If Jay Tarses had any hope he’d been rescued, the sight of chief Edison bull Joe McCoy swaggering out of the woods disabused him of that. McCoy, the meanest Edison detective Tarses had even met, reported directly to Mr. Dyer, Edison’s lawyer, who enforced Trust restrictions with an iron hand. McCoy had a coal trimmer’s shoulders and less mercy in his face than a cinder block.

“Mr. Tarses,” he snickered. “I would have recognized your picture taking anywhere by the camel stink.”

“Any chance of buying you off?” asked Tarses, his eyes locked on McCoy’s blackjack.

McCoy raised a mighty arm. The blackjack whistled as it tore down from the sky, and the Edison thug holding Tarses by the lapels went flying sideways into a camel and fell on his face. Tarses was vaguely aware that he himself was still on his feet and nothing hurt. Aside from that, he had no idea what was going on.

McCoy handed him a calling card. Through a smudge of blood from McCoy’s blackjack, Jay Tarses read:

IMPERIAL FILM PROTECTION SERVICE

“THE INDEPENDENT’S FRIEND”

“Telephone number’s on the back. Operator on-station night and day.”

“You don’t work for Edison anymore?” Tarses asked.

“Didn’t you hear?” McCoy grinned. “I’m a trustbuster. Just like Teddy Roosevelt.”

“What the hell is Imperial Film Protection Service?”

“‘The Independent’s Friend.’ Can’t you read?”

“Friend? I’ll bet. What’s it going to cost me?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on, Joe. What’s the big idea?”

McCoy threw a heavy arm around Tarses’s shoulder. “Jay, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. And stop asking stupid questions.”

Tarses knew he had his share of flaws, but stupidity wasn’t one of them, and he said, “Thanks, Joe.”

“Don’t thank me. Thank Imperial. Well, sun’s in the sky. Bet you’re itching to get back to work— Say, what’s your picture called?”

“The Imperial Horseman.”

McCoy tipped his hat to Tarses’s pretty business manager, slung the unconscious thug over his shoulder, and carried him away.

Tarses shouted for his players to climb on their animals.

“Camera…”

That evening, when Tarses was paying off his extras, the one last in line drawled, “Who were those fellers pushing you around?”

Tarses was about to tell him to mind his own business when he recognized the extra as the tall, barbed-wire-thin cowboy with whom his costume girl had traded a French Foreign Legionnaire kepi for the cowboy’s Stetson, with a promise to trade hats again over a glass of wine after work. Tarses had noticed him sitting in his saddle as if born to it, and now, close up, he saw angular bone structure in the cowboy’s face that looked ferocious in the light of the setting sun.

“What’s your name?”

“Tex.”

“Come back tomorrow, Tex. I’ll be taking pictures for a Wild West drama.”