Buzzard's Bluff. William W. Johnstone

you want it?” He looked at Jackson. “How ’bout you? Is that the way you want it, too?” He cocked the hammer back on the Colt .44 he was holding.

      “No, sir!” Jackson exclaimed immediately. “That ain’t the way I want it! I’ll go to jail!”

      “Shut up, Marty!” Hatcher barked. “He ain’t gonna shoot you. He’s just tryin’ to scare you.”

      “Are you ready to walk down to the jail now?” Ben asked Hatcher.

      “I ain’t walkin’ nowhere,” Hatcher said. “You want me in that jail, you’re gonna have to carry me.”

      Ben couldn’t help thinking about the last cowhand from the Double-D who took that stance. He ended up shooting him and that’s what started all this trouble. “If you and Tiny keep ’em covered for a minute, I’ll be right back,” he said to the sheriff. He went out the front door and returned shortly with a coil of rope. “I figured every good cowhand had a coil of rope on his saddle.” He made a loop in one end of the rope, then walked up to face Hatcher, who gave him a smirk for his efforts. “Hold your arms straight out to the sides, like you’ve got wings. Like this,” he demonstrated, holding his arms straight out to the side. With a defiant sneer, Hatcher clamped his arms down tight against his sides. Ben instantly dropped the loop over Hatcher’s shoulders and drew it up tight, trapping Hatcher’s arms against his sides. He then wrapped the rope around and around the surprised man until he had his upper body bound securely. Hatcher stood there helpless and furious when he realized how easily Ben had tricked him into cooperating. “All right, let’s get along, little doggie,” Ben said and led him toward the door with the other end of the rope.

      The sheriff prodded Jackson in the back with his Colt and said, “Get movin’.” And they followed Ben and Hatcher to the door before Hatcher realized he could still refuse to cooperate, so he dropped to the floor.

      Ben took a strong grip on the rope and managed to drag Hatcher through the door to the porch. He let him sit there for a few moments, long enough to untie one of the horses from the hitching rail. He led the horse up to the edge of the porch so he could tie the end of his rope to the saddle horn. He smiled at Hatcher and said, “You’re a pretty big fellow, but my money’s on the horse. Come on, boy,” he said to the horse and led him out into the street, dragging Hatcher off the porch. He thought he heard his prisoner let out a “yow” just before he heard him hit the boardwalk in front of the porch. If he had to guess, he would have bet the “yow” might have been a splinter Hatcher picked up on his slide across the porch.

      The defiant cowhand maintained his determination until about halfway down the street to the jail. But after bumping and scraping across the roughest ruts Ben could find to lead him over, he started yelling. “All right! All right! I’ll walk to the damn jail. Stop the damn horse.”

      With an air of casual patience, Ben helped Hatcher to his feet. Then he untied the rope from the saddle horn and led him the rest of the way to the jail. Bragg and Jackson followed along behind them. Bragg, his gun in hand, watched while Ben removed the rope trapping Hatcher’s arms to his sides. Then he put him in the cell with Jackson. That done, he joined Ben in the office to talk about their punishment. It was blatantly apparent that the sheriff wasn’t too happy about Ben’s actions, which had resulted in an arrest. On the other hand, he could hardly find fault with Ben’s handling of Hatcher because it prevented a shooting. However, knowing Ed Hatcher and his passion for violence, he could not imagine this arrest to be the end of the trouble over Ben’s shooting of Bob Wills.

      “I reckon I can hold ’em in jail for a couple of days, then turn ’em loose and tell ’em to get outta town,” Bragg speculated. “That’s what I usually do with anybody makin’ too big a fuss in one of the saloons, as long as it doesn’t lead to a shootin’. And that’s all this has boiled down to so far.” He paused to think about that for a few seconds. “I don’t have any idea what Daniel Dalton’s liable to say about this. I’ll tell you the truth, Ben, it ain’t beneath Dalton to send a few more men in here to settle up with you for killin’ one of his hands. And he ain’t gonna be too happy with me for puttin’ two of ’em in jail.”

      “Reckon we’ll just have to wait and see,” Ben responded. “You want me to lead their horses up to the stable for you? I gotta pick mine up from the blacksmith, so I’m headin’ that way.”

      CHAPTER 7

      Ben led Marty Jackson’s horse back to the Lost Coyote to pick up Ed Hatcher’s horse, still tied at the rail. Tiny and the women were all standing on the porch and watched as he untied the horse. “You gonna want somethin’ to drink when you come back?” Tiny asked, thinking he might need one.

      “Just a cup of coffee,” Ben answered. “I won’t be long.”

      Jim Bowden was standing in the middle of the street talking to several other spectators who had happened to see Hatcher’s rough trip to the jail. “Damned if you ain’t somethin’,” Bowden declared. “I didn’t hear no shots, so I was glad nobody got killed.”

      “Did you finish shoein’ my horse?” Ben responded.

      “No, I didn’t,” Jim replied. “I was too anxious to see if I was gonna be the new owner of that dun you ride, but it won’t take long to finish him up.”

      “I gotta take these horses to the stable, then I’ll be back to get Cousin,” Ben said.

      “Didn’t look like ol’ Hatcher wanted to go to jail,” Bowden commented, obviously desiring more details on what happened inside the saloon.

      But Ben was not inclined to paint a picture for him. “Reckon not,” he said and kept on walking toward the stable. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

      * * *

      “Boy, there’s gonna be hell to pay when ol’ Daniel Dalton finds out about this,” Henry Barnes announced with a chuckle. “He ain’t used to havin’ his boys locked up in the jailhouse, and right after you shot another one.” He pulled the saddle off one of the horses. “I swear, Ben, you’ve stirred up more trouble in two days than we’d had all year.”