Free the Trail to Seven Pines (1972) by Louis - Hopalong 02 L'amour

He designated sleeping quarters as he wished, and if any sought to dispute possession they had a choice of leaving town fast or being assigned a permanent residence on Boot Hill.
    Some of this Hopalong Cassidy knew. Much he had yet to find out. What Poker Harris knew he kept to himself, and what his dealings were with those who came and went around Corn Patch he kept a secret. Like many pioneers of both good and bad vintage, Harris had a fine memory for names, faces, and descriptions. Newspapers were sadly lacking, but word-of-mouth descriptions were correspondingly accurate.
    Few men appeared at Corn Patch whose backgrounds were unknown to Poker Harris.
    Corn Patch itself lay in a canyon once called Eldorado by some optimist or humorist.
    A mountain ridge that towered nearly five thousand steep feet above the town divided it from the mining town of Unionville, some five miles south, and the immediate canyon in which Corn Patch lay was steep-sided and the sides lined with shacks. From his windows Poker Harris could see most of those shacks and watch the comings and goings of the inhabitants. Consequently he was his own espionage service, and little took place within the confines of the town that he did not know.
    The saloon, which was also his office and home, was a stone-and-frame structure, badly weathered and never painted. It backed up against the southeast wall of the canyon and looked right down the main and only street, which was also the canyon's bottom. A store, the bunkhouse, a blacksmith shop, and a scattering of shacks completed the street, all easily seen from the stool where Poker usually sat.
    Behind him was a rack containing a Sharps .50, a Spencer .56, a Winchester .44, and two shotguns other than the sawed-off he usually carried. These were always loaded, the rack was locked, and he carried the only key. Under the bar, within grasp of his hand, was another Spencer .56, a weapon whose ventilating possibilities were scarcely exceeded by an artillery piece. In short, Poker Harris was monarch of all he surveyed and intended to remain so-against any one man or any gang of men.
    Both attempts had been made. The first had been tried four times, accounting for four of the graves on his private Boot Hill, and the last had been tried twice, accounting for seven more graves. At least four other graves were filled by itinerants who seemed doubtful to Poker, who settled his doubts with lead.
    A dozen men idled about the saloon playing desultory poker. Harris dozed at the bar.
    It was during one of the intervals of wakefulness that he glanced past the bottom of his stein to see a rider turn into the trail that doubled as street. The rider was astride a white gelding that walked fast and smoothly. The rider himself wore a black wide-brimmed hat. He had a tanned, pleasant countenance, worn black trousers tucked into cowboy boots, and two white-handled, tied-down guns. He also wore a black vest.
    It was the Winchester in the saddle boot that did not click in the brain of Poker Harris. Had it been a Sharps, he would at once have thought of Hopalong Cassidy.
    As it was, he did not know that Hoppy had at last yielded, temporarily at least, to the arguments of his old Bar 20 comrade Red Connors. The rifle argument between the two had gone on for years, and Connors, a wizard with the weapon, had at last prevailed upon his friend. That he had won a victory he did not know, and if Red Connors had appeared on the horizon, Hoppy would hastily have concealed the Winchester and resorted to his old and well-loved buffalo gun.
    Poker Harris linked men up to things, and the love of Cassidy for the Sharps was known wherever there were cow camps or men from the cattle drives. The bone-handled Colts he recognized instantly as belonging to a man who understood their use, but this man had come to Corn Patch, a place of safety to outlaws and of death to officers of the law. Therefore, this man must be an outlaw. Still, Poker Harris was