J.D. was just starting to get a handle on his unwanted paperwork when Buck finally drifted into the sheriff's office, his eyes bloodshot and his temper as sunk into disarray as his black hair. He was on his way to the saloon, seeking the solace of some hair from the dog that had bitten him, and J.D. didn't take much persuading to tag along. That meant he was right on the scene when a fight broke out between two cowboys, not that his presence stopped it from escalating into a gunfight before cooler heads--and a couple of buckets of water--could calm down the flaring tempers. Nobody got hurt, unless you counted Billy-the-bartender's heartbreak over the three-inch hole blasted through the brand new naked lady painting above the bar by a stray bullet, but Buck and J.D. hauled the participants off to jail, anyway, to give them some time to sober up.
As soon as the cowboys were safely behind bars, Buck made himself scarce, so J.D. got to spend the rest of the day sitting around, sorting wanted posters and throwing an occasional unheeded warning at the two drunks when they tried to continue their rough-housing through the bars that separated their cells. They couldn't do each other much damage, so he pretty much ignored them except when they got so loud that they made his ears ring. If nothing else, their conversation added a few new and colorful local expressions to his vocabulary--not that he figured he'd ever have the nerve to use them.
He left them locked up overnight and turned them loose the next morning. He was standing on the stoop of the jail, watching them ride out of town side by side, sober and friends again, when Amelia Johnson emerged from the hotel and started off in the opposite direction at a brisk walk.
Most of the people she passed paid her no attention at all. She was probably a complete stranger to them, because in towns like this, folks came and went at an alarming rate, moving on to seek an easier life or a new start or a better dream.
But even from a distance, J.D. could tell when she passed someone who remembered her. He saw a merchant's wife turn her head aside and pretend not to see her. Another stopped dead in the middle of the boardwalk as Amelia approached, then turned to stare after her as she hurried past. One man called something after her, his voice too distant for J.D. to hear the words but his intention clear from the tone. Amelia just stiffened and kept walking, pretending she didn't feel the eyes that turned to stare after her, or hear the whispers that followed in her wake. When J.D. came West in search of a dream, he had left more behind than the drudgery and monotony of his job in a rich man's stable. While he was growing up, he had faced endless knife-edged slights from those who dismissed him as worthless, just a servant girl's bastard who would never amount to a thing. Infinitely worse, he'd been forced to hear his mother belittled and insulted when he was too young and small to defend her. As he grew old enough to fight back, the barbs had become a little more circumspect but they had never stopped, not right up to the day she died.
Out here, all that was behind him, just a bitter memory he kept locked away so deeply inside that he hardly ever thought about it at all. In the whole territory, there were only two people--maybe three now, if Mrs. Potter had figured out the truth--who knew he carried his mother's name instead of his father's, and they didn't think a damned bit less of him for it. That comfortable acceptance meant the world to him. It was so much better than what he'd had before that he looked back sometimes and wondered how he'd ever lived with how things used to be. The answer to that question always came back to one person: the small, dark-haired woman who had taught him how to be happy--most of the time, anyway--no matter what came his way. Last night, he'd convinced himself he ought to just mind his own affairs and leave Mrs. Johnson to hers. He couldn't stop people from gossiping about her, any more than he'd been able to shield his mother from the scorn of people who weren't worth her little finger. And like his mother, she seemed quite capable of dealing with the situation with grace and humor and aloof pride. But watching her now, walking down that street all alone, the resolve made no sense to him. He wasn't a child anymore, forced to stand aside and let things like that happen in front of him. There had to be something he could do to help.
J.D. ran on heart and instinct, seldom stopping to think things through before he did them. He didn't make a conscious decision to pull closed the jailhouse door and start off down the street in Amelia's wake, he just found himself doing it. He didn't have a clue what he'd say when he caught up with her... but he'd deal with that when he got to it.
The majority of the town stretched along both sides of a single street, with a few buildings scattered down side streets or within walking distance in the surrounding countryside. Unaware that he was behind her, Amelia reached the end of the street and kept going. J.D. couldn't figure out where she was headed, because there wasn't a building off in that direction for miles. He quickened his steps, intending to catch up with her before she got too far out into the middle of nowhere, then halted uncertainly when she turned aside from the road and entered the cemetery.
The small, rectangular plot of barren earth with its scattering of simple grave markers had witnessed the beginning of this new life he'd made for himself. It was here that he'd had his first, less-than-auspicious meeting with Chris and Vin while they were saving Nathan from a lynch mob. He'd been out to the cemetery a few times since then--once to bury a rock-filled coffin, a few times to walk some citizen he barely knew to a final rest, because it seemed like the respectful thing for a sheriff to do--but he had no idea who all was buried here. He'd barely glanced at the names carved on the existing markers as he came and went.
Suddenly realizing how much he was intruding on Amelia's privacy, he thought about retreating back the way he'd come. But she might turn at any second and spot him, and if she did, he didn't want her to find him sneaking away like an eavesdropper--even if that was exactly what he was. He spend a minute or two jittering over the problem, then finally just walked over to a big boulder that was sticking up out of the ground beside the road and settled down on it to wait.
Amelia gave no indication that she'd noticed him. With her back to him, she stopped by a grave marker and knelt to lay something on the hard-packed earth. When she rose again and moved on, J.D. could see that it was a single flower. Amelia approached another grave, this one so recent that the earth above it still formed an oval mound. Here, she didn't kneel or leave any sort of gift. Seeing her face in three-quarters profile he couldn't be sure, but J.D. thought she was speaking quietly. Maybe she was saying a prayer, or maybe just talking to the dead, as people did sometimes even if they didn't believe the dead could hear them. She didn't stay there long, and as soon as she turned towards the entrance to the cemetery, she spotted him. Her displeasure with his presence and the obvious fact that he'd followed her was written on her face as she strode through the open gate and came up to stand in front of him.
"Were you listening?"
Embarrassed heat flooded through him as he said hastily, "No! Honest, I wouldn't have stayed here if I could've heard you. It wouldn't have been right... I didn't mean to pry. I just thought maybe you could use some company, is all."
"I'm doing perfectly well, thank you, Sheriff. Good day." With a small nod, she started back towards town.
J.D. caught up with her after a couple of steps. "I, um... I got a message for you from Mrs. Potter. She said she'd like you to come by and see her 'fore you leave town."
Amelia stopped walking so abruptly that J.D. got a couple of steps farther on and had to turn back to face her.
"You talked with Mrs. Potter about me?"
"I, um..." It had never been J.D.'s nature to be tongue-tied, but this woman had a way of bringing it out in him. He wasn't enjoying the experience in the least.
"What is it--exactly--that you want from me, Sheriff?"
"Nothing, ma'am," J.D. assured her hastily.
He saw Amelia read the lie from his eyes. She made a sharp little sound in her throat, too bitter to be a laugh. "It has been my experience that when a man pays this much attention to a woman, he always wants something. Let me disavow you of one misapprehension, Sheriff Dunne. A good portion of what people say about me is lies, including the assumption that I'm a whore."
"That ain't what I--" he began indignantly, but she stepped around him and walked away.
The indignation was almost immediately replaced by guilt. Whatever anger he felt on her behalf, whatever painful echoes of his past, his interest had started with apple blossom perfume and the slender, graceful curves of her body beneath the molded layers of silk--not to mention the pure satisfaction of spending time with a woman who had rejected Buck. The good reasons and the bad were all tangled up together. He couldn't even sort them out himself. He knew he would never have been able to explain them, even if Amelia had given him the chance to try.
Feeling stupid and embarrassed and annoyed all at the same time, J.D. sat back down on the rock to wait until she was out of sight. He was surprised and disconcerted when she got no more than ten steps away before she turned abruptly on her heel and started back. J.D. bounced to his feet, his eyes widening in anticipation of a further dressing down. They widened even more when he realized that all signs of her fury had vanished.
"I owe you an apology, Mr. Dunne," Amelia said quietly. "You have done nothing to deserve such harsh words. Being here is much more difficult for me than I thought it would be. My temper is frayed, and my memories makes me expect the worst from everyone. I hope you'll forgive me."
J.D. leaned his hands on the ivory grips of the pistols that hung from his belt, and stared down at a little patch of weeds that had taken root at the base of the boulder.
"Reckon I should be asking you to forgive me," he admitted. "I shouldn't have followed you or nothing, but... I saw how some folks were acting with you. Things like that, I know how hard they are to take, so I just thought..." He didn't know quite what to say so he finished the sentence with a shrug. "When I was growing up, my mama used to tell me that when people act petty and spiteful, the biggest harm they do is to themselves. Believing that helped her get by, when folks said unkind things to her or treated her poorly. Can't say I ever quite saw it that way, myself."
Amelia didn't respond immediately, and when she did, there was a new gentleness in her voice. "It seems I owe you an apology again. When we get caught up in our own problems, we tend to forget that they are never unique."
"No, ma'am, they're not. But knowing that don't make them no easier to live with."
A little of the tension bled out of Amelia's stiff carriage. "Sometimes it does... I'm afraid I'm more of your mind set than your mother's, Sheriff Dunne," she continued wryly. "It's among my numerous failings."
Sighing, she walked on a pace or two, folding her arms as she gazed out across the harsh, open landscape that surrounded them.
"I should never have agreed to come. I just didn't think it would bother me so much, after all this time."
J.D.'s eyes flickered automatically to the dismal little cemetery, a frown of confusion drawing together his thick brows. Amelia must have noticed the glance, because she shook her head. "I mean back to Four Corners, not out here to the cemetery. I intend for this to be the last time I ever set foot in this town, so I wanted to say goodbye to my mother, and... after everything that happened, I owed Sam a prayer, too, I guess." She gave a small, bitter laugh. "If nothing else, I owe him an apology for taking his money, even if I do plan to donate it to charitable works. He was not a charitable man. He wouldn't like that any better than the thought of me keeping it for myself, but I'm really not sure what else to do with it." She finished the largely incomprehensible explanation with a tiny shrug.
"Why did you come back then?" J.D. queried.
"To steal Sam's money, of course." Her voice filled with brittle humor. "You heard my father yesterday. That's how he sees it." Realizing he was still completely confused, she sighed. "As I'm sure you must know, my husband died very suddenly."
"I was out of town when it happened, but yeah, Mrs. Potter told me he got thrown from a horse."
"Sam was just forty-two when he was killed. He left no will, and if he had any kin on this Earth, he never spoke about them to me or anyone else. Mr. Gainer, at the bank, was a good friend of my mother's. After I... left, he helped us keep in touch until her death, so he knew how to contact me. He cleared up the legalities so that I inherited Sam's estate. In spite of our... separation... I am still his legal wife. I came here to sign the papers, and sort things out but now..." She folded her slender hands together, fingers tightly clenched. "Apparently there are papers that need to be filed at the county seat, and all sorts of other nonsense. Mr. Gainer told me yesterday that it would take a week before everything is finalized. I hadn't counted on needing to be here so long."
She sighed. "The inside of my hotel room will become very tedious over the next few days, I'm sure, but I really should be returning to it."
"You want to call in on Mrs. Potter first?" J.D. asked. "She ain't thinking badly of you or nothing. 'Tain't the way she is."
"No, it never was." Amelia hesitated, then finally nodded. "I think I'd like that... Would you be so kind as to escort me, Sheriff?"
Blissfully pleased with himself, J.D. offered her his arm. He could barely feel the light pressure of her fingers through his suit coat and shirt, but still they felt impossibly warm against his skin, a constant reminder that he'd never actually walked with a lady like this before... Well, except his mother, and in this case, Mama definitely didn't count into the tally.
By the time they'd gotten back onto Main Street, he'd forgotten all about his resolve to be careful about running off at the mouth. Amelia asked him a few polite questions, and suddenly he was telling her all about how he'd ended up as sheriff of Four Corners less than two weeks after he'd arrived in the territory, and how Chris and the rest of them had come to stay on in town.
He was just starting to tell her about Mrs. Greer and Morgan Coltraine, and the attempted bank robbery--and wishing real hard that the knife scar he'd got from it was somewhere he could show it to a lady--when he glanced up to find Josiah and Buck standing in front of the saloon across the street, staring at him. He missed a step and recovered awkwardly, prompting his companion to inquire, "Are you all right?" in concern.
"Oh, um, sure. Damned... darned boardwalk needs fixing before someone gets hurt." He flushed at the slip and wryly decided that the biggest disadvantage to spending time around women might be staying permanently beet red from his scalp to his collarbone. Emily had had the same effect on him. Of course, some of the things Emily had said or suggested--what he could understand of them--were definitely matters that wouldn't be coming up in conversation with a proper lady like Mrs. Johnson. Self-consciously, he glanced back over his shoulder at his two friends, who were still standing there and still staring at him. It made him feel smug as hell, but there was a trace of guilt mixed in with the triumph, and for the life of him, he couldn't figure out why it was there.
He was still trying to puzzle that out when they arrived at Mrs. Potter's store. He left Amelia in that good lady's care and went back outside, reeling from the realization that he'd blurted out a request to join her for dinner at the hotel, and she had accepted.
If he'd thought about it ahead of time, J.D. would have bet his last dollar on arriving at the street to find Buck exactly where he was: leaning casually against one of the posts that supported the canopy over the boardwalk.
"Hey there, J.D." The big drifter was trying not to grin from ear to ear, and failing dismally. J.D. sometimes wondered if Buck had ever had a thought in his life that didn't end up written straight across his face. Even when he was playacting--something he loved to do--the truth was almost always there somewhere, once you'd hung around him long enough to learn how to read it. "I don't want to talk about it, Buck." He did, of course, want to talk about it. Hell, he wanted to gloat*about it. He'd finally won a round in the unspoken rivalry which drove him crazy, but somehow it just didn't feel right to reduce Amelia's hesitant trust in him to those terms.
Why the hell does life need to be so damned complicated?
"Talk about what?" Buck inquired, falling into step beside him as he headed down the street.
"Mrs. Johnson."
"Pretty lady." Buck tipped his hat and aimed a friendly grin at Mrs. Travis, who had glanced over at them just before disappearing into her office, a few doors ahead. He'd given up on even the pretense of making time with the Clarion News's blonde owner/editor, so there was no mistaking what lady he meant. J.D. looked up at him and scowled. "Don't you even--"
"Hey, now, son, don't you go puttin' words in m'mouth, okay? I can do that real good on my own. Just 'cause a man appreciates a beautiful view doesn't mean he's got anything disrespectful on his mind."
"You've never got anything else on your mind."
"Now, that ain't true," Buck complained, but he was grinning again. "But, of course, seeing as how I do have more than my fair share of experience with the ladies, if there's anything you'd like to ask about, you know right where to find me."
"Mrs. Johnson ain't that sort of lady," J.D. informed him, bristling, as always, at Buck's easygoing and too-true assumption that he had no experience at all in that direction. It was one thing to want desperately to ask for advice on how to handle this situation, and quite another to have it so openly taken for granted that he needed it. The trick Emily had helped him play on Buck and Josiah should have settled that once and for all, but it hadn't. He would have given a lot to know exactly how Buck had come to figure out that nothing had really happened up there in that hayloft...
He was so busy mulling over that puzzling question that he almost missed Buck's softly muttered, "Too bad."
J.D. stopped walked abruptly. "What did you say?"
Buck stopped, too, and studied him with an expression that put a lie to his blithe assumption about the big man not being able to hide any of his thoughts. After a moment, Buck spread his hands in a placating gesture.
"Now, don't get your dander up, J.D. I didn't say a thing, except as how it was a mite too hot today, don't you think?" Buck settled his long bulk into the chair beside the jailhouse door, and grinned up at the younger man. "Can make a man downright prickly."
"Mrs. Johnson's got enough problems right now, Buck. She don't need you adding to them."
"Farthest thing from m'mind, son."
J.D. was never entirely sure how to deal with Buck when he turned quiet and reasonable, it being a side of his personality that didn't see the light of day very often. He hovered uncertainly for a minute or two, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while he bristled, then finally relaxed and sank into the adjacent chair.
"She's having dinner with me tonight," he offered, deciding that Buck would hear about that, anyway, so it was all right to brag a bit.
"That's great, J.D.," Buck returned, sounding so genuinely pleased for him that it was vaguely dissatisfying.
He sat there stewing in a mix of disappointment and nerves and anticipation until Buck filled the silence by passing along the story of Josiah's trip over to Jericho, which was becoming a much livelier town now that Sheriff Quince wasn't running it. He was still talking, no doubt adding considerable embellishment of his own to Josiah's account, when Amelia came out of Potter's store and turned towards the hotel.
Since the jail was on the way, she had to walk directly past them. She favored J.D. with a nod and a quick smile, but didn't seem as though she had any plans to stop and talk. As she passed them, Buck stood up quickly, the movement startling Amelia so much that she dodged sideways like a nervy colt. J.D. immediately shot to his feet, too, overwhelmed by a sinking apprehension that he knew exactly how things were going to go from here. Failing to attract a woman's interest once was unlikely enough for Buck. If he decided to try again, the outcome seemed pretty much inevitable.
Smiling at Amelia's reaction and J.D.'s, Buck took a step backwards until he was sort of half-leaning against the wall behind him and they weren't quite so overshadowed by his height and presence. Sweeping off his battered old hat, he pressed it to his heart with ridiculously exaggerated gallantry.
"Well, don't just stand there, J.D.," he demanded, his voice filled with laughter. "Introduce me to this pretty lady."
He had never known Buck not to just walk up and introduce himself when he felt like it, but J.D. pulled together his manners and did it right, as though he was still back in New York. When he finished, Buck gave Amelia a smile which was friendly but nothing like his normal, lady-killer grin.
"Seems like we got off to a bad start yesterday, Mrs. Johnson. Just wanted to tell you that wasn't my intention, and I'm truly sorry for it."
Amelia glanced uncertainly from one of them to the other, then said, "That's quite all right... Thank you."
"Good day to you, ma'am." Plopping his hat back atop his dark head, Buck walked between them and disappeared into the jailhouse. He even pulled the door shut behind him, though J.D. would have bet he was standing somewhere just inside where he could see out through the crack at the edge of the faded blinds. "Can I walk you back to the hotel?" J.D. inquired, as that annoying probability got lost in a wave of heady relief. When Amelia nodded, he offered her his arm again, deciding he most definitely liked the feeling. A few townsfolk turned to stare at them as they strolled down the street, but he barely even noticed, far less cared what they were thinking.
He had another reason to be glad he'd escorted her before they reached the hotel. They were just a few steps away from its front door when he caught sight of Horace Duggan striding purposefully across the street in their direction. Amelia saw her father at the same moment and stopped.
"You want to go inside?" J.D. asked her.
"I'm no longer a child," Amelia returned quietly. "I will not turn and run from him."
The boards beneath their feet vibrated with Duggan's arrival. He came to a halt directly in front of his daughter, ignoring J.D. entirely.
"The stage to Ridge City left an hour ago. I had assumed you'd be on it."
"You assumed incorrectly, Father. Mr. Gainer tells me it will take a week to finish my business with him."
"A week?!"
"I assure you, the arrangement pleases me no more than it pleases you."
Duggan snorted out a brief, sneering laugh. "Don't lie to me, Amelia. You take wicked delight in flaunting your brazen ways in front of the world."
"In having my own thoughts and sometimes expressing them, you mean? I know how it shames you that you could never beat that tendency out of me."
"Don't use the word 'shame' to me, girl. You don't understand what it means. If you did, you wouldn't have had the gall to come back here and humiliate me in front of my friends and neighbors again. Look at you--" He waved one hand in the air, indicating Amelia's subdued gray dress. "Don't think for a minute that you're fooling anyone, dressing like a proper, respectful widow when you're no better than a fifty-cent--"
"I'm not trying to fool anyone about anything, Father," Amelia interrupted him. "It would be a waste of time when they've all made up their minds long ago."
"Damned right it would. There are still a few good, decent folk in this town, Amelia, and we don't want your kind here." His expression as he finally acknowledged J.D.'s presence with a sideways glower pronounced that his list of "decent folk" did not include Four Corners' sheriff, nor, presumably, any of its other legal guardians. Swiftly losing his temper on Amelia's behalf and his own, J.D. started, "All right, that's enough. You're humiliating yourself, Mr. Duggan, talking to your own daughter that way, and if you don't have the sense to know it, that's too bad. But I ain't planning on standing around listening to you while you do it. And neither's Mrs. Johnson, so you just go on home and leave other folks to get on about their business."
"I told you yesterday, boy. This isn't your affair."
"Yes, sir, it is," J.D. retorted flatly. "Man decides to make a fool of himself in public, that's one thing. He starts bad-mouthin' a lady, that's a different matter entirely."
A soft snort of laughter from close behind him brought J.D.'s head around and sent his free hand searching reflexively for the reassuring solidity of his pistol grip. He relaxed again when he discovered that Buck had appeared out of nowhere to settle in a few steps away, with one shoulder supported by a post. J.D. hadn't heard him arrive, and neither had Duggan to judge by the look that crossed his face.
"Couldn't've put it better'n that myself, J.D.," Buck commented. "Real shame how some varmints never seem to figure all that out, no matter how old they grow to be."
Fixing Duggan with a hard expression that rivaled Chris at his best, the drifter went on, "Why don't you take the lady inside, J.D.? I don't figure Mr. Duggan here's got anything to say that's worth hearing."
J.D. nodded and turned to the door of the hotel, pushing it open then stepping aside to allow Amelia to enter. Attracted by the noise outside, a half-dozen pairs of eyes followed them as he walked her to the foot of the stairs, then reluctantly stepped back when she withdrew her light fingers from his arm.
"Thank you," she said softly. "And thank you friend for me. I wouldn't have thought he'd..."
She didn't finish the sentence, but it wasn't hard to guess what she'd had in mind to say. Even though he didn't particularly want to sing Buck's praises to his present company, J.D.'s sense of fairness prompted him to reply, "Buck's got a real strong belief that you need to treat all women with respect. Thing is, he's a little blind sometimes, 'cause he's got a right powerful way with the ladies, and he kind of expects... Well, he sorta..."
"Takes his successes for granted?" Amelia suggested, when he trailed off, realizing he didn't quite know a polite way of describing Buck's talents in that area.
"Yeah, I guess that's about right."
"Most men do," she returned.
J.D. was completely at a loss for how to respond to that, since it was sure true about Buck, but not in the bitter, unhappy way she seemed to mean it. Amelia saved him from floundering around for a reply by resting her gloved fingers on his arm again briefly, then turning to the stairs.
"I'll see you this evening," she called back as she mounted the bottom step.
He lingered where he was until she was out of sight, then turned on his heel and strode outside. Buck and Duggan were gone, which was what he'd expected. He had no idea of Duggan's whereabouts, but it was pretty easy to predict Buck's. Cutting straight across the street, he pushed through the swinging doors of the saloon.
Buck and Josiah were settled around their favorite table in the corner, sharing a bottle of red-eye and laughing at some shared joke. The way they both looked at him and hastily tried to compose themselves gave him a damned good idea of what they'd been talking about.
"Hey, J.D.," Buck greeted him cheerfully when he arrived at the table, "are we glad to see you. Can't play poker worth a hang with just two people."
"I could've handled it!"
"Now, I know you could have handled it, son. In fact, you were doing a fine job when I came along." Buck used one long leg to hook the chair beside J.D. and push it back from the table in invitation. "Pull yourself up a seat."
"If I was doing such a fine job, then why did you have to go and interfere?"
"Just happened to be passing by on my way to the saloon," Buck said easily. "And you know me, son. There are just some things I can't walk by and ignore. Some overstuffed fool badmouthing a woman is damned high on the list."
"Besides, J.D., it never hurts to have a little backup," Josiah put in mildly. "Having friends around helps keep the gunfire to a minimum. That's what we're here for."
That was true, of course. Even Chris accepted the solid wall of presence the rest of them provided just by being there, armed and ready to intervene if matters called for it. But in this case, he hadn't needed help. Duggan might be a bully but he was a townsman to the core. He didn't even carry a gun.
"Next time, just let me handle him on my own, all right?"
"Whatever you say, J.D.," Buck promised, though J.D. knew he'd forget that promise as casually as he made it.
Sighing, he sank down into the empty chair. Trying to stay mad at Buck was a pointless exercise, both because it wasn't part of his own nature and because it had no effect at all. Buck was as blithely oblivious to J.D.'s ire as he was to the younger man's attempts to stave off a big brotherly concern that went way beyond pushiness. Never before in his life had J.D. had a friend who meant as much to him as Buck, but even so there were times when he felt an urge to punch the older man in the mouth, purely to get his attention. Of course, he knew even that wouldn't change a thing. He'd seen the exact same need etched on Chris's features, and Chris had known Buck for almost as long as J.D. had been alive.
"You know something, Josiah?" Buck picked up the deck of cards and started to deal them out around the table. "I think we finally found the secret of getting a bit of peace and quiet out of old J.D. We just gotta keep him supplied with ladies."
J.D. dragged in breath for a sharp retort, then let it out again silently. Resting his elbows on the edge of the table, he propped his chin on his fists and stared broodily at the half-empty bottle of whiskey. "You think you know everything, don't you, Buck?"
"Near as makes no never-mind, son," the drifter agreed with a grin. "Which part of it d'you want me to explain to you first?"
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