The life Matt Jensen lived was full of desperate and deadly encounters, and those encounters invariably left enemies. But as far as he knew, he had never encountered Madison before. On the other hand, he also realized that there was no way he could ever know just who every enemy might be.
Matt looked over in the corner toward the smallish man who had given him the warning of the second shooter. Seeing a nearly empty beer mug sitting on the table in front of him, Matt turned to the bartender.
“Give me another beer,” he said, again putting a nickel down.
The bartender drew a third beer, and Matt took the full mug over to the little man at the table.
“I’d like to buy you a beer,” Matt said.
“Thank you.”
“Why did you do it?” Matt asked.
“Why did I do what?”
“You know what. You gave me a signal about the second shooter.”
“I suppose I did.”
“Why?”
“Because, Mr. Jensen, if you had been killed, I would not have been able to fulfill my obligation to my client.”
Before the little man could explain his comment, a deputy sheriff came into the saloon. He stopped just inside and looked around at the saloon patrons who were now gathered in a knot around the two bodies.
“What the hell happened here? Did these two fellers shoot each other?” the deputy sheriff asked.
“Not hardly,” the bartender answered.
“Well then, what did happen?”
Everyone wanted to tell him, and they all started talking at once, each one shouting over the other in order to be heard.
“Hold it! Hold it!” the deputy called, loudly. He put his hands over his ears. “I can’t hear you if you are all goin’ to shout at the same time. You, Ben,” he said to the bartender. “Did you see it?”
“Yeah, I seen it.” Ben offered nothing else.
“Well?” the deputy asked.
“Well what?”
“Tell me what happened.”
“That feller sittin’ at the table over there,” Ben said, pointing to Matt. “The big one, not the little one. Anyhow, he just come into the saloon a couple minutes ago and ordered hisself a beer. I drawed him one—from that barrel there, the other’n bein’ just about empty and it gets some bitter when you get to the bottom. And you know me, Pete, I figure the first beer anyone orders should be the best ’cause otherwise, how are you goin’ to keep ’em as a customer?”
“For God’s sake, Ben, will you get on with it?” the deputy said. “I don’t give a damn which barrel you served him from.”
“Yes, sir, but you asked what happened, and I’m just tellin’ you in my own way. Now if you want to hear what happened, just hear me out an’ let me speak my piece. Now, like I was sayin’, I drawed him a beer, and that feller was just drinkin’ it, all peaceful like, when that feller down there”—he pointed to Madison’s body—“he says, ‘Would you be Matt Jensen?’ And the big feller, he says, ‘Yes I am.’ And then that feller lyin’ on the floor, he says ‘I’m goin’ to kill you.’ And the next thing you know, the shootin’ commenced.”
“What about the other one over there?” the deputy asked, pointing to Jernigan’s body. The deputy looked up at the balcony and saw the busted rail. “Did he just get so excited watchin’ that he fell through the railing?”
“No, sir. To tell you the truth, Pete, now that’s the mystifyin’ thing of it. That feller was up on the balcony, and he shot at Mr. Jensen too,” Ben said.
“Did he also challenge Jensen to a gunfight?”
“No, sir. What he done is, he just commenced a’ shootin’ without no word of warnin’ at all.”
“Ben’s tellin’ it right, Deputy,” a patron said. “It all happened just like he’s a’ tellin’ you it happened.”
“So what you are sayin’ is, there was two men shootin’ at him, one from up on the balcony, but the big man sittin’ back there took ’em both on and kilt ’em both?
“Yeah,” another said. “I ain’t never seen nothin’ like it. This here Jensen fella is as fast as greased lightnin’. I mean, when you think about it, it was all over in not much more than the blink of an eye.”
“Jensen?”
“Matt Jensen is who it is. I reckon you’ve heard of Matt Jensen.”
“Yeah,” the deputy said. “I’ve heard of him.”
During the entire conversation between the deputy, the bartender, and the other patrons of the bar, Matt had remained seated at the table with the small man who had warned him about the second shooter.
“You want to come over here, Mister Jensen?” the deputy called to Matt.
“Excuse me,” Matt said to the little man at the table. He pushed his chair back, then walked over to join the deputy.
