“Same deal as before. Take the five steps back, sit down, and take off your boots, or break for the cabin, I’ll shoot if you don’t do one and I’ll shoot if you do the other. Your choice.”
For a moment Shaw looked undecided. Then, grumbling, he sat down awkwardly on a tuft of bunchgrass and slowly pulled off one boot and then the other. He did it carefully, never seeming to let the tops tilt downward. When he was finished he set both boots neatly before him. He said, “There. You happy?”
“Get up,” Longarm said. He motioned with the barrel of his rifle, standing up for the first time since Shaw had come out of the cabin.
“Now walk out yonder, north, forty or fifty yards.”
Shaw was already on his feet. He looked amazed, then angry. “In my damn socks? Hell, Longarm, you crazy? I’ll cut my feet to pieces. There’s all kind of rocks and whatnot, not to mention bugs and spiders and even snakes.”
Longarm motioned with his rifle again. “Watch where you put your feet. You’ll be all right. Now go on.” He came around the horse and walked toward Shaw, stopping some ten yards short.
Shaw snarled. “Hell, Longarm, you never said nothin ‘bout all this folderol. I thought we was gonna saddle up and get out of here. What’s all this about?”
Longarm smiled thinly. “I reckon you can guess, Jack. I don’t mind helping you out for old times sake. I just don’t want to get killed in the process. Would you do it any different if you was me?”
Shaw turned and started to gingerly pick his way out from the cabin. He was watching carefully where he placed his feet. “Well I damn shore wouldn’t treat a friend this way,” he said.
“You reckon we are friends, Jack?”
“Well … friendly. Hell, I don’t know.”
“Have you got any friends, Jack? Real friends?”
“Hell, I don’t even know what a friend is supposed to be. Yes, I got friends. Ever’body’s got friends.”
“A friend is somebody you’d do something for even when there was nothing in it for you.”
Shaw was about halfway as far as Longarm wanted him. He said over his shoulder, “Then I reckon I ain’t got no friends. You got any, Longarm?”
“I think so.”
“But I ain’t one of ‘em, is that it?”
“Ain’t known you that long or that often, Jack. Friends ain’t that easy to make. Generally you have to get in some kind of test together, see if you both hold up. You don’t make friends drinking together or playin cards or whoring around. Them is just acquaintances.”
Shaw got out as far as he appeared willing to go. He stopped and turned around. “I reckon then, if I’d been a real friend, you’d of let me go.”
“If you’d of been a real friend, I wouldn’t have had to let you go because you wouldn’t have been in this fix in the first place. And if you had, you’d never have asked me or expected me to turn you loose.” Shaw said, “Aw, bullshit. All yore friends ain’t honest.”
Longarm walked over to Shaw’s boots. He picked up one and turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out. He said, “Maybe not, but they damn shore wouldn’t do nothing where I had to come for them.” He pitched the boot toward Shaw. It landed ten yards short. But the outlaw wasn’t watching. He was intent on the second boot as Longarm picked it up and turned it upside down and shook it. Nothing came out, but Longarm didn’t look satisfied. He put the boot down on the ground and then knelt by it, keeping one eye on Shaw and shifting his rifle to his right hand. With his left he felt around inside the boot. After a half a moment a soft smile broke out on his face.
Shaw said, “Damn you, Longarm. Damn you to hell!”
Longarm worked his hand hard for a few seconds, and then drew it out of the boot. He had a derringer by the butt end. It had been held inside the boot by a sewn pocket. That had prevented it from falling out when Longarm had upended the boot. But Longarm had noticed the difference in the weight compared with the other boot. He held the derringer up for Shaw to see and said, “Jack, you are a most amazing man. I reckon I better get you to drop your britches. Wouldn’t surprise me if you had a rifle tied to one of your legs.”
Shaw was furious. “Hell, I had forgot all about it. I wasn’t tryin’ to slip nothin’ past you.”
Longarm laughed. “Yeah, forgot all about it. I guarantee you one thing, ain’t going to come a time when I forget about a pound and a half of steel in one of my boots.”
“You get used to it,” Shaw said hotly. “I been carryin’ it for years!”
Longarm broke open the action of the little gun, took out the two shells, threw them one way, and then flung the derringer as far to the west as he could.
Shaw said, “That gun cost forty dollars. You plannin’ on payin’ me for it?”
Longarm picked up the now-empty boot and sailed it toward the outlaw.
“Oh, yeah, Jack. You can bet on that. Bet your whole pile on it.”
Shaw stood, eyeing him. “Now what am I supposed to do?”
“Go put your boots on and then sit down.”
“Where?”
“Right where your boots are.”
Shaw was getting angrier by the moment. “Goddammit, Longarm, you are not treating me like a white man. I need my shirt back on. This damn sun is about to peel the hide off me.”
Longarm said, “Then the faster you do what I tell you, the faster you can get your shirt back on and get back in
