Tam Sullivan stood at his hotel room window and watched Tom Archer’s posse ride in, a group of exhausted, frozen men. They’d suffered no casualties and showed no signs of wounds, so they’d obviously been defeated by weather, not Utes. But where were Longley and Tate? Those two boys knew how to take care of their own skins and must have fallen behind for some reason. Sullivan smiled. Probably stopped off to rob somebody. He watched as the riders dismounted then followed Archer into the saloon in search of whiskey to defrost their bones. Thinking about it later, Sullivan reckoned it might have been better for the storekeeper if he’d gone straight home to the bosom of his family. Sullivan moved from the window and put on his hat and coat and wrapped a yellow muffler around his neck. It was a purchase he’d made that morning after the saleslady had assured him that yellow mufflers were all the rage since Queen Vic’s cousin, a German prince, had been seen wearing one grouse shooting in Scotland.
