After leaving the remains of their midnight guests with the local coroner (and barber and dentist), Dane and Joshua headed over to the Sheriff’s office. A young man sat outside, chewing on a stalk of grain or grass of some sort. His face was marked by some old illness and his watery blue eyes studied the pair as they approached. “Morning Mister Wilson,” the porch-sitter greeted them. “Sheriff Tanner's inside. More trouble at the ranch?” His voice was thin and reedy, and there seemed to be a bit of a sneer in his tone, even though his face remained impassive.

  Joshua simply replied “Yep” and held the door open for Dane to go in first.

  The man behind the desk bearing a pcard reading “Sheriff Olin Tanner” was a huge man, very broad of shoulder and looking like he had several yers of fat and muscle covering his frame, which Dane guessed to be almost seven feet tall if he ever rose from his chair. His hair was a soft gold color, in need of a trim, and he wore facial hair that looked as though he always shaved once a week and tomorrow was the day. His eyes were dark and deep set, giving him a slightly sinister look; somehow the thought of a giant, malevolent teddy bear entered Dane’s mind unbidden, and he forced the thought down. The man’s booming voice filled the room as he called out “Down here early, Mister Wilson. Bit of trouble at the ranch, again?”

  “Yessir,” Joshua replied. “Had a group of troublemakers try to vandalize our fence and probably steal what’s left of our herd. Most of them fled into the night but two are with the Barber.”

  The Sheriff rose to his feet at this, and Dane realized his estimate of the man’s height fell short; Sheriff Tanner was a veritable mountain of a man. “You come in here with a drifter in tow, telling me you left two corpses with Ken and expect me to believe they were criminals? An alternate theory: you two attempted to rob a pair of travelers in the night and they fought back. You killed them and made up this story.”

  Joshua motioned for Dane to back off and stay silent. “If you want to believe that you’re believing a lie, but I can’t prove otherwise,” the dark-skinned man replied, meeting the sheriff’s steely gaze with his own.

  After a few tense seconds, the sheriff spoke again: “I’ll go look at your victims, then send out some feelers. If either one is a known criminal, I’ll accept your story but if both were upstanding citizens you can either go back to the Confederate States of America or rot here in my Texas jail. And if either one or both have prices on their heads, the Ranch’ll get two thirds, and the town will keep the rest as payment for the paperwork involved.”

  Joshua stared steadily at him for a moment then nodded, turned to Dane and said, “We should go.”

  Dane nodded, then added: “If it helps, the barber recognized one as Damian Cooper but the other was too damaged to identify.”

  The sheriff nodded at this then said: “If you leave town, stay on the ranch so I can find you either way.”

  On the porch the young man outside simply sneered at them. Dane noticed he had a badge. “Have a nice morning, Deputy,” he said as cheerfully as he could muster. The deputy didn’t respond.

  As Dane and Joshua returned to their horses, Joshua said quietly “And that is why I need a drink before going back to the ranch.”

  “Bad blood between you?”

  “Bad skin. He only likes whites and Mexicans. His real hatred is for the Indians, though.”

  Dane just shook his head sadly and followed Joshua to the Dry Gulch.

  As they entered, Dane experienced another Hollywood cliche or trope or whatever they were called: as the two men entered the saloon, the entire pce, even the piano pyer, fell silent for about two heartbeats as everyone sized up the new arrivals, and then immediately went back to what they had been doing as if nothing had happened.

  Joshua pressed some coins into Dane’s hand and quietly said “I’m going to see if there is a card game I can slip into for a few hands. Grab me a beer and whatever food they have on offer and get yourself something too. Hope they have stew; it's the only thing they do better than the Widow.”

  Dane acknowledged this request and headed to the bar as his companion wandered over to one of the darker corners of the building. Dane heard a few “Hey Josh” calls over the general sounds of the pce.

  He sat down on a stool at the bar and then noticed the bartender as she approached him.

  On initial viewing, she was much closer to the women of his usual dreams than the Widow Sievert - golden skin showing likely Mexican or Spanish origins, long wavy bck hair cascading around her face down to just past the small of her back, huge brown eyes a man could get lost in, full lips and tight clothes that showed off a figure he suspected men had literally fought to see more of. Something about the woman set him on edge, though, despite her attractiveness.

  “Greetings, Drifter,” she purred at him, her voice silky with just a hint of a Spanish accent. “Got a name?”

  “Coleman,” Dane replied.

  “Coal man? No wonder things got a bit warmer when you walked in. Can I get you anything? Drink? Sausage? Stew? Bed warmer?”

  Dane almost ughed at her forwardness, then wondered if she was offering herself or one of the other saloon girls. “A helping of stew, a sausage, on bread if you have it, and two beers on tap. And it is one word - Coleman, not two,” he added.

  “Sure thing, handsome,” she said with a wink. “That’ll be nineteen cents. The first beer is on the house.”

  Joshua had given him ten coins, but a few were nickels, so he wound up with some left over after paying. “There might be more free drinks in your future if you show a dy a little friendliness,” she teased before heading off to get the food. Dane turned away from the bar and found himself staring at a bck vest. A tall, thin man with a deeply tanned complexion and ice blue eyes wore said vest, and he had a gun belt visible below it.

  “You tryin’ to make time with my girl?” The tall man said,

  “Girl? I was talking to the woman tending bar, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Oh, you’re a real smart guy, then?”

  “Only compared to a few I could name,” Dane replied wondering if the insult would hit home or not.

  The man seemed to realize there had been an insult, but did not seem to be quite sure what it was.

  “You py poker, Drifter?”

  “As I was just telling the dy, the name is Coleman. And I used to py quite a bit, but it was some years back,” he answered honestly.

  “Good,” Bck Vest said, taking out a greasy deck of cards from a pocket. “One hand. I win, you leave town in a pine box, you win, you leave town on your own two feet.” Some men at a table nearby ughed at this.

  “Sounds good, but I have a better one,” Dane replied. “One cut. I get the high card; you stand there while I break your jaw. You get the high card; you get to fight back.”. One of the men who had been ughing stood up and moved closer.

  Bck Vest narrowed his eyes at Dane. “You lookin’ for a fight, Drifter?”

  Dane sighed. “No, just for lunch, but I think I found one anyway.”

  “Yeah you did…”

  Dane then held up his hands: “Wait, let's go back a bit. One hand of poker. I win, I get to have lunch in peace and leave this saloon as soon as I’m finished, you win, I leave immediately, without compint. How does that sound?”

  Bck Vest seemed to consider it for a moment, then shook his head: “you’re much too pretty. Got to break your face up a bit. Just remember the name Jacob Barnes as the man who beat you to a pulp.”

  Dane sighed and casually blocked the swing that the other man promptly threw at him as he finished speaking. Dane then countered with a blow to the man’s chest and Jacob staggered back. Out of the corner of his eye, Dane saw the man who stood up a moment ago trying to swing a bottle at his head; Dane spun around on the stool, then slid off and down; the bottle whistled inches above his head, only to impact with the skull of Jacob, who had been lunging at Dane.

  Jacob dropped to the ground, either dazed or knocked out and Dane spun and rose quickly, hitting the bottle wielder with a double fist smash under his jaw.

  The man Dane struck stumbled back three steps and then fell, upsetting a table where five men had been sitting. Drinks flew, spshing all over the pce as the table went down. One of the men grabbed the bottle wielder by his shirt and smmed him against the ground, two others rose to confront Dane. One looked like he was going to join them, but the man from an adjacent table who was now wearing that guy’s drink grabbed him by the shoulder and slugged him before he could get there. The fifth guy at the table had his chair colpse under him and did not look likely to get up any time soon.

  Dane looked at the men advancing on him: “Look, I’m sorry about your drinks. I would offer to repce them but I’m pretty much broke.”

  One of them gnced at the other: “Drifter talks too much. Someone should shut him up.”

  As the two men approached Dane, the bartender emerged from the kitchen with a tray of food in hand, only to find two of her barmaids standing there, watching.

  One, a short, buxom blonde with her hair in tight curls and far too much makeup said, “I do love watching men fight.”

  A half smile curled the bartender's lip as she replied: “if only we could get them to take their shirts off first,” she mused.

  The third woman, a tall, slender woman with long straight hair of a brownish shade impossible to define more clearly in the dim light of the saloon gave a thoughtful look and replied, “Bet you could make money showing shirtless men fighting,”

  Dane knew he was in trouble as both men appeared to be seasoned fighters; he blocked a punch thrown by one of them and almost dodged a blow from the other, which merely grazed his cheek instead of striking his jaw. His hands were a bit tied up so Dane tried to unch a kick at one assaint but could not get the right leverage and a blow that should have hit the man square in the chest instead came up right between his legs. The man cried out in pain and staggered back.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Dane saw Joshua knock out a man who was about to smash a chair over the head of someone else, but then his active opponent moved slightly and blocked his view.

  The guy was big and clearly had seen a lot of fights. Dane spent what felt like an hour but was really several seconds dodging and blocking blows; the man he had kicked in the groin had mostly recovered and was advancing on him as well.

  Then, suddenly, a voice rang out over the noise of the brawl: “All right all of you, stop this right now or I’ll have to bring in the sheriff! I don’t care about any of you or what you’re fighting over, but you’re tearing apart my business!”

  As the man spoke the room calmed down slowly but steadily and, along with most of the saloon’s patrons, Dane turned to face the speaker, who saw him first and reacted in a very surprising way: “Coleman! What the Hell are you doing here?”