“We do.”

Bragg smiled slightly and nodded. Everyone was looking at Cole and Bragg. While they were looking, I picked my shotgun up off the floor under my table and held it in my lap just below the tabletop.

“You have a suggestion, Marshal?”

“There’s a set of town bylaws posted right outside the door of this here very saloon,” Cole said. “Your boys do like the bylaws say, and everything will be muy bueno.”

Bragg’s face pinched a little.

“And if they don’t?” he said.

“Then I arrest them.”

“And if they don’t go along?”

“I shoot them.”

Cole smiled sort of happily at Bragg. He nodded toward me.

“Or Everett does.”

I had moved the shotgun onto the tabletop. As Bragg looked over at me, I cocked it.

“That’s your idea of an arrangement?” Bragg said after a moment.

“The law is all the arrangement there is,” Cole said.

“Your law,” Bragg said.

“Same thing,” Cole said.

The men along the bar were looking at Bragg and looking at the shotgun. Bragg sat silently for a moment, looking at Cole. Deep in thought, maybe.

Then he said, “This town belongs to me. I was here first.”

“Can’t file no claim on a town, Bragg.”

“I was here first.”

Cole didn’t say anything. He sat perfectly still with his hands relaxed on the top of the table.

Leaning forward toward him, Bragg said, “I got near thirty hands, Cole.”

“So far,” Cole said.

“You proposin’ to kill us all?”

“That’d be up to you boys,” Cole said.

“Maybe you ain’t good enough,” Bragg said.

I could see it in the way he sat, in the way he held his head and hands. He was trying to decide. Could he beat Cole? Should he try?

“Don’t be so sure you’re quicker than me,” Bragg said.

He was trying to talk himself into it.

“So far I been quick enough,” Cole said.