“You ain’t got no right coming to Founders Square,” he said. “You ain’t got no right trying to make Senator Vardaman uncomfortable.”

“Uncomfortable?” Quinn said, trying not to smile. “Now, that just breaks my heart.”

Another man stepped up by the sawed-off little fellow. He was a little taller, with wraparound sunglasses and a GLOCK hat. All the men wore guns on their hips and all of them probably carried permits. If they made any more trouble, he’d make sure to run all their records.

“Vardaman told you up in Tibbehah,” the man said. “You can’t stop what’s happenin’. You thought you were real clever shutting down his talk. Permits, you said. That was just a damn lie.”

Every man wore a red bandanna around his neck. Most of them tattooed, kind of shorthand these days to show folks you’re tough. The tattoos were of shamrocks and Gaelic symbols. The Punisher logo from comic books.

“Come on, Quinn.”

“Nice place you got, ma’am,” the short man said. “A real pretty shade of blue.”

Quinn slowly dropped his right hand to the butt of his Beretta 1911, slow and easy, nonthreatening. “If you speak,” Quinn said, “speak to me. And if you want to threaten a law enforcement officer, you’re gonna have to do a much better job.”

“You don’t feel threatened?”

“By you?” Quinn said. “Not at all. Only thing you boys threaten is my sense of smell.”

“It’s coming,” another man said, piping up like he’d just thought of what to say. “Ain’t nobody gonna stop it. Especially you. You ain’t got the right to wear that flag on your sleeve.”

Something broke in Quinn with them talking about his service. Pushing by Maggie, he walked up on the man, who was red-faced with spittle on his lip, and reached out and grabbed the loudmouth by his nose, twisting and pulling until the little fella dropped to his knees. The men yelling and threatening but not doing a damn thing.

“You boys can spend the rest of the fair in jail,” Quinn said, twisting the man’s nose more for good measure. “Or you can walk away. It can be all corn dogs and cotton candy. Doesn’t matter a damn to me.”

There’d been a time when Quinn would’ve taken them all on. He’d been in bar fights, hand to hand in combat, and even left in a pit to battle it out with other Rangers. But law enforcement wasn’t like being a Ranger. Assholes weren’t real threats.