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Bo pointed out.
    John grunted in acknowledgment of that comment.
    â€œHowdy, Mr. Creel,” Scratch said as he walked up.
    â€œScratch,” John said with a nod of greeting.
    â€œIt’s mighty good to see you again. Were those some of your hands takin’ those potshots at us?”
    â€œThat was all a misunderstanding,” Bo said. “They thought we were rustlers working for a fella named Fontaine. Seems it was his son who started that ruckus on the bridge in town.”
    â€œYou mean there’s a feud between the Creels and these here Fontaines? That’d explain some of it, I guess.” Scratch frowned. “But not the way Avery Hollins and Jesse Peterson and all the other folks in town acted.”
    â€œThat’s because that’s not all of the story,” Bo said. His face and voice were grim. “It seems that most of the people in these parts are convinced that I’m a murderer. They think I killed a couple of saloon girls.”
    â€œWhat! That’s crazy. You never done such a thing!”
    â€œYou know that, and I know that,” Bo said dryly. “Convincing everybody else will be the trick.”
    Scratch looked up at John Creel, who was still mounted.
    â€œYou don’t believe that, do you, Mr. Creel?” he asked.
    â€œOf course not,” John said gruffly. “But enough people do that it’s gonna cause a heap of trouble around here if you stay, Bo.”
    â€œAre you telling me to run, Pa?” Bo sounded like he couldn’t believe it.
    â€œYou ought to know better than that,” John snapped. “Creels don’t run from trouble. Sometimes, though, it’s smarter to ride around it.” He lifted his reins. “For right now, both of you come on back to the ranch with me. You ought to know the whole story before you make up your minds what to do next.”
    â€œThat sounds good to me,” Bo said. He took the reins of his horse from Scratch and swung up into the saddle. Scratch mounted, as well, and the two of them fell in alongside John as the patriarch of the Creel family started west along the stream toward the headquarters of the Star C.
    Bo tried to bring up the subject that was uppermost in his mind, the accusations leveled against him, but John wasn’t having any of it.
    â€œWait’ll we get back to the ranch,” he said, and Bo knew his father well enough to be aware that there was no point in arguing.
    â€œWell, how about the rest of the family?” he asked. “Will you at least tell me how everybody’s doing?”
    â€œReckon I can do that. They’re all fine. Riley and Julia are grandparents.”
    â€œIs that so?”
    â€œYeah, their boy Chad and his wife, Sunny, got themselves a little boy.”
    â€œThat makes you a great-grandpa.”
    â€œYeah, I know, and I will be again, sometime in the fall. Davy’s wife, Hannah, is in the family way, too.”
    â€œI’m glad to hear it,” Bo said. “Davy is Cooper and Desdemona’s boy, right?” He had close to a dozen nieces and nephews, and it was hard for him to keep up with all of them, what with him being away from home so much. He supposed he had missed out on a lot by drifting for all those years . . . but he had experienced a lot of things he would have missed out on otherwise, too.
    â€œYeah, Davy is one of Cooper’s sons,” John went on. “He’s got the twins, too, and that girl, Barbara Sue.”
    For the next quarter of an hour, John brought Bo up to date on all the family happenings. Bo enjoyed hearing about it, even though nothing really exciting had happened to the Creel family, just the mundane things that wove together to form the tapestry of life.
    Clearly, though, other things had been going on around here that weren’t so mundane. When Bo was caught up on all the lives of all his kinfolks, he said, “What about this trouble with the Fontaines? Are