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waited.
    Tristan began to talk, pacing back and forth before the desk like a big-town lawyer in front of a jury box, and damned if his ideas didn’t make a certain amount of sense. Folks would soon guess that there were two of them, but the resultant confusion was sure to provide certain advantages.
    When the speech was over. Shay opened a drawer and reluctantly took out a badge that had been worn by his predecessor. Big Dan Collins. He’d been Dan’s deputy for five years, until the older man was killed breaking up a brawl down at the Yellow Garter Saloon, and he’d never admired anyone as much, before or since.
    He polished the nickel star against his shirtfront before handing it over. “If you’re going to get yourself shot,” he said, a little hoarse all of the sudden, “make sure you get hit someplace where this badge won’t be marked up. I want it back looking just like new.”
    Tristan pinned the star to his chest in precisely the same place Shay wore his, without looking. “I’ll need some practice at being you,” he said, letting Shay’s warning go unremarked, as usual. He cocked a thumb toward the far end of the street. “You’re clearly a man who likes his whiskey. What brand do I drink?”
    “You don’t,” Shay said, with a grin that was all his own. He leaned back in the chair, his hands cupped behind his head. “You’ve decided to redeem yourself. Why, you might even want to go forward during Sunday’s church meeting and give your heart to Jesus.”
    Tristan let that pass, drawing a cheroot from his shirt pocket, along with a match, which he struck against the outer edge of Shay’s desktop.
    “I don’t use tobacco, either,” Shay pointed out. He paused, considering Tristan’s several allusions to his status as the elder brother. “What makes you so sure you were born first?”
    None too cheerfully, Tristan shook out the match and tossed it, put the cheroot away. “I’ve got a birthmark on my right thigh. You don’t. According to my mother—the woman who raised me, that is—the midwife on the wagon train took note of the fact.”
    Shay put his feet on the floor and leaned forward as a thought struck him. “Where’s your horse? Somebody must have seen you ride in.”
    Tristan laughed grimly. “I hope it doesn’t take much longer for your head to clear, because, God help me, I’ve got to depend on you. It was pitch black outside when I got to town, and I was wearing a hat and a long coat. You’ll remember that I had a beard, too.” He made to stroke the absent whiskers with one hand, obviously ahabit of long-standing, then glanced ruefully toward the stove, where the sleep-addled barber had disposed of a pile of walnut-colored hair early that morning. “I told the man at the livery stable that the horse was yours, a gift from an old friend.”
    “He must have been drunk, half asleep, or both.”
    “He did say I put him in mind of somebody, though he couldn’t rightly think who it was.” Tristan smiled at the memory, then cast a glance toward the window. “It’ll be dark in a couple of hours. Start talking. Marshal. Who am I going to meet when I walk out of this place, and what will they expect from me? Are you a chatty sort, or a man of few words?”
    “What do you think?” Shay challenged. He was hung-over, he couldn’t chase Aislinn Lethaby out of his head, and he was still getting used to the fact that Saint-Laurent existed at all. And then there was the implication that he, Shay, wouldn’t be able to bring the robbers to justice without his brother’s help. He didn’t have the patience to be cordial on top of all that.
    “I think you don’t say much—you like to watch and listen and work things through before you put in your two bits. You’re at home on a horse, and probably fairly fast with that forty-five, when you’re sober. As a kid, you got good marks in school, but you spent a lot of time staring out the window, wishing you were somewhere else. You