he could thumb the hammer and press the trigger again, Pappy's own deadly .44 had bellowed. Pappy lay on his side, firing across his body. He must have drawn the gun and cocked it while he was flopping over, but it looked as if it had been in his hand all the time. One bullet was all he used.
I still hadn't moved. I stood there in that frozen half-crouch waiting for Ray Novak to go down. When Pappy fired only once, I knew it was over. He got to his knees and slowly lifted himself to his feet, darting a glance in my direction.
He said mildly, “Just unbuckle your pistol, son, and kick it over here.”
I slipped the buckle on my cartridge belt and dropped it. Then I kicked it toward Pappy. But the thing that held me fascinated was Ray Novak. He was still standing. He wasn't even swaying. Then I saw that his gun hand was empty and I began to understand what had happened.
It hadn't been anything as fancy as shooting a man's gun out of his hand. Not even Pappy Garret could have done that, shooting as fast as he had, from the position he had been in. He had shot to kill, but the bullet had nicked Ray's forearm, making him drop the gun.
I lost any suspicion I had about Ray Novak's guts. He had plenty. There was nothing he could do now but stand there and wait for Pappy to finish him off. But he didn't flinch, or beg, or anything else. He just stood there, staring into those pale gray eyes of Pappy Garret's, while bright red blood dripped from his fingers and splashed in a little pool at his feet.
“What are you waiting on, Garret?” he said. “Why don't you go ahead and finish it?”
Pappy smiled that tired half-smile of his. He said softly, “I wouldn't waste another bullet on you. If I decide to kill you, I'll beat your brains out with a pistol butt. Now get the hell out of here before I do it.”
Ray Novak's face burned a bright red. For a moment he didn't move. Then Pappy started toward him, slowly, holding his .44 like a club.
Ray said, “I'll get you, Garret. There won't always be carpetbag law in this country. And then I'll get you, if it's the last thing I do.”
Pappy kept coming, half-smiling, with his pistol raised.
Ray turned then, and walked off, leaving a little trail of crimson in the tender green shoots of young grass. He didn't look at me. He walked on by. Around the bend he got his horse saddled, and pretty soon we heard him ride away.
I started to go myself. There was no explaining the reason I had yelled the way I had. Probably it had been because of a lot of things. Ray Novak and his everlasting talk of law. Ray Novak being able to put two bullets in a tin can. Even those rides of his over to Laurin's might have had something to do with it. All that, and Pappy lying there under the cottonwood, looking like a tired, helpless old man.
Anyway, I had done it. Ray Novak and I were through for good now, but I didn't give a damn about that. I turned and started up toward the bend in the creek to get Red saddled up.
But Pappy said, “Just a minute, son. I'd like to talk to you.”
Chapter 3
I TURNED AROUND. Pappy looked at me as he punched the empty cartridge out of his pistol and replaced it with a live round. After a moment he said:
“Thanks.”
“Forget it. I wasn't trying to buy anything.”
“You called me Pappy,” he said. “How did you know who I was?”
“The other fellow figured it out. His old man used to be a town marshal and he saw your picture on one of the dodgers that came through the office.”
Pappy shook his head, puzzled. “I know a man on the run when I see one. And he was on the run, the same as you. He didn't look like a marshal's son to me.”
“His pa was marshal before the carpetbaggers took over.”
Pappy began to understand. He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over his bushy chin. He moved back up the slope a few steps and sat down, leaning back with his elbows on his saddle. After a moment he untied the dirty bandanna and mopped his face and the back of his neck.
There was something about him that fascinated me. Only a minute ago he had come within a hair's breadth of getting a bullet in his brain, and all the emotion he showed was to wipe his face 'with a dirty handkerchief.
“Well,” he asked, “what are you staring at?”
“You,” I said. “I was just wondering how you came to go to sleep at a time like that.”
He thought about that for a moment, and at last he sighed. “I was tired,” he said simply. “I haven't slept for more than two days.”
I should have saddled Red right then and rode away from there. There was trouble in the air. You could feel it all around, and you got the idea that trouble flocked to Pappy like iron filings to a lodestone. But I didn't move.
I said, “Ray Novak will be on your trail again. Sooner or later he'll be riding behind a marshal's badge, and when that happens he'll hunt you down. You should have killed him while you had the chance.”
I half expected Pappy to laugh. The idea of Pappy having anything to fear from a youngster like Ray Novak would have been funny to most people. But Pappy didn't laugh. He studied me carefully with those pale gray eyes.
“A man does his own killing, son, and that's enough,” he said. “I reckon if you want this Novak fellow dead, you'll have to see to it yourself.”
