Free the Iron Marshall (1979) by Louis L'amour

cowardice and it only invited trouble.
    One way or the other, he didn't care. Within hours he would be riding the cars back to New York, where enough trouble already awaited him. "You talk mighty free," Drako said.
    "Mister, I have work to do. If you've come here hunting trouble, step right in and get started. If you aren't hunting trouble, I'd suggest you get on down the street while you're all in one piece."
    Shanaghy had a light hammer in his hand and he knew what he could do with it. Long ago he had learned how to throw a hatchet or a hammer with perfect accuracy. He knew that before Drako could put a hand on his gun, he could have that hammer on its way. And once thrown, Shanaghy would follow it in. It was a chancy thing to do, but he had been taking such chances all his life. Drako hesitated, then reined his horse around. "I'll see you again!" he blustered, then rode off.
    "You do that," Shanaghy called out. "Any time, any place." The smith heaved a sigh when Drako was gone. "Figured he was goin' to shoot you," he said.
    "And me with this hammer? I'd have put it right between his eyes." "Just as well you're leavin' town," the smith said, "although I surely wish you weren't. You're the best I've seen in awhile. You must have you a girl back there to want to go so bad."
    "A girl? No, I've no girl." Yet the thought reminded him of the girl in the gray traveling outfit.
    "Speaking of girls ... " Shanaghy began, then went on to describe her. "Do you have any idea who she is?"
    "I surely don't, but I know she didn't come in on the train, like you'd expect. She rode in a-horseback ... side-saddle. She rode in early so I doubt she came far."
    The smith paused. "She's a handsome young woman. You interested in her?" "Not that way. Kind of curious, though, about who she is and where she found that man she was talkin' to."
    They returned to work. At noon, Shanaghy hung up the leather apron and washed his hands in the tub. As he dried them, he thought about the girl, Drako, and Barrett.
    "Smithy," he asked, "this man Barrett, who has been sent for? What if he doesn't show?"
    "There'll be hell to pay. Vince Patterson is a hard, hard man, and from all we hear he's coming up the trail loaded for bear. Short of a shooting war there's no way we can stop him. He knows how many men we've got and he will have more." "And Rig Barrett could stop him?"
    He shrugged. "Who knows? He could if anybody could. Rig's been there before, and they know it. He's a strong man, and they know if shooting starts somebody will die. Somebody may die anyhow, but with Rig shooting it's no longer a gambling matter.
    "What we hope for is that he'll be here, and that his mere presence will stop them. He's a known man."
    Later, when Shanaghy walked to the door to cool off in the light breeze, he looked down the street at the town and shook his head, wonderingly. It was nothing. A collection of ramshackle shacks and frame buildings stuck up in the middle of nowhere, and yet men were willing to fight for it. He took out his heavy silver watch and looked at it. There were hours yet before the train was due.
    The smith came out and stood beside him.
    "It ain't much," Shanaghy said.
    "It's all we've got," the smith replied. "And it's home." Home ... how long since he had a real home? Shanaghy wondered. His thoughts went back to the stone cottage on the edge of moors in Ireland. He remembered the morning walks through the mist when he went to the uplands to bring the horses down. How long ago it seemed! He turned away from the dusty street and walked back to the forge.
    Yet the thoughts of home had altered his mood. He finished a lap weld in a wagon tire, and returned to making hinges, but suddenly he was feeling lost and lonely, remembering the green hills of Ireland and the long talks with his father beside the forge. His father, he realized now, had been a strange man, half a poet, half a mystic.
    "A man," his father said once, "should be like iron, not steel. If steel