"That's about it. There may be a couple more dips, spurs, and angles to this vein, but that's at the heart of it."

Before his son could reply, the office door opened, and Charlie, one of the Overland drivers, looked in. "Afternoon, Sheriff. Got a note here for you—picked it up when we changed horses at Sherman Ranch."

The lawman took the small white envelope he held out, recognizing his own name laid on across it in Slim's bold hand. Charlie touched his hat to Mort Senior and went out to rejoin his coach. Mort Junior slit the flap, unfolded the single sheet of paper inside it, read it quickly, and handed it to his father.

Dear Mort [it read],

Jess tells us your father is visiting, and we'd be pleased if you'd both come out to supper. Let us know when, if you can, by the afternoon outbound, so Daisy can plan the meal.

Regards, Slim

"Now there's a lucky strike," the old man observed. He traded glances with his son. "Are you thinking the same thing I am?"

"If you're thinking about Kirby, I sure am," Mort Junior agreed. "He'll need to stop and ask directions, and this would be a logical place for him to do it. Even if he doesn't, as a peace officer, seeing a group of strangers that size ride in, it would be natural for me to want to find out their business. Tomorrow?"

"Sounds good to me."

Mort Junior immediately pulled a tablet out of his desk drawer and scribed a quick reply:

Dear Slim,

Pa and I will be delighted to join you. We've got plans for tonight but will be out sometime tomorrow. Hope all's well with you and your arm is healing nicely.

Best,

Mort

**SR**

It was around three-thirty the next afternoon that the riders came up Front Street at the steady jog-trot that is one of the chief road gaits of Western horses: seven men, plus a couple of packhorses for the camp outfit and grub. The two Coreys were ready for them, seated casually outside the jail, enjoying the spring sunshine. Since the livery barn—the usual goal of strangers to any town seeking directions, its owner generally being a walking directory as to who lived where and how best to get there—lay another hundred yards farther on, it was natural for them to halt at sight of the badge on Mort Junior's vest. The leader of the group was probably close to forty, average height, but heavy through the shoulders, with a tough-looking, meaty face scored and reddened by much exposure, and a short black-brown beard and mustache, wearing fawn-colored nankeen pants, a velvet-collared bottle coat, and a black-and-white checkered waistcoat over a soft pleated white shirt, teamed with beautiful cherry-colored cattleman's boots, a blue silk bandanna with a thick silver slide ring inset with a pale and excellent turquoise, and a pearl-gray hat with a four-dented crown bringing it to a sharp peak. A Dickens watch chain crossed his middle, and under the edge of his jacket Mort saw a holster on his left hip, butt forward; the gun in it had a pearl handle set with a single diamond on either side. His horse was a deep liver chestnut with reddish mane and tail, his saddle a full-stamped double-rig by H. H. Heiser of Denver. To his right and a little behind him was a man about thirty-five, taller than he by three or four inches, but looking even taller because he was so lean-built; he rode a golden-dappled dun and wore a slightly upgraded version of range dress—a loose, open-throated black sateen shirt under a buckskin vest fringed around the edge, tan corduroy pants tucked into elaborately hand-tooled boots, a smoke-gray hat with an Indian-beaded band, a green silk bandanna. There was a sardonic cast to his lean face, and his eyes were a clear, light gray-blue, almost crystalline in the early-afternoon light. And to his left, astride a bright blood bay, was a much younger man, early twenties, ruddy-skinned, with flaxen blond hair and light-blue eyes, his cutaway holster embossed with hand-tooled sunbursts centered by small diamonds. His saddle had a gold-mounted horn and leather inlaid with silver beadwork; he wore California pants of loud pattern, a finely checkered green and blue linsey shirt under a corduroy jacket. "Afternoon," the leader said. "Would you be the law here?"

"I am. Mort Corey, sheriff. Something I can do for you?"

"I'm Henry Kirby, Double Heart ranch, south of Denver. I'm looking for a man I understand lives in these parts. Slim Sherman."

"That so?" Mort's tone was casual, but an experienced man might have noted the way his eyes sharpened and his posture altered just ever so slightly. "And what would your business be with him, Mr. Kirby?"

"I'm told he was shotgun-guarding a stage that was carrying a lot of money of mine, and was instrumental in preventing its being lifted by a gang of road-agents," said Kirby. "I thought it would only be courtesy to stop up and give him my thanks. Twenty-five thousand is a lot of beef."

"It is that," Mort agreed. "Well, Slim and his partner have a ranch just about twelve miles out the east trail. It happens that my father and I were invited out there to supper; if you'll give us time to get our horses saddled, we'll ride along with you and make sure you don't take a wrong turnoff." Not that they'd be likely to, he reflected, as there were quite a few signboards pointing the way, but Kirby wouldn't know that.

"Glad of your company, Sheriff. We'll take a break and wash some of the trail out of our throats while you get saddled up. Which is the best saloon?"

"Most of our ranchers like the Stockmen's," Mort said truthfully, nodding across the street toward it. "We'll meet you in twenty minutes."

Neither the Coreys nor the Kirby party paid much attention to the dark-chestnut Negro lounging outside Windy's saloon, a little farther up-street, or the tall, serious-faced, thirtyish white man who slowly drifted down to join him from the saddle shop as the riders turned across to get their drinks. "Is that who I think it is, Jackson?" Case Northcott asked quietly.

"Looks that way," agreed Jackson, who had the best eyesight in the group apart from Pen the sharpshooter. "Fair piece from home, ain't they?"

"Fairer than I like," Case admitted. "What do you say we just tag along a quarter-mile back or so, and see if we can find out what's fetched them all this way?"

**SR**

Dallas Trelagen had spent Tuesday out on the range with Jess, on a borrowed horse, helping with the work—"Seems like it's the least I can do," he'd told Slim, "bein's it might've been my lead left you with a bad arm, and bein's you're puttin' us up." The two Texans had been a bit cautious with each other at first, but had gradually struck up a sort of conservative friendship as Jess made opportunities to assure his counterpart that both Slim and Mort could be counted on to keep any bargain they agreed to. He found that he agreed with Daisy: Dallas and Jake shared a bond very like his own with Slim, and that made him all the more sympathetic toward them. He thought, too, that if he'd ever been done the way Dallas claimed they had, he'd feel pretty knotty about it himself—let alone if Slim had gotten a piece of the same treatment.

Wednesday, knowing that the Coreys were planning to come out, they kept their day short and close to home, and were in the barn seeing to their horses when Mort led the Kirby party in. The volume of hoofbeats alerted them to the fact that this was more company than they'd been expecting, and they moved to the door to see who it was. Dallas went white, then red with anger. "Kirby! What on the face of God's round earth is he doin' up here? And with Johnny and Garrett besides!" He whirled to face Jess. "Harper, this better not be some kind of trick, or I swear—"

"Keep your shirt buttoned, Dallas," Jess snapped. "When do you reckon we'd had time to get in touch with him even if we wanted to? You read Slim's note, and anyhow, ain't no way they could'a' got all the way up here in two days unless they flew. They must'a' left Kirby's spread no later'n Sunday, likelier Saturday—you can see they come up by saddle, they got packhorses. You stay back here and I'll see to this. Look, there's Mort and his pa with 'em. Stay set." He moved out into the yard, striding easy, his steps light and graceful and his hand casually at his side.

Mike, having taken charge of the last team change, had been on the porch catching up on schoolwork and sharing a companionly pitcher of lemonade with Slim. Daisy wasn't in sight; probably she was in the kitchen, beginning to organize supper. Jess wondered if Jake was awake and aware. His fever had broken the day before and hadn't recurred since. He'd be safe enough as long as he stayed in the bunkroom; Kirby might recognize him, or Dallas, if they got close, but Jess didn't figure he'd show himself against odds this size.

He reached the porch in time to hear Mort making introductions: "—Kirby, from down below Denver—the man whose money you saved last week. Mr. Kirby, Slim Sherman."

The cattleman shook hands. "A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Sherman."

Jess saw the thought in Slim's light-blue eyes: A man like this doesn't Mister you—certainly not when you're as small-time as we are—unless he's got a good reason, or something in mind. "This is my partner, Jess Harper," was what the big man said, and Jess also offered his hand. "Get down, Mr. Kirby, and rest yourself. If your men would like to water their horses, the trough's just by the corral. Mike, get another chair."

Jess made an opportunity to glance back toward the barn as he stepped up on the porch and lifted himself to a comfortable perch on the rail, his back against the post that held up the right corner of the roof, his right leg straight down so he could draw if he had to. Dallas had quietly withdrawn into the shadowy interior of the building; if any of Kirby's bunch had even seen him just now, they'd probably assume that he was just a hired cowhand and had gone back to finish whatever he'd been doing when they rode in. Jess bet himself five dollars that what Dallas had really done was get his rifle off his saddle and head for the back door of the barn; from there he could get up on the roof and be set to cover the front of the house and the entire yard. Men wearing broad-brimmed Western hats rarely look up unless to check the weather, or maybe scan for buzzards; they wouldn't know he was there till he started dropping lead on them.

Mike brought the chair and Kirby settled his square-built body into it. "I reckon you know," he told Slim, "that the money you saved was the day-to-day operating capital for the new ranch I'm starting up this way."

"So I was told," Slim agreed.

"Well, it was express, so the company would have had to make good," Kirby proceeded, "but it would have taken some time to get the paperwork processed, and that would have meant just so much delay till I could get things running up here. So you saved me a fair amount of bother, and I wanted to thank you in person—and give you this." He took a slim Cordova-leather wallet out of the inside of his coat, opened it and extracted an oblong of paper.

Slim whistled softly as he got a look at it, then handed it to Jess. It was a draft on a Denver bank, for $2500. "I appreciate the sentiment, Mr. Kirby," he said carefully, "but I'm not sure it's exactly ethical for me to take a reward for money that was never really out of Overland's custody."

"It's my money," Kirby pointed out, "and I reckon I can give a reward for it to anyone I care to. Don't get your back up, Mr. Sherman. I don't plan to be in these parts very often, so I won't have many opportunities to express my gratitude any other way." Jess's gaze shuttled past him, to Mort, who was leaning up against the wall by the front window, arms folded. He wasn't fooled, any more than Jess was; the Texan could see that in the lines of his face and the veiled look of his eyes. In fact, he got the strong impression that Mort knew a lot more than he was ready to let on just now. Mort Senior, too, had gotten down, and drifted casually over to the bench near the kitchen door; Jess noticed he was carrying the black leather valise he'd had with him at the jail on Monday, and wondered why.

"There is that, I guess," Slim admitted, but there was a note in his voice that Jess knew; not a warning, exactly, but a clear hint that he sensed hidden undercurrents in this situation as surely as Jess did. "In that case, thank you, Mr. Kirby. This will come in handy when we need to pay the taxes and buy grain for the winter, and I've got a kid brother at school in St. Louis—I'll owe his tuition for next term before I know it."

That, Jess thought, was a lie if he'd ever heard one: Andy had finished up last spring and was working for a surveying firm now, getting experience so he could set out on his own. He don't like havin' this hombre on our land no more'n I do, the ex-gunslinger told himself, and cut his gaze toward the cattleman's followers, who had watered their mounts and were idling by the pump, rolling cigarettes and talking quietly. With the trained perceptions he knew he would never completely lose, he appraised them, together and severally. The blond youngster with the fancy saddle and holster thought a lot of himself, but it might not be just vanity—at least he'd be worth keeping a cautious eye on; kids like that could be more unpredictable than Wyoming weather. Most of the rest were tough enough, though not in Jess's own league. The one Jess trusted least—short of Kirby himself—was the one in the buckskin vest, with the crystal-gray eyes and light ash-brown hair. He tried to look like a cattleman, and he probably knew his way around range work, but he was something else too—not a professional, maybe, but about as close as you could get and still miss. What was more, he looked like the smartest of the bunch of them. Not anybody I know, Jess thought, but that don't mean nothin'—I been out of the trade a long spell, and even before that there was plenty of guns I never saw in the flesh.

He half-listened as his partner and Kirby exchanged small talk, Kirby asking the kinds of questions you might expect a newcomer to a range to ask of an old-timer on it, Slim responding frankly but a bit guardedly. He's thinkin' that if Kirby done Dallas and Jake the way we been told, he might sometime want to serve smaller cowmen the same way, Jess thought, and he don't want to give nothin' away that might give the other side what he'd call a tactical advantage.

What is Kirby doin' here? He don't suspect them two are here or he'd just go in after 'em; he's got enough men to hold Mort and me off easy enough, and Slim ain't armed. At least I think he'd go in; after the way they been nippin' away at him all this time, ain't likely he'd hold back if he reckoned he had a chance to put a stop to 'em.

Similar questions were being asked atop the ridge, where Case and Jackson, their horses safely concealed in the ravine, were lying belly-down in the scrub, watching the scene in the yard. When they'd passed the last signboard and realized that the party must be making for Sherman Ranch, they'd cut off the road and circled, alert every minute for the sound of gunshots. "This can't be a posse," Case was saying. "Not that Kirby couldn't get himself and his boys deputized easy enough, but they wouldn't have no authority in Wyoming."

Jackson snorted softly. "Don't reckon that'd stop him. But how'd he know our partners is here?"

"That's a good question," Case admitted, "and I got another. What part's that Laramie sheriff got in this?"

"Might be Kirby and his is just tryin' to get a sight of the place in daylight," Jackson suggested, "figurin' to come back later."

"You reckon?" Case asked, looking sharply around.

"I'm thinkin' might be best I ride on back to Laramie and get the rest of the boys," Jackson replied. "I ain't so heavy as you, I can get there faster."

Case considered that briefly—a man on the dodge had to be able to make sound decisions quickly, on the basis of whatever information he had—and nodded. "All right. I'll stay here and keep watch; if I got to move I'll leave sign for you."

"Be as quick as I can," Jackson promised, and slid backwards down the slope to get his steeldust blue.

**SR**

The Kirby party stayed for perhaps half an hour or a little more, then mounted up and headed back to Laramie with the very logical excuse that they needed to find hotel rooms for themselves and stable space for their horses. Jess went back out to the barn to do the evening chores, assisted by Dallas, who quietly kept out of the Coreys' sight, and Mike. Wonderful aromas began to drift out of the kitchen as the guests sat on the front porch with Slim and waited to be called. "How's the arm coming along?" Mort Junior inquired.

"Good. It itches," Slim told him. "Doc said he'd try to get out tomorrow and have another look at it. It doesn't hurt to move my hand, that's progress."

The roundup triangle outside the kitchen door began to jangle. Slim knew that Jess would have warned Dallas to stay low unless and until he was called, and Daisy would have made a chance to let Jake know about the guests so he'd stay in the bunkroom. She had prepared her specialty, tender young frying chicken done in a skillet with minced green pepper and breadcrumbs, which she said was a Quaker method she had learned in her Pennsylvania girlhood. With it there were flaky boiled potatoes with bits of green parsley, green beans put up from last year, creamed onions, corn salad, and hot slaw; fresh-baked biscuits with home-churned butter, tomato preserves, spiced elderberries, pickled beets, and sweet-corn relish. And for dessert, of course, her famous deep-dish apple pie, nine inches across, with ginger and cinnamon in it, served with a choice of cheese or thick cream, and rice pudding on the side. Everyone gorged happily while Mort Junior caught the Sherman Ranch family up on the news from town and his father talked of the latest gossip from the mining camps where he had investments.

It wasn't till Mike had been sent to bed that the sheriff said, "You know, Pa and I are always pleased to join you for one of Daisy's good meals, but this time we were especially glad to get your invite. Because if we hadn't, we'd have come out anyway."

Jess's face stilled and darkened a bit as he began mentally clearing for action, warned by some subtle note in the lawman's voice. Slim frowned slightly. "Why would that be, Mort?" he asked.

"I'd better let Pa tell it," the lawman replied. He nodded to his father, surrendering the floor.

"Well, to begin with," Mort Senior said, "you all know that I've been knocking around the frontier almost since Lewis and Clark took their little excursion up the Big Muddy. I've done a lot of things in my life, and while I've taken a lot of pleasure in the thrill of hunting for gold and silver, and enjoyed the gamble of speculation, I've never felt I was being quite so useful to my fellow man as when I wore a badge. And I've worn just about every kind there is—Texas Ranger, town marshal, county sheriff, U.S. Marshal. I even thought once of reading the law; I figured I might be able to do even more good if one day I could sit on the bench. Never got around to it, but I did have occasion to read Andrew Jackson's philosophy as expressed in his customary charge to juries. 'Do what is right between these two parties,' he'd say. 'That is what the law always means.' That was the first time I ever realized that law and justice didn't really have to be two separate things, although I admit that too often they are; folks are too devoted to the letter of the first instead of its spirit, or too focused on their own interests to care much about the second. Anyway, even though I never got to be a judge, in my badge-wearing I always tried to behave in a way that old Andy would have approved of.

"Over time, the word got around, and of course in a long life I've met many an officer of the court—not just other badge-toters, but attorneys and judges, some of 'em pretty high up now. Many I've trained; many others have been deputies under trainees of mine. So I've built up a considerable network of contacts and correspondents spread out from St. Louis to San Francisco and from Laredo up to Helena and Fort Benton.

"A couple of years ago, just after school closed down for the summer, a young woman came to see me at my home in Denver. Charlotte Bonnell, her name was, though her friends called her Charly. Just eighteen and range-raised, with all that implies: being her father's only living child, the one he'd expected would inherit his land, she'd grown up around men and learned how to read them and deal with them. Unfortunately her father didn't go quick; he sickened and took a long time dying, and his debts consumed the best part of his estate. She had enough left over to buy a lot and build herself a good five-room cottage to put on it, and to put some out at interest and earn a little income from. Not enough to live on, so she taught school and boarded a couple of young ranch girls in her spare room; the school paid her ten dollars a week for about forty weeks out of the year, and her boarders' parents another dollar a day each, including meals, and she managed all right. She was—and is—also an accomplished sharpshooter and horsewoman, and having been a bit of a tomboy, as most range girls are, in love with adventure. And with a very attractive outlaw she'd met the previous fall.

"The town she teaches in is called Bluestone; it sits on land that used to belong to Henry Kirby's Double Heart, and his ranch is still the big income producer for it, what with purchases and payroll. This outlaw she'd met knew that a schoolteacher hears more gossip around a town than any other woman except a seamstress; even if she doesn't board around, as Charly Bonnell didn't have to, her pupils talk, and their parents trust her. He hadn't expected she'd fall in love with him—or him with her. You've met him, Slim: he calls himself the Calico Kid."

Slim started, just a bit, and barely managed not to look toward the bunkroom door. "As he grew to trust her," Mort Senior proceeded, "he told her how he'd come to ride that trail. It's a long story, but what it boils down to is that he and a partnerof his were working a claim up in the Leadville District in '69 and fell afoul of a syndicate whose local representative happened to be Henry Kirby. They had a good piece of ground and he offered for it, some ridiculous figure that they turned down, so he jumped it, and then rigged the courts so they couldn't get it back legally. To get revenge—and what they saw as their due—they went outlaw. She wanted to help them. She asked if I couldn't, with all my contacts, help her get proof of how they'd been swindled out of their mine.

"So these last couple of years that's what I've been trying to do. Tracking down witnesses, getting depositions. Charly's ridden with me, summers, to help me find people to talk to. I found out some interesting things. First, Calico and his gang are mighty choice about where they strike and what they take. No one I interviewed could say that they'd ever shot anyone—at least not until Slim—or touched the U.S. Mail, or anything belonging to any private individual except Kirby. One time they stopped a stage and a lady passenger threw her handbag out the window; it happened to have six hundred dollars cash in it, never mind how that was. Calico swayed down out of his saddle like an Indian, plucked it up off the ground, glanced inside it, and tossed it back in. 'Thank you, ma'am,' he said, 'but I honor only Henry Kirby and the Double Heart spread.' And they rode off with a payroll for a lumber camp Kirby owns a share of—over four thousand dollars, counting grub money.

"Second, if there ever was a Robin Hood in this country, Calico is it. Half the money he takes he gives away to nesters, small ranchers, squatters, hard-luck sourdoughs—many of them people Kirby has done dirt to over the years. That's one of the things Charly's been helping me do, locate the people he's helped. Character witnesses, you might say. People up in the hills south of Denver and above Colorado Springs have some mighty fine things to say about him. I must have twenty or thirty statements from folks with reason to be thankful to the man.

"Then I got in touch with the Eastern headquarters of that syndicate Kirby represents in Leadville, and I learned something even more interesting. It seems the other men in it had been led to believe that Calico and his partner had been very well paid for their claim—over half a million dollars in cash and stock. By this time I was hooked, and sure that these young men were justified in their desire to take their due out of Kirby's hide. Then, just last month, Charly wrote to me; she'd managed to find out where I could contact another witness. This person, when I went to see him, told me in no uncertain terms that he had seen with his own eyes Calico's claim jumped, and would testify to it—provided I could get the case before a judge in time for him not to die of consumption in the meanwhile. Since he's done for anyway, there's not much room for Kirby to threaten him into keeping mum."

Slim and Jess looked at each other. "This is all... very interesting, Mr. Corey," Slim admitted, "but why tell it to us?"

"My son asked me pretty much the same question yesterday," the old man replied, "and I'll tell you the same I did him, more or less. First of all, to make any headway against the crooks who messed up their try at selling their claim honestly—Kirby and the lawyers and judges he bought or scared off—Calico and his partner will have to bring suit from outside the county, and they'll also need protection while the case is heard. Kirby's not likely to sit still for it to wind its way through the system; he'll try to eliminate the plaintiffs, the witnesses, or both—and being as winning the suit wouldn't do the plaintiffs much good unless they could live to collect, they'll be the ones he'll probably prefer to hit at. My son's a disinterested party, and a lot harder to suborn than a lawman might be who lived closer to Kirby's orbit. Plus he can call on you two for backup—and I know you both care about justice. Second, I have a strong feeling that the gang's still in this neighborhood somewhere. They knew that money was going to the Laramie Bank. They didn't get it off the stage, and they won't want $25,000 to slip through their hands, so their only option would be to take it out of the bank—but this is unfamiliar ground to them; they'll need to get an estimate of the town, the bank itself, the law, their routines, trails, hiding places... it takes time. Plus we know, or are pretty sure, that a couple of them were wounded, besides the one you killed, Slim; they'll need time to heal up before they try another job."

"Still don't tell us why you'd lay all this out t'us," Jess observed. "Make better sense you'd try and get in touch with the gang direct, maybe through this Miss Charly. I'm guessin' Calico started out figurin' he'd use her as a spy, her livin' so close to his enemy's main camp."

"That's exactly true," Mort Senior agreed. "Well, first, because I knew—again through Charly—that not only had Kirby's foreman, Nelse Garrett—he was with them today, the tall drink of water on the dun, wearing the black sateen shirt—sent out some inquiries about Slim last week, after finding out about the holdup, but that Kirby and his merry band were on their way up here. That, with what I already knew about Calico's little war, is what convinced me it was time to come up, show my son the evidence I've gathered—it's in here," he added, nodding toward the black valise, "and talk to you; it seemed fair that you understand why you might be called on to protect an outlaw. I'm thinking that maybe we can set up some kind of trap and catch the gang when they try for the money. Once we have them in protective custody, with my network of honest contacts, we can get more help if we need it, and start launching a counteroffensive, so to speak. I also thought that if you had a chance to meet Kirby in the flesh, you might be readier to believe that he'd do what my findings suggest, which would make you more likely to take a hand if you're called on. Second, it occurred to me that Slim's lived in this country since he was fifteen, and you, Jess, are a noted hunter, even if you haven't been around here nearly that long; between you, you might be able to suggest some place the gang might be hiding out, even guide me there for a parley under a flag of truce. That would be the best, if we could manage it; less chance of anybody getting shot before we could convince Calico that we had his interests—not Kirby's—at heart."

The two partners again exchanged a look, then traded another with Daisy, who had been listening with an expression of serene justification. "Will you excuse us a minute, Mr. Corey?" Slim asked. "Come on, pard." They slipped out the front door to the porch.

"You reckon this is on the level?" Jess wanted to know.

"I was figurin' on askin' you the same," Slim admitted. "But since you brought it up first, I'll tell you what I think. We know Mort, and it's not likely a lawman as straight as he is would have had a father who was any less so. There's no way either of them could have guessed what we've already found out, or even that Calico and Dallas would have lit on this place to use as a hideout—you'd have to admit it was a pretty wild chance. Mr. Corey says he's been workin' on this for a couple of years—long before anyone could have had any advance hint that I'd end up ridin' guard on a stage the gang would try for. What's more, what he's found out supports what Dallas told us—and he's got it in sworn written statements."

Jess nodded. "Yeah. It's a fair piece of a coincidence, but I reckon they do happen, time to time." He grinned briefly. "Reckon Kirby and that bank draft didn't hurt none."

"That's true," Slim agreed. "That whole thing doesn't smell right to me, somehow. He didn't have to waste five days riding all the way up here. He could have written me a letter, tucked the draft in with it, and mailed it. Or he could have come up on the stage, with maybe one man to bodyguard him; that would only have taken a couple of days each way. The fact that he brought nearly as many as Calico has makes me think he might have something in mind besides just—expressin' his gratitude. I have an idea that Mr. Corey's right about him—that he's come outlaw-hunting. He doesn't know the country up here, but then neither does Calico; that puts them on a fairly even footing. And he does know—as Mr. Corey said—that Calico missed the Fargo box and probably doesn't want to lose out on the money, which leaves the bank as his target of choice."

"You want to bring 'em all together?"

"I think we should. Got any idea where Dallas is?"

"Layin' low in the bunkhouse, like as not. I'll fetch him if you'll get Calico."

"Good enough. Bring him in through the kitchen, and I'll take Calico out the side bunkroom door and back in by the front."

Jess dropped down off the low step without a word and headed for the barn. Slim turned back to the house and went in. "I'll just be another minute," he told the Coreys, and quietly slipped into the bunkroom.

Jake looked up sharply from the book he'd been reading—a cheap paperback reprint of M. Verne's romance, Around the World in Eighty Days—one hand going reflexively toward the nearest of his guns, hanging on the bunkset's upright in their buscadero rig. "Oh," he said quietly, "it's you, Sherman. That company of yours pull out yet? I'd sure like to get a taste of whatever Miss Daisy had cooking—could smell it all the way through the door."

"That company of mine," Slim told him, "is why I came in. They haven't left, but I think you ought to meet them. Jess has gone to get Dallas."

The young outlaw sat up slowly, his face stilling into the same kind of chill mask Slim knew so well from sharing his life with Jess these last five years. "What goes on?" he asked evenly.

"You and Dallas already agreed that you'd be willing to work with our Sheriff Corey," Slim pointed out. "He's out there now, along with his father, who wore a badge for at least as long as he has and maybe longer, and has just been tellin' us some things that changed a lot of our thinking. I'll be frank, Calico: I wasn't quite sure I believed your story as Dallas told it. That was why I asked for your consent to have Mort look into it. Well, it seems his pa has already been doin' that, on his own. And he's got proof of it. Jess and I think it's time we had a council of war—us, and them, and the two of you—and get everybody up to date."

"Proof?" Calico echoed softly. "You mean somethin' the law might listen to?"

"That's what I mean, plus at least one thing even you didn't know about. You weren't the only ones swindled over that mine of yours; it begins to look like Kirby shafted his own partners in the syndicate as well."

"Well, now," the younger man murmured. "I can't say I'm surprised to hear it. And I think any man who could find that out is somebody I'd like to meet."

"Get your shirt," Slim told him.

Three minutes later Slim opened the front door again. "Mort, Mr. Corey," he announced, "I'd like you to meet Jake Thomson, generally known as the Calico Kid."

"And," Jess added quietly from the kitchen archway, "his partner, Dallas Trelagen."

**SR**

Daisy went off to bed, pleading a long day tomorrow, but the six men gathered around the dining table with a pot of coffee, Jake and Dallas munching cold leftovers from supper while they sifted through some of the depositions and other evidence Mort Senior had collected. "And you say it was Charly set you onto this, Mr. Corey?" Jake inquired. "That brave, sweet, wonderful girl. It's the last thing I'd have thought she'd do."

"You're a lucky man, son," the old lawman told him. "Lucky to have a partner like Dallas; lucky to have had such a fine young woman—and so smart and persistent a one besides—fall in love with you; lucky to have found Slim and Jess when you did."

"Guess my dad would say God's been holding His hand over me," Jake mused. "I'd pretty much figured He'd have given up on me a long time ago."

"I kinda had the same notion, Jake," Jess admitted, "till I got to see what I had here. Don't matter if it's God, or luck, or what—we both got a second chance, and if you're as smart as Dallas says you are, you won't let yours slip by you no more'n I done."

Dallas was poring over the syndicate statements of which Mort Senior had acquired copies. "Well," he drawled, "like they say, the apple don't fall too far from the tree. Them two Kirbys—that blond one that was with 'em today was Henry's kid brother Johnny, he's twenty-two; there was a couple sisters in between that's been married off—they're just two chips off their pa's old block and always have been. Crooked as a rail fence, all three of 'em, and alike as crows settin' on it. Not one'd tell the truth if a lie would do, and they always figured everybody else done the same. Henry's maybe the worst of the lot: he's the crookedest jasper west, east, north, south, or in the middle of the Rio Grande, a hell-raiser and a rustler, and till we started steppin' on his toes he was makin' money with his left hand faster than his right hand could spend it. He's never run an honest deal where he could run a crooked one, nor a square trick when he could play a mean one, and if it's a long time since he rode all night with a rifle in his hand, there's plenty he can hire to do his dark-of-the-moon stuff now." He looked up, somber eyes raking around the circle of faces. "But it don't do to sell him short—that's what got us in trouble to begin with. Bad as he is, there was never anything penny-ante about him. He laid it on the line and played the cards he was dealt, and off the bottom of the deck if he was doin' the dealin'."

"What about them others that was with him?" Jess asked, one expert consulting another. "You knew two of 'em, you said their names."

"The tall one, like Mr. Corey told you, that was Kirby's line foreman, Nelse Garrett. He's tough, and he don't balk at much, but he's smart—smarter'n Kirby is, maybe. And if he knows the cow trade, he's also a sight better with a gun than most men that earn their livin' through it."

"And the brother?" Slim prompted.

"Johnny? Well, Henry just about raised him—the kid wasn't but nine or ten when their pa died—and natural-like he carried on the way the old man had done with him. Them two is a sour pair if you rub 'em the wrong way, like me and Jake done. Henry has a lot of sense, and he tries to hold Johnny down, but Johnny is off the same piece he is, and Henry can't do much with him. He's kind of wild—not mean, but he hangs out with the roughest boys in the crew, and they egg him on, and he won't back down. I reckon pride's filled half of Boot Hill. He killed a feller down in Las Animas, year or two back, just for lookin' at him cross-eyed, I guess. Folks there had to kinda pass it off, admittin' it might ha' been self-defense. Half the time him and Henry ain't on speakin' terms. But once one of 'em gets in a tight place, then it's Kirbys against all, and Henry can go as crazy as Johnny can, if he wants."

"That might be a weak link we can take advantage of," Mort Junior mused. "What about the others Kirby brought along?"

"Can't say I know 'em by sight," Dallas admitted, "but I know for a fact he keeps a regular stable of range detectives—that's what he calls 'em, but the Cattlemen's Associations don't pay more'n fifty-five a month for that kind of work, and Kirby's boys get three times as much."

Jake chuckled. "Yeah. The son of the president of the Bluestone bank is sweet on Charly. She leads him on—that's where we get a lot of our information. So we know what each of his boys gets paid, from Garrett down to the cook's louse." He sobered, his attention going to Mort Senior. "All right, you got all this information together, Mr. Corey—what do you figure to do with it?"

"It seems to me," the old man replied, "that you've got one enormous advantage, son. Kirby, and maybe his inner circle—his brother, his foreman, possibly some of his hired guns—are the only people who'd know all the details of why you'd be out to ruin him, and probably out of the urge for self-preservation, they don't seem inclined to spread it around. The reward on you is from the express and stage companies and banks, for your holdups, not for any of the rustling, and Kirby hasn't been letting on everything he knows about you, most particularly your name, or Dallas's either. That means nobody can prove that Jake Thomson and the Calico Kid are one and the same; Kirby might claim they are, but he can't prove it without revealing a lot of things he'd rather not, like the way he tricked the syndicate out of half a million dollars. Even if he could, we'd still have enough depositions—from the witnesses to your holdups, the people you've helped, and that one man who can testify to your claim being jumped—to establish the probable existence of extenuating circumstances. And if you wanted to, you could get on the stand and explain just why you set out to destroy him, which would likely result in a deadlock or a hung jury.

"But I think that our best tactic would be to strike first. Lawyers will tell you that, as a general rule, it's better to sue than to be sued. It makes juries think that you're likely to be in the right, because you had the confidence to bring the action first. What we need to do is find some excuse to get Kirby, and maybe Johnny as well, in jail, where they're less of a threat to you, and then start the legal machinery going. Contact Henry's syndicate partners and explain that he's defrauded them as well as you, they'll want to sue on their own account. He'll have a lot ado to defend himself from two accusations, especially when the amounts involved total more than you've made off with these last five years."

"If he's plannin' to sue across territorial lines," said Slim, "shouldn't he have more behind him than just Mort? A lawyer, of course—Marshal Ives down in Cheyenne could probably put him onto a good one, he'd know most of 'em. But Mort's only local."

"How about Branch McGarry?" Jess suggested suddenly. "He's a U.S. Marshal, and they go where they're sent—or sent for; if Mort was to contact him and say he was needin' help, that'd be enough to fetch him. Plus he knows me, and he kind of owes me one."

"He does owe you one," said Slim. "You nearly got yourself killed, tryin' to warn him he was ridin' into that ambush at Stillwater Crossing. It took six weeks before you were strong enough to get back to work, and if it had been anyone else, it would have been twice that, God save your Harper grit and stubbornness. I don't think you've come so close since I've known you—except maybe your first winter here, when you had the fever."

"That's eight of us," Mort Junior said. "Pa and me, you two, Jake, Dallas, Branch and that deputy of his, Reb. But you and Jake are still recovering, Slim."

"There's my boys," Jake put in. "They deserve to be in on this. Most of 'em have been with me from the start, and Dallas and I always said, if we could get our own back, we'd take care of 'em."

"Only trouble with that," Dallas observed, "is that me and you can't be goin' into Laramie to find 'em, not with Kirby and his bunch there; they'd know us at sight. Like Mr. Corey says, they might not want us to be in no shape to be tellin' what we know. They'll just take us down as they can, and find excuses afterward."

Mort Junior gave the younger outlaw a hard, keen look. "You haven't said yet—were you planning to hit the bank?"

"If I was, it wouldn't be too smart for me to say so, would it?" Jake retorted. "But if I was, I sure couldn't do it from here. The boys would have to wait till I was healed up enough to ride. When the doc comes out tomorrow to check Sherman, he can have a look at me too. Then we can—"

That was when the front door and the side kitchen one burst open.

**SR**

It had taken till nearly nine for Jackson to get back to the ridge with Kyle, Pen, and Boston. "What's goin' on?" the sharpshooter asked, as the four of them bellied down to either side of Case's position.

"Not much," Case admitted. "Kirby and his bunch pulled out hours ago, but that Laramie sheriff's still there, and the old gent who was with him at his office."

"No sign of Jake or Dallas?" Kyle guessed.

"Can't be sure from this angle, but it don't look like there's any lights in the bunkhouse," Case admitted. " 'Course they might be shy of showin' any, as long as there's folks awake in the main house, and Jake's probably doin' a lot of sleepin'; that Miss Daisy might'a' got the bullet out of him, but a wound like that takes it out of a man."

"I been hearin' some things about this Sherman Ranch outfit," Boston told them. "It's two partners—Sherman, his pa started it, and a feller name of Harper who turned up here four-five years ago with a reputation as a gunslick. They're both tight with the sheriff—he deputizes 'em frequent, sometimes just one, sometimes both. And the place is a relay on the Overland, and they fill in as guards on the coaches. You remember that blond feller that messed us up when Jake got hurt? That was Sherman."

Four faces swung around in his direction. "You sure of that?" Jackson demanded.

"Driver had it spread around half the town before he took the stage on toward Medicine Bow the next day," Boston said. "What cause would he have to lie?"

"None," Case admitted. "So. Jake and Dallas is hidin' out on a spread owned by a man one of us shot, and who shot Jake. If they're keepin' low, they may not know that yet, and he may not know they're there. But we can't be sure of that, and I don't like it the way the sheriff's been stayin' down there since this afternoon. And it's gettin' late for ranch folks to be sittin' up, which we can see they are, by them lights: work starts early. There's somethin' goin' on, and it don't smell right to me. I think it's time we went down and got our bosses out."

"You reckon Jake's healed enough to ride?" Kyle asked anxiously.

"Been most of a week since he was shot," Case pointed out. "Jake ain't big, but he's tough; we all know that."

"We didn't fetch their horses," Pen mentioned.

"They can ride double with a couple of us, at least as far as town," Case suggested, "and then we can pick theirs up and move out into the countryside somewheres. Kirby and his'll be in bed time we get 'em there, they've had a long ride up from Double Heart. We tie them fellers, Sherman and his partner and the sheriff, and run off the horses, nobody'll be able to get after us or get the word out on us till after the first stage has been here tomorrow; that should give us time enough to get clear. The five of us have had five days to gather up the information Dallas wanted us to; that should be enough. If Jake don't think so, well, he'll think of somethin', he always does." He pushed up. "I got a fair notion of the house layout before it got too dark to see. The light's in what must be the main room, and the front door lets right into it; that's probably where they are. That side wing's likely the kitchen, and it's got two doors, one in front and one at the side. Pen, you and Boston go in that one; that should put you behind 'em. Kyle and Jackson and me'll take the front. Let's go down slow and easy and leave our horses behind the barn, where we'll be able to reach 'em quick if we have to."

**SR**

Mort Junior and Jess whirled at the sound of the door flying open, the younger man naturally a second or two sooner, and froze as they saw they were covered. For a heartbeat or so there was total silence, and then Dallas stood up. "Blast it," he said, "put them guns away! Don't you know a council of war when you see one?"

The older of the two white men stared at him. "Dallas? You're carryin'!"

"Of course I'm carryin'," Dallas retorted. "Settle down, all of you. These fellers is on our side."

Then Jake pushed to his feet. "Do as he says. We're in no danger, and neither are you. In fact, we were just tryin' to figure out how we could get word to you. Did you know Kirby's in town?"

"That's what fetched us out here," explained the man who'd spoken before. "Jackson and me saw him ride in, him and his outfit, so we tailed 'em. What were they doin' here, Jake?"

Jake grinned. "Givin' Sherman a reward for keepin' Kirby's money safe," he said. "What they didn't know was that Sheriff Corey's dad, here, has been gatherin' up evidence enough against Kirby to sink the Monitor all over again."

**SR**

It was past eleven by the time Slim and Jess got to bed. Dallas had taken the gang over to the bunkhouse, where he could answer any questions or doubts they had; Mort had bedded down in the barn loft and his father on the leather sofa in the main room, and only Jake—much more worn out than he had wanted anyone to know—remained to share the bunkroom with them; he was asleep almost as soon as he lay down. "Pard?" Jess ventured quietly, after ten minutes or so. "You still awake?"

Slim sighed. "Yeah. I'm awake."

"You sure you're okay with this?" the ex-gunslinger asked, his tone a bit tentative. "I know you said all them things Mort's daddy found out went a long ways to convincin' you, but fact is Jake and them is still outlaws, and you've always been strong for the law, long's I've known you."

"I have. I am," Slim agreed. "But... there's times the law as it stands can't really meet the situation. I've told you about that time, right after the war, when Mort and I got involved in some vigilante doings in Kansas. Ordinarily I don't approve of vigilantes, but that time... that time they were all there was. I think this situation is like that. Kirby has so much power, so much money... without some outside help, like us, and Mort, and Mr. Corey, I don't see how Jake and his friends would have a chance. And we know, now, that they were the first offended against. There's a legal term for it; it's called 'the principle of first injury.' " He turned from his back to his side, facing his partner across the space that separated the beds. "Remember Mr. Corey telling us about what Andrew Jackson used to say to juries? How it made him understand that law and justice didn't always have to be two different things?"

"Yeah, I remember. 'Do what's right.' Reckon I been tryin' to live by that the best part of my life."

"Sometimes people have different ideas of what's right," Slim observed, "and I guess that's where law comes in handy. It takes what most people consider the right, codifies it, sets it down in a permanent form. But there's a saying that goes, Circumstances alter cases. What it means is that sometimes you have to go against the accepted way of doin' things." Pause. "You can't have a workin' society, a safe society, if people don't respect one another's rights. That's why just about all societies have rules against things like murder and theft, so folks can feel safe among their neighbors. Just because a man has a lot of power, it doesn't give him a right to ignore those rules."

"That mine belonged to Jake and Dallas," Jess agreed. "They found it, it was theirs. They had the right to decide who they'd sell it to and for how much. And Kirby didn't have no right to steal it out from under 'em, no more'n the Bannisters had a right to take my family."

"That's so," said Slim. "And... and I think even before we found all this out, I had some doubts. You recall, the day I got home, we talked about it a little. About how Hankins snatchin' that woman's brooch distracted Jake from me and the box, like it mattered more to him to make sure his men bided by his rules. About how, maybe, he was the one who killed Hankins—not me. When a man's willing to take that kind of step against someone who rides with him... that says something about the code he lives by, I think."

"Says somethin' about the rest of 'em, too, that they didn't turn on him after," Jess pointed out. "That they was still watchin' out for his interests when Kirby got to town. That they come chargin' in here ready to take him out at gunpoint, if that's what needed doin'."

"That too," Slim agreed. "It might have been just a kind of self-preservation, a fear that if the law got hold of him he'd sell them out to make things easier on himself... but the fact was that they did it, they didn't just take off."

"What do you reckon Kirby's like to do?" Jess asked. "I got a notion you and Mort's daddy was right, that he come up here on a huntin' trip... but how's he gonna go about it? Like you said, he don't know the country."

"A man doesn't get where he is, not even buildin' on the foundation his father left him, without some brains," Slim replied thoughtfully. "He'll figure that, with the mountains so close, it would be a waste of time to try hirin' a guide—like you, say—to find the place the gang might be usin' for a hideout; he'll know there'd be hundreds of possibilities. Maybe he could do it, but just as likely he couldn't—and he has business interests back home that need lookin' after. No. He knows what they were after, and he knows they have to know where it is. If I were in his place, with that bunch he brought with him, I'd just keep watch on the bank. Folks in town wouldn't be expecting a holdup; almost nobody ever does, till it happens. But they would be, and that could make a difference."

"Seven of 'em," Jess remembered. "Each takes maybe a three-, three-and-a-half-hour trick, or two two-hour ones out of every twenty-four, they'd all still have plenty of time to rest, eat, sleep, and not get too far off their edge. Even just six, if Kirby pulls trail-boss privilege and exempts himself, could do it."

"But they can't have guessed about Jake and Dallas bein' here, or about what Mr. Corey found out," Slim finished. "That gives us a little bit of an edge. When Mort goes back to town tomorrow, he can keep an eye on 'em. Then, after McGarry gets in, we'll have a strategy session and decide what's the best thing to do."

"Yeah. They got to've heard there was a couple of them bandits wounded, and they got no way to know who, or how bad. If it takes a spell yet for anythin' to happen, it won't seem strange to 'em, I don't reckon." Jess was silent a moment, then: "Slim?"

"What?"

"That fight I got into, Monday..."

"What about it?"

Jess's voice sounded rough and uncertain in the darkness. "I wasn't lookin' for the fight, exactly. I was... I needed to stop seein' that mark on your arm. I couldn't stop thinkin' how, if the bullet had gone maybe a little bit further to the side, you... you might'a' come home in a tarp. That scared me, pard."

"I know it did," Slim told him quietly. "Like hearin' Branch tell about how bad you were wounded scared me."

"Only you didn't go out and get in a brannigan," Jess pointed out, sounding embarrassed. "Don't seem like your good sense rubs off on me."

"Maybe if it did, you wouldn't be who you are," Slim suggested. "And besides, anyone who hangs out at Dooley's probably deserves to get pounded on." He yawned. "We'd better get some sleep. Day'll be here before we know it."

**SR**

Dallas sent the gang back to town at first light, having first established a location where he or Jake could leave messages for them at need. The Coreys shared breakfast with the ranch family, then saddled their horses and headed in themselves. Doc Phillips came by early on in the course of his rounds, pronounced Slim's arm almost healed and Jake's condition improving satisfactorily. Meanwhile, in Laramie, Mort was sending telegrams: one to Branch McGarry, care of his office in Cheyenne, and one to Marshal Ives in the same town. He knew McGarry checked in with Cheyenne regularly—had to, in case some small-town lawman had managed to put his hands on a big-time outlaw who needed moving in a hurry—and had a fair bit of latitude in changing his schedule around if circumstances warranted it. He didn't want to drag this out—he didn't like the smell of those "range detectives" the Kirbys had brought with them—so he traded unashamedly on McGarry's sense of honor; his message to the marshal ran:

JESS HARPER AND MYSELF IN NEED OF HIGH-POWERED HELP=COME AS SOON AS YOU CAN=COREY, LARAMIE

It worked. The telegrams went out Thursday morning; Sunday McGarry and his deputy, Reb Carlton, rode in. They'd left their driver, Patches, to follow with the tumbleweed wagon as fast as the roads allowed. By that time Mort had gotten a feel for what Kirby was up to—which was just about what Slim had figured. He sent a note out to Sherman's by the afternoon stage, suggesting a meeting at his house the next day. Since he lived out on the residential edge of Laramie, he figured Slim and Jess—and Jake and Dallas, if they were willing to come—would be able to slip in without Kirby's bunch getting a sight of them.

The two ranchers rode in openly, Slim with the sling finally off his arm, though still favoring the limb a bit; Jake and Dallas came in "like a corkscrew," as Jake put it, using all the cover they could find, riding a couple of borrowed S R horses. All eight of them settled down in Mort's cozy, slightly shabby sitting room, and Mort Senior once again laid out what he had discovered.

"You did right to send for me, Mort," McGarry said when the old man was finished. "It sounds to me as if there was one thing none of you thought about, and it may make all the difference, legality-wise."

"Are you sayin'," Jake ventured cautiously, "that after all this work Mr. Corey's done, there's still no way to nail Kirby?"

"No, I'm not," the marshal assured him. "Look. We know that Kirby's partners in the syndicate think he paid you and Dallas to sell the bulk of your claim to it. He had to have written and told them so. Even if he only telegraphed, he must have later sent them a copy of the contract for the sale—with your signatures forged to it. That's mail fraud, and it's a Federal offense. As a U.S. Marshal, I have every right and authority to make an arrest for it. What's more, we don't have to have the case tried in any of the local courts. I'll send for the Federal circuit-court judge—Orrin Travis, his name is. A tough man, but fair. Once we get Kirby up in front of him on the fraud beef... well, if he's found guilty, that would virtually guarantee that your suit over the jumped claim would go against him too. Your attorney might even be able to get the two cases tried together, seein' that they're so closely related."

Slim, with his long experience at business, was looking thoughtful. "About that contract," he put in. "Mr. Corey, exactly what kind of deal did it stipulate?"

Mort Senior squirrelled quickly through his papers. "It incorporated the mine at $800,000—that's 160,000 five-dollar shares—and provided that the original locators were to receive one-quarter of those, plus a cash payment of another $455,000."

"Okay," said Slim, "that means that, assumin' they hadn't sold the stock in the meantime, and assumin' that production remained constant, the stock would've earned the two of 'em somethin' like five point two million dollars these last five years. Where's that money gone? They don't have it. For that matter, what became of that almost half-a-million cash payment?"

Dallas and Reb both sat bolt upright. "Be dadgummed," Jess murmured, "Kirby must'a' siphoned it all off into his own pockets."

"Exactly," Slim agreed. "So we're lookin' at a case of ongoing fraud, against the syndicate and the original locaters. What would a man do with that kind of money?" He turned to face Jake. "You're the one who's been studyin' his ways all this time, what do you think?"

"I think," Jake responded slowly, "he'd have taken it in cash, which would be hard to trace; checks would be risky, he'd have to try to keep forgin' our names to 'em. Suppose the payments are quarterly, that's $260,000 each. Cattle was forty a head last fall, that's 6500 of 'em, which is about twenty per cent again as many as he usually sends to market in a season, times four. I don't think he'd bank that money. I think it might raise some questions, even with the way he's got his interests spread around, and he'd know that. Taxes, and all that. Some of it he might've spent as cash—maybe that $25,000 was part of it. But I think—no, I'd bet—that he's got the bulk of it stashed somewhere on his property, and most likely at his house on Double Heart, where he can get at it in a hurry, without anybody—even his crew—seein' him go after it. I've seen that house, from a distance; it's big. There could be any number of hiding places in it, purpose-made or worked up later."

"Which means what, amigo?" Dallas wanted to know.

"Means if he makes bail, all he's got to do is hightail it home, get that cash out of wherever it's hid, and make for Mexico," Jake told him grimly. "He'll have to leave his land holdings and his stock behind, but five and a half million, or even half as much, will set a man up like a king in Mexico—or South America, even better. Of course, I've got no proof. I'm only thinkin'."

"Just keep thinkin', Jake. That's what you're good at," said Dallas.

"He's right, too," Jess agreed. "Branch, will that judge of yours be willin' to set a real high bail?"

"Wouldn't matter if he did," growled Dallas. "Marshal McGarry can arrest Henry, but he's got no evidence against any of the rest of the outfit. They could spring him out of jail before he could come to trial."

"And you told us," Slim recalled, "that even if Henry and his brother aren't on speakin' terms, if one of 'em gets in a tight spot, the other forgets the quarrel and backs him to the bitter end."

"That's about the size of it," the big Texan confirmed. "Johnny'll still be on the loose, and boss with his big brother out of action; likely Garrett and them range detectives'll be ready to go along with anything he suggests, knowin' that if they don't they could lose their meal ticket. And if Johnny don't always seem to keep his brain noplace but in his holster, Garrett does. I told you th'other night, he may be smarter'n Henry is—smart enough not to let it show."

"And as long as they behave themselves," Mort Junior put in, "I'll have no excuse to run them out of town. Six of 'em, without their boss. Eight of us. That's too close."

Jake grinned. "No, Sheriff. You're forgettin'. Thirteen of us. And Kirby and them wouldn't know any of my boys, except Dallas, if they fell over 'em in the street."

Jess's eyes sparked. He knew, now, what had kept these two out of the hands of law and order for five years. It wasn't just Dallas's spontaneous style and Jake's studied thoroughness, so much like his and Slim's own way of doing things. At bottom, it was Jake. Not only was he, in Jess's professional estimation, probably one of the best of the lot with a gun; it was who he was. His easy way was not only natural to him, he was simply confident, with that hard confidence that comes only from having measured one's ability and knowing what one can do when the chips are down. "That's right," the ex-gunslinger said. "Keep a watch on 'em, changin' off regular so's they don't keep seein' the same face hangin' around. They'll want to move fast, before that judge gets here, maybe. We'll have the bait, all we need to do is set a trap."

McGarry shot a look at Reb. "What did I tell you about this feller?" he asked. "All right. Mort, have you been able to get a picture of how that Kirby outfit spends its time?"

"They've settled in at the Stockmen's, pretty much," the sheriff replied. "They can get meals there, and the bank's not far off. I've had Freddie and his bartenders keeping a quiet eye on them ever since I got back from Slim and Jess's place."

"They got a regular table?" Jess asked.

"Usually that big one in the back left corner, on the raised flooring."

"That's good," said Slim. "Mr. Corey, have you got a piece of paper? Let's work out how we'll do this. No need to give those range detectives a chance to make a fight out of it."

**SR**

Two or three hours later, Slim and Jess strolled casually into the Stockmen's, nodding to acquaintances at the bar, and ordered a couple of schooners of beer, which they took back to the four-man table in the right rear corner. As Mort had said, the Kirby party—all except one of the "range detectives," presumably the one currently watching the bank—was settled comfortably at the bigger one directly opposite, desultorily playing poker to pass the time. There was a bottle centering it and a glass at each place, but none of them (or so Freddie and his bartenders had reported to Mort) drank more than a sip or two every half-hour or so. Jess tipped a look at his partner. "Keepin' sober," he murmured. "Keepin' their wits about 'em and their hands quick, just in case Jake and them make that try for the bank."

"Just like we thought," Slim agreed. "Time?"

Jess fished his silver-plated watch out of his vest. "We got forty minutes till Mort and Branch get here."

Thirty-five of those minutes passed; the two partners sipped their beers and talked quietly, just as any pair of harmless saloon patrons might. Then Jess's keen gunfighter hearing picked up a faint click directly behind him. "Reb's here," he said softly.

Slim shifted in his chair. The door at the end of the bar was open about half an inch; when they sat down, it hadn't been. "Time to make your move, pard."

"Right." Jess slowly pushed his own chair back, collected his almost-empty glass, and moved over to the bar, carefully choosing his spot so he'd be directly behind Johnny Kirby and able to cover Garrett by pivoting a few degrees. "Refill here, Freddie?"

"Sure thing, Jess," the Stockmen's lanky owner responded from the other end. "Just give me a minute."

On the other side of the half-wall, the batwings creaked and slapped, and two figures came into view: Mort Corey with a double shotgun tucked under his arm, Branch McGarry casually armed with only his sixgun. Mort quietly moved to his own right, toward the side wall opposite the bar, and then as easily along it, until he was positioned just short of the corner where the room widened: his twelve-gauge, loaded with buckshot, would be effective at up to forty yards—more than a dozen times the distance that now intervened between him and the Kirby table. Jess, his left elbow resting on the bar, shifted just a bit, his right side turned toward it. Branch strolled past him, dark eyes quickly picking out Henry Kirby, who sat facing Slim and Jess's table, Garrett two places to his left, Johnny three to his right. He moved in casually, to the edge of the raised flooring, which was sometimes cleared for use as a stage, but more often held two or three tables and a mechanical piano, and stepped up onto it, past the other large table, to stop within ten feet of the group. "Henry Kirby?" he asked levelly.

The cattleman's attention lifted from his cards. "I am. Who's asking?"

"U.S. Marshal Branch McGarry. You're under arrest, Mr. Kirby, for mail fraud and such suspected other irregularities as may come to light."

Garrett's head snapped up; Johnny made a move toward his gun. Jess stepped quickly one pace away from the bar, his Colt flashing out of leather. "Hold it!" he growled.

The door at the end of the bar opened, and Reb Carlton came through, his sixgun drawn and levelled. Slim stood up, producing his own from under the tabletop. "Nobody move," said Mort, easing around the corner and bringing his scattergun to bear. He nodded to Branch. "Your play, Marshal."

Kirby slowly scanned the scene: Slim and the deputy at three o'clock, Mort Corey at twelve, Jess at two with his gun pointed at the back of Johnny's head, Branch at five. The corner position of the table, intended to provide him and his with privacy and easy access to the door in case of an alarm at the bank, had become a trap: they couldn't go any farther back than the wall, which hemmed them in on two sides. As Slim had noted on Wednesday night, a man didn't get where Kirby had without having some brains—and knowing when it was better to use brains than guns. "Easy, boys," he said. "All right, Marshal. There's no need for violence, I'll come quietly."

"Reb," McGarry said.

Carlton slipped around behind Slim's back, up onto the raised flooring and around the perimeter of it, and came up behind Kirby as he stood, carefully lifting his hands. Holding his sixgun on the cattleman's beefy form, he reached out with his left and twisted the pistol out of his holster, tucking it through his own belt. "Keep 'em up," he ordered. "Now, to your right—start walkin'."

Jess, deftly as a dancer, fell back along the length of the bar, toward the doors, so Kirby's body wouldn't block his aim. Slim stood where he was, covering Garrett and the rest of them. Branch followed his deputy, circling around Slim's table to keep out of his line of fire, while the rancher provided him with cover. Jess was clearing patrons away from the half-wall, silently gesturing with his Colt to back them into the front corner—not that any of them would have cause to take a stranger's part, but he didn't want them caught in a crossfire if somebody started something. Slim backed in McGarry's wake, watching Kirby's party keenly. Mort stayed fixed, the shotgun covering the others' movements.

Johnny Kirby pivoted slowly in his chair, watching his big brother's back. "I'll be over to talk to you, Henry," he said, his young voice surprisingly even.

"I'll be there," Henry told him, not stopping or looking around.

Jess slipped around the half-wall, the faint jingle of his spurs almost the only sound in the room, and out through the batwings, pausing to hold one of them open so Kirby couldn't slap it back in Reb's face, his eyes probing down the street toward the bank; Jake and Dallas between them were supposed to have located the last of the cattleman's adherents and be keeping an eye on him, not moving unless he showed some hint of being about to head for the saloon in case his watch ended with no sign of his relief, but there'd been no way to confirm that ahead of time. Next came Reb with his prisoner, then McGarry, then Slim, and last of all Mort. As the sheriff vanished out the doors, the entire room seemed to start breathing again.

Out on Front Street, passersby paused, staring, as Reb and Kirby descended the saloon's front steps, shortly preceded by Jess, who had had to circle around a hitch rail full of horses so as not to put himself within the cattleman's reach. He angled across the street to open the jail door, while Slim and Branch backed in Carlton's wake, flanking Mort and his shotgun. But either Garrett or Johnny was apparently keeping the range detectives in hand, since no one charged out after them. In two minutes they were safely indoors. Branch threw the bolt while Reb got Kirby up against the wall, hands flat against it, feet spread, and began searching him; Jess stood back to provide cover.

"What's your part in this, Mr. Sherman?" Kirby asked mildly, not flinching even when the deputy extracted a derringer from a harness along the underside of his right arm, then a Colt .41 from a holster hooked over the back of his waistband.

"Call it a favor for a friend," Slim replied over his shoulder; he was standing by the window, his sixgun still in one hand, the other holding the shade back so he could watch the street.

"Not a way to make a friend of me," Kirby observed in the same easy tone.

"You hush," Jess ordered, his voice rough and deep. He'd never cared for the large-scale type of cowmen; too often they were range hogs and bullies, and in his gunfighting days he'd often—indeed almost normally—found himself on the side of the underdog, sometimes even wading into battles that weren't necessarily his own, simply for the principle of the thing. Indeed, almost the only times he'd sold his gun to a big outfit, like the King Bartlett spread, it had been one that was evenly matched with whoever it was fighting. Having once purged himself of the lingering fear that he could so easily have lost his partner, he had entered completely into Jake's cause, just as he had into those of so many other victims in his career.

Reb checked Kirby's hat for hideouts, knelt to examine the tops of his boots, then came up with a nod. "All right, Branch, he's clean."

"Put him away, Mort," the marshal said, deferring to local law on its own premises. Mort hooked the key ring off its peg and tossed it to Jess, who opened the cell-bloc door, then stepped through to unlock the first cell and hold its door while his friend urged Kirby into it at scattergun point. He shut it with a shivering clang, backed away and holstered his gun. Mort followed, closing the intervening door.

"Well," said Branch, "we did it. Now we wait and see what happens next."

**SR**

It took about an hour before Johnny Kirby arrived; he and the others had probably needed time to consult, to try to make some sense of the charge they'd heard Branch level, to decide what they should do. He found the office occupied only by Mort, Branch, and Reb. He gave up his gunbelt and allowed himself to be searched, then went into the cell bloc to confer with his brother. After fifteen minutes or so he came out. "Who's gonna be hearin' this case, Marshal?" he asked Branch.

"I've sent a telegram to Federal Judge Travis," the marshal answered honestly. "I told him I'd just as soon have the trial here as in Cheyenne; too many things can happen to a tumbleweed wagon along the trail, and besides it only draws things out."

"You got to give us time to get Henry's lawyer up from Denver," Johnny protested.

"Tell it to Travis when he gets here, he'll be the one to set the date," Branch replied. "And if that's the way you think, maybe you'd better go send for him right now."

"Maybe I better," Johnny said, an odd note in his voice. "Can I have my gun back?"

Mort handed it over, and the youngster left without even stopping to buckle it in place. "Well, you think he had enough time to take a good look at the layout?" Corey asked the two Federal officers.

"It's not a big jail," said Reb with an amused snort. "Now he'll have to tell Garrett and the rest what he saw."

"When do you think they'll make their move?" Branch inquired of Mort, who was the oldest and most experienced of them.

"I don't think they'll want to waste any time about it," the sheriff replied. "They won't know how long they've got before Travis gets here. I'd say tonight, probably sometime around or after midnight."

"That's about what I thought," Branch agreed. "Reb, it's getting about time to order the prisoner his supper. You see to that, will you?"

**SR**

Quietly conferring at their table, Johnny Kirby, Garrett, and the rest—the watch had been taken off the bank; springing the boss came first—paid no attention to the tall, serious-faced, thirtyish man who strolled into the bar just as it was getting well dark, got a beer, and sat down near the half-wall with the latest number of the Laramie Gazette, always kept available for patrons. In turn neither Case nor the Kirby party paid any heed to the lanky, fair-haired youngster who arrived about an hour later and made a beer last a long time. Meanwhile Case finished reading the paper and went out. Twenty minutes later a dark-chestnut Negro came in, ignoring Kyle completely.

At the jail, Slim and Jess, duly badged as deputies, came in through the back door after several turns through the town. "Any word from Jake's boys?" the ex-gunslinger asked.

"Not yet. We'd better start getting ready," said Mort.

Ten minutes later a very surprised Henry Kirby, handcuffed and gagged, was being escorted out that same back door and by way of the alleys and side streets toward Mort's house, under charge of Mort Senior and Slim. The rancher was back inside a quarter of an hour. "No trouble?" Mort asked.

"No trouble," Slim agreed. "He's locked in your cellar, and your pa's in the kitchen with his Winchester, lights turned out. If anybody does break in, his eyes will have gotten used to the dark long before."

"Ain't likely nobody will," Jess declared. "They ain't been keepin' watch on the jail; Slim and me made sure of that. So they'll figure he's still in his cell. And when they come, it'll be all of 'em or none. They got to know if a stranger disappears out of this jail, any man known to've been with him'll come under suspicion right off. They'll be plannin' to head for the Line together."

Slim eyed his partner uncertainly. "Are you sure this is a good idea?"

"Good or not," Jess retorted grimly, "I'm the only one that's got a chance of foolin' 'em. You're too tall, pard, and Branch ain't much less. Mort's too gray, and Reb's hair's too light."

"And you're nowhere near Kirby's build," Slim reminded him.

"No, but in that dark cell, with a blanket over me, how are they gonna know that?" Jess challenged. "'Sides, they won't be meanin' him no harm; 'long's I can take 'em by surprise, I'll be okay. You just see to it don't none of 'em make it out of town, or we'll have to keep guard till the trial's over." His voice dropped by an octave or so, chill and hard and quiet. "They owe me this, pard. If Kirby hadn't jumped that claim in Leadville, five years back, Jake wouldn't'a' been stickin' up stagecoaches, and you wouldn't'a' got shot. You and me, we look after each other. This is part of that. And if that Garrett's as good as Dallas thinks he is, then there's just three of us got a chance against him—me, Dallas, and Branch."

Slim tilted his head. "Why mention Garrett in particular?"

" 'Cause he's in on it," the younger man replied flatly. "Maybe you didn't notice, but I did. When Branch said that about 'mail fraud'—he was th'only one that come up sharp. Might be Johnny knows, or at least guesses, that that mine deal wasn't all on the level, but he don't know the details—shoot, he'd only 'a'been about seventeen when it happened. Garrett, he knows. Likely was part of it. He's got to cover himself. Got to make sure that if Kirby ain't sprung, he's anyways too dead to name him."

"I thought you said they wouldn't be meanin' Kirby any harm," Slim objected, beginning to look worried.

"Not if they reckon they can get him out." Jess looked up from the Colt whose chambers he was checking, and his grave expression melted briefly. "Don't you fret none about me, pard. I can take care of myself, remember? Done it a lot of years before we met up. Ain't got that rusty, not yet. Anyhow—" and his hand went to Slim's shoulder— "you won't be far away."

Not one foot farther than I have to, Slim promised himself. He still wasn't happy about Jess's part in this plan, chiefly because of the lack of maneuvering space—and of light—that Jess would have; but at the same time he knew that Jess was right, that he was the one best suited to take that part. This was what it meant, to have a partner like Jess, and you just had to take the bad with the good.

Kirby and his followers had been in Laramie, now, the best part of a week; they'd probably noticed that unless Mort had a prisoner in the jail, he locked up at night and went home, since he ran his office on a shoestring, only swearing in deputies temporarily, as and when he needed them. They—most likely Garrett, if Dallas was right about his intelligence—would guess that since Kirby was technically a Federal prisoner, McGarry and Reb would be the ones to take responsibility for him. They'd count on only one of the two staying the night, and the other finding himself a bed so he could take over the day watch. Branch and Reb had had a sharp disagreement over which of them would stay, both knowing that the one who did would be most liable to be risking his life, and each resolved that this dangerous duty should be his. Jess had finally suggested cutting for high card, and Reb had drawn the queen of diamonds to his boss's eight of spades.

Mort had left, according to his usual custom, around eight o'clock, when it was just beginning to get dark. Slim left too, by the rear door, which Branch and Reb then barricaded behind him with one of the desks. Branch stayed on another half-hour or so, then likewise departed. But none of them went very far. Mort circled around, took up a position in the livery's hayloft, and settled down there with a Winchester at his side. Branch similarly established himself on the roof of a store at the other end of Front Street. Their job was to cover the two main routes out of town.

Slim was in the alley alongside the Stockmen's; he'd considered the roof, but had decided it might take him too long to get down from it if Jess needed him. Around half-past nine he saw a shadowy figure appear at the low cornice that bounded the jail roof. That would be Dallas, and Jake would be with him. Their gang would begin closing in later, when Kirby's outfit started moving. As Dallas had said, they were all basically decent men, who'd been pushed into outlawry against their will; once the situation had been explained to them, they'd been ready and willing to act as auxiliary deputies for the sake of settling their boss's quarrel.

Reb barred the door, turned down the light in the office, and settled in the chair with his feet up on the desk. The shades were pulled tight on the windows so nobody could shoot through the glass and be sure of hitting him. In the cell bloc, Jess lay on the bunk in the cell where Johnny had last seen his brother, his face to the side wall. A spare pillow tucked under the blanket with him made his shape seem larger than it really was. His Colt lay beneath the blanket, close by his hand, and under the bed was a rifle—not that he thought he'd need one, but just in case he'd guessed wrong and it came to a head-on assault, he wanted to be prepared.

Monday being a slow day for the saloon business—and almost every other kind of business in town, for that matter—Freddie closed down about ten. This pushed Kirby's party out of the bar, and Slim watched from the alley as they straggled slowly down the street toward the hotel, then quietly moved to stand under the awning by the shuttered storm doors. He didn't see anything of Jake's boys, but he didn't doubt they were around somewhere; in their line, like Jess, they would have learned, of necessity, how to move from place to place quietly and invisibly.

They had. Two of them—Jackson and Kyle—were in the alley behind the hotel within five minutes after Kirby's outfit got there. About ten-thirty the alley door opened and a shadowy figure set off along the backs of the buildings, up the street. Jackson, almost invisible in the darkness, followed him.

In the livery loft, Mort Corey heard shiftings and rustlings and the soft talking of horses as someone began moving around down below. He moved cautiously to the square hatch that looked down onto the centerway. From that angle he couldn't make out details, but he could see that whoever it was appeared to be in the stall with Johnny Kirby's bright blood bay. That made sense. It would take over an hour for one man to get seven horses fully tacked up, even if all of them were in the barn (as opposed to the feed corral out back); he would want to give himself some leeway to lead them to whatever place had been decided on. Mort withdrew. He didn't want to make his move too soon. When they made theirs, they'd have to leave town either by this end of the street or by the other, where Branch was. Time enough then to make his presence known.

The man downstairs finished his task and quietly led the horses back the way he'd come, to a point about halfway between the barn and the jail, behind the Laramie Bakery. He never saw the dark-skinned man who came up behind him and laid a gun barrel behind his ear. Jackson quickly tied and gagged him, then led the horses away. Now, even if all went according to their plan at the jail, Kirby's party would have nothing to ride out on. Jackson left the animals in the evergreen timber at the top of the street and hurried back to the hotel.

The departure of the horse-bringer had left five men in Henry and Johnny Kirby's hotel room: Johnny himself, Garrett, and three "range detectives." Kyle was still on watch outside the back door, Boston in a recessed doorway across the street, Pen and Case quietly settling into place near the jail, the former, with his Remington buffalo rifle, positioning himself on the roof of the dry-goods store, a couple of doors up from Slim. A little before midnight the Kirby quintet slipped down the back stairs and out of the building, then down the alley toward the street, which by this time was deserted. Both Kyle and Boston saw them and ghosted silently in pursuit.

Reb came out of his doze with a start at the sound of someone banging on the front door. "Sheriff! Hey, Sheriff! There's a fire down the end of the street!"

Fire was the great scourge of frame-built towns, and the one kind of alarm that would focus everyone's attention. Reb knew he was being gulled—at worst Kirby's outfit might have set a small decoy blaze—but he also knew he had to play his part. He pulled the bolt back, threw the latch, opened the door, and immediately fell back as two men with guns in their hands and bandannas over their faces shoved their way in. "Hands up!" ordered the taller one. "In the corner! Face the wall!"

Reb did as he was told, feeling a sudden lightness as he was relieved of his sixgun. Up to you now, Jess, he thought, staring stonily at the brickwork and expecting to be clubbed down at any moment. He heard the jingle of the key ring being lifted off the peg, the rattle of the cell-bloc door being unlocked.

Jess did too: he was a notoriously light sleeper except at home in his own bunk. He slid his hand around the butt of his Colt and waited. He could hear the creak of the door as someone entered from the outer office, the harsh metallic sound of a key in the cell's lock. "Wake up, boss," the newcomer said, not loudly. "Time to go."

"Think again, friend," Jess grated softly, rolling over and coming up in one swift, smooth movement, his sixgun up and cocked. "Don't holler or you're dead. Turn around."

The astonished range detective did exactly that, and Jess clubbed him quickly, caught him as he fell, dumped him on the cot, and snaked his rifle out from under it. He took the unconscious man's sixgun and tucked it through his waistband, then slipped his own back into the holster and eased his way out of the cell. It was the "front" cell, the one whose window looked out onto the street, and from the office no one could see what was going on there unless they came and stood in the doorway between, which was why they had put Kirby there to begin with: it gave Jess a bit of an edge. He put his back against the partition wall and began soft-footing toward the door.

"Tom? What's holding you up in there?"

Jess didn't recognize the voice, but then he hadn't heard any of the outfit speak, except for the two Kirbys. He peered carefully around the doorframe. Reb was standing in the far back corner, hands up, face to the wall, and the ex-gunslinger felt a lift of relief that they hadn't simply knocked his head in. A tall man in a black sateen shirt was covering him from behind, and Jess pulled back as this person glanced back quickly over his shoulder. Garrett, he told himself. Better move now. If he decides to come in after me—or after Kirby and Tom, he'll be thinkin'—he'll have to take Reb down first, and if he don't do that, Reb might try to jump him, and I won't dare to fire for fear I'll hit him. He leaned the Winchester gently against the partition and stepped into the office. "Drop the gun, Garrett," he said evenly.

Nelse Garrett, knowing instantly that something had gone awry, spun around, his Colt already at the level. Jess drew, simultaneously throwing himself to the right, toward the open space in the middle of the floor. "Reb, get down!" he yelled, as gunfire exploded in the room.

Total darkness, coming suddenly, confuses a man and puts him out of element; "get the light" was a prime rule of outlaw and lawman alike. Garrett, who thought he knew where his enemy was, went for the lamp on the desk. He hadn't expected to be facing a one-time professional for whom drop-and-roll was second nature. Three shots sounded almost as one, the muzzle flashes actinically bright in the smothering blackness. Reb, hugging the floor, heard a grunt, an erratic stutter of boot heels against the planking, and a thud. Before he could speak, he heard a shout from outside, then more gunfire.

At the sound of the barrage, Johnny Kirby and the second "range detective," each keeping watch by one corner of the building, spun toward the door. Slim moved quickly out from under the shelter of the Stockmen's awning, onto the steps. "Drop your guns, you're under arrest!" he ordered.

Johnny—Slim knew it was Johnny, since he hadn't troubled to mask himself—whirled back, going for his gun. And he was fast, faster than Slim. But the rancher had been half expecting some such desperate move, and he ducked sideways, firing as he did. He was marginally aware of a hurtling shadow that sprang over the roof parapet onto the kid's unsuspecting backup—Dallas by the size of it—and of an untidy tussle for the fellow's gun even as a bullet chunked into the post an inch above where his head had been; then Johnny screamed and fell back against the squared timbers of the cell bloc, his Colt flying from his hand. Somewhere footsteps pounded as someone Slim couldn't see took off running. Another shot sounded, this one from the jail roof, where Jake was supposed to be, and there was a shout: "Next one goes between your shoulders! Stop where you are!"

Slim pushed up slowly. Several shadowy forms were appearing from various points of concealment, moonlight gleaming off the handguns they held; whippoorwill whistles—the agreed-upon recognition signal—told him they were Jake's, and he relaxed, moving quickly across the street. Dallas's tall form reared up on its knees, flesh met flesh with a loud smack, and the man underneath him fell back limply. "Sherman?" came the deep East Texas drawl.

"All right," Slim assured him, panting a bit; he'd lost some condition these last ten days.

"See to your pard," Dallas told him, "I'll look after things here."

Slim edged up toward the jail door. "Jess? Reb?" he called.

"Okay, pard." It was Jess's gravelly Texas accent, and Slim started breathing again. "I'm gonna find a light."

"Could use one out here," said Dallas. "Johnny's alive."

"I'll light the one by the door," Slim offered, and dug in his vest pocket for his match safe.

Jake came around the corner of the building with a range detective sullenly marching ahead of his gun and Jackson, the black man, beside him. "How'd we do?" he asked.

"Jess is up and talkin', so the two who went inside must be down, one way or another," Slim told him. "Dallas took one, and I hit Johnny, I don't know how bad yet."

"Then we're good," Jake observed. "Jackson says he left one tied up behind the bakery. Case, fetch Corey—Kyle, find the marshal. And whistle before you come up on 'em!"

Dallas pulled a stumbling Johnny into the lamplight; there was a welling red spot on the right front of his shirt. Slim pulled the garment aside while the big Texan held the wounded man upright. "Shoulder," he said. "It'll heal, but it'll never work right again. You'd better give up on that handgun, kid."

Reb appeared at the office door, a lamp in his hand. "Jess says Garrett's alive, though he don't know for how long," he reported— "got a slug in his chest. The one that was with him is locked up in the front cell."

"I'll fetch Doc Phillips," Jake offered. "Spotted his office on the way in this morning. Jackson, you watch this one."

**SR**

Garrett died at a quarter to four that morning, but not before he'd said some things that confirmed both Jake's story and Mort Senior's findings—as well as Jess's guess that he'd been involved in both the claim jump and the fraud. Having only two cells in the jail, Mort Junior left Johnny Kirby in Doc's care and Henry in his cellar until either Patches or the judge could arrive and better arrangements could be made; the cells had to be used for the four "range detectives."

At about eight A.M. the Reverend Thomson (generally known as "the preacher") and his wife were eating breakfast in their comfortable house at the edge of town when a knock came at the front door. "Now who would that be so early?" Mrs. Thomson wondered. She was a brisk, practical lady with abundant sandy hair, who looked much younger than her husband but really only missed his age by about five years.

"Only one way to find out," the man observed. He was tall, broad-shouldered, his white hair giving way to a bald spot at the crown, customarily neatly dressed in a dark suit and string tie; when he left his original church he had given up the clerical collar too. He had been eating in his shirtsleeves; he pulled his suit-coat on as he went to respond.

Waiting on the doorstep was a slight, small-framed young man of about twenty-five, five feet six, between 130 and 140 pounds, wearing dark serge trousers and a blue flower-print calico shirt. A Chinese silk sash of vivid raw colors cinched his waist, and a big red-checked bandanna hung loosely at his throat. He swept his soft, plain black hat off his sandy-blond hair, holding it by its wide, curling brim, and smiled. " 'Morning, Dad," he said, turquoise eyes shining.

Thomson stared, searching the face. "Jacob?" he queried tentatively.

"I go by Jake now, Dad. But you're right, it's me."

"Jacob," Thomson whispered, stunned, and then: "Alice! Alice, come here!"

Across the road, under some trees, Slim, Jess, and Dallas watched as the woman joined her husband, then swept her son into a desperate embrace. "Looks like everything's gonna be all right," Slim said. "We'd better go; we've got teams to change and a ranch to run. Are you comin', Dallas?"

"No, I'll stay. He'll want some time alone with 'em, but then he'll want 'em to meet me; I been too much a part of his life, since he seen 'em last, for him not to." The Texan shook hands. "Ain't sure if I said it, but I'm obliged—we're obliged—for the way you went along with Miss Daisy when she asked you to trust her about us. You give her our best when you get back."

"We will," Jess promised. "But you'll be seein' us again, and her too—she won't hear of not bein' at the trial when that judge gets here."

**SR**

Epilogue

Sherman Ranch & Relay Station, six months later:

Mose brought the morning stage in all of ten minutes early, fetching a shout of surprise from Jess. "All right, folks," the driver proclaimed as he set the brake, "Sherman Ranch, stop to change horses. Anybody wants to stretch, now's the time."

Slim came to the door in time to see a slight, small-framed young man in a black wide-brimmed hat and blue broadcloth frock coat, with light fawn trousers tucked neatly into hand-tooled black boots, helping a young woman down from inside the stage. He turned and grinned as he caught sight of the rancher. " 'Morning, Slim."

"Jake!" Slim turned to holler back over his shoulder. "Daisy! Daisy, come here, it's Jake!" He dropped down off the porch and went to meet the younger man, his hand outstretched. Another man, almost as tall as he, emerged in the woman's wake; he wore a black suit-coat and brown plush vest edged with black braid—the kind a cowboy would choose for dressy occasions—over a soft, bright-colored flannel shirt, with brown denim pants tucked into high-heeled black Texas boots. "Dallas!" Slim exclaimed.

Jess joined them and there was an interval of handshaking and how-are-yous. "What are you all doin' here?" Jess demanded.

"Wanted you to meet someone, first off," Jake told them. "This is my wife, Charly. Honey, this is Slim Sherman, and his partner Jess Harper, and this is Miss Daisy."

Charly Bonnell Thomson shook hands firmly all around. She missed her husband's height by only an inch or so, and had lively hazel eyes and light brown hair with gold highlights, fashionably swept up at the sides to coils on top, dressed in more coils at the back and cascading down from a high bun. She wore a small hat lavishly trimmed with feathers, birds' wings, ribbon bows, lace, and a small veil, a trim coffee-brown travelling suit with pale-yellow kid gloves, and a three-row pearl choker at her throat.

"We thought about writing," Jake went on, "but then we figured, well, we'll be comin' through here anyhow, we'll just stop and catch 'em up when we change teams. We're on our way up to Rock River." That was a tiny crossroads settlement with a population of about a hundred persons, just under forty miles northeast.

"What for?" Jess demanded. "Ain't nothin' in Rock River—I been there, or through there, ridin' guard on stages."

"No, there's nothin' much in it," Jake agreed, "but there's somethin' outside it. Remember that ranch Henry Kirby was gonna start with the money you were guardin' the day we met, Slim? By the time he got finished payin' off his lawyers, and his partners in the syndicate, and the fines and court costs and us, he had to sell off a lot of his properties, that one among 'em. Well, there was Dallas and me with better than five million dollars between us, more money than we'd ever really believed there was in the world, so we bought it—not for anywhere near what it was worth, of course. We're goin' into the beef business. Case and the others already headed up with a herd and to start cleanin' the place up; like I told you, we always said we'd take care of 'em."

"Well, congratulations!" said Slim, smiling broadly. "I'm guessin' there was no trouble with the law?"

"Mr. Corey and Judge Travis between 'em got us a pardon from the governor down in Colorado," Dallas explained, "and that got all the paper on us called back. We're clean as the driven snow. Can't say as much for Kirby, which don't sadden me one little bit."

"What'd he get?" Jess asked.

"Thirty-five years. He might get out in twenty if he behaves himself. That deathbed confession of Garrett's plugged up any holes Mr. Corey might'a' left in his diggin' around. Johnny, well, couldn't nobody prove nothin' on him—like you figured it, Slim, he wasn't but seventeen when his brother worked us around—so he's runnin' what's left of Double Heart, maybe half of it now. And you was right, that shoulder of his ain't ever gonna be what it was. Seems to've settled him quite a lot."

"It's beginnin' to look as if our mine's startin' to play out," Jake added. "But it doesn't matter; we got enough out of it to make a good runnin' start and put money by for bad times. So if you ever get in a tight spot, you two, don't you hesitate to call on us. We'd never done it if it hadn't been for your help."

"You must come down and visit, now and then," Daisy told him. "Around Christmas, perhaps? If the weather turns bad, Charly can share my bedroom, and you and Dallas can sleep in the bunkroom with Slim and Jess."

"We'll keep it in mind, ma'am," Jake promised. "And if any of you are ever up our way, you got a home on our spread for as long as you need."

Mose had been changing the team singlehandedly, swapping out the tired four-up for the fresh ones Slim and Jess had had ready by the corral. He checked his big nickel-plated watch and said, "All aboard, folks. If we leave now, we'll be just dead on time."

There were more handshakes, quick farewells and good wishes, and the two former outlaws and the new Mrs. Thomson climbed back onto the stage. The Sherman Ranch family watched as it rumbled up the slope, turned west on the Old Laramie Road, and gradually diminished to invisibility in the distance.

-30-