“Yessir. Both of them.”

He turned without another word and walked over to John Russell with that soft ching-ing spur sound.

He said, “That boy at the counter said you got a stage ticket.”

John Russell opened his hand on his lap. “This?”

“That’s it. You give it to me and you can take the next stage.”

“I have to take this one,” Russell said.

“No, you want to is all. But it would be better if you waited. You can get drunk tonight. How does that sound?”

“I have to take this one,” John Russell said. “I have to take it and I want to take it.”

“Leave him alone,” the ex-soldier said then. “You come late, you find your own way.”

Frank Braden looked at him. “What did you say?”

“I said why don’t you leave him alone.” His tone changed. All of a sudden it sounded friendlier, more reasonable. “He wants to take this stage, let him take it,” the ex-soldier said.

You heard that ching sound again as Frank Braden shifted around to face the ex-soldier. He stared at him and said, “I guess I’ll use your ticket instead.”

The ex-soldier hadn’t moved, his big hands resting on his knees, his feet still propped on the canvas bag. “You just walk in,” he said, “and take somebody else’s seat?”

Braden’s pointed hat brim moved up and down. “That’s the way it is.”

The ex-soldier glanced at John Russell, then over at me. “Somebody’s pulling a joke on somebody,” he said.

Russell didn’t say anything. He had made a cigarette and now he lit it, looking at Braden as he blew the smoke up in the air.

“You think I come in here to kid?” Braden asked the ex-soldier.

“Look here, this boy is going to Contention,” the ex-soldier explained, “and I’m going to Bisbee to get married after twelve years of Army. We got places to go and no reason to give up our seats.”