Town Tamers by David Robbins Page A

to respond, “Afternoon to you.”
    On an impulse Asa went into the Whiskey Mill. Byron was behind the bar and Noona was joshing with some men at a table. Both glanced his way, and then ignored him as they were supposed to do.
    Asa crossed to the bar and when Byron came over, said, “Whiskey.”
    Byron made no attempt to hide his surprise. “A little early in the day, isn’t it?”
    “I’m celebrating,” Asa said.
    “You’ve heard that your son is going off on his own and you’re happy for him?” Byron baited as he poured.
    “No,” Asa said. “I’m celebrating lasting as long as I have.”
    “Lucky you,” Byron said.
    Just then the batwings creaked and in strode a pair of Circle K hands. Asa recognized them from the descriptions he’d been given. They were Old Tom and Tyree Lucas. He sipped and let them come to the bar. At close range he could sometimes down two birds with one stone, as it were. “Gents,” he said when they looked at him.
    “Town Tamer,” Tyree Lucas said. His scorn was as obvious as his sneer.
    Old Tom had more sense. “Mr. Delaware,” he said.
    “Surprised to see you here,” Asa said.
    “What in hell for?” Tyree Lucas said. “It’s a free country.”
    “Freer for some than for others,” Asa said.
    “We don’t want no trouble,” Old Tom said. “I’m hankerin’ after some coffin varnish, is all, and Tyree, here, tagged along.”
    “We hear it takes two days to make up your mind,” Tyree Lucas said.
    “Tyree, don’t,” Old Tom said.
    “That’s all right,” Asa said. “I’ve already made it up.”
    Old Tom cocked his head. “Awful quick.”
    “It was made up before Knox asked me.”
    Old Tom lowered his arm so his hand was near his revolver. “So that’s how it is.”
    “How what is?” Tryee Lucas asked. To Asa he said, “Why in hell did you ask for two days if you already knew what you’d say?”
    “To do some whittling,” Asa said.
    “Hold on, now,” Old Tom said.
    “My grandpappy liked to whittle,” Tyree Lucas said. “He’d sit in his rocking chair for hours, just whittlin’ away. Carved me a horse when I was little. Not a bad horse, either, except he forgot the tail.”
    Without taking his eyes off Asa, Old Tom said, “That’s not the kind of whittlin’ he’s talkin’ about, you jug head. He’s talkin’ about whittlin’ on us.”
    “We’re not made of wood,” Tyree Lucas said.
    “You might as well be,” Asa said, and took a step back. The Winchester was in his right hand, pointed down.
    “Why us?” Old Tom asked.
    “Have to start somewhere,” Asa said. “The more now, the fewer Knox can send when he realizes I was stringing him along.”
    “Bull Cumberland, you mean,” Old Tom said.
    “I mean Weldon Knox.”
    “So much for his great brain,” Old Tom said. “Bull told him it wouldn’t work.”
    Tyree Lucas was growing more exasperated by the moment. “Will one of you tell me what this whittlin’ and stringin’ is about?”
    “It’s about gophers,” Asa said.
    “You’re loco,” Tyree Lucas declared.
    “When a man has gophers, he can sit in a chair and wait for one to poke its head out of its hole so he can blow it off. Or he can cover all their holes except one and smoke them out. Or he can drop castor beans down in their burrows and poison them.”
    “What do gophers have to do with whittlin’?”
    “Whittling can be easy or hard depending on how you go about it.”
    Old Tom did the unexpected. He held his hands out from his sides. “I refuse to draw on you. I refuse to even touch my hardware. You want me dead, it’ll have to be in cold blood, with witnesses.”
    “Bull Cumberland had witnesses when he shot Ed Sykes,” Asa said. “Jake Bass had witnesses when he gunned down Myrtle Sykes.”
    “They’ve told you about that?” Old Tom took a slow step toward the batwings. “But that’s Bull and Jake, and you’re not them. You have to abide by the law.”
    “Who says?”
    “You tame towns for a