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gettin’ another room. I’ll have some men come up and move these bodies.” Reynolds looked up and down the hall. Roper figured he was thinking about the fact that nobody was sticking their head out to see what was going on.
    “Nobody showed much interest in the goings on, Sheriff.”
    “Naw, they wouldn’t,” Reynolds said. “The fellas in these rooms usually got somethin’ on their minds.” He looked at Roper. “You got a girl in your room?”
    “No, sir,” Roper said. “I was sleepin’.”
    “Yeah, okay,” Reynolds said. “These two ain’t gonna be no loss to anybody. Go get yerself another room key.”
    *   *   *
    Roper went down to the lobby, which was still empty. Hearing shots in Hell’s Half Acre was nothing new, but he still thought the clerk should have showed some interest.
    The young man watched as Roper approached the front desk, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing.
    “Guess you didn’t hear the shots upstairs,” Roper said.
    “I heard ’em.”
    “Yeah? How come you didn’t come runnin’?”
    “This is the Half Acre, mister,” the clerk said. “You don’t run towards shots, you run away from ’em.”
    “Well, looks like I’ll need another key,” Roper said. “Those two broke my door.”
    “We got rooms,” the clerk said. He turned, grabbed a key, and turned back, handing it to Roper. “There ya go.”
    “I guess when you gave those two my room number, you should’ve given them my key. Then they wouldn’t have had to kick in my door.”
    “Huh?”
    “They knew what room I was in because you told ’em,” Roper said. “Now, when the sheriff comes down here I can tell him that, or I could keep quiet.”
    “Why would ya do that?”
    “Because you’re gonna tell me who you and those two are workin’ with,” Roper said. “Who sent them after me?”
    “I can’t—I’ll get killed.”
    “Okay, then,” Roper said, “I’ll tell you, and you just nod.”
    The young man didn’t move.
    “Go ahead, try it. Nod.”
    He nodded.
    “Okay,” Roper said, “it’s my guess a young lady named Nancy sent those two after me after she saw me in the saloon.”
    The clerk remained frozen. There were footsteps on the stairs.
    “Here comes the lawman, boy,” Roper said. “Am I right?”
    As the lawman appeared at the bottom step, the young man jerked his head in a quick nod.
    “Okay,” he said, then loud enough for the sheriff to hear, “thanks for the key.”

13
    Roper didn’t get much sleep.
    He stuck the wooden chair beneath the doorknob of his new room, set the pitcher and basin on the windowsill in case somebody tried to get in that way. Then he went to bed fully dressed with his gun beneath his pillow.
    He dozed here and there, but was awake when first light came streaming through the window. He sat, his stomach growling. Killing two men had done nothing to ruin his appetite. They would have killed him for two bits, so they deserved what they got.
    Roper didn’t know if the desk clerk had told Nancy the saloon girl what had happened. He also didn’t know how many other men she had on a string. The clerk was worried about getting killed, and Roper doubted the girl did her own killing.
    He’d decided to stick to his plan about approaching the stockyard boys in the saloon, but that meant having it out with Nancy first. And lying awake that night, he had come up with an approach for that.
    But first he wanted breakfast.
    *   *   *
    The café looked dubious from the outside, but Roper—as “Andy Blake”—could not be choosy. Most of the clientele was dressed as he was, so he went inside and got a table. He ordered bacon and eggs, and resisted the urge to clean the silverware while he waited. The waiter filled his coffee cup before Roper could inspect it to see what was at the bottom.
    While he was eating breakfast, Sheriff Reynolds came walking in. The lawman stopped inside the door, looked around, spotted Roper, and walked over. Along the way,