“I don’t know who started it,” Charlie said. “I heard it the first day you rode in with me and Alice Snell and Joe Bishop. I don’t like to repeat gabble, but seems to me you’d ought know.”
“Shoot!” Rock smiled.
“It’s just a whisper,” Charlie mumbled seriously. “Nobody said a word to me direct. I just overheard here and there. They say you’re rustlin’.”
“Me—rustling?” Rock perked up in astonishment. For the moment he forgot his assumed identity. The idea was so utterly ludicrous. He laughed. Recollection sobered him. This must be more Martin history.
“Ye’ah. Got you hooked up with them Burris boys over behind the Goosebill,” Charlie murmured. “Talkin’ about rawhide neckties. Some of them Texicans in Buck’s crew are bad hombres, Doc.”
Rock knitted his brows. He hadn’t heard before of the Burris boys. The Goosebill he had seen only as an oddshaped hill standing blue on the southwestern sky line, halfway between the Marias and Fort Benton.
“Well, you reckon I’ve been draggin’ the long rope in my spare time and should be a candidate for their kind attentions?” he asked.
Shaw snorted.
“I might ’a’ known you’d make a joke of it,” he complained.
“I wonder who wants to get me so bad as that?” Rock said under his breath.