hammer. Then a shotgun blasted almost in Danner's ear and he whirled to find Sheriff Brant leveling down on the crowd with a twelve-gauge he had used to fire into the air. Andersen struggled to his feet.
'I can't believe you would defend this man,' Andersen said quietly.
'If you really want that grain back,' Brant stormed, 'you'll go home and give Jeff Danner a few days to find it.'
'We figger he knows where it is now,' Andersen returned, his blond whiskers quivering. 'But that doesn't mean we'll ever see it again.'
'Now hear me, Andersen—all of you,' Brant said, his frail body rigid. 'Jeff Danner is the best lawman I've known in forty years of wearing a star. I tell you he had nothing to do with that theft, but given a few days he'll locate the train. That's why he came back from Topeka.'
Confusion spread across the bearded face of Andersen and he glanced about for support. An uncertain mutter came from the other grangers. Danner holstered his Colts. He knew they had passed the point of violence, at least for the moment. Andersen must have realized it also, for the stiffness went out of him. But he stared at Danner suspiciously before speaking again.
'Danner, can you offer us something more than just your word that all this is true?'
Danner shook his head without speaking, still in the grip of a rash and stubborn anger.
Andersen flushed, unsatisfied but unwilling to change his course. 'Suppose we give you three days. Can you promise to recover our grain in that length of time?'
Again Danner shook his head.
Disconcerted, Andersen clamped his mouth shut for a moment then looked about the crowd and back to Danner. 'You don't offer us much reason for trusting you.'
'I didn't ask you to trust me.'
'Ease up, boy,' Brant whispered harshly. 'Ease up.'
Olie Swensen rushed up to the bottom of the steps then, his right fist upraised. 'I promised Lona to stay out of this,' he snarled. 'But I'll put the rope around your neck myself if you don't change your tune.'
'You can try,' Danner said with ice in his tone. Andersen held up both hands then, heading off a new rise in tempers. 'I say we wait three days. There shouldn't be any doubts by then. If Danner can't produce that train, or won't produce it, by then, we can still find him.' He turned and faced the grangers. 'Does anyone object?'
Nods of approval came slowly, reluctantly, but not from Olie Swensen.
'What if he decides to run out?'
Danner grinned at him without mirth. 'You know better than that.'
Olie flushed and turned away. The crowd began to disperse. Danner breathed easier then, for all of his unyielding talk.
'Jeff,' Brant said tiredly, 'if I hadn't come out when I did, would you have fired into that crowd?'
'Who knows?' Danner said. Then he pulled out a bandanna and wiped the sweat from his neck and forehead.
Time moved slowly while Danner stared at the unconscious McDaniel lying so still against the white sheets of the clinic bed. His face flushed with fever, McDaniel breathed so shallowly that Danner sometimes wondered if the strong Irish heart had stopped beating. He squirmed in the cane-bottomed chair, wanting to help his friend and knowing there was nothing he could do. Lona rocked gently in a chair on the other side of the bed, her face haggard from lack of sleep and worry. She'd said scarcely a dozen words since Danner had arrived.
'I heard how you've looked after him since they brought him in,' Danner said softly. 'I appreciate it, and so will Billy.' At first he didn't think she had heard him, then her hand came up to her throat and her fingers touched the brooch.
'He's a good man,' she said simply.
Danner could think of no suitable answer and he sat quietly as the morning sun crept farther into the room. It was time to be moving out, he thought, yet he felt a reluctance to leave with so much unsaid between Lona and himself. But she hadn't mentioned it and he didn't either.
'Does the doctor think Billy will make it?'
Lona shrugged tiredly. 'We won't know until tomorrow, but it looks like he might be all right.' Then she looked at him directly for the first time.
'Father told me what happened yesterday when you came back. I know you had nothing to do with—shooting Billy, and everything, but were you really in Topeka?'
'You, too?'
Color touched her cheeks briefly, then she shook her head. 'I told you I knew you had nothing to do with the robbery. I'm just curious as to why you would go to Topeka.'
Danner stared down at the blunt ends of his fingers.
'I remember,' she probed, 'some time ago you received a letter from Topeka offering you a job as special agent for a railroad there. That's why you went, wasn't it?'
Wordlessly, Danner nodded, then felt the need to say something.
'I'm thinking about it.'
'But why?' she demanded. 'You haven't even given the farm a fair try yet.'
'Every man has to do what is right for him,' Danner said.
'And working as a hired gunman is right for you?'
'There's more to it than that,' he answered.
Her lips pinched in tightly, then she closed her eyes with a faint shake of her head. When she looked at him again there was a misery in her eyes that brought a feeling of shame to Danner.
'When the Colonel was alive I thought you stayed with a detestable job out of loyalty to him. But to go back to a job like that when you are free from it and have a chance at something so much better, is—' She shook her head again then looked away.
Sounds of the morning work train moving out of the yard warned Danner of the time slipping away from him, time he needed for a more vital purpose just now.
'I'll be busy for a few days,' he said, rising and starting toward the door. 'When I get this mess cleared up, we'll talk about it some more.'
'No,' she shook her head. 'There's nothing more to say, unless you change your mind about the farm. I'm not leaving here, not ever.'
Danner stared at her for a long moment, fighting against a rising turmoil that might make him say something he would regret. Then he nodded and turned away.
Jogging along the main street Danner was only dimly aware of the stares that sought him out. He turned north at the vacant lots separating Browder's granary from the nearest business establishments. A lean-to built along the trackside of the granary was used to protect loading of boxcars during bad weather. It wasn't long enough to hide a locomotive and thirty boxcars, even if Browder had been foolish enough to try it. Still, Danner rode up to the entrance for a look-see just the same. As he had expected, the long shed was empty.
As Danner reined away, he heard a low rumbling chuckle that could have come only from the mammoth Alec Browder. He whirled his horse and found Browder and Tuso standing just inside a loading doorway of the granary. It was difficult to tell what Browder was thinking behind the squinting eyes, but the taunting grin on the swarthy face of Tuso transmitted a clear message.
'Lose something, big man?'
Danner stared at them with an impassiveness he didn't feel.
'Oh,' Tuso feigned a sudden realization, 'come to think of it, I believe I did hear something about you misplacing some little old something or other. Train, wasn't it?' Then he cackled loudly, poking his elbow in the ribs of Browder. The vast belly of Browder shook with mirth as he shifted his bulk to his left leg, then back again.
Danner felt the heat spread across his face.
'If you don't find that little old choo-choo,' Tuso taunted, 'those sodbusters are going to make you guest of honor at a neck-stretching party.'
