'So it would appear, gentlemen. I appreciate your time and your honesty. I suppose some men live on reputations from the past.'
'That's Morgan,' Ford said. 'I hate to inform a feller that he's wasted his time, but I figure you have if you intend to write about Frank.'
Pettigrew pushed back his chair. 'So many people want to read the dime novels about true-life heroes out here in the West. Some of our best-selling books in the past have been about Wild Bill and Buffalo Bill Cody. There's even this woman, Calamity Jane they call her, who can outshoot most men with a rifle or a pistol. Our readers love this sort of thing. We can't print enough of them.'
'Nobody wants to read about Frank,' Vic said. 'It'd be a waste of good paper and ink.'
* * * *
Pettigrew had gone outside before Ford and Vic began to laugh over their joke.
'You spooned him full of crap,' Vern said, grinning. 'He bought every word of it.'
Vic's expression changed. 'We don't need some damn reporter hangin' around while Ned's got Frank's boy.'
'We got rid of the reporter,' Ford said. 'I figure he'll head for Denver at first light.'
'If this storm don't snow him in,' Vern observed, watching snowflakes patter against the saloon windows. 'That's one helluva long ride up to Denver when the weather's as bad as this.'
'We'll stay here tonight,' Vic said. 'Go tell the rest of the boys to find rooms and put their horses away.'
Vern stood up, stretching tired muscles after the ride from Gypsum Gap. 'I'm damn sure glad to hear you say that, Boss,' he said.
'Me too,' Ford agreed. 'Our asses could have froze off. It sure is late in the year for so much snow.'
Vic looked out at the storm. 'We need to send a couple of riders down to Lost Pine Canyon,' he said, 'just to make sure Ned got Morgan and that boy.'
'We'd have heard by now,' Ford observed.
' Somebody from Ned's bunch would have come lookin' for us if they needed help,' Vern said. 'Hell, Morgan's just one man an' Ned's got nearly a dozen good gunmen with him. Slade an' Lyle are enough to drop Morgan in his tracks.'
'I hope you're right,' Vic said. 'Morgan can be a sneaky son of a bitch.'
'He ain't _that_ sneaky,' Ford said.
Vic glanced at Ford and smiled. 'How the hell would you know, Ford? In spite of what you told that Easterner, you've never set eyes on Frank Morgan in your life. He could walk in here right now and you wouldn't recognize him.'
Ford chuckled. 'You're right about that, Boss. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity.'
Vern started for the door, sleeving into his coat as he passed the potbelly stove. 'You damn sure did a good job of it, Ford Peters. For a while there, I thought maybe you an' Frank was half brothers.'
'I could kill you over a remark like that,' Ford said.
Vic tossed back the last of his third drink. 'Tell the boys to settle in for the night, Vern. I'll send a couple of 'em over to the canyon tomorrow so we'll know what's keepin' Ned. I had it figured he oughta be here by now.'
* * * *
Conrad remembered that time all too clearly ... and by all accounts he was headed back into the hands of Pine and Vanbergen again.
'Damn the rotten luck,' he whispered, with Cletus Huling holding a shotgun at his back.
--------
*Thirteen*
Sheriff Charlie Maxey looked up from a stack of WANTED posters on his desk when a slender young man wearing suspenders and a tin star burst into his office, slamming the door behind him.
'What is it, Dave?'
His deputy, Dave Matthews, was out of breath. 'You ain't gonna believe this, Sheriff, but them sorry sons of bitches done it again.'
'Done what?'
'Took Morgan's boy, Conrad Browning, prisoner.'
'What?'
'I seen it myself. An' I recognized the bastard who took him.'
'Who the hell was he?' Maxey cried, standing up to take a rifle from a rack behind his desk.
'The sorriest son of a bitch who ever straddled a saddle. Cletus Huling, that damn bounty hunter from down in the Texas Panhandle. You remember when he come up here last year after Boyd Haskins?'
'Huling is in Trinidad?'
'He _was._ He took Conrad at gunpoint an' headed north into the mountains.'
