Free Winchester 1887 by William W. Johnstone

horses and tack at one of the city’s livery stables and hadn’t been seen since. Nobody would remember them at the depot, and maybe they would have taken separate trains. Certainly they would not have boarded the train together. But if Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell had sold their horses, that meant they had hurried south to Texas.
    Judge Parker and the marshal would be disappointed, but until McCoy and Maxwell returned to the Nations, there wasn’t anything Sixpersons could do. Against those bad men. Yet the white men in Fort Smith weren’t all stupid. They had given Sixpersons plenty of other warrants. He would meet up with the posse at Eufaula and start hunting. Link McCoy and Zane Maxwell would have to wait.
    For now.
    Denison, Texas
    Jeff White barged through the batwing doors of the Railroaders Saloon, stopped only long enough to see Link McCoy, and stormed over to the corner table where he nursed a beer alone. Uninvited, White pulled up a chair, sat heavily down, and slammed a newspaper on the table.
    â€œSpell your name wrong, Jeff?” Sarcasm accented McCoy’s voice.
    â€œWhat this says is that the McCoy-Maxwell Gang made off with more ’n a thousand bucks!” He slid the paper angrily toward McCoy’s beer stein. “You give me and Tulip jus’ a hunnert.”
    Ignoring the paper, McCoy picked up the stein, and sipped his beer. He waited for the barmaid to walk by, and when she stopped, and looked at White, McCoy said, “Bring him a whiskey. And you might as well bring me another pilsner, sweetie.”
    With a smile, she hurried back to the bar.
    Only then, did McCoy turn the Morning Call & Telegraph around and read the story on the front page. It didn’t take long. Texas didn’t really care much about what the McCoy-Maxwell Gang was doing in the Indian Nations or Arkansas, which was why the law pretty much left the gang alone in Denison and over in the Hell’s Half Acre district of Fort Worth.
    He counted two paragraphs and three typographical errors. Maybe four. “Wouldn’t be the first time a newspaper has made a mistake. Or a bank official lied.”
    â€œWouldn’t be the first time some smart dude has cheated me, neither,” Jeff White said. “And—” Dumb as he was, White was smart enough, savvy enough, and experienced enough to shut up when he heard the saloon gal coming up behind him.
    She placed the shot glass and bottle in front of White, and the new beer beside McCoy, and took the empty stein and McCoy’s greenback away.
    Before White could say something else, McCoy cut him off, his voice a cold whisper. “Most of those boys we left dead in Arkansas and at the salt works had been riding with Zane and me a lot longer than you, White.” He let those words sink in.
    â€œWhat are you sayin’?” White reached for the bottle. He didn’t bother with the shot glass.
    â€œMeaning I ain’t knowed you long enough to miss you when you’re gone.”
    â€œIf yer cheatin’—”
    â€œDrink your whiskey. Take your bottle back to your room. Get drunk. And keep your mouth shut. The paper’s wrong. We got four hundred bucks from that robbery. They probably hadn’t found the gold-filled sack Clete McBee died for. Go on. The whiskey’s on me.”
    White swore, slammed the bottle on the table, and reached for the Morning Call & Telegraph.
    â€œLeave the newspaper,” McCoy said.
    The outlaw cursed again, but obeyed.
    McCoy made sure he left the saloon, watching him through the front window as he stormed across the boardwalk, crossed the muddy street, and made his way toward the hotel across the street.
    Only then did McCoy sip his beer, then pick up the newspaper again. He wasn’t vain. He didn’t care about what the ink-slingers wrote about him or Zane Maxwell, and could care less if the newspapers reported he had stolen $400 or $4 million. But above the