“They’re so drunk they think I’m still in there,” she said. “They didn’t see me leave.”
Titus looked in through the window one more time, just to make certain none of them was holding a gun.
“All right,” he said to Travis and Troy. “Are you boys ready?”
“Ready,” Troy said, pulling his pistol.
“Say when,” Travis said. He was also holding a pistol.
“On the count of three,” Titus said. Then he counted aloud. “One, two, three!”
Titus pushed the door open quickly; then he and his two brothers rushed into the parlor.
“What the hell?” Cletus said, turning toward the front door as the three lawmen burst in. “What are you—”
For a moment, it looked as if he was going to reach for his gun, but before he could do so, Titus Calhoun stepped up to him and brought his pistol down sharply on Cletus’s head. Cletus went down.
“What did you do to my brother?” Ray shouted angrily, getting up from the couch.
“Easy, there, big man!” Calhoun said, swinging his pistol toward Ray. “You’re too damn big for me to pistol-whip. I’d have to shoot you.”
“No,” Ray said, sitting back down and putting his hands up. “No, there ain’t no need for you to be doin’ anything like that.”
“Get Maggie in here,” Titus ordered.
Travis stepped out on the front porch to call out to Maggie. When she came inside, she was no longer holding the handkerchief to her face and the cut, such as it was, was no longer bleeding.
“Did they do any damage to your place?” Marshal Calhoun asked.
Maggie looked around the parlor, then shook her head. “Nothin’ that I can see,” she said.
“Which one of them cut you?”
“I’m not sure which one it was,” Maggie said. “But I think it was him.” She pointed to Deke Mathers.
“I didn’t do no such thing!” Mathers said.
“Or it could’ve been him,” she said, pointing to Reeder, “Or him,” she added, pointing to Cletus, who was just now beginning to get up.
“Damn, Maggie, you’ve pointed to everyone but Ray. Are you sure it wasn’t Ray?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t him,” Maggie said. “I would have remembered if it was him.”
By now, the five other women had come downstairs. Even if Titus did not know what kind of an establishment this was, he would have been able to tell by the makeup and dress, or more accurately the undress, of the women.
“Were any of you women hurt?” Titus asked.
“No,” one of them answered. “We were scared, but we weren’t hurt.”
“Did any of you see which one of them cut Maggie?”
The women all looked at each other, then shrugged.
“None of us seen it,” the oldest of the bunch said. She looked nearly forty, though Titus knew for a fact that she was not yet thirty. The dissipation of her occupation had taken a severe toll on what had once been a very pretty young girl.
“Well, pick one of them,” Titus said. “I can’t make an arrest unless you press charges.”
“Oh, I’m not going to do that,” Maggie said.
“You aren’t going to do what?”
“I’m not going to press charges,” she said.
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m trying to run a business here, Marshal,” Maggie said. “If I pressed charges every time someone got a little rowdy, I wouldn’t have any customers.”
“Ha!” Cletus said. “I reckon that means you ain’t got nothin’ on us. So, why don’t you just go on back to marshalin’ and leave us alone.”
“Get out of here,” Calhoun said.
“We’re goin’, we’re goin’,” Cletus said. “Come on, boys, let’s go over to the Hog Waller. The girls over there ain’t as pretty, but they’re a hell of a lot more friendly.”
“No,” Titus said.
“No? What do you mean, no? No what?”
“No, you aren’t goin’ over to the Hog Waller,” Titus said. “When I told you to get out of here, I mean go on back to your ranch. I don’t want you in my town tonight.”
“You got no right to run us out of town,” Cletus complained.
“You’ll either leave town, or spend the night in jail,” Titus said.
“On what charges?” Cletus asked. “You already heard Maggie say she wasn’t going to press no charges.”
“I’ll press charges myself.”
“Oh, yeah? And just what would those charges be?”
“I would charge you with pissing me off,” Titus said. “Now, go on, get!”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
Titus looked over at Ray. “There ain’t neither one of you got as much sense as your youngest brother. But Billy isn’t here, and you seem to be a little smarter than Cletus. Get him out of here, Ray. Get him out of here, or I’ll throw his ass in jail, then shoot him in the middle of the night for trying to escape.”
“What?” Cletus shouted. “Ray, did you hear what that son of a bitch just said?”
“Yeah, I heard,” Ray replied. “Come on, let’s go.”
“I ain’t goin’ nowhere, I—”
That was as far as Cletus got before Titus pointed his pistol at Cletus, then pulled back the hammer. The clicking sound of the pistol being cocked stopped Cletus in mid-sentence.
“Come on, Cletus,” Ray said. “Let’s go.”
With his eyes glaring hatred at Marshal Calhoun and his two brothers, Cletus reluctantly followed his own brother outside.
Titus, Travis, and Troy went out on the front porch with them, then watched them mount up and ride away, amidst the cheers and catcalls of the crowd gathered there.
“Troy, Travis, get yourselves a rifle,” Titus said. “If any one of those men come back into town tonight, shoot them on sight.”
“Gladly,” Travis said.
“Thank you, Marshal,” Maggie said. She smiled. “I thank all three of you. In fact, you three have one free visit coming,” she added. “You can choose any girl you want.”
Overhearing Maggie’s offer, the men in the crowd laughed out loud.
“What about us, Maggie?” one of the men called. “Don’t we get a free visit?”
“Sure,” Maggie said.
“Great!”
“When pigs fly,” Maggie added, and her comment was met with good-natured laughter. “Come on in, boys,” she said. “We’re open for business again.”
Titus watched several of the men go back inside, but there were still several milling about on the street outside the whorehouse.
“All right, boys, the show’s over,” Titus said. “Let’s break it up. Go on back about your business, unless going to see one of Maggie’s whores is your business.”
When the crowd broke up, Titus, Travis, and Troy started back down toward the marshal’s office, where Travis and Troy could get a long gun for the rest of the night’s patrol.
“Hey, Troy, did you give Maggie’s offer a thought?” Travis asked.
“Are you kidding? Lucy would kill me. If fact, if she even hears the offer was made, she’ll be on me like a duck on a june bug.”
“Damn,” Travis said, laughing. “What do you think, Titus? Is our brother henpecked or what?”
“He doesn’t have to worry about Lucy,” Titus said. “If I caught him taking Maggie up on her offer, cheatin’ on a good woman like Lucy, I’d bust his head myself.”
The three brothers laughed and joked as they walked down the middle of the street. The sounds of merriment from the two saloons, loud and raucous from the Hog Waller, and a bit more reserved from the Golden Nugget, told them that the town was having another normal night.
Chapter Five
Over the last twenty-five years, Ike Clinton had bought, stolen, and bullied his way onto one hundred thousand acres of good grazing land. He did this by the sweat of his own brow, and with the blood of the Mexicans and Indians who got in his way. With a sense of irony, he named his ranch La Soga Larga, or “The Long Rope,” a tacit admission that he wasn’t always too careful about whose calves he rounded up for branding.