The last two faro players in Cheyenne City's Shingle & Locke's Saloon placed their bets, the older blonde man putting down ten dollars on the draw of queen, nine, seven. The taller, younger one chewed his half-smoked cigar and stared at the card box as if he could see right through it, before putting down his hand-made checker atop his double eagle bet. The bright red marker had a yellow snake coiled in its center, eating its own tail.

"Twenty for nine, seven, queen," he said.

The cards came up nine, seven, queen, and the smartly-dressed dealer smirked at the half-breed winner. "You're the luckiest sumbitch I ever seen."

The other player spat out a disgusted "Damn!"

Wylie nodded, not smiling. "Uh huh."

Before he could place another bet for the next round, his red-haired partner pulled him aside and whispered in his ear, barely audible over the banging of the player piano and the drunk voices of cowboys and the squealing giggles of saloon girls. "You been dusting off this faro table all day, Wylie. Collect your money, 'fore he shoots your ass. We need to go play brag."

"Fine." Wylie picked up his chips. "I'm done for the night."

The young blonde casekeeper grudgingly paid him his last winnings, which came up to a hundred dollars, and the scowling black lookout caressed the stock of the sawed-off shotgun that lay across his lap . As Wylie walked away, the aggravated dealer grumbled, "Looks like I'm done for the damn night, too."

Raymond took Wylie's cigar out of his mouth and used it to light his own. "How much you take 'em for, this time?"

"Seven hundred."

"Hot damn!" Raymond put the cigar back in his partner's mouth. "Probably near cleaned him out! His eye was startin' to look a mite deadly! So was that Negro's shotgun. That man wanted to clean you out." He held out his hand. "Gimme the bank."

Wylie took two hundred out of the money and handed the rest to his friend, then eyed the room, looking for a table with a lot of rich-looking players around it. He spotted one with seven men crowded around it, and started toward it.

Raymond followed him, a grin halving his wide jaw. "Whoo, you picked you a good one! Looks like it's full of suckers. You'll pluck them ducks in no time."

Before they reached the table, one of the men looked up and saw them coming, and stated loudly, "Oh hell. Here comes that damn cheatin' Indian. I ain't playin' with him."

Another man echoed the sentiment. "Me, too. I'm folding, now."

One more got up and left without any comment. The other four remained, laughing at the quitters. One of them, a well-dressed fellow in a grey frock coat and top hat, gave a wink to his compadres, and spoke loud enough to make sure Wylie could hear him. "He can't cheat at a table I'm sitting at. I could put good money on the fact he can't even win once with me."

Wylie stopped next to him and gave him one of his confident grins. "I could put good money on the fact that I can, and I will. I don't need to cheat to beat you, Top Hat."

"Sit down, boy," the man said, almost sneering at him. "Put your money out, and if you try to cheat, I'll blow you to hell."

"I don't cheat." Wylie sat down and Raymond stood back a bit to watch.

"We don't play for pennies, either. Twenty minimum, and five hundred maximum."

Wylie flipped his cigar into the spittoon and put twenty dollars on the table. "Fine."

When all five players had tossed their ante money into the pot, the man politely tipped his silk top hat and dealt the players their three cards.

The grizzly old man to the left of the dealer scowled. "Now, what the hell is that, Tom? There ain't no ladies at this table." He looked at his hand and slapped it. "Damn. I fold."

"We won't know 'til the bets are laid, whether or not there's any ladies present," the dealer said.

"Heh, just ain't your night, is it, Jack?" said a tall fellow with a handlebar mustache and a brown derby sitting cocked sideways on his head. He then bet his twenty dollars. Wylie matched it, as did the sunburnt cowboy to his left. The chuckling dealer did likewise.

"How about we bring the pot up, some, so we can scalp this little Injun quicker?" Pete, the mustachioed man, threw in forty dollars. "No need to be timid."

Wylie said nothing, but his spine stiffened. He laid out his own forty dollars. The cowboy growled and slapped down his money. "Don't get too rich, too fast, Pete! I'm starting to run low."

"Stop whining, Cyrus. You know the cost of sitting at our table." The dealer threw in his money, and cast a suspicious glance at Wylie. The younger man ignored him, just focused on Pete, who was studying the pot as if already planning out what he meant to do with it, once he won it.

"I think I shall raise, again," Pete said, twisting up his gigantic mustache in a lopsided grin. "Let's go for sixty!"

"Damn!" Cyrus grumbled.

Wylie stared hard at the backs of Pete's cards. There were only two possible hands that could beat his own, and he could tell Pete didn't have either of them. He matched the bet, and turned his eyes on Cyrus. The cowboy grouchily threw down his sixty dollars, gnawing at his cheek in anger. Tom, the dealer, matched, as well.

"Now we're rollin'!" Pete's lean face broke into a full, tooth-baring smile. "I bet two hunnerd dollars."

"You son of a bitch!" Cyrus spat, looking at Pete with drunken fury in his eyes.

"Pardon me. I need to get some more money." Wylie motioned with three fingers to Raymond to bring him three hundred dollars of his "bank." He took two hundred of it and placed it on the table. "I'm in for two hundred."

Cyrus was still spitting, and slapped his palm hard onto the table. "I fold!"

Tom shook his head. "Afraid I have to fold, too."

Pete nodded his head, flashing a hungry leer at Wylie. He plopped another pile of cash onto the table. "Well, Injun. Four hunnerd, to see how bad you lose." His face froze in a grosteque version of his leer when Wylie flipped over his cards and exposed three kings. The only hand that could have beaten them would have been three aces, or the top brag hand of three threes.

"Your face says I win," Wylie said, with a slight smile. He raked all the money to his side and Raymond snatched it up and stuffed it into their bank bag.

"Yeah, you win," Pete hissed, flipping over his running flush of king, queen, and jack of clubs. He turned his angry eyes on Tom. "Spread out them cards, Tom. I see four kings, right here, just between me and him. I need to know there ain't any still in that deck."

Tom eyed Wylie with distaste, too, and happily complied with his friend's request, even turned over Jack's and Cyrus's discarded hands. No more kings showed up, anywhere. That didn't satisfy Pete, though. "You gotta be cheatin'. Gotta have a toothpick up your sleeve or something. Nobody wins with a damn kings prial on their first hand."

Wylie's dark eyes went hard. "I told you, I don't cheat."

"Oh yeah?" Pete said, standing up. "Well, I say you do."

Tom, the dealer, stood up, too. "It just seems suspicious, doesn't it? The way you win all the time. I've seen you in here for the last week, and nobody at your games ever leaves with any of his money. Something's not right. I can't put my finger on what it is, but it ain't right."

"I don't win all the time." Wylie stood up, too, sensing the implied threat from the two men. "If you ever really paid attention, you'd see that. You're just mad that you lost to a dirty half breed."

Grizzly Jack watched the three of them in their mental standoff, before shoving his chair back and leaving the table. "Y'all are all damn fools."

Cyrus agreed. "Jack's right. I was losing plenty before he ever come into the game. If anybody was cheating, it was probably you, Pete. You're always the one betting like crazy and scaring everybody else off, coming up with perfect hands. I think you done had that same damn runnin' flush two or three times, today."

"Shut up, Cyrus!" Pete yelled, pointing his finger at the cowboy in an imperious manner. "You always lose, no matter who's playing. You just a sorry loser."

"Aw, go to hell." Cyrus joined Jack at the bar, and let the older man buy him a drink. They proceeded to totally ignore the trio at the brag table.

Wylie shook his head and started to leave, but Pete stopped him. "Now just where you think you going? I ain't through with you."

"Well, I'm through with you." He turned to walk away, again, and noticed Raymond was nowhere in sight. Anger knotted up his guts. He was about to stomp out to look for him when Pete yelled at him, again.

"Get back here, you long-haired savage! You damn cheatin' son of a bitch!"

His anger made Wylie spin back around and yell a reply, throwing daggers from his flashing black eyes. "Go to hell! I don't cheat!"

"You son of a bitch!" Pete went for his gun, prodding his buddy, Tom, to do the same.

But Wylie was faster and steadier. He yanked his twin Schofield revolvers up and shot both men dead before either of them had their guns fully out of the holsters. The girls screamed at the sound of gunfire. Before the noise finished fading, several men made quick exits, and a few others took offense on behalf of the dead men. He realized what was about to happen, seconds after he holstered his guns, but then it was too late to do anything about it.

"He killed Tom and Pete! Murderer!" shouted one outraged man. The little vigilante group descended upon Wylie, en masse, shouting obscenities and insults, hitting, shoving and kicking at him, as they slung him outside. He tried in vain to fight back, but he was no match for the eight angry drunks.

Once in the alley, the gang relieved him of the two Smith and Wesson revolvers and the sawed-off double-barrel Remington he wore in a fringed scabbard at his back. One man pistol whipped him with his own guns, while the others kept up their dogpile assaults with boots and fists.

Another man shouted, "Let's hang the bastard!" He ran off to get a rope, amid shouts of consent from the others.

Wylie was already in bad shape by the time the man came back with the rope. He was only partially conscious, but still, he tried to fight off the attackers. His attempts at fighting back only served to make the men assault him, further. The man with the rope tied up a noose and put it over Wylie's head, yanking it tight and nearly throwing him backward in the process.

They finally did pull him onto his back in the dirt, and he choked and pulled at the noose as they dragged him around, looking for something to hang him from. When they couldn't find anything other than a telegraph pole that the rope wouldn't reach over, they just took turns trying to strangle him by repeatedly jerking on the rope, lifting him almost to his feet with the last pull.

"That's enough, boys." The gang, intent on killing their victim, didn't hear Wyoming Territory Marshal John Carter's words, so he drew his gun and fired a shot into the air to get their attention. "I said that's enough!"

The men stood still, glaring his way. He advanced toward them, followed by a deputy, cowboy Cyrus and one of the dark-haired saloon girls, who was holding Wylie's dusty black hat. "Let him go."

They let go of the rope and Wylie slumped to the ground, unable to pick himself up. One of the men in the gang glared down at him, looking as though he wanted to kick him. "He killed Tom Finley and Pete Smith. Cold-blood murdered the both of 'em!"

"From where I was sitting, it looked a lot like self defense," the deputy said. "They pulled on him, and he beat them. It was a fair fight. Miss Maggie, Cyrus and I are all witnesses to the entire incident."

"But...!"

The marshal interrupted, his glare hardening. "Seems like you boys aren't listening to what you're being told. Give him back his guns, and go on home. You aren't the law. You'd best not be forgetting it, again."

The men tossed down one of the 1869 Schofields and started to go, but the deputy marshal stopped them. "Wait a minute. He had three guns. Two of them revolvers and a shotgun."

The youngest man in the group grumbled and tossed the other two guns onto the ground beside Wylie, then joined his friends in skulking away from the scene. As they left, Cyrus turned and went back into the saloon, too. The marshal and deputy knelt beside Wylie and helped him up. "You still with us, son?" Carter asked. "What's your name? Where you from?"

Wylie couldn't lift his bloody head to look at them, and he didn't answer any of the questions, just groaned and choked and coughed. Maggie came closer and took the noose off of his neck, petting his head.

"Poor thing. His name's Wylie. I don't know his last name. I heard him say he was from Pine Bluffs." She tossed the rope aside. "He's been coming here to play cards for about a week, now. Him and some Irishman named Raymond. They usually stick together, pretty tight, but who knows where the other one's gone to, now."

The marshal and deputy half carried Wylie and his guns toward the front of the saloon. "He's not much of a friend, to go off and leave you like this, is he?" the marshal said. He looked over at the deputy. "Dan, why don't you and Miss Maggie see if you can't get him home. If he stays in Cheyenne too long, those boys'll finish killing him."

Dan nodded. "We can tie his horse to the buggy, if he'll tell us which one it is." He nudged Wylie's left shoulder and caused him to groan. "Wylie, which horse is yours?"

Maggie frowned. "You're hurting him, Danny!" She gently lifted Wylie's face in her hands. "Honey, tell me which horse belongs to you, so we can make sure you get him."

He fought to get his voice out. "Ap...app..."

"Appaloosa?" she said, trying to help him out. "That little brown one?"

He tried to nod, so she petted him, again. "That's good, honey." She stroked his bruised face with her fingertips. "Oh, you poor, poor thing! You're gonna be a sore boy, tomorrow morning."

The marshal sat down with him on the edge of the boardwalk, supporting him with an arm around his shoulder, and Dan left to get the buggy ready. Maggie untied the appaloosa mare and walked her over to her owner. The horse nudged his head with her nose, and then licked his head.

"Ain't that sweet!" Maggie cried. "She's just like a big dog."

By the time Dan returned with the buggy, Wylie had passed out on the marshal's shoulder. Maggie led the mare to the back and tied her reins to the buggy frame, while the two men lifted Wylie and lay him and his guns in the cargo area in the back. Through all the jostling and moving, he didn't wake up.

Maggie leaned in and laid his hat beside him, and petted his head some more. "I sure hope he's all right. He seems like a nice boy." She walked around to the front of the buggy and let the two lawmen help her into the seat. The deputy climbed up into the driver seat and drove off to the east, toward Pine Bluffs.