That was it. The whole fight. Though in the days to come it would grow with every retelling, eventually becoming almost unrecognizable.
McQuillan’s eyes rolled back, his knees buckled and he went down.
Walker, meanwhile, gripped Brylee firmly by one arm, barely giving her a chance to retrieve her purse from the floor next to her chair, and propelled her toward the exit.
“We’re going home now,” he was heard to say in a tone that left no room for negotiation.
“Damn it, Walker,” Brylee yelled in response, struggling in vain to yank free from her brother’s grasp. “Let me go! I can take care of myself!”
In spite of everything, Hutch had to smile a little, because what Brylee said was true—she could take care of herself and in the long run she’d be just fine.
Oh, the woman had spirit, all right. Life would have been so much simpler all around, Hutch thought, if only he could have loved her.
Moments later, the Parrishes were gone and somebody was helping McQuillan back to his feet. He was rubbing his jaw and had one hell of a nosebleed going, but he looked all right, otherwise—no obvious need for any wires, stitches or casts, anyhow.
“I’m pressing charges!” McQuillan raged. “You’re all witnesses! You all saw what Walker Parrish did to me!”
“Ah, Treat,” one man drawled, “let it go. You put your hands on the man’s sister, and after she told you straight out she didn’t care to dance—”
McQuillan’s small, beady eyes flashed fire. He was trying to staunch the nosebleed with the sleeve of his shirt, but not having much luck. Some of the sawdust on the floor would definitely have to be shoveled out and replaced.
“I mean it,” he insisted furiously. “Parrish assaulted an officer of the law and he’s going to face the consequences!”
Hutch, standing nearby, flexed his fist slowly and waited for the urge to drop McQuillan right back to the floor again to pass.
Presently, it did.
The show was over and Hutch turned, meaning to go back for the beer he’d set aside minutes earlier. He nearly collided with Brylee’s best friend, Amy Jo DuPree in the process.
“You have your nerve coming in here, Hutch Carmody!” Amy Jo seethed, standing practically toe-to-toe with him and craning her neck back so she could look up at him. Five-foot-nothing and weighing a hundred pounds soaking wet, Frank and Marge DuPree’s baby girl was a pretty thing, but feisty, afraid of nothing and no one.
Montana seemed to breed women like that.
Hutch arched an eyebrow. “Excuse me?” he countered, raising his voice a little as the jukebox cranked up and Carrie Underwood took to extolling the virtues of baseball bats and kerosene-fueled revenge.
Maybe that was what was making the whole female sex seem more impossible to deal with by the day, Hutch speculated fleetingly. Maybe it was the inflammatory nature of the music they listened to on their iPods and other such devices.
“You heard me,” Amy Jo all but snarled through her little white teeth, and gave him a light but solid punch to the solar plexus.
Intrigued and, okay, a little pissed off at the injustice of it all, Hutch took Amy Jo by the arm and squired her outside.
The parking lot was hardly quieter than the interior of the bar, what with Walker and Brylee yelling at each other and then peeling away in Walker’s truck, and then Boone arriving with his lights flashing and his siren giving a single mournful whoop in case the blinding strobe left any doubt he was there.
“Hell,” Hutch breathed, watching as the sheriff climbed, somewhat wearily, out of his cruiser and came toward the doors of the Boot Scoot. “McQuillan’s really going to do it—he’s going to press charges against Walker.”
“Somebody ought to press charges against you,” Amy Jo huffed out, but she wasn’t quite as steam-powered as before. “How could you, Hutch? How could you let things go so far and then humiliate Brylee in public the way you did? Do you even know how much a wedding means to a woman? She looks forward to it her whole life, from the time she’s a little bit of a thing, and then—”
Boone passed them, nodded in grim acknowledgment as he went inside the tavern to investigate the scene of the crime, as McQuillan, who must have gotten right on his cell phone to report the event, would no doubt term it.
By now the damn idiot had probably taped off a body-shape in the sawdust, to mark the place where he’d fallen.
Hutch turned his attention back to Amy Jo. “Just exactly what is it,” he asked, exasperated, “that you people want me to do, here?”
Amy Jo jutted out her spunky little chin. “‘You people’? You mean Brylee’s friends?”
“I mean,” Hutch bit out tersely, “that all this Team Brylee crap is getting old. I’ve always lived here and I always will, and I will be damned if I’ll stay away from the Boot Scoot or anyplace else I want to go, just because you and the rest of Brylee’s bunch think I ought to be ashamed of what I did.” He leaned in, and Amy Jo’s eyes widened. “Here’s a flash for you—pass it on. Post it on that stupid website. Print up T-shirts, put fliers on windshields, whatever. I’m not going anywhere. Deal with it.”
Amy Jo blinked. She wasn’t a bad sort, really. It was just that she and Brylee had grown up as close friends, the way Kendra and Joslyn had. The way he and Slade might have, if it hadn’t been for the old man’s cussed determination to ignore one of them and browbeat the other.
Loyalty was an important quality in a friend, even when it was the bullheaded kind like Amy Jo’s.
“Nobody expects you to move away or anything,” Amy Jo said belatedly and in a lame tone.
“Good,” Hutch sputtered, as another ruckus of some kind erupted inside the Boot Scoot. “Because when hell freezes over, I’ll still be right here in Parable.”
Amy Jo swallowed, nodded and went back into the tavern to find her friends.
Although Hutch’s better angels urged him to get in his truck and go home, where he should have stayed in the first place, he figured Boone might need some help settling things down, so he followed Amy Jo inside.
McQuillan was out of control, waving his free arm and guarding his gushing nose with the other, yelling in Boone’s face.
Boone, for his part, calmly stood his ground. “Now, Treat,” he reasoned, amiable but serious, “I would hate to have to run one of my own deputies in for drunk-and-disorderly and creating a public nuisance, but I’ll do it, by God, I’ll throw you straight into the hoosegow if you keep this up.”
At the periphery of his vision, Hutch saw Amy Jo and the rest of the Brylee contingent quietly gather their purses and other assorted gear and trail out of the tavern. Probably a wise decision, given the incendiary mood McQuillan was creating.
“Arrest me?” the deputy bellowed. Treat never had known when to keep his mouth shut, which was part of his problem. “I’m the victim here! I was assaulted!”
“We’ll discuss that,” Boone assured him, “but not until you calm down.”
“I’d have knocked you on your ass, too, McQuillan,” a male voice contributed from somewhere in the dwindling crowd. “You can’t expect any different when you grab on to a woman in a goddamn cowboy bar!”
“Harley,” Boone said, recognizing the speaker immediately, and without looking away from McQuillan’s bloody, temper-twisted face, “shut up.”
Hutch, looking on, privately agreed with Harley.