Jeff picked himself off the ground and carefully brushed the dust from his new jeans. “I know your pa's got a forty-five,” he said coldly. “It won't be any trouble to snitch it.” He allowed himself a thin smile, not realizing how much he resembled his father at that moment. “I'll see you at the creek,” he said. “Unless you're yellow, Alex.” Then he turned and walked away.
That day, sitting there at his plank bench in the crowded schoolhouse, Jeff could feel the shocked and frightened stares of the pupils upon him. But he didn't care what they thought of him.
He was young Blaine, the son of Nate Blaine. From time to time he would look around to see how Alex Jorgenson was taking it. The boy was still pale. Alex was scared half to death and everybody in the room knew it.
He'll never meet me at the creek, Jeff thought with a sneer. He's yellow clear through.
But Jeff was wrong. At the end of the day Alex and several other boys came up to him in the schoolyard.
Jeff said, “You backing down?”
Alex swallowed. “No. It'll take a little time to get my pa's gun. But I'll be there.”
Jeff would have sworn that Alex never would have gone through with it. But there was a saying that cornered rats would fight, and maybe that accounted for it. Jeff tried not to show his surprise. “Well, just see you don't take too long. I can't wait all day.”
He turned and walked off from the others. Todd Wintworth ran across the yard to catch up with him.
“You're not really going through with it, are you, Jeff?”
Jeff almost laughed. Todd's eyes were popping. “I'm going through with it, all right. I'll teach him to go around telling lies about the Blaines.”
“Are you sure it's lies?”
Jeff stopped in his tracks. “What do you mean by that?”
Todd Wintworth was no coward. He had fought plenty of boys bigger than himself and usually came out on top. But there was something about the set of Jeff's mouth that made him back water.
“I didn't mean anything.”
Jeff stepped out again, walking on hard ground when he could, to keep the red dust from settling on his boots.
“Jeff,” Todd said, “will you tell me something?”
“Sure.”
“Are we friends, or not? You've been acting so funny lately—”
Jeff looked at him. “Sure we're friends. We've always been friends, haven't we?”
“Will you do something for me?” Todd asked.
“What?”
“Go after Alex and tell him not to get the gun.”
Jeff turned on him. “Are you crazy?”
“Go after him, Jeff, before it's too late!” His voice had a curious twang to it, like a fiddle string about to snap. “Fight him with your fists. I know you're not afraid of him.. He's mostly blubber and you can whip him easy.”
“I don't want to whip him with my fists,” Jeff said grimly. He started walking again, and this time Todd stood where he was, letting Jeff go on alone.
Well, to hell with him! Jeff told himself. I don't need Todd Wintworth or anybody else!
Today he did not take the street that went past Jed Harper's bank building, because he knew his pa would be waiting there for him. He cut up the wide alley behind Baxter's store, circled in front of the public corral and headed toward the Sewell house. He was careful not to go past the tin shop and not to let Aunt Beulah see him when he got home.
When he was sure that nobody was watching, Jeff headed for the cowshed where Nathan had hung his saddlebags from a rafter. He knew that his pa kept an extra .45 and several boxes of cartridges in one of the bags.
Sure enough, when he got the leather pouches down he found a heavy Colt's Cavalry carefully wrapped in oiled rags. He loaded it with five rounds from the ammunition carton, easing the hammer down on the empty chamber. He carefully wiped the oil from the revolver and then hid it away inside his shirt.
He felt his heart hammering with excitement, but he was not nervous or scared. His hands were perfectly steady. He peered around the shed wall to make sure Aunt Beulah hadn't seen him, and then he darted around the front of the house and headed toward Harkey's pasture. If anybody wanted to know, he was just heading to the pasture to fetch Bessie.
But nobody wanted to know.
When he reached the barbed-wire gate, he turned north and followed the fence toward Crowder's Creek. When he was sure no one could see him, he took out the revolver and tried to hold it the way his pa did.
His hands were large for a boy of thirteen, but not large enough to handle a gun as big and heavy as a Colt's .45. He could cock it with his thumb, but it was a strain and took some time. It would be better, he decided, to cock with the left hand and trigger with the right, a technique known as fanning.
Nathan Blaine did not like fanning as a technique for rapid shooting. There were only two excuses for using it: one was when you were standing belly to belly with the man you were shooting at, and the other was
