Chapter One

The kid was obstreperous. That was the way Johnny Collyer thought of him anyway, since Johnny had once been snowed in for the winter with nothing but a dictionary to read and he had gone through that sucker from cover to cover and memorized a lot of it.

But it would have been just as easy to say that the kid was an asshole, because that was true too.

Johnny moved the bar rag in circles over the mahogany, even though the wood already shone in the light from the oil chandeliers in the Silver Baron Saloon, and listened to the kid's braying laughter. He'd been drunk already when he came into the Silver Baron half an hour earlier, and he hadn't done anything since then except get drunker and more obnoxious. His friends, a couple of hard-faced hombres in range clothes, had tried to persuade him to control himself, but the kid wasn't having any of it.

Now he stood over the table where Professor Burton had been nursing a drink and demanded in a loud, arrogant voice, "What the hell are you dressed up for, mister? Goin' to a weddin'-or a funeral?"

The professor, who was always dapper in a suit, vest, and bowler hat, replied in his fluid, cultured voice, "This is my normal attire, sir."

The kid laughed again. "Then you must be one o' them strange fellas who don't like women. That what you are, mister?"

Burton's middle-aged face, usually tranquil, flushed with anger. "Even if that were the case-which it's not, by the way-it would be none of your business. Now, if you wouldn't mind taking your questions elsewhere ..."

The kid drew himself up as straight as he could, not an eas

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