Boone finished his sarsaparilla. He set the glass down with a soft click. "Because I know the governor," he said. "He wasn't a tall man. Couldn't stand to be around anyone over six feet. That fella was six-two if he was an inch. No way the governor would have pinned a star on someone he had to look up to."
Within an hour, two men had been thrown through the batwing doors, and the stranger had declared himself the new law in Red Oak. Sheriff
"No," Boone said. "That's what a deputy does. A sheriff walks the streets at midnight when the widows can't sleep. A sheriff knows which family's cow is sick and which boy is stealing eggs because his daddy drinks the grocery money. A sheriff carries the dead to the undertaker and lies to their mamas about how quick it was, how they didn't suffer." He leaned on the bar, his weight settling into the wood like a tree settling into old ground. "That badge you're wearing? It ain't authority. It's permission to give a damn." Boone finished his sarsaparilla
The saloon had gone quiet when Boone pushed through the doors. The stranger stood at the bar, one hand flat on the wood, the other resting easy on his hip where a revolver sat in a polished holster. He was younger than the sheriff had expected—maybe thirty—with a face that was handsome in the way a razor blade is handsome: clean, sharp, and likely to cut you. "He wasn't a tall man
Then the stranger laughed. It was a dry, hollow sound. "You're bluffing."
"The governor," Boone said, "has been dead for six years. You tell whoever gave you that badge that if they want Red Oak, they can come and take it. But they'd better bring more than a mule and a smile."