Mankiller, Colorado. William W. Johnstone

lost a race yet.”

      “If that was true, you wouldn’t have been able to get such good odds, now would you?”

      Scratch grimaced. “Well, yeah, I reckon you’re right about that. I guess I wasn’t thinkin’ too straight—”

      “Because you’d had nearly a whole jug of hooch in that parlor house.”

      Scratch shook his head stubbornly. “You know whiskey don’t muddle me none, and neither do the señoritas. Sometimes my ambition gets a mite ahead of my thinkin’, though.”

      Bo had to laugh. “Well, if I didn’t know that after all these years, I don’t reckon I’d have been paying much attention, now would I? Anyway, it’s like a tumbleweed. It’s blown away, and there’s no point in worrying about it anymore.”

      “Now that’s a right smart way to look at it.” Scratch resumed digging, adding over his shoulder, “Anyway, this ain’t so bad. We’ll work for Big John for a while until our poke’s fattened up again, and then we can light a shuck outta here.”

      “Sounds good to me.” Bo pulled his gloves on again and slid off the tailgate. He went along the side of the wagon until he could reach over and grab hold of one of the rolls of barbed wire he and Scratch had loaded into the vehicle before leaving Circle JP headquarters that morning.

      Scratch was right. Jobs weren’t easy to come by at this time of year. All the roundups were already over. A fella with empty pockets had to take what he could get, and by the time he and Scratch had reached Socorro, about halfway between Las Cruces and Albuquerque, they had barely had two coins to clink together. Usually when their funds ran low, Bo could find a poker game in some saloon and replenish them, but this time they didn’t even have the wherewithal to buy into a game. It was ranch work or nothing, and Peeler was the only cattleman hiring.

      Bo glanced off to the west as he dropped the roll of wire on the ground next to the line of posts. His eyes narrowed as he straightened.

      “Somebody coming,” he told Scratch.

      Scratch paused in his digging and looked in the same direction Bo was looking. A plume of dust curled upward in the distance.

      “Three or four riders, I’d say.”

      “Yeah,” Bo agreed. “Coming from the Snake Track.”

      Peeler’s neighbor to the west was Case Ridley, who called his ranch the Snake Track because his brand was just a squiggly line. The name fit, because from what Bo and Scratch had seen of Ridley, he was snake-mean, all right. There was bad blood between Peeler and Ridley, but also an uneasy truce. The Texans knew that Peeler hoped putting up this fence would settle some of the disputes between them.

      Scratch carried the posthole digger over to the wagon and leaned it against the tailgate. “I don’t know about you,” he said to Bo, “but I reckon I’ll feel a mite better if I’m packin’ iron.”

      He reached into the wagon and took out a coiled gun belt with two holsters attached to it. He strapped it around his hips and then grasped the ivory handles of the two long-barreled Remington revolvers in the holsters. Scratch slid the guns up and down a little, making sure they were riding easy in the leather.

      Bo followed suit, taking a gun belt with a single holster from the wagon. The gun in the holster was a Colt with plain walnut grips. He buckled on the belt, then stood beside the wagon with Scratch, waiting for the riders who were coming toward them.

      The black dots at the base of the dust plume resolved themselves into four men on horseback. As the riders came closer, Bo recognized one of them as Case Ridley, whom he had seen in Socorro. Ridley was a tall, whip-thin man with a hawk nose and a narrow black mustache. His face was all hard planes and angles. Bo didn’t like him a bit.

      The other three men were some of Ridley’s crew, hard-bitten, beard-stubbled men who’d been hired as much for their skill with their guns as for what they could do with a horse and a rope.

      The riders came to a stop on the other side of the fence line. Ridley edged his horse forward a couple of steps and demanded, “Who the hell are you men, and what are you doing here?”

      Bo answered the second question first. “We’re stringing fence for the Circle JP. We work for Big John Peeler. His name’s Morton. I’m Creel.”

      “Peeler told you to do this?”

      “That’s right.”

      “That son of a bitch!” Ridley flung out a hand to gesture at the posts. “That fence is on my range!”

      Scratch drawled, “I reckon you must be mistaken, Mr. Ridley.”

      The rancher sneered at him. “You know who I am, eh?”

      Scratch nodded. “Seen you around in town.”

      “If you know who I am, you must know I don’t take kindly to being called a liar.”

      “Scratch didn’t call you a liar,” Bo pointed out. “He said you were mistaken.”

      “It’s the same damn thing! Now pull those posts up, and be damned glad you hadn’t strung any wire I’d have to go to the trouble of tearing down!” Ridley pointed. “Peeler’s range ends a thousand yards east of here.”

      “I don’t think so,” Scratch said. “The boss gave us pretty good directions. He told us right where all the landmarks are. We’re in the right place.”

      “Now you are calling me a liar!”

      “This is where Mr. Peeler told us to build the fence,” Bo said. “I reckon this is where we’ll build it.”

      “You’ll play hell doing it!” Ridley gestured to his men. “Boys, get down and teach these old bastards a lesson.”

      Bo and Scratch were both tough, but Ridley’s men were tough, too, and a lot younger. The Texans knew they probably couldn’t win a fistfight, which meant that Ridley’s men would give them a thrashing.

      They weren’t going to stand for that. Their hands edged toward their guns.

      “You fellas best stay on your horses,” Bo said in a quiet, dangerous voice.

      Ridley’s angular face darkened with fury. “You old codgers are going to shoot it out with us?” he demanded as if he couldn’t believe it.

      “If we have to,” Bo said.

      The dust that had been kicked up by the riders had blown away. Now the air was filled with the tense expectation of gunplay and sudden death instead.

      CHAPTER 2

      Before anybody could slap leather, one of Ridley’s men spoke up, saying, “Somebody comin’ over yonder, boss.”

      He was looking back to the east, behind Bo and Scratch, and for a second Bo thought it was just a trick to get the two of them to turn around so Ridley’s gun hawks could get the drop on them.

      But then Bo heard the distant pounding of hoof-beats.

      “Hold it,” Ridley snapped to his men. “Don’t start anything. Not until we find out who that is.”

      Bo had a hunch who the newcomers were. They were coming from the direction of Circle JP headquarters, so in all likelihood they were some of Big John Peeler’s men.

      That turned out to be the case. After a couple of tense minutes, eight riders led by Joe Archibald swept up. Big John ramrodded his own crew, but Archibald was his segundo and gave all the orders that Peeler didn’t.

      “What the hell’s going on here?” he demanded of Bo and Scratch, unwittingly echoing what Ridley had said a few minutes earlier.

      Scratch nodded toward the rival rancher. “Mr. Ridley here’s got a problem with this fence Big John told us to put up, Joe.”

      “Of course I’ve got a