“Exactly?” asked Jake. “Couldn’t say. Upwards of ten days though would be a good guess. About the time you came to me complaining about your shot being off. Couldn’t have been off more than a couple of inches, and at the distance you were firing that Winchester, seemed a little odd to me that you’d be fussing about it. Got me thinking.”
“Bit longer than that for me,” said Jessop. “I understood that you didn’t want to talk about it right off in front of the missus. We didn’t know much at first, but when you told us not to say anything ever, well, that sort of spooked me. Like maybe you knew something we didn’t.”
Max folded his cards and tapped a tattoo against the table with one corner of the stack. “About the same for me. None of us talked about it until yesterday. Guess since Jem isn’t here, we can blame him. He brought it up.”
“Jem,” Morgan said flatly. “Jem brought it up.”
“More or less. He said something about Mrs. Longstreet bein’ just about the quietest woman he knew. I guess that’s when we realized she hadn’t always been that way. Only natural that words would come to be exchanged about you.”
“Only natural.”
“Well, it does seem as if she should know,” Jessop said. “If you think we have notions rattlin’ around in our heads, what kind of things do you suppose she has rattlin’ around in hers? They’re rustlers, boss. Cut the fence, take a few head of cattle, hightail it off your land, and come around again when they think it’s safe to take a couple more.”
“And what if they’re not rustlers?” Morgan asked quietly. No one said a word. An ember popped in the stove and Max jerked, but other than that they were still. “What if they’re not only rustlers?”
Jake asked, “What do you mean?”
“How often do rustlers make off with just a few head of cattle? And how often do they come back in so short a time?”
Max said, “We’d have caught up with them already if they’d run off with more cattle.”
“Maybe. I hope so. But again, if not getting caught is that important, why return?”
“Hunger,” said Jessop. “Could be they’re rustling for food, not profit. Feeding a group, say. Squatters.”
Jake shook his head. “No squatters on this land.”
“Of course they ain’t squatting here,” Jessop said. “But there’s plenty of unclaimed land north of here and only four of us that can ride out.”
“Not homesteaders,” Max said thoughtfully. “The whole point of homesteading is to put down roots. Same with squatters. These thieves are movin’ around. Hiding out, I reckon you could say.”
“Outlaws?” Jake sat up straight. “Is that what you’re gettin’ at?”
“Rustlers are outlaws,” said Jessop.
“I know that. Max knows what I mean, and I was talkin’ to him anyway.”
“You should be talkin’ to the boss,” said Max. “I reckon it’s his thinkin’ that matters.”
Jake looked at Morgan. “You think it’s outlaws?”
Morgan knuckled the stubble on his jaw. “It’s better to entertain the possibility than pretend it can’t exist.”
“You mighta entertained it with us. I can see why you don’t want Mrs. Longstreet fretting about a thing like that, but the rest of us should be prepared.”
“And what would you be doing that you aren’t already? You ride out every day armed and alert. You know what I know. More, probably, since you’ve been out there. I just have another thought about it, is all, and it’s the kind of thought that I want to keep from my wife. So now you know.”
Jessop laid his cards down and pushed them toward the pot. “You have some suspicion about who the gang might be? Cassidy, maybe?”
“He and Sundance are up at Hole-in-the-Wall,” said Jake. “Everyone knows that.”
“Well, everyone ain’t found them yet, have they?”
Jake flicked a card at his brother. It struck Jessop in the chest. Jessop started to come out of his chair, but Morgan threw out a restraining arm before there were blows and blood.
Morgan waited for the air to become less agitated. For a moment there Jake and Jessop were putting out more heat than the stove. “Done?” he asked them, looking at each of them in turn. “So help me God, if I see one or both of you sporting shiners in the morning, I’ll keep Jem on and exchange the pair of you for Rabbit and Finn Collins.”
Neither brother had anything to say to that, although they did exchange squinty looks.
