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walking with Robby Coles after church.”
    “So,” he said. “Any more coffee?”
    She poured the heavy black coffee into his mug. “You know what I think?” she asked him.
    “What’s that?”
    “I think she told Robby Coles that you pestered her.”
    “That’s right, that’s what I said,” he answered, nodding. “That’s what Coles
told
me she said.”
    “Well, of course,” she said.
    Benton looked up at his pretty wife with a grin. “Of course
what
, ma?” he asked.
    “Louisa Harper is in love with you.”
    He stared at her, speechless. “She—”
    “In love with you.” Julia nodded with a confident smile. “Of course she is. All the girls in Kellville are in love with you. You’re their big hero.”
    “Oh . . .” Benton waved a disgusted hand, “. . . that’s hogwash.”
    She smiled at him.
    “That’s nonsense, Julia,” he insisted.
    “No, it isn’t,” she said with a laugh. “Ever since we moved here everyone’s looked up to you. The boys look at you as if you were a god. The girls look at you as if—”
    “Why should they?” John said, embarrassed.
    “Because you’re a hero to them, dear,” she said. “You’re John Benton, the fearless Ranger, the quick-shooting lawman.”
    He peered at her until the mock-serious expression on her face broke into an impish grin. “Ha, ha,” he said flatly.
    “It’s true,” she said. “To them you’re Hardin and Longley and . . . and Hickok all rolled into one.”
    “That’s nonsense,” he said. “I haven’t worn a gun in town the whole two years we’ve been here.”
    “Yes, but they know what you did in the Rangers.”
    “Oh, that’s silly,” he mumbled and reached for his coffee mug.
    She sat down with her peas again. “Yes, I expect that’s what it is,” she said. “She’s in love with you and she probably dreamed out loud in front of Robby.”
    “Well, that’s stupid,” he said in disgust. “If it’s true, that is. What’s the matter with the girl, doesn’t she know any better than that? She has that Coles kid thinkin’ I’m a . . . a gallivantin’ dude or somethin’.”
    Julia laughed. “He’ll get over it,” she said, “as soon as he knows it isn’t true.”
    “How do you know it isn’t true?” Benton said, forcing down the grin with effort.
    Julia looked up at her husband with soft eyes for a moment, then back to her moving fingers.
    “I know,” she said, gently.

Chapter Six
    A gatha Winston walked down Davis Street in the late afternoon, her thin legs whipping like reeds against the heavy blackness of her skirt and the half dozen petticoats beneath. She was a tall, gaunt woman with eyes of jade, and features molded in sharp angles and pinches. She was a hidebound churchgoer who used her self-styled Christianity as a bludgeon on all those not in the accredited fold.
    Right now Agatha Winston was on a crusade.
    Like a dark bird of vengeance, she swooped down on the small house of her sister, umbrella stem clicking on the plank sidewalk, skirts a vindictive rustle. Mouth a gash, she shoved in the gate and kicked it shut behind her as she clumped and swished toward the porch steps.
    Inside the house, the bell tinkled reactively to the wrathful tugging of Agatha Winston’s clawlike fingers. She stood tensely before the door, one black and pointed shoe-tip tapping steadily at the porch, the other pressing down a corner of the welcome mat.
    There was a stirring in the house. From its depths, Miss Winston heard the voice of her sister calling, “I’ll be right there,” and then the light sound of her sister’s shoes across an inside floor. Through the gauzyhaze of freshly laundered curtains, Miss Winston saw her sister’s approach.
    The door opened. “Agatha,” said the widow Harper in surprise.
    “Elizabeth,” Miss Winston replied with a concise moving of lips.
    “Come in, my dear, please,” Elizabeth Harper said, stepping aside, her soft, pink face wrinkled in a welcoming smile.