“I was afraid they might hurt you, Mr. Rusty”

“Thanks,” Rusty replied, “but the only thing hurt was some feelin’s. You know they had a notion to give you a whippin’. They’ll do it yet if you stay here.”

Shanty stared off in the direction the visitors had taken. Rusty sensed that he was assessing the danger not only to himself but to his friends. Shanty said, “Even if I was to go with you, they’d still know where I was at.”

“But you won’t be by yourself.”

Reluctantly Shanty accepted the inevitable. “I’ll gather up my needfuls first thing in the mornin’.” He looked toward the dog, which had returned from seeing the riders off. “I don’t know how 01’ Rough will take to movin’.”

“Ol Rough doesn’t have the Ku Klux on his tail.”

Riding toward Tom Blessing’s cabin, Rusty heard hammering and reined Alamo toward a shed that served as a blacksmith shop, among other functions. Blessing stood before a glowing forge, beating a heated horseshoe against an anvil. He had removed his shirt. His long underwear was streaked with sweat and dirt. As Rusty dismounted, Blessing lifted the horseshoe with tongs and dipped it into a wooden tub half full of water. It sizzled. Blessing raised a big hand to shield his face from the steam.

He was a large man in advanced middle age, a contemporary of Daddy Mike and Preacher Webb. Tall, broad-shouldered and all muscle, he looked at home beside a blacksmith’s forge. He said, “Git down, Rusty. You come to get ol’ Alamo shod? The coals are hot.”

Blessing grasped Rusty’s hand. He had a crushing grip that made Rusty’s bones ache. “Me and Len Tanner took care of that already.”

Blessing seated himself on a bench in the shade and rubbed an under-wear sleeve across his grimy face. He said, “I heard a little rumor over in town.”

“What kind of yarn are they tellin’?”

“I didn’t get this from anybody who was there. At least they didn’t own up to it. But the story was that your boy Andy threatened some citizens and fired off a shotgun.”

“Not at anybody. He fired it into the air to get their attention.”

“He got it, all right. Nobody’s admitted to bein’ there. I don’t imagine they want to explain what they were doin’ at the time.” He frowned. “what were they doin’?”

“A bunch of them figured on whippin’ Shanty, or maybe worse.” He explained his own role in the incident, then Andy’s and Tanner’s. “The boy puts a lot of store in him.”

“Most folks around here respect Shanty, but there’s always a few . . . You know who they were?”