Cheers filled the saloon.  A voice shouted: "Go to it, Jubal!"

Fortuna West, sudden ungovernable fear gripping her as eager, liquor-flushed, grinning faces pressed in about her, recoiled further.  She raised her hands to ward off Jubal's clawing fingers, glancing appealingly at Saul Harper.

She would get no help from the deputy.  He lay amid the wreckage of a chair, the overturned table resting on his shoulder.  Pain distorted his features as he endeavored to disentangle his injured leg, unquestionably broken, and sit up.

"A danged lady lawman!" Jubal boomed in a loud voice.  "You reckon she's the same as any other female?"

"Find out, Jubal!" someone encouraged.  "Find out!"

"Just what I'll do," the heavy-set rider shouted, and again reached for Fortuna.

Abruptly a hand fell on Jubal's shoulder, and spun him roughly about.  A tall, vaguely familiar, hard-faced man crowded in close.  Moving swiftly, he sent the drunk stumbling and cursing back into the circle of onlookers.

"Best you forget it," the tall man said coolly.

Again shouts echoed through the Texas Rose - this time of disapproval.

"You forget it, Luttrel!" a voice in the crowd countered.  "This ain't none of your put-in!"

Luttrel folded his arms across his chest.  "I'm making it mine."

Fortuna West, recovering her hat from the bar where the drunk had tossed it, placed it on her head, and quickly tucked her hair into place.  She was stunned, shocked.  Matters had not gone at all the way she had expected; the fact she was a woman had completely overridden the authority of the star she wore.

"Get out of here, Deputy, if that's what you are," Luttrel said in a low, harsh tone.  "Too many of them for me if they take it in mind to go ahead with Jubal's little peeling party."

Luttrel had thick, dark brows, small agatelike eyes that glittered in the lamplight, and a hard line for a mouth.  Dressed in usual range fashion - leather vest, shield shirt, brown cord pants, and stovepipe boots, he wore a high-crowned, uncreased gray hat with a snakeskin band.

"Now," he muttered, urgency in his tone.

Fortuna could scarcely hear him above the clamoring of the unruly crowd, but his meaning came through.  She turned and crossed to Saul Harper.  One of the bystanders was assisting him to rise.