Mankiller, it ain’t none o’my business what they might’a done somewheres else.”
Bo sighed. Biscuits really was a sorry excuse for a lawman.
“We’ll have to go through these later,” he told Scratch. “There’s a good chance some fugitives are in town.”
Scratch was peering down the twin barrels of a shotgun he had broken open. He snapped the weapon closed, then said, “You’re gonna take it seriously, aren’t you?”
“Take what seriously?”
“This deputyin’ job. Just like when we pinned on those badges in Whiskey Flats a while back, you think we ought to be act like real deputies.”
“We
“All I care about is settlin’ the score with those damned Deverys.”
Biscuits clapped his hands over his ears and moaned. “Oh, don’t talk like that!” he said. “I don’t wanna hear anything like that!”
Bo looked at his partner. “We’ve got a chance to do some real good here, not just get back at the Deverys.”
“And since when do we owe this town anything?”
“We don’t,” Bo admitted. “But the people who live here are counting on us, and that’s important. I don’t want to let them down.”
Scratch put the shotgun he’d been looking at back on the rack. “Well, I wouldn’t want to disappoint Mrs. Bonner…”
“There you go. Look at it that way.”
Scratch grinned. “All right, I will. Those Greeners look all right. You run across any shotgun shells in there?”
“Not yet.” Bo returned to his search of the desk. The next thing he found was a drawer full of empty whiskey bottles, along with one that was still half full. He looked in disapproval at Biscuits, who just ignored him. The sheriff had started to snore softly.
Under a welter of papers in another drawer, Bo found four deputy badges. He took out two of them and tossed one to Scratch, saying, “Here you go.”
Scratch caught it and pinned it on to his shirt. “You reckon the sheriff ought to swear us in?”
“Probably,” Bo said as he fastened on his own badge, “but I think we might have a hard time waking him up to do it. How about we swear each other in?”
“Fine by me. Hold up your hand.”
Bo lifted his hand.
Scratch said, “You swear to uphold the law, arrest any varmints who break it, and ventilate every Devery who gives you a good excuse to do it?”
Bo chuckled. “I swear. How about you?”
Scratch raised his hand and said, “I swear the same thing. I reckon we’re real lawmen now, Bo, or at least as close to it as this town is gonna get.”
Bo came out from behind the desk. “Maybe we’d better get started on our first patrol. Seems like it’s our duty to let the citizens of Mankiller know that there are a couple of new deputies looking out for them.”
They left Biscuits snoring on the sofa. People had seen them walking from the cafe to the store and from the store to the sheriff’s office, but at that time the Texans had just been a couple of strangers, and unarmed strangers at that, before visiting Abner Malden’s establishment.
Now they were armed, and not only that, they had law badges pinned to their shirts. Sure, the law badges were just cheap tin stars on which someone had done a fairly crude job of engraving the words DEPUTY SHERIFF.
It wasn’t the badges themselves, however, that were important, but what they represented. The badges were symbols of law, of progress, of civilization, and of human decency itself. It was as true on the frontier as elsewhere that some of the men who wore such badges were corrupt or incompetent or both, but that didn’t mean that what they stood for was worthless. The badges just needed the right sort of men behind them.
Bo and Scratch hadn’t gone very far down the street before they began to attract attention. They saw men staring at them and heard the increased buzz of conversation behind them. They were walking toward the river, and they hadn’t quite reached the bottom of the slope and the eastern end of Main Street when several men who were in front of them suddenly got out of the way in a hurry. That alerted the Texans that something was wrong. They stopped, hands poised near their guns just in case.
Two men appeared in the gap that opened up in the crowded street. Bo recognized them instantly: red- bearded, bare-chested Luke Devery and his ugly, lantern-jawed cousin Thad. Both Deverys came to an abrupt halt, their hands tightening on the rifles they carried.
CHAPTER 13
A long moment of tense silence crawled by, punctuated by music drifting out of one of the saloons. The talk in the street had stopped, and most movement had, too, at least at this end of town. Everyone was watching the confrontation between the Deverys and the two new deputies.
Luke finally broke the silence. “Well, what do you know? My brother Reuben told me he seen you fellas walkin’ around a little while ago, but I didn’t believe him. Now here you are, big as life.”
