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ole saw me, I knew. Already, I could tell that he saw everything. If he thought I was with the skinners, the increase in odds didn’t appear to bother him. I had no money on this one. But I didn’t think Bear should gut a woman, whore or otherwise, and I didn’t think one man should go against seven.“Marshal,” I said, “I’m backing you in this.”I said it softly, but it was so still that it almost echoed. Cole didn’t stop looking at Bear, but he made a barely visible nod. Bear still watched Cole. The men on the boardwalk glanced at me when I spoke, and spread a little farther. I cocked both barrels on the eight-gauge and rested the butt against my right hip. Then I moved Sugar a little closer so that I was nearly beside Cole. Again, the silence arched over us, made more intense somehow by the sound of the easy wind.Bear said, “Fuck you, Marshal,” and went for his gun.I brought the shotgun to my shoulder. Cole seemed in no hurry. Carefully, he drew the Colt, thumbed back the hammer, aimed at the middle of Bear’s big body, and shot him in the center of the chest. He recocked the Colt as he turned a half-turn so that the big, bone-handled Colt was steady on Bear’s supporters. Bear sagged and fell over, his gun half out of the holster.Sugar didn’t mind gunfire. Sudden movement scared him, but noise had no effect. He held rock-still where I had set him, so that both barrels of the shotgun were steady toward the men on the boardwalk.“You men go about your business now,” Cole said.Nobody did anything.“I won’t tell you again,” Cole said.At the far right edge of the group, the right shoulder of the man who’d loosened his Colt made a kind of involuntary twitch and then froze. Everything teetered. Then the man turned and walked away, an