“I have a question,” Duff said.
“All right.”
“You have recently added three new men who work for you, but who are not cowhands. Their names, I believe, are Knox, Malcolm, and Dobbins. Do they also hold a commission from the governor?”
“No, they do not.”
“If they are nae deputies nor hands, would ye be for tellin’ us their purpose?”
“I will tell you as I told my men. Misters Knox, Malcolm, and Dobbins are supernumeraries to the operation of the ranch, and they will remain as such to the territorial deputies as well.”
“You still haven’t answered Mr. MacCallister’s question,” Burt Rowe said. “What is the purpose of these three men?”
“Gentlemen, and lady,” Houser said, with a pointed reference to Meagan’s presence, “if you look around you, you would see that every one of you are wearing pistols. I don’t cite you for that—too often the continued existence of men who live here is dependent upon both their ability, and their willingness, to use a firearm. I do not wear a pistol, because I have neither the willingness, nor the ability, to do so. I also have an abhorrence to violence, especially as it may pertain to me.”
Houser forced a smile.
“Therefore I have hired Mr. Knox, Mr. Morgan, and Mr. Dobbins to perform the service of personal bodyguards to me. And as such, they will have nothing to do with the deputies. The reason I have hired them should be obvious to all of you. Now that I have initiated this effort to rid our valley of the pervasive lawlessness, I do not fool myself with the false hope that I will not become a target of those whose rustling operations will be curtailed. As long as none of you take it upon yourselves to attack me, and I’m sure none of you are harboring such intentions”—again Houser forced a smile—“none of you need concern yourselves about the presence, or the activities of my Pontificia Cohors Helvetica.”
“I am aware of some of the activities of these three men, Mr. Houser, and I would hardly call them the Swiss Papal Guard,” Duff said.
Houser clapped his hands softly. “Oh, very good, Captain MacCallister, you recognize my Latin. You are right, of course, they are hardly up to the task of guarding the Pope. I do hope you will forgive me my little private joke.”
“Yes, well, getting back to these deputies, how are we going to know who they are? I mean, will they be wearin’ badges or anything?” Barnes said.
“I will provide them with badges, which will give them all the authority they need to carry out their mission. Mark this day on your calendar, gentlemen. This is the day the war against the cattle rustlers of the Valley of the Chug began.”
Chapter Twenty-one
“I don’t trust Houser any farther than I can throw him,” Biff said. Meagan had returned to her dress shop, and Biff rejoined Duff and Elmer at his private table in Fiddler’s Green.
“He sure talks fit ’n proper, I’ll say that for him,” Elmer said.
“That’s because he was a barrister before he came here,” Duff said.
“He was a barrister?” Elmer asked. “You mean he was a bartender? Hell, I thought the son of a bitch was a lawyer.”
“I’m sorry. I should have said lawyer,” Duff said without further explanation.
“Wait. Barrister, is that one of them Scottish words for lawyer?”
“Aye.”
“Yeah, he was a lawyer, all right,” Biff said. “Only what I heard was that he got in some kind of legal trouble down in Texas, ’n he was told he couldn’t be a lawyer anymore.”
“You mean he has been disbarred?” Duff asked.
“Yes, he was disbarred. That’s what it is, I just couldn’t think of the word.”
“Why was he disbarred? Do you have any idea?”
“I’ve never heard why, I just heard that he was disbarred. He must have done pretty well as a lawyer while he was at it, though, because when he came up here and bought the ranch from Cliff Prescott’s widow, he paid cash for it.”
“Would ye be knowing how he came by the money he used to start his ranch?”
“I don’t have the slightest idea. All I know is he put eighty thousand dollars in the Bank of Chugwater the very first day he got here,” Biff said.
“I wonder if Mr. Blanton would be knowing anything about it,” Duff asked. “If he has been disbarred from somewhere, ’twould likely have been a story about it. And all the newspapers share their stories.”
“Could be,” Biff replied. “Like you said, he gets all these stories sent to him from all over the country, so if it made the newspaper anywhere, Charley more ’n likely has it, even if he didn’t print it in his own newspaper.”
“What do you say, Elmer, that we pay a visit to Mr. Blanton? I would like to know a little more about the gentleman who has just hired his own private army.”
“His own private army?” Elmer replied.
“Aye, for what else would you call these deputies who are responsible only to Mr. Houser?”
“I’ll be damn,” Biff said. “You know, I hadn’t thought of it in that way before, but you are right. Houser does have his own army.”
“Yeah,” Elmer said. “Not only that, the slick-talkin’ son of a bitch managed to get all the other cattle ranchers to pay for it.”
* * *
“Oh yes,” Charley Blanton said as he searched through his morgue. “Here it is, reprinted from a Fort Worth newspaper. I didn’t print it when the story came in, because Mr. Houser is obviously trying to make a new life for himself up here, and I saw no reason for my newspaper to place a burden upon any of our citizens.”
“Aye, ’tis not asking you to print the story, only to let me read it,” Duff said. “I think it would be a good thing to know a bit more about our newest rancher.”
Duff examined the newspaper article.
Lawyer Disbarred
Brad Houser, a Sulphur
