Slocum and the Glitter Girls at Gravel Gulch (9781101619513) by Jake Logan

Abilene, sis, Slocum meets his enemies face to face. He’s not a backshooter.”
    “I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I just wondered if you were going to shoot his men down, one by one.”
    “We’ll see,” Slocum said.
    “How?” she asked.
    “They’ll have a choice,” Slocum said.
    “What kind of choice?” Laurie said, visibly upset at the thought of Slocum as a gunman who would shoot and kill men, for whatever reasons.
    “Whether they want to live or die,” Slocum said, and he looked at the sky. There were no more puffs of smoke, only a blue expanse devoid of clouds.
    Then he looked at Laurie and smiled.
    She shuddered again and looked away.
    Harvey stood there as if struck dumb. He remembered Slocum in Abilene. Calm, cool, deliberate in the face of death.
    He hadn’t backed down then, and Harvey was sure Slocum was more than a match for Canby’s men.
    But he was badly outnumbered.
    There was no telling how many men Canby had under his command. Slocum was facing a tough and ruthless enemy. And there was not a man who worked for Canby who would hesitate to shoot Slocum in the back.
    Slocum might not even see the man who raised a gun against him.
    “Is Canby that important, John?” Harvey asked. “Shouldn’t you let the law take care of him? Why risk your own life?”
    “There seems to be no law here,” Slocum said. “Canby’s already shown his true colors by framing an innocent man and hanging him. And he was about to hang another innocent man, Wallace Hornaday.”
    “But you’re not the law, John,” Laurie said.
    “Where there is no law,” Slocum said, “it’s sometimes up to the law-abiding to take the law into their own hands.”
    “Nobody’s stood up to Canby here in Deadfall,” Harvey said. “Even I would hesitate to buck him.”
    “Not every law-abiding citizen can combat evil,” Slocum said.
    “But you appoint yourself as judge, jury, and executioner,” Laurie said, plainly upset.
    “I wouldn’t say that,” Slocum said.
    “What would you say, then?” Harvey asked.
    “When I see a town like Deadfall, with no law and a tyrant running things, it angers me,” Slocum said.
    “That’s still no excuse to start killing,” Laurie said.
    “Some people are rabbits,” Slocum said. “When there’s danger, they freeze or hide.”
    “And you, what are you, John?”
    “Maybe a wolf,” he said with a slow curl of his lips into a half smile.
    “Well, Canby’s a wolf, too, then,” Laurie said. “And you would descend to his level.”
    “There are good wolves and bad wolves,” Slocum said, the smile widening.
    “Oh, you men,” Laurie said. “You just do what you want to do and to hell with everyone else.”
    “I said I’d give Canby’s men a chance,” Slocum said. “And if it’s possible, I want to capture Canby alive and take him back to Dodge to face justice.”
    “All very noble and admirable,” Laurie said, still upset. “And you might get yourself killed.”
    “And if I don’t face off with these men,” Slocum said, “more innocent men might die here.”
    Laurie clamped her mouth shut to keep from protesting further.
    Harvey looked at Slocum with fresh eyes.
    “He makes a point, sis. I wish I could stand up to Canby for what he did to Harlan and what he was about to do to Wallace.”
    He looked apologetically at Slocum.
    Laurie drew in a deep breath and brushed her hair away from her face with the back of her hand.
    “I—I don’t know what to say,” she said.
    Slocum gave her a moment to compose herself.
    “Sometimes,” he said, “you can’t sweep a problem under the rug. As long as Deadfall tolerates such a man as Canby, he’ll take more and more from them. The best way to solve a problem is to face it head on. Win or lose.”
    “You might lose, John,” she said. “I would hate to see that.”
    “She’s right, John,” Harvey said. “You’re taking on a dangerous task to go up against any one of the men who work for Canby. And