“How did you do that?”
“I let the hand think,” Wang replied.
* * *
One month later, after going through a series of drills, Duff was able to snatch the coin from Wang’s hand, ten times out of ten, not beginning his own move until Wang started to close his fist around the coin he was holding.
It took but a week to apply that newly acquired skill to drawing a pistol, doing it so fast that to the observer the actual draw couldn’t even be seen.
“Duff,” Elmer said after watching Duff draw with lightning speed and shoot with unerring accuracy, “You are twice as fast as the fastest man I have ever seen. ’N I’ve seen the best. No,” he added with a smile. “I am seeing the best.”
Chapter Two
Under a leaden gray sky and swollen clouds, the stagecoach rolled westward, the passengers inside cushioned from the imperfections in the road by the thoroughbraces that absorbed the shocks. They were passing between thickets of brush, mixed with sumac and spruce. Occasionally a deer or a coyote would come to the edge of the road to watch them pass.
Thunder muttered sullenly above the rolling hills, and lightning played across the sky.
“Hope that lightnin’ don’t get too close,” the man riding alongside the driver said.
“Afeared of lightnin’, are you?” the driver asked. He had identified himself as G. F. Guy, and the man riding beside him was a passenger who had volunteered to ride up top, because the coach was full.
“Damn right I am,” the passenger replied, punctuating his comment with a spit that squirted brown tobacco juice over the spinning front wheel. “Some years ago when I was helpin’ to bring a herd up from Texas, I seen a feller that got hit by lightnin’ oncet. It knocked ’im right off his horse. Kilt ’im, too.”
“Yeah, well, it seems off a ways, so I don’t reckon we’ll have any problems with it,” Guy said, holding the six-horse team to a steady trot.
* * *
Duff MacCallister and Wang Chow were two of six people who were inside the coach. Duff was by the window, Wang was in the middle, and a whiskey drummer was on the other side of Wang. Across from Duff was an attractive young mother with two children, a boy of about twelve and a girl of about ten.
Duff and Wang were returning to Chugwater, Wyoming, from Bordeaux, Wyoming, where Duff had bought a new saddle for his horse, and Wang purchased a set of knives for the kitchen at Sky Meadow. The saddle and knives were on top of the coach.
The whiskey drummer had been talking ceaselessly about places he had been and things he had done.
“I saw Wynton Miller once,” he said. “Yes, sir, it was in the Long Branch Saloon in Dodge City, Kansas. Chalk Beeson, he owns the Long Branch, you know, is a good customer of mine. Anyhow, I was in the Long Branch when Wynton Miller came in.
“‘Angus Quince?’ he calls. Angus Quince was a bounty hunter and real good with a gun, so a bunch of outlaws got together and hired Miller to go after him.
“‘Yeah, I’m Angus Quince,’ a man says from the other end of the bar.
“Miller, now, he was dressed all in black, with a real low-crown black hat that had a silver band around it. I remember that silver band.
“‘I’m Wynton Miller,’ he says. ‘And I have been hired by a group of men who find your profession as a bounty hunter to be abhorrent to them. They have asked me to put an end to it.’
“‘Wynton Miller, you say,’ Quince says back to him. ‘Well, now, there’s quite a reward out for you.’
“‘You’ll never collect one dollar of it,’ Miller says.
“And with that, Quince went for his gun, drawing it quick as lightning, but Miller was even faster, ’n when the smoke cleared, Quince was lyin’ dead on the floor of the Long Branch.”
“Sir, I wish you wouldn’t tell such horrible stories in front of the children,” the woman passenger said.
“That’s all right, Mama,” the boy said with a big smile. “I think it was a real excitin’ story.”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” the drummer said, lifting his hat briefly.
“Where is Wynton Miller now?” the boy asked.
“Nobody knows,” the drummer replied. “He hasn’t been heard from in three or four years. Most people think he is dead.”
“Is it going to rain, Mama?” the little girl asked.
“It certainly looks like it,” the attractive young mother replied, thankful that the subject had been changed.
“We’ll get wet.”
“No, we won’t,” the little boy said. “We can close the curtain ’n the rain can’t get in.”
“What if the other people won’t close their curtain?”
“Sure, ’n if it starts to rain, I’ll be for closing my curtain, too, so you’ll not be getting wet,” Duff said.
“You talk funny,” the little girl said.
“Emma Lou, that’s a terrible thing for you to say!” Emma Lou’s mother scolded.
“There is no harm done, ma’am. ’Tis sure I am that the Scottish brogue that rolls off m’ tongue, sounds a bit queer to the wee lass.”
“I didn’t mean bad funny,” Emma Lou said, trying to make amends.
“’N it wasn’t bad the way I took it,” Duff said.
“We’re going to see Gramma,” the little girl said. “She lives in Chugwater.”
“Does she now? Chugwater is a mighty foine place, with many good people. If your nana lives there then she must be a good person, too, especially to have a pretty wee lass like you as a granddaughter.”
“Do you like pie?” Emma Lou asked.
“Aye, pie is one of my favorite things.”
“What kind do you like best?”
“Oh, cherry, I think. ’N what would be your favorite?”
“I like anything my gramma makes. She has a store in Chugwater where she makes pies.”
“Tell me, lass, your nana wouldn’t be Mrs. Vi Winslow, now, would she?”
“You know my mother?” the woman asked, surprised by Duff’s comment.
“Aye, but then Mrs. Winslow’s pies are so good that everyone knows her.”
Suddenly there was the
