“Bluebellies giving you trouble, Will?”
“Nah, that Captain Culp seems to be a fair enough fella. There’s worse than bluebellies around these parts.”
“Carpetbaggers!” men chorused.
“That’s right,” Will said. “But there’s worse than carpetbaggers, too.”
“Scalawags!” they shouted.
“Traitors,” Will said. “That’s what they are. Men like Isaac Pew and Sully Weatherspoon. They’re both giving me trouble. Big trouble.”
Someone had heard about Will’s sister and said something about it now, and all of them had heard about Will whupping Gibbs on the street.
“That ain’t the half of it,” Will said, and relayed the trouble Sully, Gibbs, and Butler had given his women.
The men roared with anger.
Will was not surprised. True Texans are nothing if not chivalrous to their women.
“Sully waited for me to leave, then snuck over like a fox sniffing around a henhouse. No way he’d face me man-to-man. Everybody knows he’s yellow as a chicken yolk.”
One of the men slapped the bar. “I seen him coming back from there. This was yesterday?”
“Yessir,” Will said.
“I seen him, all right. I was coming out of the general store when Sully come riding up to the sheriff’s office. Went running in there and started shouting at Rickert. I could hear him through the glass. Not the words, mind you, but the shouting. Then, Sully comes out of there and slams the door and rides off, looking fit to be tied.”
“I run Rickert off about a week back,” Will said. “But at least he had the guts to look me in the eye instead of creeping around, threatening women.”
This got the other men going again. Several mentioned stories about Sully giving them or someone they knew a hard time. And everyone seemed to have something to say about Gibbs.
Will glanced at his watch. It was three o’clock on the dot.
Perfect.
And at that exact moment, the saloon door swung open.
CHAPTER 36
Will announced loudly, “Bartender, I’d like to buy another round for everyone who wore the gray or wished he had—but not him.”
He turned in his chair and pointed across the room at Sully Weatherspoon, who stood just inside the door with Gibbs and Terry Tubbs, one of Sully’s less impressive toadies.
Sully stared at Will with open hatred.
“Lieutenant Weatherspoon turned tail the first time the 5thtook fire,” Will declared loudly. “Ran out on his commission and had his daddy pay his way out of it. Now, he’s a skalawag in the business of threatening women… because he’s too afraid to stand up to a man.”
“How dare you spread falsehoods about me, Will Bentley?” Sully demanded, his face turning purple with rage.
Will arched a brow. “You calling me a liar, Sully?”
“Yes, I am! You are a liar, and we aren’t going to stand for?—”
“Those are fighting words, Sully,” Will said, standing and pulling back his jacket to reveal his Colt, which sat in the holster he’d bought at the mercantile and practiced with in the alley outside before coming into the saloon.
Benny and Cullen Baker were right. It was much faster, whipping a gun out of a holster than it was dragging out one shoved through your belt.
Sully sputtered, his eyes locked on the revolver.
