Sidewinders. William W. Johnstone
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got straightened out in the end, though.
“No, I’m not arrestin’ you,” Harding said. “I just want to talk to you, but not here.”
“That’s all right with me,” Scratch said. He threw a hard glance toward Claremont. “Ain’t the friendliest place I ever been anyway.”
The two drifters followed the marshal outside. The sun had set and night was settling down over Red Butte now. Stars had begun to flicker into life in the deep blue sky that arched above the settlement and the butte that gave it its name.
“You say you’re working for Abigail Sutherland?” Harding asked as they began strolling down the street.
“That’s right,” Bo said. “We signed on as drivers, guards, or whatever else she needs us to be.”
“Hired guns?”
“We’re not gunslingers, Marshal,” Scratch said. “That don’t mean we can’t handle these smokepoles when we need to, but we don’t hire out to go gunnin’ for folks.”
Harding grunted. “I’m glad to hear it. Rutledge claims those hombres who work for him are just teamsters, but you saw ’em for yourselves. They haven’t done a whole lot of honest work in their lives.”
“And you thought we were more of the same, hired by Mrs. Sutherland to take her side in this little war that’s brewing between her and Rutledge.”
“I ain’t sure how little it’s gonna be,” Harding said with a sigh. “But if it breaks out, it’s gonna be pretty one-sided, that’s for sure. Miz Sutherland’s got one boy who means well but is green, one that’s not worth much of anything, to be blunt about it, and a crippled-up old-timer.”
“And us,” Scratch said.
“Two more old-timers,” Bo added.
That brought a laugh from the marshal. “You boys may have some years on you, but based on how you handled those three gunslicks, I wouldn’t want to tangle with you. What are your names anyway? I may have heard ’em, but I disremember.”
“I’m Bo Creel. This is Scratch Morton.”
“Creel…Morton…” Harding mused. “I don’t recall seeing any wanted posters on either of you.”
“That’s because there aren’t any,” Bo said.
“We’re peaceable men,” Scratch said.
“Yeah, I could tell that when I came into the saloon and found you standin’ over a fella with a busted nose and two more who were out colder’n mackerels.”
“That wasn’t our fault—”
Harding held up his free hand palm out to forestall Scratch’s protestations of innocence. “I know that. But you strike me as the sort of gents who just naturally find trouble, whether you want to be peaceable or not.”
Neither Bo nor Scratch could deny that.
So instead, Bo said, “Rutledge was quick to hint that Mrs. Sutherland might be tied up with Judson’s outlaws.”
“Foolishness,” Harding snorted.
“What about the other way around?”
The marshal shook his head. “I don’t get your meanin’.”
“What are the chances that there’s some connection between Rutledge and Judson?”
Harding stopped and stared at Bo in the light that came through a window in one of the buildings they were passing. “That don’t make any sense either,” he said after a moment. “Rutledge’s freight wagons have been held up, and so has that one stagecoach he runs back and forth between here and Cottonwood every week.”
“Did he lose much of value?”
“Well…I don’t know about that. And I can only go by what Rutledge tells me.”
“Exactly,” Bo said. “Has anybody been hurt in any of those holdups?”
Harding thumbed his hat back and scratched at his thinning hair. “Now that I come to think of it, I don’t believe there has been.”
“Then maybe they were the same sort of phony robberies Rutledge accused Mrs. Sutherland of being part of.”
Harding closed his eyes and shook his head for a moment before opening them again and saying, “Sorry, Creel, but this is gettin’ too mixed up for me. I think both sides need to quit flingin’ accusations back and forth and just learn to get along.” He paused. “I don’t reckon that’s gonna happen, though—the gettin’-along part, I mean—as long as Jared Rutledge wants to have the only stage line in these parts and the government mail contract, to boot. He’s a fella who doesn’t like it when he don’t get what he wants.”
“He’ll just have to learn to live with,” Bo said.
“Or die with it, if it comes to that,” Scratch added.
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