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said. “This is your home when you’re not in the saddle.”
    â€œThat much is true.”
    â€œI kind of thought you might come in with me when you settled down.”
    â€œWhy would you want a partner?’ Clint asked. “You’re doing great on your own.”
    â€œYou never know what it would mean to have the Gunsmith as your partner.”
    â€œNow who’s the liar?” Clint asked. “Reputations mean nothing to you.”
    â€œOh, yeah? Well, if you know me so well, what does mean something to me?”
    â€œFriendship.”
    â€œFriendship?”
    â€œAnd money.”
    â€œWell, yeah . . . but I was thinkin’ about branching out, and you’d be good at that.”
    â€œAh, now I get it.”
    Rick Hartman rarely, if ever, left Labyrinth. In fact, he was starting to live like a hermit, only instead of a cave or a cabin, the whole town was his hole.
    â€œYou want me to be your advance man,” Clint said. “Go out and find some new locations, buy them up—”
    â€œWell, you’d be a partner,” Hartman said.
    â€œFifty percent?”
    â€œWell,” Hartman said, “seein’ as how I’d be the money guy—”
    â€œWho never leaves town.”
    â€œLook,” Hartman said, “we can discuss the percentage break later—”
    â€œA lot later,” Clint said. “I’m not ready to put Eclipse out to pasture—or myself. Not yet, anyway.”
    â€œI’m just puttin’ it out there,” Hartman said. “Give it some thought.”
    â€œI’ll do that, Rick,” Clint said. “I’ll give it some thought while I’m on the trail.”
    â€œWhen are you leavin’?”
    â€œIn the morning.”
    â€œWhat about the songbird with the big . . . lungs?” Rick asked.
    â€œShe left on the stage yesterday,” Clint said. “Moving on to her next show.”
    â€œYou know,” Hartman said, “you need to settle down with a good woman.”
    â€œLook who’s talking,” Clint said.
    â€œWhat woman would want this kind of life?” Hartman asked, spreading his hands. “She’d only try to change me.”
    â€œExactly how I feel.”
    â€œSo we’re both too old to settle down with a woman and have babies?”
    â€œAnd how,” Clint said. He stood up. “Thanks for breakfast.”
    â€œWhere are you off to?”
    â€œTo get outfitted so I can head out first thing,” Clint said.
    â€œOutfitted,” Hartman said. “To you, that means a burlap sack. I’ve never known a man who travels as light as you do.”
    â€œI don’t like to be weighed down,” Clint said. “By anything.”
    As Clint left the saloon, Rick Hartman was thinking that he felt exactly the same way.

THIRTEEN
    Tarver looked up as two men entered the saloon. Dexter and Gerald were standing at the bar. They had left Arizona before they started recruiting men, so Tarver was now sitting in a saloon in a small, no-name town in New Mexico. The word had gone out that Jed Tarver was out of jail and looking for men. Not as many men responded as Tarver had hoped, and the “good boys” Dexter had talked about had not appeared, yet.
    Tarver has been out of Yuma for a few weeks now, but he still woke up at night feeling hemmed in. He never told anyone how panicked he got some nights in the confines of his cell. He’d never liked confined spaces going in, and even less now. He enjoyed sleeping in real beds in hotels now, but he did so with the windows wide open.
    The two men approached and Tarver indicated they should sit down.
    He got their names first, then a list of who they had ridden with. These two wouldn’t do. They had not ridden with anyone of note.
    After he dispatched the two men, Dexter came walking over and sat down.
    â€œThat’s the last for today,” he said. “My boys are