"You said this was a rotten town preying on Vickers' c-crew. You even jailed the marshal. You said the hell with authority. Then Miss Persia wrapped you around her f-finger like a Christmas ribbon. N-now you're in with the rest of them!"
"The town council agreed to go along with me, Willie. That changed things."
"M-maybe you don't know it," Willie said. "B-but it was the other w-way around. Miss Persia rustled her skirts at you and you w-went along with the town."
"We'll leave Persia out of this," Tesno said with a steel edge of anger in his voice.
"We c-can't—even if you beat the peewallopus out of me. I g-guess you could do it easy enough. You're tougher than anybody I kn-know." Willie laid his plate on the tailgate and looked Tesno squarely in the eye. "And you've g-got no more spine than a rag d-doll!"
He put his back to Tesno, caught up his reins, and swung into the saddle. He poised a rein end above his horse's rump and said, "I'm m-mad. M-maybe I didn't m-mean all that."
Tesno wanted to tell him to come back and finish his dinner. Instead, he found himself saying gruffly, "You meant it. And be damned to you."
The handcuffs hanging from Willie's saddlehorn clinked dully as he pivoted the horse and headed back to the road at a trot.
An hour later the boiler had been inched up the hillside and was back on the road. Rejack called a halt just above a small bridge, and the crew clustered around the cook wagon for a late dinner. Something about the bridge interested Tesno; then suddenly he recognized it. He turned his horse up the creek and followed it to the grassy place where he had nooned on his first trip to Tunneltown, the place where Willie had surprised him.
He got off his horse and washed his face in the chill, singing water. He stretched out in the soft grass then, knowing that he had to sleep if only for an hour. Yet sleep did not come at once, and he lay staring at a ragged patch of sky.