"You cattlemen stick together," he said between his teeth. "So you better carry word to Milser if he takes that little girl to wife he'll never bed her down."
Even with his own whiskey in him Sam could smell the other's drink. He glanced at McWharter, noting the wide set stare, the teeth bared, the slight tremble in the man's hands. "You're getting yourself wall-eyed for nothing," Sam observed.
McWharter jerked. "About nothin'?" He raised his voice. "We're stranded out here, nothin to eat, no place to go, some good people at the mercy of merciless men like you, who harry our camp and seduce our women, even the girl child, and you tell me not to get my dander up—" McWharter was glassy-eyed with rage. His mouth twitched in speechless rage and he tongued spittle from his lips.
Sam finished his drink, considering the man beside him. "You've had enough to drink," Leo Maury told McWharter. "I'd recommend you take your leave, friend."
"You runnin' a public place," McWharter said defiantly. "Don't go tellin' me when I've had enough to drink. I got words yet for this cattle baron here, this high and mighty king o' the mountain."
"You didn't make this kind of noise at camp last night," Sam said mildly.
"You gonna tell Milser to leave that pore innocent girl be?"
"That's between him and the girl—and the girl's family," Sam said, fighting the anger that threatened him. "It's got nothing to do with me."
"It's got plenty to do with you and the rest. You cattlemen're like a pack o' wolves. Lemme tell you somethin', cattle king: there's a bounty on wolves where I come from—" Sam's patience snapped and he interrupted. "You're asking for trouble, mister. The bartender here gave you some good advice. Take it and go home."
"I'm not scairt," McWharter bragged. "You can't run me outta here, not any more'n you can run me outta the country. I got my rights. An' I can back 'em up." He slapped his belly and then snaked a hand inside his shirt.
"Look out!" Leo shouted, ducking below the bar.
Sam caught a glimpse of a gun in McWharter's hand. He brought out his own gun and slammed it across McWharter's head. The man dropped in a sodden heap, his pistol still snagged in his shirt.
Sam slid his gun back in the holster and poured himself another drink and gulped it down. He said, "Get Doc Sawyer to take a look at him, Leo." He patted his pocket, laid a thin gold coin on the bar. "This ought to pay for it." He turned and walked shakily out of The Mint, mounted his horse and turned the animal south, toward Flag.
Halfway down the street a man in a frock coat and derby hat stepped from a doorway and raised his hand. "Ho, there, Mr. Harden," Thomas P. Wheeler, editor, printer, publisher and sole owner of the Crossroad Corners Times called. "Could you get down and come in for a minute?"
"Afraid not," Sam answered. "I get off this horse, chances are I won't be able to get back on again."
Wheeler, a stumpy, dark-browed man with long black sideburns, pulled aside his coat and took a notebook from an inside pocket. "You want to tell me about getting shot?" he asked, poising a pencil above the pad.
"I don't know anything to tell."
Annoyance washed across Wheeler's face. "Do you have any idea who'd do a dastardly trick like that?"
Sam halted a head shake. "No."
"You think it has anything to do with Cooney bringing his cattle into this country? I hear he made threats against you in The Mint last night."
"That's not right," Sam said, his head beginning to ache. "Cooney made no threats. Not to me he didn't."
"What about the farmers in McGee's grove?"
"What about them?"
"Well, what I mean is, do you suspect one of them might have—"
"I've no reason to think so," Sam said.
"Mr. Harden, what do you predict will happen in our present travail?"
"I think the wind'll stop blowing about sundown," Sam said.
Wheeler puffed up, slowly replacing his notebook. "Is it true, Mr. Harden, that Flag will throw in with Kenton's outfit?"
"Flag's not throwing in with anyone," Sam said and lifted his hand holding the reins.
"You could do worse," Wheeler said, putting on a stubborn look. "Mr. Kenton's the only man around here big enough to cope with our problems. You should do—" He raised his head like a bird dog catching fresh scent as Doctor Sawyer, bag in hand hurried down the street and turned into The Mint. "What do you suppose happened?"
"A farmer got banged on the head," Sam said and watched the newsman scurry toward The Mint, his coattails wrapping around his legs in the stiff wind. He spoke to his horse and rode out of town, thinking,
I didn't want to hit the man, I did it because I had to. Hell's fire, you'll be doing a lot more things you don't like before this is done.
He lifted his neckerchief over his nose to keep out the dust.
Sam slowed his horse to a walk near where he'd been shot. In the dimness of the blowing dust he didn't hope to find anything, but something about the spot held him. He tried to figure just where he had been when the bullet knocked him from the saddle.
The wind had erased all sign, but something black was snagged in a clump of sage. He dismounted and walked across the dim wagon track, bent and picked it up. It was his hat, a jagged tear separating the crown from the brim on one side.
That sweatband saved my life,
he thought.
He leaned in the lee of his horse, rolled a cigarette, and managed to get it lighted despite the wind. A dark shape loomed out of a nearby gully. The big buckskin of Sheriff Alonzo Winner whickered a greeting to which Sam's horse answered.
Winner got stiffly down and pulled the red and white bandanna from over his mouth and nose. He got another just like it from his hip pocket and blew his nose. "Hi, Sam. What're you doin' out here? Thought you'd be laid up a spell." He stuffed the bandanna back into his hip pocket. He was a small, sharp-eyed man in his forties, lean and weather brown.
Sam pinched the fire in his smoke between thumb and forefinger and let the wind take the remains of his cigarette. "Going home. Thought I'd see if I could cut a track here."
Alonzo grunted. "In this wind? Can't hardly breathe, let alone see. Where you ought to be is home in bed."
Sam decided to ignore the advice. Instead he asked, "Wind start blowing before you got here?" "No, I picked up a trail of sorts."
Sam waited, knowing that Winner had other information to give. He'd give it in his own way and his own time.
"Fella tied his horse up there in that gully I came out of," the sheriff said, pointing. "He waited 'til you come along
and then shot at point-blank range. Wonder you got any head left, Sam."
"I didn't know I'd be riding along here just then," Sam said. "Well, maybe. This ambusher, Sam, I backtracked him first off. He was followin' you from the start, from Crossroad
Corners. Waited up there while you messed around Fill's ol' barn. He could of had his try at you no matter which way you went."
"Who was it, Alonzo?"
The sheriff signed and shook his head. "Tracked him to Squaw Creek and lost the trail. Lost it right there by that big old rotten stump of a cottonwood."
On Kenton's range, Sam thought.
Everybody in the country knew the stump of cottonwood. Everybody called it the hanging tree. A group of cattlemen, years ago, made an example of a cattle rustler named Long John, hanging him to the tree. Many of the county's inhabitants pointed to the dead tree as mute evidence that the wrong man had been strung up. It was told that the tree started dying as soon as Long John stopped kicking from the end of a rope.
Alonzo read his thoughts. "It'd be a mistake to go jumping to conclusions about where I lost the trail, Sam."