Free William W. Johnstone by Law of the Mountain Man

time.”
    “Little puppy dog done got up on his hind legs, boys,” Garner said with a nasty grin. “I just might have to findme a slick and whup his tail back between his legs. What’d you boys think about that?”
    “I wouldn’t try it,” the redhead warned. His quietly spoken words had steel behind them. “You just might find that stick stickin’ out of a part of you that you didn’t figure on.”
    Several of the men in the cafe laughed at that.
    Several more men in the cafe softly pushed back their chairs and took their leave before the lead they knew was coming started flying.
    And a stray bullet doesn’t give a damn who it hits.
    “You got a fat mouth, red on the head,” Slim told Rusty.
    “You wearin’ a gun, ugly face?” Rusty popped right back at him.
    Slim’s face turned as red as Rusty’s hair. “In here or outside?” He challenged the soft-voiced but hard-talking puncher.
    “It don’t make a damn to me.”
    The counterman came up with a sawed-off shotgun, pointed right at Slim’s belly. “You hardcases ain’t gonna shoot up this place,” he informed them, earing back both hammers. “So this is my way of tellin’ you to take your guns and your big mouths and your quarrel out into the street. And I mean lak raht now!”
    Slim nodded then looked at Smoke and Rusty. “We’ll meet you boys at the south edge of town. That is, if you’ve got the belly for it.”
    “We’ll be there,” Smoke told him, finishing his cigarette and stubbing it out. “Watching our backs all the way.”
    Bob Garner spun around, red from the neck up and his ugly face turning even uglier. “What the hell does that mean, Jensen?”
    “It means, Garner, that I think you’re all a bunch of back-shooting cowards!”
    “Git outta here!” the counterman hollered. “Afore Iturn loose both of these barrels!”
    The four hired guns and bounty hunters stomped out of the cafe. Smoke poured another cup of coffee and Rusty did the same. They sugared and stirred and sipped.
    “How do we handle this?” Rusty asked, his voice low so that only Smoke could hear. “And what’s this about them bein’ back-shooters?”
    “They’re not back-shooters. I just said that to make sure they wouldn’t try it. It’s a matter of pride for them now. Some of their own kind would shoot them if they tried to set up an ambush.”
    They both looked up as the waitress set two thick slices of apple pie on the table before them.
    “On the house, boys,” the counterman said. “I ain’t never had nobody as famous as Smoke Jensen come in my place afore.”
    The men nodded their thanks and fell to eating the pie, chasing it down with gulps of coffee. Around them, men were beginning to place wagers on the outcome of the impending gunfight. Most of the bets went to Smoke and the red-headed cowboy with him.
    Their pie and coffee finished, Smoke and Rusty pushed back their chairs, settled their hats on their heads, and stood up, hitching at their gun belts.
    “Good luck, boys!” the waitress called, as they were stepping out the door and onto the boardwalk.
    The street that had been bustling with people when Smoke entered the cafe was now barren of human life as the two men began their lonely walk toward the edge of town. The word had been quickly passed among the townspeople that, lead was about to fly.
    A dog looked up from its midday doze and wagged its tail, its eyes seeming to say: you leave me alone and I’ll do the same for you.
    They walked past the animal, their spurs softly jingling. They stayed in the shadows of the buildingsuntil coming to the very edge of town.
    “I got a hunch that Slim and Bob will stay together,” Smoke said. “So we play it like that. I’ll take Montana Slim and Bob Garner. You handle the other two. I don’t know them; they might be fast as lightning.”
    “I ain’t all that fast,” Rusty conceded. “But I don’t hardly ever miss.”
    “That’s the main thing. Many so-called fast guns usually