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the funeral parlor.
‘I seen a stack of dead folks piled up down there.’
    There was one heck of a
gunfight here earlier, ’ she said rolling her eyes. ‘I thought that we
was all gonna get killed the way them bullets was flying in all
directions. Seems that Iron Eyes was after the same varmint as
you.’
    Jones? ’
    ‘ Yeah.
Well, Jones paid some of the local gutter-rats to stop this Iron
Eyes character whilst he made his getaway,’ she said as she
adjusted the mop in her hand.
    Tom Quaid inhaled deeply through his
nostrils.
    ‘ What
happened?’
    ‘ That
Iron Eyes killed the whole bunch of them and then lit out after
Diamond Back again,’ she gushed.
    ‘ He
killed them all?’ There was surprise in the veteran lawman’s
voice.
    ‘ Every
darn one of them. Good riddance, I say. They were all scum like
Jones himself.’ She spat at the boardwalk as if demonstrating her
disgust. ‘They tried to bushwhack him and he didn’t cotton to
it.’
    ‘ Thank
you, ma’am.’ Quaid pulled out a silver dollar and offered it to the
woman who gratefully accepted it and slid it into her ample
cleavage.
    ‘ Thank
you, Marshal,’ she said. ‘Say, I’d be careful if I was you. They
don’t cotton to the law in this darn town. There’s still plenty of
back shooters who’d kill ya for the gold in ya
fillings.’
    ‘ In my
experience, there ain’t many towns which do cotton to the law,
ma’am.’ Tom Quaid smiled. ‘And my teeth are store-bought
anyway.’
    Quaid touched the brim of his Stetson and
nodded. He watched as she went on her way.
    ‘ Who
the hell are you, dude?’
    The marshal turned to face the gravel voice
that came from the saloon doorway. His eyes narrowed as he surveyed
the large figure standing with one hand on the top of the
swing-doors and the other resting on the grip of his Colt.
    ‘ You
talking to me?’ Quaid asked, squaring up to the man.
    The dying rays of the sun flashed off the
well-polished star pinned to the silk vest.
    ‘ Are
you a lawman, dude?’ the man gruffed in a mixture of shock and
surprise. ’Cause if’n ya are, ya must be damn loco to come to Dry
Gulch.’
    Quaid lowered his head slightly so that he
could watch the eyes of his adversary.
    ‘ I’m
looking for Diamond Back Jones, friend.’
    The big man spat a lump of dark goo on to
the bleached boards between them.
    ‘ He
rode out hours back with that bounty hunter on his
tail.’
    ‘ I know,’ Quaid said,
flexing his fingers over the grips of his guns.
    ‘ Then
what are ya still doing in town?’ the man growled like an angry
bear. ‘Get going. Your sort ain’t welcome in Dry Gulch.’
    ‘ I figured that
already, friend.’ Quaid sighed heavily as he could sense that once
more his gun skills would be tested. ‘But if I was you, I’d go find
myself a rock to hide behind.’
    The man released his grip on the swing-doors
and then lowered his hand to waist-level.
    ‘ We’ve
had a real bad day here. I think ya ought to quit while you’re
ahead. Get going.’
    ‘ I’m
going when I decide to go and not when some fat scum tells me. OK?’
the marshal said firmly.
    ‘ I ain’t fat!’ the man
protested. ‘I just got me big bones, ya old bastard.’
    ‘ Even
your fingers are fat, son!’ Tom Quaid said. ‘You try to draw on me
with those fingers and you’ll surely regret it.’
    The large man made a noise that sounded like
a stuck pig. Whatever words might have spewed furiously from his
mouth, the marshal could not understand any of them.
    Quaid saw the
man ’s right
hand move as it began to haul the Colt from its holster. His own
hands moved far more swiftly. Both his Remingtons were drawn from
their hand-tooled holsters in one fraction of a
heartbeat.
    The marshal cocked the gun hammers and
squeezed both triggers at exactly the same moment.
    One bullet severed the holster
from the large man ’s gun belt as the other tore the battered Stetson off his
head.
    There was a look of
astonishment on the man ’s