“Sooner the better, so far as I’m concerned.”
A snarled curse from the poker game filled the room. “You tinhorn sonovabitch! You’re cheatin’.”
“Am I?” the man in the derby hat replied. “How do you propose to prove it?”
“Don’t have to prove it!” The accuser kicked back his chair and started around the table. “I’m just gonna beat the livin’ shit out of you.”
The gambler rose, pulling a bulldog pistol from his waistband. “Stop right there.”
The other man shoved the table aside and lunged forward. At point-blank range, the pistol roared and the powder flash set his shirt afire below his breastbone. He staggered sideways, his eyes wide with shock. Then he dropped dead on the floor.
Tilghman stood, his reaction one of visceral instinct. He pulled his Colt and thumbed the hammer. “Drop that gun.”
The gambler crouched, wheeling around, and brought the bulldog pistol to bear. Tilghman shot him in the chest, nicking the edge off the lapel on his coat. The impact drove him backwards, his feet tangled, and he collapsed onto the wreckage of the poker table. A trickle of blood leaked out of his mouth and his eyes rolled back in his head. He lay still.
“Jesus,” Sutton mumbled hollowly. “Why’d you take a hand? Wasn’t your fight.”
The question, though phrased differently, was put to Tilghman several times over the course of the afternoon. Ed Kelly, the first lawman on the scene, was dumbfounded. He clearly thought it a mild form of insanity to take part in someone else’s fight. There would be a coroner’s inquest, with those who witnessed the double shooting required to testify. No one doubted that Tilghman would be cleared.
Heck Thomas arrived as the bodies were being carried out. When he posed the question, there was not a trace of surprise on his face as Tilghman explained that murder required a response. He felt confident that, with or without a badge, Tilghman would respond to any killing in exactly the same way. The traits that had made him an outstanding lawman were the traits that would permit him to do no less. To Thomas, it was a fundamental part of certain men’s character.
Outside, they stood talking for awhile on the street. Thomas related that the Dalton gang had robbed yet another train, and vanished into the Nations. Tilghman, though he’d just killed a man, listened closely and asked questions that would have occurred only to a lawman. Still, despite his interest, he evidenced no sudden urge to pin on a badge. He meant to raise horses, not chase outlaws.
Upon parting, Thomas told himself that it was only a matter of time. Tilghman was one of that rare breed with no tolerance for those who stepped outside the law. He’d been born to wear a badge.
CHAPTER 7
The sun dipped lower, splashing great ripples of gold across the water. Overhead a hawk veered slowly into the wind and settled high on a cottonwood beside the stream. The bird sat perfectly still, a feathered sculpture, flecked through with a bronzed ebony in the deepening sunlight. Then it cocked its head in a fierce glare and looked down upon the men.
There were five of them, all lean and hard, weathered by wind and sun. Four were Sac and Fox tribesmen, their features like the burnt mahogany of ancient saddle leather. Tilghman watched as they wrestled a stout log onto their shoulders and jammed the butt end into a freshly dug hole. Small rocks and dirt were then tamped down solidly around the log until it stood anchored in the earth. This was the last in a rough circle of wooden pillars embedded in the flinty soil.
Tilghman had hired the men through Moses Keokuk, chief of the Sac and Fox. While they continued work on the corral, he slowly inspected the ranch compound. His homestead centered on a wide expanse of woodland, with cottonwoods along Bell Cow Creek and a grove of live oaks stretching westward for a quarter mile. Bordering the shoreline was a natural clearing, with a rocky ford and a stunted hill to the north, which would protect it from the winter blast of a plains blizzard. The terrain rolled away from the creek in virgin grassland.
Not quite three weeks past, in early September, Tilghman and Neal Brown had joined twenty thousand homesteaders in the land rush. Tilghman had claimed one hundred sixty acres along Bell Cow Creek, three miles northwest of the Chandler townsite. Farther west along the creek, Brown had staked a homestead abutting Tilghman’s land. Their combined holdings provided over three hundred acres of natural pasture for raising horses.
The ensuing weeks had been a time of sweat and labor. Tilghman drove himself and the tribesmen at a furious pace, working from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. At the outset, he had informed them that two buildings must be erected, a main house and a stable for twenty horses. They felled trees, snaked logs to the clearing, and worked without respite under his relentless urging. The buildings were completed, including planked floors and a stone fireplace in the house, in less than three weeks.
Now, as dusk settled over the clearing, they stood back and marveled at the fruit of their labors. Set off away from the creek, shaded by tall cottonwoods, was a sturdy, shake-roofed log house. It had five rooms with windows overlooking the stream and an oak door with iron fittings. Across the clearing, set flush with the terrain, was the stable, also constructed of logs. Half the stalls were filled with brood mares, most of them topped by the Sac and Fox stallion and ready to foal in late spring. The stallion, by now named Steeldust, stood at his stall door watching the men.
The corral sat squarely in the middle of the clearing, a short distance from the stream. The cross posts were springy young logs, designed to absorb punishment from milling horses without snapping. There,
