Luther Fox swung a long leg across his saddle horn and thus at ease in his saddle, gazed at the rudely lettered sign nailed to the lone cottonwood. A cold cigar jutted from the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. The age-yellowed ivory butt of a long-barreled .45 poked itself from beneath the long tail of his rusty black coat. He removed the cigar from between his crooked teeth and sprayed the sign with tobacco juice. One or two brown specks were added to the already badly spotted white expanse of shirt front.
“Barring —— and high water,” he addressed his two roughly garbed, heavily armed companions who had dismounted and squatted on the ground, “that sign will come off that tree before sundown.”
“No more dead-line between Basset’s and the LF, eh, boss?”
Fox nodded. The corners of his mouth twitching. Then he pointed with the butt of a home-made quirt to a small dust cloud, slowly approaching from the direction of the Basset place.
“What do you make of it, boys? How many comin’?”
“Two. Two hossbackers. Nary steer.”
“That’ll be Basset and his sweet-tempered wife. We’re due to receive a tongue lashing, boys. —— a man that can’t do business without his —— cat of a woman tagging along. Killing’s too good an end for such females.”
“I wonder where’s the cattle and them two waddies yuh hired, boss?”
“Quit the country, no doubt. I sent a man over here yesterday to see ’em. They’d pulled out and Basset was making no effort to gather the few head uh stuff he has on his range. As a matter of fact, Basset’s wife had the old fool penned off in the blacksmith shop.”
Fox smiled faintly. The two punchers laughed coarsely.