Free Bounty Guns by Luke; Short

she cried. “I like Buck, and I know him, and you don’t! Now I suppose you’ll arrest him and lose whatever chance I’ve got of getting the truth from him.”
    Tip’s face flushed a beet-red. “You know,” he said thickly, “there’s just one thing worse than a mule-headed woman, and that’s two of ’em. No, I won’t arrest your nice little Buck. You can get him drunk, like any honky-tonk girl, and find out what you damn well please. Good-by!”
    Tip stalked past the press in a towering rage. There he paused, looked back at Lynn, and came back to her.
    â€œI didn’t mean that last,” Tip said miserably. “But why do you rawhide a man so? Hell, I’m tryin’ to help you if you’ll let me. And I don’t like this bullyin’ any better than you do.”
    Lynn, tense as wire, suddenly relaxed. She said, “Maybe I deserved it. But I’m doing the best I can. And your way seems so clumsy, so brutal. You can’t beat truth out of people, Tip.”
    â€œAnd you can’t coax it out of them.”
    Lynn smiled. “Then I guess you’ll have to go your way and I’ll go mine. But—let’s don’t fight any more. And I’ll give you any information I get if you’ll give me yours.”
    â€œIt’s a deal,” Tip said, and grinned suddenly. They shook hands on it, and Tip went out. This time, for a reason unknown to him, he was whistling.
    Tip headed downstreet toward the barbershop opposite the Mountain saloon for a shave. With sudden gravity he realized that his period of indiscriminate hell-raising was over. There was a responsibility attached to wearing a law badge, one that did not allow for a hot temper. He had come here to uncover a murderer, and had wound up as a deputy, not much closer to the truth than the night he had come. Lynn’s information as to Buck Shields meant nothing, for Tip believed as Lynn did, that Buck didn’t do it. Nobody, it seemed, killed Blackie Mayfell, and yet he was dead with a bullet hole in his back.
    About to turn into the barbershop, Tip glanced across the street. Hagen Shields and Buck were dismounting at the tie rail in front of the saloon. They went inside, and Tip stood there on the boardwalk, remembering what Lucy Shields had said last night. Normally, the sight of Hagen Shields would only serve as a reminder of that night in the saloon, the memory of which still rankled Tip. But added to what the girl had said last night, it was nothing short of a dare.
    Tip crossed the street and entered the saloon. Buck and Hagen were at the bar, and Tip walked up to it, stopped next to them, and asked for a drink. He nodded to Buck, who nodded back and then left the bar for one of the poker tables, on which were scattered some papers. Hagen Shields, his face without expression, stared levelly at Tip and then away. Tip looked in the bar mirror at Buck, and found that Buck was watching him. Suddenly, Buck shook his head from side to side, saying no in as plain a manner as a man could without speaking, and he was saying it to Tip, for in front of Hagen the bar mirror was broken out.
    Tip scowled, perplexed, and suddenly Buck cleared his throat.
    â€œWoodring,” he said firmly, “I see your ad here in the paper. You don’t aim to leave, then?”
    Tip waited until the bartender set the bottle and glass in front of him, poured his drink, then turned sideways and stared levelly at Buck. “No,” he said flatly.
    â€œI thought we told you the other night to light a shuck,” Buck said. His voice was strained, and he stared intently at Tip. There was more worry in his eyes than threat or anger.
    Tip asked curiously, “What are you tryin’ to do, Shields? Crowd me into a fight?”
    Buck said in a voice that was near to cracking, “You can walk out that door and get on a horse, or you can go for your gun.”
    Tip stood motionless a