THE SHERIFF AND THE WIDOW PART ONE

THE TAINTED ARCHIVE PRESENTS

A digital publishing first.


Chap O'keefe's classic Black Horse Western - the complete novel in four parts.





PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

Lesson for Wolves

"Now there's a purty sight," murmured Deputy Sheriff Alec Tucker, and raised the sun-yellowed paper blind an extra inch or two in the front window of the Cedar City law office.

Across the room, his boss, Ross Kemp, deposited a steel-nibbed pen in the inkstand on his battered mahogany desktop and stretched his cramped arms. He was a big man in his early thirties with wide shoulders and muscular biceps -- a man built for action -- and paperwork was not among his loves. He uncoiled his frame smoothly from the swivel chair and joined Tucker at the window, moving on his feet with a lightness uncommon for a man of his bulk.

"The surrey, huh?" he said, tongue in cheek. "Yeah, it sure is a smart rig." Every word was true enough. An artist's hand had decorated the shiny black paintwork with ornate scrollwork and gold leaf. Its four, smooth-running wheels were a yellow blur, tinged orange by fine red pinstriping on the spokes. Two matching thoroughbreds, sleek and black, were in the harness. Highly polished brass trimmings glinted in the sunlight.

"Aw, you're joshin' me, Ross," Tucker said. "You know I was referrin' to the handsome couple ridin' it . . . specially that Mrs Blackwood. Wow! She's one hundred percent, blood-heating woman!"

There was no denying that, either. But Kemp didn't really care to chin about Mrs Jessica Blackwood with his sidekick. A frown creased his bronzed brow. Tucker was right about the Blackwoods being handsome, but it was as individuals not as a couple.

Rancher Boyd Blackwood was in his fifties, under-average in height, but a man of stature with a broad chest and a square-shaped head of dark hair shaded a distinguished grey at the temples. He was also possibly the richest man in the territory, owner of the fine Double-B spread and a shrewd cattleman and businessman.

His wife, shielded by a parasol, was indeed something else. The phrase femme fatale came to Kemp's mind. He scarcely knew what that meant, but he'd heard it someplace and despite its foreignness it seemed to fit all the same. Jessica Blackwood was a darkly beautiful woman in her mid twenties, tall, slim and mature -- and half her husband's age.

"This little old cattle town ain't never seen the likes of such class," Tucker pressed on, licking his lips with enthusiasm for the subject.

"That's for a fact," Kemp grunted. "Maybe old Boyd should of thought twice before he brung her here. Grown men are apt to act like half-baked kids when she's around, you may have noticed."

Tucker dragged his ogling eyes back into the room. Kemp wasn't a sour man, and the deputy thought he knew why the sheriff begrudged his admiration of the rancher's wife.

"Never did understand why she and Miss Ellen never hit it off," he stated openly. "Women can take the damnedest attitudes, I guess."

Kemp's back stiffened and his lips thinned into a staight line.

"Boyd Blackwood's daughter can't be blamed for wanting to steer clear of her stepmother. She can be plumb blatant and provoking where menfolk are concerned. I seen it and Miss Ellen has, too. It'll lead to a mess of problems and Miss Ellen wants no part of it."

Tucker shrugged. He knew his boss well enough to know when to back off. It was the popular contention that Ross Kemp was sweet on Ellen Blackwood, the rancher's offspring by his long-departed first wife, and had been for these last several of her teen years.

So Tucker lapsed into silence on the matter of the second Mrs Blackwood.

"You know," he continued presently, and a mite tentatively, "you know, that young Ellen is gettin' to be a fine prospect for some feller, what with the success she's made of her little shop an' all. A mighty -- uh -- weddable lady, I reckon . . ."

"God! I swear you're worse than a matchmaking old woman, Alec Tucker! You seem to be forgetting Miss Blackwood is a rich man's daughter and a frontier-town badge-packer ain't exactly wise material for a husband."

"Trouble with you, Ross, is you work too hard," Tucker opined owlishly. "That, and you've gotten a too well-honed sense of duty."

"Drop it, will you!" Kemp retorted.

He gestured toward the far side of the office where a fold-down cot with a neat pile of folded blankets stood against the wall beneath a survey map of the county. This was where he customarily slept.

"I'm already wedded," he said, blue eyes flashing. "To the job. I figure a law officer's only legitimate concerns are to keep his bailiwick peaceable and law-abiding. That's why folks elected me and what I've been sworn in for."

"Yeah, I suppose that's right," Tucker said placatingly. "But I dunno there's many would uphold the same views. Cedar City appreciates it." He pondered a moment, then finished more boldly, "Leastways, most of its folks does, though I'm damned if Ellen Blackwood would appreciate bein' passed over on account of public duty."

Kemp scoffed. "If she doesn't realise she deserves better, then it's only her youth deceiving her and sometime she'll learn it."

The sheriff returned his gaze to the glare of Main Street and the gleaming surrey, now pulled up outside the livery barn and receiving the diligent attention of not one but two hostlers.

Boyd Blackwood was already strutting away in the direction of the railyard and the town's commercial sector. This, Kemp surmised, he would quickly traverse till he came to the quieter, part-residential street where he was a regular caller at the home and office of his lawyer, Isaac Siebert. A tradesman carrying a bag of tools touched the brim of his hat to Blackwood as he passed. The act of recognition visibly pleased the rancher. He threw back his square shoulders, the deference balm to his ego.

Jessica Blackwood, with a shopping basket looped over her arm, had mounted the plank sidewalk and was sashaying beneath the awnings, ostensibly inspecting the wares on offer in the town's stores.

She wore a thigh-moulding skirt of fine calico, printed in many colours with a swirling floral pattern, and a black satin blouse cut low across the shoulders in a lace-trimmed style Kemp thought should have been more appropriate to a Mexican peasant. But she affected an air of challenging superiority which allowed her to get away with it. And no one could deny the blouse drew attention to the full swell of her breasts and gave tantalising hints of the concealed ripeness of a perfect body.

As always, she had an audience. Dozing loafers jerked out of their siestas; a boy at Baker's Mercantile found a sudden devotion to the sweeping of a doorway; a hotel clerk positioned and repositioned a vacancy sign in a window. Even the horses at the hitching rails, switching their tails at the flies, seemed to sense the vibrations in the air. They shifted their weight from one side to the other and slewed heads around as though to catch a glimpse of the passing phenomenon.

Kemp scowled on it all from his window. "Sheep-eyed idiots," he muttered under his breath. But he noted, too, the pair of respectable matrons who sucked in their cheeks and clucked their disapproval. He couldn't hear them, but could imagine the words they exchanged: "No good can come out of her, the hussy . . ."

He didn't think for one moment Jessica was unaware of the vacuous, mooning looks she attracted. Damnit, she was enjoying it, relishing the power she had over the fools. She was torturing their glands and their minds with her untouchability, wrapped in the secure but invisible cocoon of her husband's power and influence.

The other thing Kemp noticed about Jessica's passage was that she took good care not to linger in the vicinity of the modest millinery and haberdashery shop run by her stepdaughter. Ironic, he thought, since Ellen's business was one place that could normally be counted on to draw the respectable wives of visiting ranchers.

A pair of roughnecks lurched out through the batwings of the Lucky Horseshoe saloon. Comings and goings in Cedar City were something Kemp made it his business to keep track of. This pair were itinerants, part of a crew of trail herders who'd ridden in yesterday, red, sweating and dusty from driving a four-hundred-head bunch of three-year-old beeves to the cattle pens at the railyard.

The cowpunchers had collected their pay and, as was the wont of their kind, had done the rounds of the town's pleasure spots ever since, whooping it up in all the ways denied them on a hard, late-summer drive.

To some townsfolk these hombres were riff-raff. They frowned on their animal lusts even as they catered to their wants and helped thin the fat green rolls tucked in the pockets of their weather-faded Levis.

But Kemp recognised that they were part of the town's lifeblood.

He never forgot the place's history. Cedar Crossing had been a small, isolated, dead place -- just a dozen log huts -- before a land speculator and an entrepreneurial liquor dealer had bought up the district and sold it off in small parcels to hopeful settlers enticed by the promoters' optimism, expressed in the settlement's renaming as Cedar City.

The new owners moved in and a farming community began to develop. Then local businessmen induced a railroad company to extend its line to the town, to realise an ambition to cash in on the lucrative cattle trade. The town boomed after the fashion of others of its like.

In the wake of the free-spending, footloose cowboys came their predators: the hucksters, the gamblers, the ladies of the night (and all other hours), road agents, horse thieves, cattle rustlers . . .

And dismayed respectable citizens raised an outcry that needed the calming of a strong and diligent lawman. The job had fallen to Ross Kemp, who'd built a reputation for being tough and fair.

Because of the kind of man he was, keeping rowdy cowpokes in line was among the least onerous of his chores. Kemp didn't miss much that went on in Cedar City, though this pair of out-of-town drunks, weaving now along the sidewalk, might have seemed beneath the notice of a busy peace officer.

Kemp's instant wariness, he allowed, had more to do with the fact that in their path stood the bounteously-endowed and daringly-attired Jessica Blackwood. A man with any sort of intuition didn't need a fortune teller to prophesy the set-up augured trouble.

The first hint was an incredulous slackness in the trail drovers' jaws, an added glazing of their eyes. Kemp buckled on his gunbelt and got moving.

"Gawd! She ain't real, pard -- she can't be," the biggest of the two drunks slurred. He tipped back the stetson on his simian, black-bristled brow and blinked.

His companion, leaner and with a wolfish cast to his eyes, growled crudely. "Hey, sister, come a li'le closer, will yuh? My amigo figgers yuh ain't nothin but a mirage!" He guffawed and caught at her wrist with a horny hand. "Jest lemme put a kiss on them luscious lips an' I kin tell Max yuh's all solid flesh!"

Jessica wrenched her arm free and retreated backwards into the space between a rack of women's dresses and the plank wall-cladding of Baker's Mercantile.

"Get your filthy paw off me!" she jerked out in indignant disbelief at the man's effrontery. "My husband will kill you!"

But her accoster was undeterred. He squeezed after her, trapping her against the store wall and imposing his outspread, groping hands over her prominent breasts, rubbing the slippery black satin over swelling nipples.

She squirmed and sobbed. His big partner Max giggled -- a high-pitched, incongruous sound like a schoolgirl would make, till it was cut off by a hiccuping belch. "Save a handful fer me, Lew!"

"You leave me alone, you -- you beast!" Jessica stormed. The deeper breath this forced her to draw was tainted with the rank odour of spirits and sour gastric juices emanating from her tormentors.

That was when Ross Kemp made the scene.

"Lay off, you lousy bums!" he snapped. "The place for you's the calaboose!"

He grabbed Max by the shirt collar and big as he was flung him out of his way.

Max tottered unsteadily on his high-heeled riding boots, then reeled against the dress rack. He sat down heavily on the walk, pulling the display on top of him in a suffocating rainbow cascade of cottons and silks.

Lew whirled round in a crouch, hand clawing for the holstered Colt at his right hip. "Why, you god-damned interferin' bast--!"

His cussing ended in a yelp; Kemp's booted toe had sent the shooting iron spinning from his grip out into the street and left his fingers curling uselessly with knuckle-whitening pain.

Max scrabbled free of his fabric bonds. He wasn't so drunk any more. Anger and his spine-jarring fall had evacuated some of the alcohol fumes from his brain.

A gathering audience saw Max go for his gun and gasped a warning to Kemp.

"Behind yuh, Ross!" one man found the presence to cry hastily.

Kemp saw he was too late to stop the other man's draw. He plunged sideways like a massive oak that had been suddenly felled. And his big right fist closed at the same time on the butt of his own Colt.

He hit the boards with a crash that spectators would afterwards swear rocked the awning supports. A deafening shot from Max's gun fanned over his head and whistled out across the emptiness of the main drag.

He rolled like a mountain cat. His Colt left the smooth leather. A finger tripped the hammer onto a cartridge -- and a bullet sped to its mark. At such close range, he could scarcely miss the target. But he hit bullseye, too, the lead smacking deformingly into the iron of Max's weapon.

Disarmed, Max staggered back, agape at the limpness of his broken wrist. He was out of the fight.

But Lew wasn't. He was maddened by drink and frustrated lust. His wolfish face contorted in a snarl of fury, he whipped out a Bowie knife. It was a full, vicious fifteen inches long, the glistening blade sharpened on both sides from the curve to the pointed tip, and it had a handguard of brass to assist its handler to drive home a murderous thrust.

Any lesser man would have been intimidated, but Kemp leaped to his feet, wading in fast and furious.

It all happened in split seconds before the echoes of the gunshots died or the acrid whisps of burnt gunpowder cleared. Kemp seized the barrel of his smoking Colt in his left hand and swung it like a club.

The sharp Bowie knife chipped a deep notch in the gun's walnut butt and burred its edge on the steel frame, but the deadly blade was smashed from Lew's hand. Next instant, Kemp's big right fist slammed into Lew's jaw.

Thunk! The would-be molester's teeth crunched together with an audible snap and his eyes rolled. He fell in a rag-doll heap at Kemp's feet.

"That's larnin' 'em, Ross!" Alec Tucker said, rushing up to lend a hand no longer needed. "That's larnin' 'em good!"

Jessica looked straight at Kemp across the prone man, a gamut of emotions running through the contours of her even features. Her full red lips quivered with the last traces of fear, her cheeks gained new colour that replaced the whiteness of terror and disgust. Then she became quite still, drawing herself up with a renewed air of her majesty, and her amber eyes sparkled with satisfaction and unquenchable mischief.

She was the centre of Sheriff Ross Kemp's attention. It was an achievement she'd often desired but never accomplished. Why, the man paid more attention to that foal-like daughter of her husband! Ellen let him pay her his chaste affection like some big brother she'd never had; was too silly and inexperienced to whet the virile man's appetite for more.

"I'm truly sorry about this, ma'am," Kemp said, respectfully dipping his head. "Do you want to lay a complaint against these galoots?"

"Oh, Mr Kemp, thank you so much!" she gushed breathlessly. "You were simply magnificent -- " She broke off, never getting to answer his question.

A murmur had risen from the onlookers and they broke their circle. Boyd Blackwood, his face congested with fury, shouldered his way through their rubbernecking ranks.

CHAPTER TWO

Unfair Gunplay

The wealthy rancher took in the tableau with sharp eyes that were clouded with passion.

"The dirty coyotes!" he snarled from between clenched teeth. "I'm told they had you baled up, my dear . . . are you hurt?"

Kemp, like most everyone else, knew that Boyd Blackwood doted on Jessica. Her every wish was his command, and despite her unbridled coquetry and self-exhibition it would have been a brave man who would have dared to run foul of his jealousy. He was a power in the country and could afford the indulgence of his temper.

His wife shook her head and smiled with little-girl weakness.

"Not much, Boyd darling," she said. "In point of fact, it was hardly anything at all. Sheriff Kemp got here just in time." She threw the lawman a brief but different smile, lowering her lids.

Blackwood grunted and tilted his head on his short, thick neck. His jaw jutted grimly and his lips thinned into a grim line.

"I don't take kindly to hoodlums roaming Main Street, Kemp. I shall raise this matter with my friend Judge Ward. What have you got to say about that?"

Kemp bristled. The circuit judge Franklin Ward was political boss of the county and chairman of the Board of Commissioners -- in effect, Kemp's overseer.

"There'll be no need to take that tone, Mr Blackwood sir," he said levelly, keeping his own feelings in check. He thrust his Colt back into its holster and gestured a strong open hand toward Max nursing his busted wrist and Lew groaning his way back to consciousness.

"The fellers

were liquored up, and now I guess they know they're licked likewise! Your wife states she's unharmed. With her leave, I'll give 'em till sundown to get out of town."

Blackwood sneered at him. "You will, will you?" His thin lips writhed with barely controlled emotion, but what came next took Kemp totally by surprise.

"I say that ain't enough!"

The rancher whipped a revolver from its concealment under the tails of his superfine broadcloth coat. Without warning, he swung the weapon on Max and fired a heavy, bone-smashing .45 slug into the big puncher's right kneecap.

The violence of the crashing shot, the gasp of the crowd and Max's agonised scream were a single peal of horror succeeded by a moment of awesome silence.

Everyone watched Max crumple backwards and tumble off the sidewalk into the dust. New pain pierced the fog of his fuddled wits. He moaned piteously.

Kemp recovered first. The bullying boss of the Double-B didn't scare him any when it came to seeing fair play in Cedar City. No one did.

It was the rancher's turn to be surprised. Kemp wrenched the warm revolver out the older man's grasp with scant regard for his own safety.

"Blast it all, Blackwood! There ain't no call for more shooting. You're taking advantage of disarmed and beaten men, and the law won't allow it. Leastwise, not around here it won't. I'm lifting this firearm till you've cooled off."

He tucked the confiscated gun in his belt.

Blackwood exploded. "Why, you insolent whelp! Give that gun straight back here and I'll fill your half-baked legal opinions full of holes!"

An excited b

uzz ran round the crowd, but Kemp turned his back on Blackwood and pointed to Lew, who was staggering to his feet.

"Alec," Kemp addressed his deputy, "help this man get his pardner to the sawbones' surgery, will you?"

Blackwood shook his clenched fist at the sheriff's back. "This ain't over yet, not by a damned sight!" he blustered. "No man crosses me and gets away with it. You'll regret this afternoon all your born days, I tell you!"

Jessica laid a restraining hand on his arm, and her touch seemed to restore a measure of his sanity. "Leave it, darling. Let's go home," she cooed. "You mustn't let the man upset you so. Not in front of a crowd anyhow."

Blackwood surveyed the engrossed witnesses to his discomfiture, withering them with his furious glare.

"Very well, Jessica," he then mumbled harshly to her alone. "But Kemp will pay for this humiliation, I promise!"

He stumped away in the direction of the livery barn, not looking back, confident in the expectation that his glamorous young wife would follow.

She did. But unlike him she spared a long look over her shoulder as she departed.

Her eyes met Kemp's and she shrugged. His eyes, which she knew were blue and clear, narrowed. But he nodded as t

hough he approved of her success in advocating a retreat.

Jessica gave him her most alluring smile, gratified that he'd observed her intervention to spare him further immediate trouble; daring to think that she might have started to thaw his customary coolness toward her. He was such a red-blooded, physically powerful man, as he'd just so capably demonstrated, that it was a great shame he'd never favoured her with his regard.

She wanted Ross Kemp to be interested in her, to desire her, like other men did. In his case, she might even be prepared to seek out the opportunity to reciprocate intimately. The idea of an illicit relationship thrilled her. Because of her nature, and because she was not a virgin, she recognised that her quickened pulses were another of her body's private but unmistakable signs of response to the aura of vital maleness which emanated from him.

She had her sexual needs -- they were at least as strong as her liking for knocked-dead admiration and dumb adulation -- and experience told her the means to satisfy those needs were sadly diminished in a husband past middle age. The chemistry between her and Boyd Blackwood was inclined to produce a splutter where she sought the exciting spark of a strong reaction.

So her amber eyes hopefully flashed Kemp her most provocative expression. It was a challenging look that said explicitly, "Come and take me if you can."

* * *

The sheriff had not been the only person watching with attentive interest the passing parade on the Main Street of Cedar City.

Orson Rymer was a stranger in town. His flashily-suited form was slumped with every appearance of indolence in a canvas chair on the gallery of the Cedar City House hotel. The heels of his highly polished, handmade boots were propped on the gallery railing; a flat-topped sombrero was tilted deceptively over his alert obsidian eyes. Rings glittered on the long, immaculately manicured fingers that drummed easily on the wooden arms of the chair. On the low table at his side, part of a pack of crisp new playing cards was spread in an abandoned game of solitaire, and a cold green bottle, misted by the heat, and a tall glass stood ready to slake his afternoon thirst.

When Jessica Blackwood stepped into his line of vision, hips swinging, Rymer's astonishment was virtually invisible. The casual tap of his supple fingers missed a beat. His hidden eyes widened beneath the hat brim. And that was all.

Jessica!

It had to be her -- all woman as ever and typically glorying in it. She'd had no twin he'd heard of, and could a female such as her have so exact a double? Jessica, he'd been one of many to appreciate, was a unique specimen.

A waiter passed, clearing tables. Rymer plucked at his cuff.

"Who is that woman?" he asked in a cool, disinterested drawl, nodding his head in her direction.

The waiter looked across the street, and sucked his breath beneath his teeth with a whistling sound. He turned back and gave Rymer a lopsided, knowing grin.

"Fancy baggage, ain't she, suh? But you'd better keep your eyes off."

"How's that then?"

"Waal, suh, rumour has it she's no better than she oughta be, but thet thar's Mrs Jessica Blackwood, who's married to the richest rancher hereabouts -- an' mebbe the touchiest sonofabitch to boot."

"Hmm . . ." said Rymer, settling back again in his chair as though he was giving this deliberate consideration. "A sassy little piece, I'd say, but I'll keep what you say in mind. Meanwhile, I guess this Blackwood jasper can't stop me looking and thinking."

"Thet's right enough. Lord knows, I reck'n she's a witch to draw a man like she does," the waiter said virtuously and shuffled off on his chores.

Rymer continued his observations. Bar Ross Kemp, he was the first fascinated member of the audience that witnessed Jessica's confrontation with the two drunken trail herders.

His imagination ran riot when Lew crowded her behind the dress rack. But he knew he could see all he needed to from his inconspicuous vantage point on the hotel gallery and he made no move to rescue Jessica from her hassling by the hardcases. He didn't so much as raise an admonitory yell. Actually, a lewd chuckle twitched the too-full lips beneath the thin black line of his rakish moustache. The picturing of Jessica's manhandling sent a trickle of saliva drooling from the corner of his mouth.

Voyeurism gave way to headier entertainment when the sheriff took a masterly hand and six-guns fired and a knife flashed shortly in the sun.

The boorish and needless intervention by the proud and prosperous-looking gent he gathered to be the rancher Blackwood gave Rymer cause for more serious reflection.

Nor did he miss the subtle hints communicated by the eye contacts made between Jessica and the sheriff: appreciation and invitation on the one part, an edgy reserve on the other. It was part of Rymer's trade at the gaming tables to read body language, and though this case was something else it had its points of similiarity.

In particular, Rymer noted Jessica's last look of reluctant parting and patently amorous promise.

"God damn it!" he affirmed to himself. "She's set her sights on the tinbadge for sure. He's just the macho type she'd pick for a roll in the hay."

One of Rymer's personal maxims was "You can't keep a good man down." Nor, in Jessica's case, he thought, a bad woman either!

It was a delicious situation, coming across her here in such promising circumstances. A stroke of luck the like of which hadn't come his way in many a moon. He saw the opportunity for immense profit if this Blackwood was as wealthy and jealous as his reputation and recent appearances suggested.

Jessica would have to be apprised of his presence and brought to an appreciation of her dependence on his goodwill. But first he'd need to do some groundwork.

That evening, Rymer smoothly engaged the gossipy night clerk who manned the hotel lobby in lengthy conversation, after which he began to lay plans.

* * *

Business was brisk at the Lucky Horseshoe. When Ross Kemp pushed in shoulder to shoulder with Alec Tucker, there was standing room only in the saloon. It was the end of the month and payday for many of the cowhands working the spreads around Cedar City.

An especially rowdy bunch of riders had just arrived in town in a cloud of dust, blazing off guns into the air as they swept along the main drag. The sheriff decided to keep an eye on their progress into their favoured watering-hole. "That pack of howling hyenas ain't starting trouble in this neck of the woods," he told Tucker.

Kemp cast an appraising look about the lamplit, smoke-filled room. The whooping crew, once through the batwings, had quietened themselves down somewhat. Its members returned his approving nod with sardonic amusement, knowing from old he

would stand no nonsense but that any dealings he might be obliged to have with them would be scrupulously fair.

"Set 'em up, pop!" one waddie cried to the ageing barkeep. "We're here to have fun!"

The saloonkeeper himself glided his portly bulk along behind the counter to serve the two peace officers personally. "What'll it be, gents? On the house, of course . . ."

Kemp and Tucker settled for beers. While Kemp sipped the brew, he took in the earnest business taking place at a poker table in a far corner beyond the general hubbub. He frowned over the frothy head brimming his glass.

Orson Rymer was one of the players. The dapper visitor was resplendent in a black Prince Albert, a fancy vest with mother-of-pearl buttons, and a string tie. He studied his cards speculatively and inhaled deeply the smoke of a long, thin cheroot.

"You know, Alec," Kemp confided, "that man Rymer bothers me some."

Kemp had kept Ryner under his discreet surveillance since soon after he'd arrived in Cedar City. Like always, he'd made it his business to check up on a stranger in town.

"Why should a professional gambler want to hang around a small town like this for a month and more?" he went on. "Don't seem natural."

"Dunno, boss, but he's a wizard with the pasteboards. He's purely rakin' in the dinero over there." Tucker threw a meaningful look out of the corner of his eye at the pile of coin and bills stacking up in front of Rymer.

Kemp shook his head. "It d

oesn't figure . . . And another thing was how he left town for several days a couple of weeks back but didn't give up his hotel room."

"He had business someplace else . . . ? I hear he drifted down from Colorado."

"Come to think of it, that probably is where he snuck off to. But what kind of business would he have to go to? And what was bringing him back? He ain't the kind that lives by honest labour. He's the lone wolf living on his wits and unscrupulous ways. I seen 'em before, Alec. A smooth way with ladies and businessfolk -- not to forget a quick hand with the cards and eventually a gun!"

Deputy Tucker gave an uneasy sigh.

"The man's done nothin' we kin hold agi'nst him yet, Ross. As it stands, we'll jest have to watch and wait."

CHAPTER THREE

Ellen

Orson Rymer permitted himself a brief smile of satisfaction and let the cheroot smoke trickle from his flared nostrils. Kemp's troubled vigilance sharpened.

The lawmen's beer glasses had been drained and in that interval a build-up of tension from the corner poker table had spread tentacles through the saloon. The noise level fell back to a hum of avid interest. Kemp could now hear the murmur of

voices, the chink of coin and the soft flipping of the cards on the felt as the hands were dealt.

The stakes were climbing mighty high. Kemp marked a certain, strained nerviness about the thin-shouldered man who had his back to the room, across the green-topped table from the flashily dressed gambler. The way he sat was eloquent. He was losing heavily and couldn't afford to.

Kemp turned to the counter and switched his eyes to the same scene reflected in the ceiling-high backbar mirror. "Jeremiah McClay, ain't it?" he quietly asked his deputy.

Tucker nodded. "The Snake hisself," he confirmed. "But he's outa his class this time. If he turns his head ag'in, yuh'll see his ugly face gawn as pale as a fish's belly."

McClay exulted in the nickname Snake because he believed it a tribute to his striking swiftness in the drawing of a handgun and the shuffling of a pack of cards. He saw himself as a swell sport and a real sharp bucko. In truth, he was a fiddle-foot cowhand currently enlisted, to Kemp's disgust, on the Double-B payroll.

"The bum must've gone beyond his limit. He's writing IOUs to stay in the game," Kemp informed Tucker, keeping tabs in the mirror.

One of the other three players suddenly pushed back his chair after betting heavily and losing. "That's my lot, gents. Yuh won't mind my pullin' out after I've fattened the pot, will yuh?"

"Count me out, too," the man on his right said with a philosophic shrug.

Rymer's dark eyes caught and held McClay's shifty gaze. "I reckon the game's over, Mr McClay." He took up one of the cowpoke's pencil-scrawled notes in his beringed fingers and waved it delicately. "I think you'd have trouble raising enough to call me. There's already a little matter of two hundred thirty-some dollars outstanding . . ."

Tucker nudged Kemp. "Thet's more'n five months o' McClay's pay!" he whispered.

"Yeah," McClay

growled truculently. "Yuh offered to accept notes I writ, didn't yuh? I never know'd a run ag'inst me like it. It damnwell beats the law of averages. I was suckered!"

A cynical smile played around Rymer's fleshy lips. "The luck of the cards, Mr McClay. But there's no call for harsh words between friends and gentlemen. I suggest we discuss the business privately. Could you do me the favour of stepping across to my room at the Cedar City House?"

Both men left soon after, separately, Rymer delaying his departure to toss down a double measure of bourbon at the bar.

Snake McClay went with a swagger. He wasn't a man to crawl, ever, though this evening's experience had been a galling one, Kemp divined.

A stringy, monkey-faced little runt probably in his late twenties, McClay was a hard-bitten, vindictive sort of man, proud and stubborn. He had cold grey eyes, customarily blank as though masking secret thoughts. Prematurely balding, a fringe of lank hair surrounded a patch of flaky-skinned scalp while he hadn't shaved in several days and stubble sprouted on his chin, giving it a dirty look.

At the batwings he paused to give his Double-B pards a surly wave. "See yuh later, boys!"

"He ain't exactly tuckin' his tail an' runnin'," Tucker commented, his tone full of contempt.

Kemp concurred gruffly. He had the sneaking suspicion that a trap had been set and sprung. But who was the victim?

McClay had no

money, nor any prospect of it. It looked very much like the gambler was going to have to accept that the cowpoke's debt to him could only be written off. At a guess, they would come to an "arrangement" behind closed doors that would jeopardise the reputation of neither.

But Kemp had his misgivings. He told himself to quit being fanciful, yet went on trying to make it add up more satisfactorily in the light of them.

Next morning, acting on an impulse, he sent off an enquiry by wire to the state capital.

* * *

Ellen Blackwood paused under the simple sign that said "Ellen" above the door of a modest millinery and haberdashery shop just off Main Street and fumbled in her purse for the key.

She wasn't by nature a fumbling person. A quality of inherent repose usually lent a grace to her every movement. But this moment she was angry. She'd just returned to her home, which was at the back of the shop, from a visit to her father's big rock-and-adobe ranch house on the Double-B.

She wore a pearl-grey sombrero, yellow bandana, a light flannel shirt -- it might have been called mannish except the snug fit did nothing to disguise delectable curves -- and a divided corduroy riding skirt.

Fiercely independent though only nineteen, Ellen abhorred anything that might be construed as meddling in her private affairs. And it was this that had put her out of countenance.

Bringing the key finally to light, the girl thrust it into the lock and let herself in. A bell above tinkled briefly before she closed the door and swept across the shop and behind the heavy tapestry drapes that partitioned off her living quarters.

Here she flung off the sombrero. loosing the pendant ringlets of her golden hair, so that they bounced lustrously in the morning sunlight shafting through a rear window. She also quickly removed the shirt and skirt, dusty from the trail. Tipping water from a pitcher into the fine blue chinaware bowl on the washstand, she quickly sluiced face, neck, hands and arms to freshen up before putting on a cool gingham dress that, though she wasn't conscious of it, complemented the unbroken bloom of her youth.

All the while her head was filled with images of Sheriff Ross Kemp. She'd go to hell before she'd do what her father had told her!

When she returned to open up the shop, fate had it that the first person she should see passing by was Kemp. Without hesitation, she flung open the door. A glad cry of surprise burst from her lips.

"Mr Kemp! Oh, Mr Kemp," she called, "I have to speak to you!"

Raising his hat, and his eyebrows, too, Kemp broke his measured stroll. "Why, Miss Ellen, what is it? You look in a fair lather about something . . ."

Ellen's flushed cheeks took on a still deeper hue as he came over and followed her into the little shop. His powerful frame seemed to fill all the available space between shelves packed with hatboxes, the colourful bolts of cloth and spools of yarn and thread.

"Come and sit yourself down a moment, if you please, Mr Kemp. There's something I wish to tell you."

Kemp was intrigued and slightly perturbed. Ellen was not a girl to get in a fuss about nothing. He weaved an agile path between two glass-fronted showcases containing needles, buttons, ribbons and other feminine necessities to where a small cedarwood table and two chairs completed the furnishings.

"It's about my father, Mr Kemp. I rode out to the home lot today to visit him."

The sheriff placed his hat on the table and pulled out a chair for his host. "He was well, I trust."

Kemp knew that after

Ellen's refusal to carry on living under the same roof as her glamorous stepmother Jessica, Boyd Blackwood had reluctantly agreed to let his daughter come to town and had provided the capital to set up her business.

Ellen was a competent young woman. The shop had prospered, its young operator displaying all her father's business flair coupled with an appealing freshness and warmth. But though Kemp believed Ellen had hidden reserves of quiet fortitude, he realised there must be times she regretted the abrupt and untimely uprooting from her childhood environment.

Boyd Blackwood seemed insensitive to the oddity of the situation. He doted on his young second wife to the extent that it left blind spots in his judgement. Luckily, in this instance, the result was turning out well enough. Or so it had seemed.

"Yes, my father was in his usual robust health," Ellen said, though with an absence of pleasure. "But I happened to -- er -- mention your name, and he flew into the most fearful rage."

Kemp frowned. "I guess he hasn't gotten over my taking his revolver off him. That was a month back and he hasn't reclaimed it yet. Too proud, maybe."

Ellen shook her head nervously and dropped her eyes, as though ashamed to speak out further.

"No, it's more than that, I fear. He said he has evidence to break you, and he vowed to do just that! He was so passionate about it . . . like he is usually only when something has happened involving Jessica."

Kemp patted Ellen's slim hand, thinking absently how smooth the skin was, like the texture of rose petals.

"We mustn't let it worry us. I don't hold your father's follies against you. We can still be good friends."

Ellen's soft hazel eyes flew wide and shining. "Oh, but we can't!" she cried. "He insists that after I've advised you of his intentions I'm to have nothing more to do with you!"

She didn't dare to say that she would

willingly defy this edict.

Kemp was stunned by the ultimatum. "That sounds crazy, Miss Ellen. He can't intimidate a law officer. Wasn't he any more explicit about what's bugging him?"

Ellen shook her golden curls. "No, he was ridiculously secretive. That is, he said it was nothing fit to be heard by young ears, but that you would understand and could expect to hear from him very soon."

Kemp tried to make light of the mystery. "Aw, well, your pa has done some strange things before," he said with a laugh. "Like taking on that pasty-faced saddle-bum Jeremiah McClay. That I never did understand."

"Ugh! Snake McClay! Why do you mention the odious man?"

Kemp told her briefly how the Double-B cow-waddie had ostensibly signed away the equivalent of several months' earnings to the man called Orson Rymer, who was clearly a professional gambler and seemed to have taken up residence at the Cedar City House.

"McClay turned up in the weeks after dad returned from Colorado with Jessica," Ellen remembered, slightly wrinkling her smooth brow. "It was after the fall roundup. He said he was riding the grub line."

Kemp understood that she meant McClay was resorting to the time-honoured cowboy custom of riding from ranch to ranch, taking advantage of typical rancher hospitality, fulfilling any odd jobs that cropped up, like fence building.

"He was a real mean customer," the girl continued, "and I hated the way he used to leer at me and follow me with those cold eyes of his when he t

hought I didn't know he was around. If he ever had a message to bring, or a chore to do around the house, he'd try to find an excuse to touch me, too. It was horrible. He gave me the shudders, and I think he knew I despised him."

The sheriff's big hands clenched involuntarily into fists. A brooding light came into his blue eyes.

"How did he make out with the rest of the crew?" he asked, his tone gruff.

"Not very well, I think. He'd spend most of his spare time in the yard behind the bunkhouse, practising his draw, shooting at old cans for targets. It was the thing he was best at and most proud of. He got the boys to call him `Snake', but I was amazed when father took him on full-time. Looking back to those early days of his marriage to Jessica, I think his judgement was impaired; he was besotted with the new bride."

Kemp wasn't reassured by Ellen's summing-up of the unattractive little amateur gunman.

"Well, now McClay is in debt to this Rymer dude, and when no-goods need dinero bad, it starts to worry me what they might get up to," he mused.

After a moment's frowning reflection, Ellen licked her shell-pink lips. She said quickly, "I don't know that I should mention it, because it's probably of no importance, but by an uncommon coincidence I saw today this other man you mention -- this Orson Rymer . . ."

"Oh?" Kemp prompted gravely, sensing more was to follow. "I rode back from the Double-B through the hills, past the old Holyoak place. And behind the ruins of the homestead I saw the strangest -- er -- meeting." A blush crept to the roots of her hair. "I didn't mean to pry and I pulled back into the brush before they saw me, but I recognised the people instantly. How could I not? One was my stepmother, Mr Kemp, and the other was Orson Rymer."

A low chuckle escaped Kemp's lips.

"I guess it's no secret to anybody Jessica draws all kinds of admirers," he drawled quietly. "Leastways, to anybody but Boyd Blackwood. Jessica must be a loco fool if she thinks she can cheat on your father, but that isn't our problem."

Ellen took an oddly d

elicious comfort from the way he emphasised the word "our". Did it mean this strong, thoughtful man was prepared to share her other concerns?

Kemp was not as shocked as Ellen to learn that Jessica had kept an apparent tryst with the smooth tinhorn. The man had a suave charm and the even-featured looks women might construe as handsome. Yes, Rymer was a lady's man all right, and the type who wouldn't hesitate to take his pleasure from any chances arising.

Kemp saw no more to it than that.

And if there was a secret liaison, it could explain Rymer's continued dalliance in town, though Kemp somehow couldn't see the gambler letting his heart rule his head. He could better imagine him being prepared and able to pay for his fun in the parlour-houses of Virginia City, Nevada, or Leadville, Colorado.

Kemp took his leave. "Adios, Miss Ellen. Don't worry about your father now. His bark is surely worse than his bite."

Ellen gulped, unable to confess that amidst the unpleasantness she was more worried for him than her father. But she managed to shape her sensitive mouth into a smile.

"Look after yourself, Mr Kemp, won't you?"

* * *

The talk of Snake McClay had reminded Ross Kemp of the enquiry he'd sent over the wire to the capital. He strolled down t

o the telegraph office at the railroad depot.

The shirtsleeved operator was busy tapping out a message on the key of his apparatus, his finger swiftly and nimbly translating the words into morse code.

"Be right with you, sheriff," he called pleasantly. "Got a message for you not an hour ago."

Finishing, the man turned to a row of pigeonholes on the wall of his cramped office and brought over to the window a message form filled out with neat block capitals.

Kemp read, and a gleam of satisfaction brightened his eyes. The territorial officials had done him proud, running down the facts on Jeremiah McClay.

"Well, my hunch was right," he muttered to himself. "Our friend Snake was previously a jailbird. I always did think he turned up here with a prison pallor!"

McClay had been convicted for stage robbery and attempted murder and had served a seven-year sentence.

It was also noted McClay had been suspected of rape, but his shocked victim had been too deeply mortified to testify.

CHAPTER FOUR

Rancher's Rampage

Dusk had settled over Cedar City and was deepening into night. A crisp breeze skipped playfully down Main Street, funnelled by the false fronts of the wooden buildings. It swept the dust under the boardwalks in eddies and worried a flapping news-sheet into erratic flight.

Cooling timbers creaked and crickets chirped in a continuous chorus that would have been remarked only if it had been suddenly to end. Somewhere in the empty hills, way beyond the boundaries of settlement, a coyote howled mournfully at the rising moon.

It had all the makings of a quiet, midweek night in town.

Late afternoon, Boyd Blackwood had ridden in alone on a steeldust roan with white markings that dramatically set it apart from most other mounts tethered at the hitching rails.

The rancher was in a black mood. His first call had been made on lawyer Isaac Siebert, where he deposited a document. It was on a roll of thick, parchment-like paper and was tied with red tape. He'd then stumped back into town.

A hostler, lounging on a bale of hay at the yawning entrance to the livery barn, noted he was untypically indecisive in his movements, like a man shattered by bad news -- a death in the family perhaps. But the prosperous rancher wasn't a man approachable by his inferiors, which is how he would have regarded most of the town's working people.

His face set in hard planes, Blackwood ultimately directed his heavy footsteps to the sheriff's office.

Alec Tucker put down a dime novel and scrambled to his feet when Blackwood thrust open the door.

"Mr Blackwood! Is there somethin' I kin do fer yuh, sir?"

Blackwood's flinty eyes flicked round the office.

"No, there ain't, Mr Deputy! Where's Ross Kemp?"

"He went outa

town fer the county clerk. Some small argument arisin' over the registerin' of a brand. If 'n it's about your gun, mebbe I kin help."

"Blast the gun! I want Kemp! Tell him I'll be back!"

Blackwood had stormed out and later enquiries established he'd started at one end of town and worked his way to the other, stopping at every saloon on the way. By nightfall, he was well liquored up.

Barkeeps reported he wasn't good for business, apart from the drinks he morosely ordered for himself. He was rude and peremptory and glowered at other patrons. Attempts at polite conversation with him were cut dead. He just nursed his drinks and stared into empty space.

Around about nine, Blackwood lurched out through the batwings of the Lucky Horseshoe. For a moment, he stood swaying in the pool of light that spilled out onto the porch.

"K-Kemp!" he grated.

Then, getting his bearings, he stumbled away into the darkness, his boots clumping echoingly on the planks of the sidewalk.

* * *

Ross Kemp had long since returned to town and was settled behind his desk completing paperwork preparatory to turning in for what he confidently expected to be an early night. The blankets were already unfolded on the cot at the back of his office.

A fist pounded on the frosted-glass pane in the door and the doorknob rattled.

"Open up, sheriff! Open up!" The voice was slurred, unrecognisable.

The caller hammered again and Ross feared the tough glass might break. "All right, I'm coming! Hang on, will you?"

The sheriff's relaxed muscles jerked into action and his big frame uncoiled like a tense spring, taking him across to the door where he shot back the bolts and freed the latch.

The door was instantly shoved into his face.

"Say, what is -- ?"

Blackwood burst into the office.

"So y' here this time," he sneered. "Been out chasing more skirt all afternoon, I guess!"

"Blackwood! What kind of crack is that, might I ask?"

The rancher took several tottering steps across the room and leaned heavily on the desk.

"Huh!" he snorted. "Don't come the innocent with me -- you dirty, wife-thieving bastard!"

Kemp shook his head as though he wasn't hearing properly. Alec Tucker had warned him Blackwood was on the warpath, but he'd

had no idea why.

"Now let's get this aright," he said incredulously. "Are you accusing me of taking liberties with some man's wife?"

Blackwood jigged with rage. "With my wife, damn your eyes!" he roared.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mr Blackwood." Ross smelt the sweet-sour odour of alcohol emanating from his irate visitor. "I suggest you've been drinking overmuch and the liquor has run away with your tongue."

"You insolent skunk!" Blackwood rasped venomously. "Ain't no use denying it. I seen the secret notes you've been slipping Jessica. All the more, I know you've been acting like you were sweet on that filly of mine, Ellen. That was just a blind. Real devious business -- and heartlessly misleading a young, inexperienced gal! But I'm gonna expose you to Judge Ward. You'll be disgraced and slung out of office!"

"This is rot. I've writ no notes . . ." Kemp said wonderingly.

"You have so! And you were a goddamned fool initialling 'em. So now I've got you where I want you, Mr Bossy Sheriff!"

The hurled, liquor-thickened retort preceded a bull-like rush.

Kemp sidestepped and Blackwood's careering fist grazed past his ear.

With a cry of drunken wrath, the thick-set cattleman went staggering on till he was bought up by a chair which thudded back into the adobe rear wall releasing a trickling shower of dusty particles.

Blackwood was enraged still further. Stooping, he picked up the chair in one hand and swung it murderously at Kemp's head.

Kemp ducked. T

he chair toppled a hatstand, both pieces of furniture smashing splinteringly to the floor.

With another bellow, Blackwood came lunging forward again, fists like hams flailing.

Kemp copped a ringing blow to the side of the head. "Cut it out, Blackwood -- or you'll pay dearly!" he rapped.

But the rancher had worked himself up till he was insensible to warning. He took another swing at Kemp's jaw.

"You've asked for it, Blackwood," Kemp grunted, bunching his own big fists. He stepped in under the other man's right arm and lammed his punch wrist-deep into his drink-bloated belly.

An almighty belch ripped from Blackwood's snarling lips and he doubled up.

Kemp was almost overcome by the sickly gush of breath, but he followed through. His left shot in a rapid arc to Blackwood's jaw, rocking him back on wobbly legs.

But Blackwood was made of strong stuff. He recovered to croak an obscenity. "No man does that to me!" Then with unexpected swiftness, he shot out a booted foot.

Crunk! One hardened square toecap of a pair of thirty-dollar Justins struck Kemp paralysingly on his unguarded shinbone. He lost his balance, falling against the desk.

Blackwood immediately closed in, to follow up his new advantage. He landed a heavy blow, splitting the skin over the bone above Kemp's left eye socket. Blood welled and trickled, spattering the sheriff's star-adorned vest.

Kemp weaved, dodging Blackwood's merciless but unscientific onslaught. He pivoted on the heel of his good foot and the next punch he delivered was a telling one.

A mist of blood

blurred his vision and his smashing fist caught Blackwood's plunging form on the nape of the neck.

It was a rabbit-punch which, if delivered with more force, might well have lethally snapped the top of Blackwood's spine.

As it was, it put him face-first on the floorboards, barely conscious, like a pole-axed steer, his stocky arms now limp and outflung.

The office was all at once still and silent, except for the sound of Kemp's own ragged breathing. He was panting from exertion and a hundred bruising pains.

He yanked open a drawer and reached in unsteadily for a pair of handcuffs. Checking that the key was on the ring at his belt, he pulled Blackwood's wrists together and manacled them. Then he rolled the battered man onto his back and propped him up against the desk.

Kemp slumped into his big swivel chair and mopped at the blood still oozing from the cut over his eye.

"Drunk! He must've been drunk," he murmured. "But what was all that stuff about me writing notes to Jessica? I don't get it . . ."

Fooling around with the teasing dark temptress would make about as much sense as playing with a stick of unstable kieselguhr dynamite.

It suddenly struck Kemp with almost physical force that this whole sorry set-up was going to embarrass and upset Ellen Blackwood. His blood boiled at the thought. For some reason, he felt that was something he had to move heaven and earth if necessary to prevent. Judging by the state of him, old man Blackwood had been drinking up large all over town. Which would have gotten tongues wagging aplenty, even if he hadn't already blurted out his crazy accusa

tions in the Cedar City saloons.

"What a mess," he groaned. "Mebbe Blackwood will make more sense when he's recovered from his drinking jag. Hell, I can't figure it out at all. But I don't fancy another round with the hombre."

Kemp pulled out his Durham sack and pondered his options while he built a smoke. It wasn't easy wearing the badge they voted you to have, and Blackwood was a bad man to buck. But a man had to live with something a lot more important than the good opinion of influential electors. He had to live with his conscience.

He scraped a lucifer on the edge of his desk and, as he put flame to the twirl of wheatstraw paper and tobacco flakes, decided the best way to avoid a developing scene was to lug the rancher into a cell, where he could sleep it off. The jailhouse was right behind his office in a separate but adjoining structure.

After a few puffs of his cigarette through punch-swollen lips, Kemp hauled the moaning rancher up and dragged him on his heels to the solidly panelled door that was one entrance to the lockup.

The sheriff unlocked the door and pulled Blackwood through.

"Welcome to the calaboose, Mr Blackwood. We don't often entertain the likes of rich ranch owners, but it's clean, tidy and quiet -- and just the place to cool off."

The walls were thick adobe on all sides and the floor was stamped dirt. The cells, three in row, each had a heavy iron-grille door that went from ceiling to floor, and a stack of old, much-washed army blankets on a wooden bunk.

"No one'll hear your moaning in here," Kemp informed his prisoner matter-of-factly. "Nor the raving if you should take it into your head to start that up again!"

Knowledge o

f his whereabouts percolated to Blackwood's brain. His slitted eyes glimmered in the half-light.

"This time Franklin Ward will have my report, Kemp," he slurred. "I'll see you broken -- and no way can Jessica persuade me otherwise now I know your game."

* * *

When Boyd Blackwood had headed into town that afternoon, a second horseman had followed surreptitiously in his tracks, without compunction neglecting his lone duty on an outlying Double-B pasture to do so.

Snake McClay these days had a second master to please.

The monkey-faced gunnie scratched his balding scalp when the rancher visited lawyer Siebert's and was even more puzzled by his antisocial behaviour in various bar-rooms along the main drag.

His boss seemed to be trying to tune in to the town gossip, as though expecting to hear something of importance --which in Blackwood's case meant something concerning himself or his sexy young wife -- but his arrogance was as entrenched as ever and he conversely shunned all intercourse.

It wasn't hard for the stringy little Double-B rider to escape notice. Blackwood was eaten up with his own problems, whatever they were.

McClay watched from the dark shadows of an adjacent alley when Blackwood bombastically forced his way into the sheriff's of

fice and strained his ears to catch the drift of what ensued.

The sounds of violence glazed his cold grey eyes with amazement. "Waal, whadyuh know?" he breathed.

He scurried back to the Lucky Horseshoe and made urgent signs to Orson Rymer. Not many minutes later the gambler excused himself from his poker game and glided out to join McClay on a backyard path that meandered past stacks of empty crates to the privy.

McClay recounted all he had seen and heard.

Rymer bared his even white teeth in an evil grin. "There's no fool like a jealous fool," he said. "It looks like things are coming to a head."

He pulled a notebook from an inner pocket, wrote rapidly and tore off the sheet. He signed his handiwork simply "R", folded it in four and shoved it into McClay's dirty, broken-nailed fingers.

"You're to ride back directly to the Double-B, McClay, and deliver this personally to Mrs Jessica Blackwood, you understand? Then come straight back here."

"What's up, Rymer?" McClay said, bemused.

Rymer gave an ugly laugh as though relishing some secret and especially dirty jest. He knew the brutish McClay could neither read nor write and would be unable to learn anything from the paper he was to deliver for him.

"Tonight there could be other work needing your special skills, Snake." He raised his hand as though it contained an invisible gun and crooked a long trigger finger meaningfully. "You might even be able to write off the whole of your debt to me in one fell swoop."

McClay nodd

ed his misshapen head eagerly. His fringe of lank hair fell across his low brow and he moistened his grubby lips with an astonishingly pink tongue.

"That'd be damn' good, mister. Jest gimme the word."

Next week: Murder from ambush

Copyrig

ht © 1994 by Chap O'Keefe

All rights reserved

Come back Next Monday for part two of this thrilling western.