“You can’t hit the ass end of an elephant with a shotgun at two paces. That would be some shoot-out.”
“I can hit most anything,” Vanilla Ride said. “And you seem to be a good shot.”
I looked up at her on the landing, in the shadows.
“With a long gun,” I said.
“What about a short one?”
“Nowhere as good.”
“But he can hit stuff,” Leonard said. “His bad is someone else’s good. He’s got an instinct.”
“My instinct is to stay right here,” I said. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“I’m tired of waiting,” Vanilla Ride said. “You can go, or you can stay.” Then she turned her attention away from me and yelled outside. “Hey, you still out there, loudmouth?”
“I’m out here,” came the voice.
“You two, you show yourself, handguns only,” she said. “I’ll meet you outside, guns by our sides.”
“You mean that?”
“Hell yeah, I got better things to do with the morning.”
“Oh, you aren’t going to end up doing all that much today, Vanilla.”
“I guess we can find out, swizzle dick.”
There was a long moment of silence. Then the voice yelled back. “Deal.”
“Damn,” I said to Leonard. “You know I got to do it now.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll do it, you know that, but—”
“You can’t shoot for shit.”
“Bingo,” Leonard said.
I took a deep breath and put the rifle on the floor and pulled the automatic from my belt. Leonard said, “If you get killed, I’m running out that back door like a goddamn rabbit.”
“No you won’t.”
“Yes I will.”
“No. You’re a macho queer.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. Maybe. Christ, Hap, let them come for us.”
“Either way scares the hell out of me,” I said. “I’m always scared. I’m not like you.”
“Hey, I’m scared. You get killed, John doesn’t take me back, where am I to stay?”
Vanilla Ride came down the stairs carrying her automatic pistol in her hand. I eased away from the couch and along the wall near the window. I said to her, “Think they’ll keep their word?”
“Of course not,” she said.
Easing over to the edge of the window on her side, she called out: “There will be two of us, and two of you.”
“That sounds good,” came the voice from the dark.
“One of us will step out, and you’ll show one of you, with a handgun only.”
“High noon,” the voice yelled out.
“High morning,” Vanilla Ride said. She stepped through the gap where the window had been. A tall man with dark hair came up over the rise. He had his hand down by his side. I could see a handgun in it. I stepped out, but kept close to the edge of the windowsill.
The other man came up over the rise. I could see his handgun. He held it in such a way that it was in front of him and resting against his thigh. The sun was still coming up, and though the sun in our eyes should have been a hazard, this early in the morning and coming through the trees it wasn’t so bright and all it did was outline our targets neatly.
“Let’s walk out a ways,” said the tall dark-haired man.
“They’re going to fuck with us,” Vanilla Ride said so only I could hear.
“But we’re going to go on out a ways in spite of that, aren’t we?” I said.
“We are,” she said. “I got to tell you, I always wanted to do this.”
“Not me,” I said, and I could feel my hands shaking. It was all I could do not to break and run.
“What happens we get killed?” she said. “What about your friend?”
“They’ll have hell coming in and getting him,” I said. “It won’t be any cakewalk, that you can depend on.”
“Good,” she said.
“Do we have to do this?” I said.
“No.”
