"Well, you sure couldn't have picked a more fussed-up time."
"How come?"
"Well, you hear about the killing of Quade, I reckon?"
"Not a word."
"You ain't? Where you been these days?"
"Oh, yonder in the hills."
"Chipping rocks, eh? Well, Quade was a gent that lived out the norm trail, and he had a fuss with the schoolteacher over Sally Bent, and the schoolteacher up and murders Quade, and they raise a posse and go out to hang Gaspar, the teacher, and they're kept from it by a stranger called Sinclair; when the sheriff comes to get Gaspar and hang him legal and all, that Sinclair sticks up the sheriff and takes Gaspar away, and now they're both outlawed, I hear tell, and they's a price on their heads."
The lad brought it out in one huge sentence, sputtering over the words in his haste.
"How much of a price?"
"I dunno. It keeps growing. Everybody around Woodville and Sour Creek is chipping in to raise that price. They sure want to get Gaspar and Sinclair bad. Gaspar ain't much. He's a kind of sissy, but Sinclair is a killer—and then some."