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  “Dekker,” Masterson said, “either sit down or get out.”

  Dekker glared and fumed, but finally sat down to watch the outcome of the hand.

  Evan called and raised, and Short called. As it turned out, Short had tens full, and Evan had four threes—which he’d had through six cards. He hadn’t even needed the seventh.

  “Gentlemen,” Masterson said, “I believe this is the end.”

  “And what an end!” Dick Stark said.

  “I don’t believe it,” Carl Dekker said. “Four threes!

  That’s the third time you’ve had four of a kind—”

  “Luck,” Evan said.

  “That’s what you call it,” Dekker said.

  “Don’t say something you’ll be sorry for, Dekker,”

  Masterson said.

  “I want a chance to get my money back.”

  “The game is over,” Masterson said. He had been considered the host of this particular game. “Gentlemen, thank you all for coming. I suggest we go down to the bar for drinks.”

  Dekker leaped to his feet and said, “I won’t drink with a—”

  “Dekker!” Masterson snapped, cutting him off.

  They all stared at Dekker, and then at Evan McCall. It was obvious that Dekker had been about to call McCall a cheater.

  “Dekker, I think you’d better leave first,” Masterson said.

  “And if I don’t?”

  Masterson, not yet thirty, was the youngest man at the table, but was perhaps the most respected—and feared. He reached across the table with a gold-headed cane he’d taken to carrying when in San Francisco and tapped Dekker’s chest with it.

  “I’ll have to make you.”

  Dekker looked around the table, found no support from anyone, and then turned on his heel and left.

  Masterson turned to Evan McCall and said, “I’d be careful if I was you. No tellin’ what a sore loser will do.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Evan said. “Shall we go downstairs for those drinks?”

  Evan McCall, Bat Masterson, Luke Short, and Dick Stark all repaired to the Alhambra bar for their choice ofdrinks. Evan and Stark chose beer, while Masterson and Short chose whiskey.

  As they entered the bar they saw across the crowded room, through a haze of smoke, Carl Dekker seated at a table with three other men, who had the look of hard-cases. Dekker himself had the look of a sore loser who had been drowning his sorrows in drink. There was an empty bottle on the table, and another but half full. Even with four men sharing, Dekker had to be more than a little drunk.

  “Maybe we should drink somewhere else,” Stark suggested.

  “You all can drink elsewhere,” Masterson said, “but I have a room here, and I intend to go to it after a couple of drinks.”

  “We’ll drink here,” Evan said, and that seemed to settle that.

  The four men approached the bar and advised the bartender of their choices.

  “Who was it that invited Dekker, anyway?” Dick Stark asked.

  The other three exchanged glances, no one answering immediately.

  “Bat?” Short said. “You were the host this time, weren’t you?”

  “I can’t remember who recommended him,” Masterson said, “but I wouldn’t have allowed him in the game if the reference wasn’t a sound one.”

  “Maybe you should try to remember who it was,” Short said, “and mark him down as a less than reliable reference for the future.”

  “In the morning,” Masterson said, “when I’m not so tired, it’ll come to me.”

  Masterson and Short each had a second whiskey and then bade the other two goodnight.

  “When are you leaving?” Masterson asked Evan.

  “In the morning, Bat.”

  “See you next time, then,” Masterson said, extending his hand.

  They shook hands all around and then Masterson and Short left the saloon.

  “They almost look alike, don’t they?” Stark asked. “I mean, the way they dress, so fine and proper.”

  “They dress alike, all right,” Evan said, “but that’s where the resemblance ends.”

  Masterson was not yet thirty and clean shaven, while the older Luke Short had a fine mustache that he tended to expertly. Short was probably the better gambler, while Masterson’s talent with a gun was probably the finer of the two. Evan McCall was willing to bet that by the time Masterson reached Short’s age he would be the more famous.

  “Another beer?” Stark asked.

  “Why not?” Evan said.

  “Masterson and Short are gone,” Dekker said. “Now you lily-livered cowards can take McCall.”

  “You’re payin’ us enough to gun Evan McCall, Dekker,” one of the men said, “but not nearly enough to tangle with Bat Masterson and Luke Short.”

  The others nodded their agreement.

  “Well, they’re gone and McCall is there,” Dekker said, again.

  “What about the other man?” another of the men asked.

  “I doubt Stark even carries a gun,” Dekker said. “Come on, get it over with.”

  “The man must have done you some grievous harm for you to want him dead this bad,” someone said.

  “Just do it,” Dekker said, “and never mind my reasons.”

  “You gonna take a hand?”

  “I might,” Dekker muttered, glaring across the room at Evan McCall’s back, “by golly, I just might.”

  Evan McCall was deep in conversation with Dick Stark about where their respective next stops would be, and he didn’t see the batwing doors open to admit a tall, somewhat weary traveler. He did, however, see the three men seated with Dekker rise to their feet—by looking into the mirror behind the bar.

  “Stark, are you armed?”

  “Why, no,” Stark replied, “why?”

  “I suggest you step aside, then, before lead starts flyin’.”

  “What?” Stark said, turning and looking behind him. “Oh!”

  He saw the three men standing, fanning out across the room, as did others in the saloon. Suddenly people began to scatter, and any hope of taking McCall by surprise was gone.

  “Get ’im!” Dekker shouted, standing.

  The sound of gunfire filled the room, and gunsmoke mingled with the haze already caused by cigarette and cigar smoke to almost form a fog in the room.

  Through the fog the principals fired their weapons, some in haste, and some with cold deliberation.

  Evan McCall produced his cutdown Colt .45 from a shoulder rig and did his firing calmly. He was facing four men, and his goal was to do as best he could before their lead took him to the floor.

  His first shot drilled one man through the heart after that man’s hastily fired shots went wild. As the man fell Evan turned to fire again, but before he could, a second man—who had also fired wildly—was felled by a bullet. Before Evan McCall knew what was happening, the third man fell in quick order. To Evan’s mind, the rapid succession of unerring shots could only have beenfired by a handful of men, one of whom was his own brother, Sam.

  He looked toward the batwing doors and saw Sam standing there, a grin on his face.

  “There’s one left, brother,” Sam said, holstering his shotgun.

  Evan gave his brother a nod and then turned his attention to Carl Dekker.

  “By God, Dekker, draw your gun!”

  Dekker, who’d had his coat thrown back so that he could reach his weapon, had been so surprised by the turn of events that he had not been able to draw.

  He wet his lips. “McCall—”

  “Draw your weapon or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”

  “You can’t,” Dekker said. “There’s too many witnesses who’ll say I didn’t have my gun out.”

  “And there are enough witnesses who know that you and your friend tried to backshoot me,” Evan said.

  “They’ll stand behind my story. Which is it to be? Will you die like a man, or a coward?”

  Dekker’s eyes darted about the room, sear
ching for salvation. When he saw that none was coming he looked back at Evan McCall.

  “Damn you, McCall!” he shouted, and went for his gun.

  Evan McCall fired once, the bullet striking Carl Dekker on the bridge of the nose. Dekker’s jaw went slack, his hand fell to his side, and he keeled over backward.

  Evan shoved his gun back into his shoulder rig and walked over to where his brother was standing.

  “Much obliged, Sam.”

  “Anytime, brother.”

  Before they could exchange another word the doors swung open to admit a hoard of blue-coated policemen.

  The officer in charge surveyed the damage before speaking.

  “Who killed these men?” he demanded.

  “We did, Officer.” Evan told the truth because there was no hope of denying it—and no reason to.

  The officer, tall, barrel chested, in his forties, gave them a stern stare and said, “You’ll both turn your weapons over to me and accompany me to jail.”

  “Jail?” Sam McCall said. “These men tried to back-shoot my brother.”

  “You and you brother are still standing, my friend,” the officer said loudly. “Until I can get the whole story, you two are the only ones I can take to jail—and by God, that’s where you’re going!”

  Suddenly the other officers surrounded the brothers, giving them barely enough elbowroom. Sam and Evan McCall exchanged a helpless glance before turning their weapons over to the policeman.

  At the jail they were given separate cells, but it was a simple enough thing to move the pallets over to the common set of bars and talk.

  “We shouldn’t be here too long,” Evan said. “Enough people saw what happened.”

  Sam nodded.

  “So tell me, brother,” Evan said, “how did you happen to be in the right place at the right time?”

  Sam stared at his younger brother through the bars for a moment, forming the words in his mind before he spoke them.

  “Ma and Pa are dead.”

  “What?”

  Sam took the telegram from his shirt pocket and handed it through the bars. He studied his brother while Evan read it.

  He hadn’t seen Evan in a couple of years, not since their paths had last crossed in New Orleans. Evan was five years younger, but Sam was still struck by how muchyounger than that he looked. He seemed closer to Jubal’s twenty-four years than his own forty-three. At thirty-eight Evan McCall had none of the gray that streaked Sam’s own dark hair. He was clean shaven, whereas Sam wore a heavy mustache that completely obscured his upper lip. Sam had always thought that while Evan and Jubal actually looked like brothers, he did not share very many of their attributes. He was larger and heavier, and his facial bone structure was that of their father rather than their mother. Sam had a strong, squared jaw and high cheekbones, while Evan and Jubal had their mother’s finer features. Evan and Jubal also had their mother’s blue eyes, while Sam’s were a muddy brown.

  After Evan had read the telegram several times he turned those blue eyes on Sam and said, “It doesn’t say how it happened.”

  “I know.”

  “Have you sent a telegram to find out?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, brother,” Sam said, taking the telegram back, “you and I and Jubal are going to Vengeance Creek to find out for ourselves.”

  “Jubal?” There was no argument from Evan. He had already decided that he was going to go find out what happened. It pleased him that he wouldn’t be going alone.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “All we got to do is find trouble,” Sam said, “and we’ll find brother Jubal.”

  Chapter Four

  All his life Jubal McCall had known that he was different from his brothers.

  Sam and Evan, they had things they were good at. With a gun Sam McCall was the best Jubal had ever seen, and he was proud of his big brother for that.

  Evan, he could do things with cards that nobody else could. Whenever Jubal thought of his two brothers he thought of them with pride.

  When he thought about himself, it was with great disappointment, because he knew that Jubal McCall was good at only one thing—getting himself into trouble.

  Ever since he’d left home five years ago Jubal had drifted from place to place, taking jobs where he could find them, doing whatever he had to do to survive, but always there was a black cloud following him around, ready to rain on whatever good thing he managed to find.

  This time, the black cloud had really done a job on him.

  He stood up, climbed up on the metal bunk that was bolted to the stone wall, and looked out through the barred window. He could see the scaffold from there, the one the people of Prosper, Wyoming, were building for him.

  The one from which they intended to hang him without even benefit of a trial. He was surprised that they were even going to the bother to build a scaffold. Having been sentenced without benefit of a trial, he’d assumed that they would take him to the highest tree they could findand stretch his neck from there, but apparently they wanted to do the job “right and proper,” as he’d heard someone say.

  The men who were working on the scaffold had stopped to eat lunch, and now the hammering started up again. He turned away, stepped down, and sat on the bunk, his chin in his hands.

  He knew that both of his brothers had been in similar situations at some time in their lives, and they had both managed to survive. A man couldn’t live without being blamed at one time or another for something he didn’t do.

  Jubal McCall had not killed Ed Flanagan. He had slept with Flanagan’s wife, however, and that made him the prime suspect for Ed’s murder. When Flanagan’s body was found with its skull bashed in, the sheriff and his men had gone directly to Jubal’s hotel room to get him. It was unfortunate for Jubal that Erin Flanagan had been in his bed at the time. When the sheriff kicked in the door, Erin sat up without the benefit of a sheet, her proud, peach-sized breasts there for all to see. Jubal had used that moment to try and make the window, but his legs had gotten tangled in the bedclothes and he had fallen painfully to the floor. Moments later he was standing between two deputies, who held his arms tightly behind him while the sheriff helped Erin on with her clothes.

  Of course, the fact that he was with Erin when her husband was killed should have been a perfect alibi, except for one thing—Erin Flanagan told the sheriff that Jubal had killed her husband.

  It was only then that Jubal realized that Erin’ten years his senior, but absolutely beautiful beyond words—had used her red hair, firm breasts, and warm mouth to set him up but good.

  So here he sat, waiting for the scaffold to be finished, waiting for them to come and get him and string him up for a murder he didn’t commit.

  Still, he had been stupid enough to get himself into this predicament.

  Sam and Evan McCall had been released from jail the very next day. Dick Stark had gotten enough men together to back their story that the police had to let them out without charging them.

  They were, however, asked to leave San Francisco as soon as possible.

  Fortunately, that was not a problem.

  While still in jail Evan had told Sam that he’d received a letter from Jubal just a couple of months ago, while he himself was in Sacramento. Apparently Jubal and Evan had stayed in touch much more than Sam had with either of them.

  The next morning, as they bought two horses and provisions and set out for Wyoming, Sam had said, “Tell me again what the letter said.”

  “Jubal said that he was going to Wyoming to try and stay out of trouble.”

  “Well then,” Sam said, “All we have to do is find the hottest spot in Wyoming, and our little brother will be there.”

  Of course, the hottest spot in Wyoming was definitely the town of Prosper, in the controlled Folk County. The word had gone out for miles around that a hanging was going to take place. In fact, there was so much interest that Jubal was told they were postponing t
he necktie party for a couple of days to accommodate certain people—highly placed people in the running of Folk County. The hanging certainly couldn’t go on without them there.

  And so Jubal’s waiting was prolonged. Later, he’d realize what good the postponement of the hanging had done him.

  The day was here, though, and Jubal was just hours from the rope. He tried to pass the night by thinking of the most pleasant thing he could. Unfortunately, the most pleasant thing he could think of was being in bed with Erin Flanagan, buried in her loving, but that just brought him full circle to being hanged again.

  He wondered who was nestled between Erin’s sweet thighs while he was waiting out his last night on earth.

  The McCall brothers had been in Folk County only a day when they heard about the hanging, in a saloon. Apparently, some young fool had been caught in bed with the wife of Dan Flanagan, son of Darby Flanagan, who, with Seth Folk, ran Folk county. As confusing as it sounded to them, the important element was “young fool.”

  They looked at each other and said, “Jubal.”

  They asked a few pertinent questions, then left the saloon and rode to Prosper.

  “Let’s go, McCall,” the deputy said, opening the cell door. “We kept you waitin’ long enough.”

  “Don’t rush on my account.” Jubal spoke without rising from his bunk.

  “Come on.” The deputy entered the cell and kicked the underside of the bunk. “There are a lot of people waiting out there for you.”

  “Yeah,” Jubal said, “we can’t keep them waitin’, can we?”

  “No, we can’t. Get up.”

  Jubal swung his feet to the floor and the deputy backed up, his hand on his gun.

  “What are you, nervous?” he asked.

  “You’re Sam McCall’s brother, ain’t you?”

  “So?”

  The deputy wet his lips.

  “So, that’d make anybody nervous.”

  Jubal laughed.

  “You think big brother’s gonna come ridin’ in here to save me?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind.”

  “It come to anyone else’s mind?”

  Now it was the deputy’s turn to laugh.

  “Not hardly. Folk County is so secure Folk and Flanagan aren’t even worried about Sam McCall.”