Massacre at Whiskey Flats. William W. Johnstone

let it go, son,” Bo advised softly. “I’d purely hate to have to kill you, because then your amigos would probably try to kill me and there’d be guns going off all up and down this street and innocent folks might get hurt. But you’d never know about that, because you’d already be dead.”

      “Son of a bitch!” somebody on the boardwalk said in the hush that followed Bo’s draw and his quiet words. “That old-timer must be as fast with a gun as Matt Bodine!”

      Bo didn’t smile, but amusement appeared in his eyes for a second. As a matter of fact, he had met the famous Matt Bodine, along with Bodine’s blood brother Sam Two Wolves, and he knew he wasn’t as slick on the draw as either of those two young hell-raisers. Bodine was in a class almost by himself, matched in gun-speed and prowess only by a few others such as Smoke Jensen, Ben Thompson, and Louis Longmont.

      But truth to tell, Bo and Scratch were fast enough to hold their own in most corpse-and-cartridge sessions, as they had been forced to prove on countless occasions.

      The gunman who worked for Tom Harding stared at Bo’s Colt in disbelief that he had been outdrawn. A muscle in the man’s jaw twitched as he warred against the impulse to complete his draw. He had to know that if he did that, he would die, plain and simple.

      After a second, his fingers opened and allowed his revolver to slide back down into its holster.

      “Take it easy, old-timer,” he said hoarsely. “That gun’s liable to go off.”

      “Not unless I want it to,” Bo said.

      Scratch unlimbered his Remingtons just in case. A fighting light gleamed in his eyes. Just like Bo, he was ready to go down with guns a-blazin’ if it came to that. He grinned directly at Tom Harding, and the message was obvious. If any shooting started, Scratch aimed to ventilate the cattle baron first and foremost.

      “What the hell!” someone in the mob suddenly exclaimed. “That crook’s gone!”

      Harding swung around, rage darkening his face. “What?” he bellowed. “Gone, you say?”

      It was true. The young, fair-haired swindler was nowhere to be seen. He had slipped away while the brief ruckus and the near-gunfight had everyone distracted.

      Harding roared curses at the men who were supposed to be holding the swindler, but that did no good. Like a rat, the varmint had slipped away in the gathering darkness. No telling where he was now, but in all likelihood he was putting as much distance as he could between himself and this settlement.

      “Looks like we don’t have any reason to fight anymore,” Bo observed. “If you’d locked that gent up like you should have to start with, Harding, he’d still be here. Now he’s long gone.”

      “Thanks to you two,” Harding snarled. “I ought to—”

      “But you won’t,” Scratch broke in as he shifted the barrels of his Remingtons significantly.

      “I’ve got a dozen men here! If I give the word, you’ll both be shot to pieces!”

      “Yes, but it’ll be the last word you’ll give,” Bo said.

      Harding looked like he was struggling to swallow something that tasted mighty bad. But after a moment he turned and choked out to his men, “Get back to the ranch—now!”

      Bo could tell that those lean, hard-faced gun-wolves didn’t want to go, but they slowly turned away and headed for their horses, which were tied at hitch rails along the street. Marshal Ralston and the other townies who had been part of the mob started to disperse as well. Harding was the last to go, and before he did, he told Bo and Scratch, “You’d better get out of this town. You’ll be sorry if you don’t.”

      “Mister, we’re already sorry we stopped here,” Scratch said. “It’s a plumb unfriendly place.”

      “You don’t know how unfriendly,” Harding said. He stalked off, jerking the reins of a chestnut free and swinging up into the saddle. It was a big horse. It had to be in order to carry a man of Harding’s bulk. He rode away without looking back.

      Bo and Scratch didn’t holster their guns until the street was empty again. Then, as they slid their irons back into leather, Scratch asked, “Are we lightin’ a shuck like Harding said?”

      “Not until I get that beer,” Bo said. “Or another one rather. I expect the first one’s warm by now.”

      The storekeeper they had spoken to earlier was still on the boardwalk, and as the Texans approached, he said, “I’ll buy you that beer, fellas. It’s been a long time since anybody around here stood up to Tom Harding. Quite a show.”

      “You sure you want to risk being seen associating with us?” Bo asked. “Sounded like Harding’s got a hold over you.”

      “His bank’s got a lien on my store, but I’m no fool. He can’t call the note in early. I made sure of that before I signed it.” The man motioned for them to follow him into the Buffalo Bar. “Come on.”

      The merchant, whose name was Gus Hobart, bought beers for all three of them and joined the Texans at a table in the corner. After he had downed a healthy swallow of the drink, he licked his lips and went on. “I admire your gumption, fellas, but it might be better if you moseyed on. Having to back down like that is going to stick in Harding’s craw. There’s no telling what he might do.”

      “We ain’t made a habit o’ runnin’ from trouble,” Scratch said.

      “On the other hand,” Bo said, “sometimes there’s some truth to that old saying about discretion being the better part of valor.” He took a long drink of the cold beer and sighed in satisfaction. “I’m curious, though. What did that young fella do to nearly get himself tarred and feathered?”

      Hobart snorted. “That’s the worst of it. You boys were risking your hides for somebody who didn’t deserve it. He came damn close to making off with a fortune that rightfully belongs to folks around here. You see, the railroad’s talking about building a spur line up here from the main route down south.”

      “Ah,” Bo said. “The railroad.” He understood perfectly well that although the coming of the iron horse had done a lot to help with the civilizing of the West, it was also responsible for a great deal of violence and chicanery in recent years.

      “Yeah,” Hobart nodded. “We’d been hearing rumors about that spur for a while, and then that young fella showed up. Called himself Charles Wortham, but that was probably a lie like everything else. He claimed to be working for the railroad and said he was here to arrange for the donation of land for the right-of-way. Folks had figured that the railroad would buy the land, but the way Wortham explained it, the only way they’d build the spur was if they could acquire the right-of-way free of charge. A trade-off, he called it. Folks around here would provide the land, and the railroad would provide the prosperity. So what we had to do was transfer the deeds to the property over to him, and then he would transfer it to the railroad in one big piece. So he said.”

      Bo and Scratch were both shaking their heads already. Scratch said, “Nobody believed that line o’ bull, did they?”

      “I’m afraid they did,” Hobart replied with a sigh. “We were that desperate for the railroad to come in.”

      “Wortham would have sold that land to the railroad and made a killing,” Bo said. “Then he’d disappear before anybody found out that he’d acquired it by underhanded means.”

      “Yeah, but he hadn’t counted on Tom Harding having a friend in Santa Fe,” Hobart said. “Harding got this fella to look into the matter, and he found out that Wortham didn’t work for the railroad at all. As soon as Harding got the letter telling him that, he went after Wortham. Grabbed him in his hotel room, got the deeds out of Wortham’s carpetbag, and dragged him out in the street.” Hobart shrugged. “I reckon you know the rest.”

      Scratch gave a disgusted snort. “Sounds like we really did risk our necks for a skunk