Mankiller, Colorado. William W. Johnstone
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I reckon you could say,” Scratch replied.
Bo said, “I told them we’d check with the law, and if they have a legal right to collect a toll, we’d come back and pay them.” He shrugged. “Then we made them toss their shotguns in the bushes and get out of our way.”
O’Brien leaned his elbows on the desk and covered his face with his hands. “Lemme think, lemme think,” he half-moaned. After a few seconds, he looked up at the Texans and went on, “Here’s what you need to do. Go up to the next block and over a block. You’ll see a place called Bradfield’s. You go in there and…and talk to Sam Bradfield.”
“Who’s he?” Scratch asked.
“The undertaker. He’s gonna need to size you boys up for coffins and find out what you want on your tombstones.”
Bo and Scratch just looked at him for a moment, then Bo said, “You’re telling us that Luke and Thad are going to kill us.”
O’Brien nodded. “Oh, yeah. Sure as a pig shits in a pen. Them and their relatives, they won’t let that pass.”
“Well, no offense, Sheriff, but we’ll have something to say about that. And if you don’t want a lot of trouble in your town, you’d be wise to speak to those men and warn them.”
“No, sir.” O’Brien shook his head. “I’m not going near the Deverys. We have an arrangement. I leave them alone, and they leave me alone. Actually, they, uh…sort of pretend that I don’t exist.”
Bo bit back the words that sprang to his lips. He wanted to tell O’Brien that he was a not only a pathetic excuse for a lawman, but also a pathetic excuse for a man. Such a tongue lashing wouldn’t accomplish anything, though.
“If anyone attacks us, Sheriff, we’ll defend ourselves.”
O’Brien held up a shaking hand, palm toward Bo. “Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know anything about it.” He was frightened enough so that now he seemed half-sober, or only half-drunk, depending on how you wanted to look at it. “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you boys are just passing through Mankiller?”
“We heard about the gold strike,” Scratch said. “Figured to do some prospectin’.”
O’Brien shook his head. “I was afraid you’d say that. Would you maybe…as a personal favor to me, maybe…consider riding on? Right now, maybe?”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Bo said, “except to get some rooms in one of the hotels and then maybe a good hot meal in one of the cafés.”
Scratch smiled. “That sounds good to me, too.”
“But you never did answer the question, Sheriff,” Bo went on. “Do the Deverys have a legal right to collect that toll?”
“Some folks in town got together and built the bridge,” O’Brien muttered. “Before that there was just a rope bridge.”
“Then the answer is no.”
O’Brien shrugged. “Depends on how you look at it. The Devery family owns a lot of land around here, including the part where the bridge ends.”
“Well, then, in that case, maybe we should go back and pay them, like I said we would.”
O’Brien gave Bo a bleak stare. “You really think that’s going to do any good now? You insult a couple of the Deverys, pull guns on them…Do you really think paying a few dollars is going to change anything?”
Bo reached in his pocket, took out some coins, and counted out twelve dollars’ worth. He put them on the desk in front of O’Brien and said, “If Luke and Thad show up to make a complaint, Sheriff, you give that to them, understand? And if that’s not good enough to settle the debt…”
“Then I reckon they’ll have to come find us,” Scratch finished in an equally grim voice.
The two Texans turned and walked out of the sheriff’s office, leaving the badly shaken O’Brien behind them.
When they reached the street, they paused. Now that they were out of earshot of the lawman, Scratch asked quietly, “You don’t reckon we ought to ride on like the man suggested, just to save ourselves some trouble, do you, Bo?”
“I suppose it would have been a lot less trouble if you and I and Sam Houston and all those other fellas had just let Santa Anna go on about his business that day at Buffalo Bayou, wouldn’t it?”
Scratch laughed. “Yeah, that’s about what I figured you’d say. The Good Lord seemed to be out of cut-and-run the day He made us, didn’t He?”
“I’d say so.” Bo pointed diagonally across the street toward a building with a sign on it announcing BONNER’S CAFÉ. “That looks like a good place to eat. What say we get a surrounding before we go find a hotel?”
“Lead the way,” Scratch said.
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