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Tommy sitting stone-faced, nursing his bruised knuckles, and
Doug flat on the floor with blood pouring from his nose.
    Rory and Hutch quickly moved between the two
men.
    Hutch yanked Doug to his feet and held a
wadded-up napkin under his nose. “Here, let me have a look at you,”
he said, switching immediately into deputy mode. He shoved Doug
into a chair and started checking him over, Rory helping by
checking the back of his head.
    “I want that red-headed bastard arrested!”
Doug demanded. “He hit me for no reason.”
    The bar got even quieter, and Christi cringed
as she heard a siren outside.
    “I called the law,” the bartender said. “I
don’t cotton to violence here.”
    “Then where were you when this asshole
man-handled me?” Christi demanded. “Didn’t you have a problem with
that?”
    “Lady, your two friends and I were all on our
way to help you,” the bartender snapped. “Your boyfriend didn’t
have to slug him.”
    Tommy glared. “She’s my girl, and I took care
of it the only way I could. If you want to have me arrested, be my
guest.” He glanced at Rory and Hutch. “You two don’t have to get
involved.”
    Rory and Hutch looked at one another and
shrugged.
    “All we plan to do is tell the truth,” Rory
said. “Doug here was manhandling Christi and baiting you, and you
sent him sprawling.” Both men eyed the bartender, and Rory added,
“You want to have a genuine American hero arrested for defending
his lady?”
    “Bartender be damned, the bastard hit me and
needs to be arrested for it,” Doug growled as he wiped blood from
his nose.
    The door of the bar opened, and Deputy Denton
Baxter pushed in through the crowd. He shot a disgusted look at
Rory and Hutch when he saw them, saying, “Should have known you two
were involved.” Then he put his hands on his hips and stared from
Doug to Tommy. “So, what the hell happened here?”
    “Bastard hit me,” Doug said. “I was just
horsing around a little and he laid me out on the floor.”
    “He was manhandling Christi,” Tommy said when
the deputy turned to him. He spoke quietly. “I can’t very well
stand up and pull him off, can I? I defended her the only way I
could.”
    “That was after Doug called him a ‘crip in a
chair,’” Christi added. Her eyes welled up with tears that she
dashed away, and she glared over and snarled, “Yes, Doug, he’s
crippled and he’s in a chair. And you know how he got that way? He
was in Iraq, Doug. He was an American soldier in Iraq trying to
save a little village from a bunch of vicious insurgents and he
caught a sniper bullet in his back. He’s been months learning how
to live without being able to get out of that chair. He’s a hero, Doug. He and every other soldier out
there. They defended your right to be an asshole while you were
going to school getting your fancy degree and sleeping with all the
coeds in Austin.”
    She turned to Denton. “He called Tommy a
‘crip,’ Deputy Baxter. Do you think that was all right?” She turned
to the bartender. “Do you?”
    Everyone stood frozen for a minute. Then,
from the back of the bar, Christi heard someone clapping, then
several someones clapping, and suddenly the entire bar was filled
with applause. Doug’s face turned beet red, and Deputy Baxter and
the bartender looked at one another as round after round of cheers
echoed through the place. As one, the bar patrons stood at
attention, and from the back a voice called, “Here’s to you,
Tommy!”
    The enthusiastic accolade finally died down,
and Denton turned to Doug and the bartender. He spoke softly and
said, “I’ll arrest him if you want, but you two are going to come
off the bad guys.”
    The bartender shrugged. “He can pay for the
table and we’ll call it even.”
    Doug glared at Tommy. “Never the hell mind,”
he said. “You always had to be the fucking hero, didn’t you,
Reece?” Then he slammed out of the bar.
    “Okay, folks, show’s over,” Rory said.