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religion, which can cause hard feelings. He just sits at a corner table, enjoys his drinks, and then goes home. "
    "Okay, then. " Joseph offered his brother a smoke. The faint low of a cow reached them again.
    "Chances are the shooter has nothing personal against Darby. "
    "Which leads me right back to the incident five years ago and a big, fat nothing in clues. " David accepted a cigarette and leaned low over the saddle horn so Joseph could give him a light. As he straightened, he said, "This whole thing is giving me a headache. My thoughts keep circling back on themselves. I have no idea where to start. "
    Joseph puffed until his Crosscut caught and then waved out the Lucifer. "Start with all the rumors and cast a wide net. A lot of folks hereabouts think that Miss Rachel's great-aunt Amanda Hollister might have killed the family. There was real bad blood between her and her nephew, Rachel's father, Henry. Near as I recall, it had to do with his inheriting the ranch and Amanda getting cut out of the will without a dime. "
    "That's the story I heard, too, " David agreed.
    "If Rachel had died with everyone else in her family that day, who stood to gain?" Joseph asked.
    David squinted against an updraft of cigarette smoke. "Amanda Hollister. As the only surviving relative, she would have gotten this ranch lock, stock, and barrel and all Henry's money, to boot. "
    "So there you go, a prime suspect. " Joseph spat out a piece of loose tobacco. "She definitely had motive. Maybe she's been keeping her head down the last five years because all the evidence pointed so strongly at her. "
    David thought about it for a long moment. Then he said, "Too obvious. In the short time I've been marshal, I've learned that the obvious answer is seldom the right one. "
    "I hear you. The woman would have had to be crazy to think she could get away with it. But maybe crazi-ness runs in the family. " Joseph hooked a thumb toward the house. "Folks blame Rachel's strangeness on her getting shot in the head, but maybe she was a little off-plum before it happened. "
    "Maybe. " David exhaled smoke and flicked away ash. "Sort of like red hair running strong in the O'Shannessy family?"
    "Yep. Only with the Hollisters, it could be lunacy. " Joseph studied the glowing tip of his cigarette. "There again, we could be sniffing up the wrong tree. It's no secret hereabouts that Jebediah Pritchard hated Henry Hollister. "
    "Jeb's spread is just north of here, isn't it?"
    Joseph nodded. "And rumor has it that his tail has been tied in a knot for going on ten years.
    Something about the flood back in seventy-nine altering the course of Wolverine Creek, leaving him high and dry without running water. "
    "I remember that, now. The original boundary description between the Bar H and his ranch included the creek and some rock formations. During the flood, the stream moved but the rocks didn't. Jeb wanted Henry Hollister to do a boundary line adjustment to follow the creek, and Henry refused because he would have been forfeiting several acres of prime grazing land. "
    Joseph pursed his lips. "If I recollect the stories right, Pritchard dynamited the creek a few months later, trying to redirect its course back onto his property. Evidently he didn't know what he was doing and only created a wide spot in the stream. "
    "Beiler never proved it was Pritchard, " David observed.
    "Who else had reason to care where that section of the creek flowed? It was Jeb. I'd bet money on it. "
    Jebediah Pritchard was a mean-natured, hostile man with an irrational streak rivaled only by his cowardice and body stench. His three grown sons, Hayden, Cyrus, and Alan, were apples that hadn't fallen far from the tree. When Joseph encountered a Pritchard in town, he stayed upwind and watched his back.
    "I thought Henry Hollister channeled water from the creek into a big pond on Pritchard's property, " David said. "That strikes me as being a fair compromise on Henry's part. "
    "More than fair. But