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Tanner
was
killed by a Cherokee, maybe inciting them to bloodshed with the liquor.”
    “You say there’s been other trouble on the rez?” asked Slade.
    “Some drunken fighting,” Dennison replied. “I’m told they’ve had one killing and some minor injuries. You know the agent out there, don’t you, Jack?”
    “Yes, sir. Frank Berringer.”
    They’d met when Slade went looking for the men who’d turned his wedding day into a massacre. The same gang had been stealing horses from the reservation, killed a tribesman in the process, and Slade’s vengeance trail had started there.
    “What do you think of him?” asked Dennison.
    “Can’t say I liked him much,” Slade said. “He’s competent enough, I guess, but lets you know he looks down on the Cherokee like problem children. Treats them that way, too, from what I saw. It wouldn’t take much alcohol to stir them up against him.”
    “He’s been talking to the army,” Dennison informed them. “I sent Tanner to investigate because it feels like an explosive situation in the making. Now he’s dead, and I intend to see the man or men responsible out there.” He cocked a thumb over his shoulder, toward the window and the courtyard gallows.
    “Is there anything to go on?” Slade inquired. “Was Bill filing reports?”
    “I got one cable from him,” Dennison replied. “From Stateline, on the Kansas border. He was cagey, said he thought that he was getting close but didn’t mention any names. I got a sense that he was worried about sharing too much in a wire that anyone might see.”
    Slade hadn’t been to Stateline, but he knew it was an agricultural community straddling the Kansas-Oklahoma border, hence its name. The split, he guessed, might cause some law enforcement problems, but he wouldn’t have to fret about it with a U.S. marshal’s badge.
    “We ought to pay a call on Berringer,” Slade said, “before we head for Stateline. See what’s on his mind and what he plans to do about it.”
    “Try to reassure him that he has our full support,” said Dennison. “If that won’t calm him down, to hell with him. We’ll find whoever killed Bill Tanner by ourselves.”
    Back on Main Street, Slade asked Naylor, “Have you ever been to Stateline?”
    “Once. Wasn’t much to it, but it’s likely grown since then.”
    “How far away is it?”
    Naylor considered it, then said, “We leave right now and sleep out overnight, we could be there tomorrow afternoon.”
    “About the same, then, from the rez,” Slade calculated.
    “Give or take a few miles. Will they put us up there?”
    “Probably. They found a room for me the last time.”
    Naylor seemed to be on the verge of saying something, but he caught himself, maybe remembering the reason for Slade’s last trip to the reservation and the bloody trek that followed it. Long seconds passed before he cleared his throat and managed, “Meet you at the livery in, say, an hour?”
    “Suits me,” Slade replied. “You have a coffeepot?
    “Sure thing.”
    There wasn’t much for Slade to pack: some vittles for the trail, a canteen full of water, ammunition for the guns he would be carrying, a change of clothes. No one for him to say good-bye to, either, as he rode with Naylor out of town. That part reminded him of all the years when he’d been drifting, gambling, dodging one scrape or another, rarely making plans beyond tomorrow. He’d have likely kept on living that way, rootless, if he hadn’t got the telegram about his twin brother’s death. Murdered for his land in Oklahoma Territory, as he’d learned, by men who thought they were above the law.
    The rest, as someone said, was history. He’d come to Enid, met Judge Dennison, and grudgingly accepted the jurist’s ultimatum: either wear a U.S. marshal’s badge while tracking down his brother’s murderers—and do it in accordance with the law—or risk a visit to the gallows if he bagged them any other way. Slade had agreed, reluctantly,