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him.”
    The young deputy rose. Upright, he turned the tables and looked down at me as if from a great height. I had known a scalp hunter in the Bitterroots who could have palmed his head in one hand, but in that room he was formidable enough. I wasn’t sure I could knock him down a second time even with a bullet.
    â€œI’m as good a man as anyone here.” He’d bitten through his lip when struck and the swelling slurred his speech. “Better than some.”

    â€œWhat’s this about a spy?” pressed Cross.
    Yardlinger filled him in. The old man guffawed.
    â€œHell, if I knowed someone’d pay for it I’d tell a story or two myself.”
    â€œIf Earl wants in, I’ll vouch for him,” said the former marshal.
    I stifled a yawn—from fatigue, not insolence. “Who’ll vouch for you?”
    â€œSon of a bitch,” Cross muttered.
    Yardlinger was unmoved. “You’ve probably been too busy playing the put-upon outsider to notice, but the likelihood of your being elected to Congress in this city hasn’t improved since you came. Without me, you don’t have deputies, and without deputies—”
    â€œI’m sold. Introduce me.”
    â€œYou they know.” He nodded at each in turn. “That’s Randy Cross with the scattergun. He’s good with it. Couple of years ago he used one like it to blow the lock off a Wells, Fargo strongbox headed for Deadwood. Pinkertons tracked him down in Canada and he got twenty to life, but he was released for helping put down a riot in territorial prison. He put in time as a railroad detective with James Hill before Bram swore him in here. Earl Trotter’s a Breen native and a hell of a fine pistol shot.
    â€œAnd then there’s Leroy Cooperstown Brody.”
    â€œ Major Leroy Cooperstown Brody.” The old man squirted a yellow-brown stream at a brass cuspidor six feet away. He hit it square.
    â€œMajor Brody commanded a cavalry unit in Virginia
during the late hostilities, though I imagine he’d have a hard time recognizing the country in broad daylight.”
    â€œNight riders,” I said.
    Brody made a soggy snapping sound with the plug in his mouth. “The First Virginia Volunteers. Our flag was bonny blue, not black.”
    â€œI’m sure that was a source of comfort to the people you murdered,” Yardlinger replied. “Anyway, when there’s shooting to be done the Major doesn’t back off, which is why Bram made him jailer. He doesn’t have a badge because I don’t want him to go around thinking he’s a deputy. That’s what you have to work with.”
    â€œI’ve worked with worse.”
    Yardlinger looked at Earl. “What about it? You’ve had plenty of time to make up your mind.”
    The hulking deputy squeezed his torn lower lip between two fingers. “I get to walk out when I don’t like it, right?”
    â€œWrong,” I said. “In now, in to the end.”
    â€œI got to take orders from him?” Looking at Yardlinger, he jerked his chin at me.
    â€œThere’s room for only one marshal in any outfit,” nodded the other.
    â€œCome on, Earl-boy,” twanged the Major. “What you going to do, you don’t throw in with us? Go back home and haul plow for your old man?”
    â€œ No! ” The violence of the retort made even the old reprobate jump. “Not for him. I reckon I’m in.”
    Brody chuckled nastily and took another pass at the cuspidor. This time he barely hit the rim.
    â€œWhat now?” Yardlinger was watching me.

    I considered. “When do you expect the hands from the Six Bar Six?”
    â€œSundown.”
    â€œUnless cowhands have changed, the trouble will start about two minutes after the first one has his belly full of whiskey.”
    â€œThey haven’t changed.”
    â€œI counted fourteen saloons. Any more?” He shook his head. I