“Thanks, Laura,” Clint said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  She nodded, confident that her point had gotten across, and settled back in behind her paperwork.

  Clint stepped into the next room and immediately spotted Matt sitting at one of eight tables. A few of the other tables were occupied, but the only real movement in the room came from a pair of servers who bustled back and forth between the tables and the kitchen.

  Sitting down at Matt’s table, Clint slapped the notice he’d taken from Marshal Lind’s wall and asked, “Look familiar?”

  “Well, good morning to you, too,” Matt said.

  “And to you. Now answer my question.”

  “You should try some coffee. It sounds like you could use a cup.”

  When Matt saw that he’d failed to get Clint’s expression to change, he looked down at the yellowed paper under Clint’s hand. “I haven’t seen that one in a while.”

  “That’s a pretty healthy sum they’re offering for your scalp.”

  Matt nodded. “One of the higher ones, too.”

  “Maybe you should tell me why I shouldn’t hand you over to the marshal.”

  Scooping up some of the scrambled eggs from his plate, Matt shook his head and grinned. “I already told you I was wanted.”

  “Then maybe I’m coming to my senses after getting a good night’s sleep.”

  “In that case, you should know that I could have torn out of here anytime I wanted if it was my intention to get away. For that matter, I never even had to allow you to come along with me at all.”

  “What is your intention here?” Clint asked.

  “To finish up my breakfast. You should order some for yourself. It’s the daily special.”

  Clint maintained his stare until Matt got the hint.

  “There’s a banker I crossed paths with the last time I was here,” Matt explained. “I was making a withdrawal and he got in the way, so I shot him.”

  “You killed him?”

  “Not so far as I know, but I did hurt him pretty bad. I even heard he could barely form a complete sentence for months after being scared so bad.”

  “How do you know that?” Clint asked. “Do you keep up with the people you shoot?”

  “Not hardly, but I did some checking and I heard that the man was still living here in town. I figured I’d pay him a visit and see about putting his mind to rest.”

  Clint let out a sigh and motioned for one of the servers to take his order. “I’m sure you could throw some money at him and everything will be just fine.”

  “I doubt it. That’s why I was hoping you’d lend a hand.”

  “You were hoping that, huh?”

  “Sure,” Matt replied. “Isn’t that why you tagged along?”

  TWENTY-ONE

  “Is this really necessary?” Matt asked as he stood outside of the livery with his hand resting on his holstered pistol.

  Clint stood directly in front of him with his arms hanging loosely at his sides. He wasn’t making a move for his own modified Colt, but he could get a grip on the weapon at a moment’s notice. For the time being, he simply nodded.

  “Yes,” Clint replied. “It’s necessary.”

  “Why?”

  “As a show of good faith.”

  “I could get another gun if I wanted, you know,” Matt said. “You’re not keeping me from anything.”

  “If you want me to help, you’ll do me this favor. Besides, I won’t let you out of my sight long enough to visit any firearms stores.”

  Matt let out a sigh, took his gun from its holster and spun it around so the handle was facing out toward Clint. Handing over the weapon, he said, “Then take it. I don’t see why you’d think I’d come all this way to shoot an old man anyhow.”

  Clint took the gun and stuck it under his own belt. “Thanks for humoring me. Now, would you like to lead the way?”

  Matt climbed into his saddle and rode out as Clint was mounting Eclipse. Both men rode through the town of Lohrens, which was still in the process of waking up and coming to life. Although a few of the locals looked over at them, they didn’t seem too interested in where the men were going.

  Clint, on the other hand, was plenty interested in seeing where Matt was headed. After rounding a corner, Matt snapped his reins and got moving a bit quicker through a stretch of deserted street. Clint followed behind, but never let his eyes stray too far from Matt.

  Plenty of men would have gone to a lot more trouble to distract Clint long enough to take a clean shot at him. Even though Matt hadn’t exactly shown himself to be a threat, Clint wasn’t in the habit of giving known killers the benefit of the doubt.

  He also wasn’t in the habit of riding beside known outlaws and letting them lead the way. For some reason, however, Clint was doing just that in the case of Matt Fraley. Despite the fact that common sense would say it was a bad idea, another set of Clint’s instincts told him to see it through. Even stronger than those things was the curiosity that made Clint wonder just what the hell was on Matt’s mind.

  After all the times that Clint had been burned by curiosity, he might have thought that he would have learned his lesson. For that reason, Clint kept Matt where he could see him and waited until Matt rode ahead before taking a few simple measures to disable Matt’s gun.

  Clint might not have had many of his gunsmithing tools available, but he didn’t need much of anything more than years of experience with crafting weapons to make the modifications necessary for him to rest a bit easier. When he looked up again, he saw Matt coming back to where Clint was waiting.

  “He’s still living there,” Matt said.

  “You knew where this guy lived?” Clint asked.

  Wincing a bit, Matt nodded. “I . . . sort of paid him a visit before robbing the bank. Kind of for insurance.”

  “What sort of insurance?”

  “The kind a man gets when he holds another man’s family hostage and threatens to shoot up his house and home if he don’t let me rob that bank.”

  “Jesus,” Clint muttered.

  Matt nodded slowly and lowered his head as if he didn’t want to look him in the eye. “I know. It was a bad one. That’s why it sort of stuck in my mind.”

  Before Clint could respond to that, the door of the little house Matt had picked out swung open. The hinges creaked loudly and made a grating sound that was soon followed by the knocking of wood against wood. The man who stepped forward wasn’t exactly old, but he carried himself as if an additional twenty years had been tacked onto the forty or so that he’d already earned.

  The man was skinny, balding, and had a sunken face. A bristly black mustache sprouted from his lip and waggled as he grunted and groaned with the effort of walking outside. Most of that effort was stemming from the fact that he only had one full leg at his disposal and needed to lean on a crutch so he could move.

  As soon as the man spotted Matt, his eyes widened and he turned to hustle inside. Considering his predicament, he actually moved pretty fast.

  “Pardon us,” Matt shouted toward the house. “I wondered if you might be able to—”

  Before Matt could finish his question, the one-legged man hobbled back through the door. Along with the crutch, he also brought along a shotgun, which he propped on one arm and then pulled the trigger.

  “Holy shit!” Matt shouted as the shotgun roared and sent a plume of smoke into the air.

  Clint had pulled Eclipse away from the front of the house as soon as he’d seen that shotgun. Unfortunately, considering the one-legged man’s haste, that only put Clint in more danger. Between the man’s rush to pull his trigger and his problem balancing on his crutch, the shotgun blast wound up coming closer to Clint than to Matt. Even as the buckshot blazed past Clint’s head, the man who’d fired the shotgun was still glaring intently at Matt.

  “It’s you!” the one-legged man shouted.

  Matt’s horse had reflexively turned from the house to get away from the shotgun blast. Coming around in a full circle, Matt faced the house again while patting the air with his free hand. “It’s not what you think,” Matt said.

  The one-legged man was trembling, but had collected himself enough to pull the shotgun away from Clint’s direction and point it at Matt. His aim might not have been perfect, but it was close enough for the shotgun to put Matt into a world of hurt.

  “Just give me a moment to explain,” Matt said.

  Slowly, the one-legged man shook his head. “No. I remember you. I won’t let you hurt me again.”

  The shotgun in the one-legged man’s hands was still shaking, but it wasn’t about to be taken away from its target. The look in the man’s eyes was full of fear, but there was enough determination mixed in to make his intentions plenty easy to distinguish.

  As the roar of the shotgun rolled through the air, the sounds of some distant voices could be heard. Matt’s voice cut right through all of that as he leveled his eyes onto the one-legged man and spoke with cool determination.

  “Just a minute of your time,” Matt said. “That’s all I’m asking.”

  But the other man barely seemed to listen. All he could do was shake his head and tighten his grip on his shotgun.

  The next sound to drift through the air was the brush of iron against leather, followed by the metallic click of a pistol’s hammer being thumbed back.

  “No need to worry about him,” Clint said as he pointed the Colt at Matt. “If you let him have a word with you, I promise he won’t ever bother you again.”

  The one-legged man looked over to Clint as if he’d just noticed he was there. “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m the one who’ll pull this trigger if this man so much as thinks about stepping out of line.”

  Finally, the one-legged man nodded and lowered his shotgun. “Fine. One minute. That’s all he gets.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Despite the fact that he was no longer staring down the barrel of a shotgun, Matt didn’t seem any more comfortable once he was inside. In fact, he was more and more uncomfortable as the tension between him and the one-legged man simmered down to a more hospitable level.

  Clint watched Matt carefully for any sign that something might be amiss. So far, the only strange thing he could see was the timid way Matt was carrying himself.

  The one-legged man set his shotgun down once he was inside his house, and immediately hobbled toward a small shelf nearby. After taking some fresh shells from an old box on that shelf, he reloaded the shotgun and did his best to keep an eye on Matt and Clint as they stepped inside. Considering the fact that he was also balancing on his crutch, it was quite a show.

  “You’re Matt Fraley,” the one-legged man said.

  “Yes, sir. I am.”

  The one-legged man mumbled nervously under his breath while fumbling with the shotgun. Just as he managed to get one of the shells in place, his hand flinched and the shotgun fell from his grasp. He winced in expectation of the loud impact, but slowly opened his eyes when only silence came.

  Having been fast enough to lean forward and catch the shotgun before it hit, Clint held the weapon sideways and offered it back to its owner.

  “And who’re you?” the one-legged man asked.

  “My name’s Clint Adams.”

  The one-legged man blinked and let out a breath. “The Gunsmith?”

  “That’s what some folks call me. I didn’t figure on being recognized so easily though.”

  “Plenty of folks heard of the Gunsmith.”

  “Yeah,” Clint replied. “But most of those spend twenty hours out of the day in a saloon.”

  That brought a smile to the one-legged man’s face. Glancing toward Matt, he asked, “Did that one there tell you who I am?”

  “Not by name.”

  “My name’s Abraham Zucker. Of course, he never asked my name when he was holding my family hostage and ruining my life.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Matt said weakly. “I know it ain’t much, but—”

  Matt was cut short by a sudden knocking on the front door. Zucker grunted and groaned, but motioned for the other two to step back as he made his way to see who’d done the knocking. Once the door was open and Zucker looked outside, Clint tried to get a look for himself, but couldn’t see more than two burly shapes standing on the porch.

  “There a problem in there?” one of the burly men asked.

  Zucker wasn’t quick to answer, but that didn’t seem to make any of the other two outside very sympathetic.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “What the hell were you shooting at, Abe?” one of the men outside asked.

  “Shooting?” Zucker replied.

  “Yeah. You may be cripple, but we ain’t deaf.”

  Zucker hung his head and said, “I . . . thought I saw something.”

  The two burly men laughed and leaned forward to get a look inside the house. Even though they had to have seen at least one other stranger inside, they stepped away from the door and threw their last comments over their shoulders as they left.

  “Don’t fire any more shots in the air,” one said.

  “If ’n we come back here again, we’re takin’ that damned shotgun from you,” the other added.

  Zucker pushed the door shut and dragged himself to a chair next to a small table cluttered with bits of food, a couple books and one chipped ceramic mug. “That outlaw you got there probably coulda shot me dead an’ nobody around here would care,” he said.

  Since there were no more chairs in sight, Clint leaned against a wall. “Why’s that?”

  “Because of what happened, that’s why!” Zucker snapped. “What the hell good is a bank manager that gives up all his money without a fight?”

  “You didn’t give up without a fight,” Matt said quietly.

  Zucker brought his eyes around to glare at Matt as if he was still sighting along the top of his shotgun.

  Matt shrugged and added, “Well . . . you didn’t.” Seeing that Clint was now staring at him as well, Matt told him, “I needed to do some real convincing to get him to work with me.”

  “Convincing while you had his wife and family held hostage?” Clint asked. “Did that include . . . ?”

  Matt shook his head slowly. “I didn’t harm a hair on any of their heads. I didn’t need to.”

  “That’s right,” Zucker replied. “And when everyone came out fine and dandy, all the folks in town started asking where their money went off to. I swear things would’ve been easier if you would have shot me rather than just hit me in the leg.”

  Clint looked at Matt and then back to Zucker. Actually, his eyes were drawn more to the stub that had been one of Zucker’s legs. “You mean you’re the one who took his leg?”

  “Not me, but one of the boys riding with my gang,” Matt replied. “When we couldn’t find the rest of the deposits, we got anxious. I told one of my partners to do some convincing and he let his pistol do his talking.”

  “Blasted me right in my goddamned kneecap,” Zucker growled. “Never had something hurt so bad in my life. Wait a second. I did, actually. After the wound turned sour and the doc had to saw off my leg, that was the worst pain in my life.”

  Matt winced as he drew in a deep breath.

  Digging out a bottle half-full of whiskey, Zucker went on to say, “Even after that, folks around here didn’t think it was enough. Those goddamned outlaws hit the bank after the lumber mill deposited their payroll. It took a hell of a while to get that money replaced, and all them mill workers blamed me for not doing my job.”

  “What did they expect you to do?” Clint asked. “You were robbed. You got shot, for God’s sake.”

  “The manager before me was robbed, too, and he only let the robbers get away with a quarter of the funds in the bank,” Zucker explained.

  Seeing that Clint was eyeing him sternly, Matt nodded. “We pulled that job, too,” he muttered.

  “I guess that explains that!” Zucker snapped.

  “Did the mill shut down?” Clint asked.

  “No.”

  “Then why the grudge?”

  “Because I’m not good with that shotgun and I’m not in charge of anyone’s job. At least, I wasn’t after I was fired from my own.” Holding the whiskey bottle in his hand, Zucker ran his thumb along the smeared glass and said, “Ever since I started drinking this stuff, I barely seem like the educated man I used to be.”

  Slowly, Matt reached out to take the bottle. Although Zucker put up a bit of a fight, it didn’t take much for Matt to pull the bottle away from him. “Trust me,” Matt said. “You’ll be a lot better off once you’re not pouring this poison down your throat.”

  Once the bottle was out of his grasp, Zucker allowed his empty hand to settle on top of the table like a flower that had been deprived of water. “So what’s your business here, anyways? Come by to see about robbing the bank again now that the mill’s back on its feet?”

  “No,” Matt said. “I wanted to—”

  “We wanted to thank you,” Clint interrupted.

  “For what?” Zucker asked.

  Judging by the way Matt was staring at Clint, he was about to ask that same question.

  “For what you did after the robbery,” Clint replied.

  After a few seconds of contemplation, Zucker blinked and said, “You mean about that description I gave?”

  “There was more than that,” Clint pressed.

  Although he was quiet for a while, Zucker began to nod. His face brightened as he said, “I described the whole gang of those outlaws right down to the clothes on their backs and the horses they rode. I just didn’t think anyone took any notice.”

  Clint smirked and started walking behind Matt. Pulling Matt up by the back of his shirt, Clint said, “I just needed to stop by here to make sure I was talking to the right man. Since you’re the one who had a hand in getting the word out, it’s only fair that you get a cut of the reward money for this outlaw’s capture.”

  Zucker brightened up even more, until he seemed to be standing taller on his one leg than the others on their two. “I wasn’t thinking about a reward, but it would help out. Would there be enough for me to put a new roof on this place?”