once without slowing his walk. Suddenly he stopped, looking at me. He waited until I pulled up alongside him, and then he said:
“My God, Tall!”
The man was Laurin's brother, Joe Bannerman. He looked at me as if he wasn't entirely sure that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. He looked at Red, who had been a glossy, well-cared-for show horse the last time he saw him, but whose coat was now shaggy and scarred in a thousand places where thorns and brush had raked his royal hide.
I tried to keep my voice light, but I knew that the change in me was even more shocking than the change in Red. I said. “How are you, Joe? I guess you might say the prodigal has returned.”
But Joe Bannerman had no smile of welcome. He shifted the saddle down to the crook of his arm. “Tall, you're crazy! What do you mean, coming back to John's City like this?”
But he knew before I had time to answer. Laurin. Something happened to his face. He said, “Look, Tall, if you know what's good for you, you'll get out of here in a hurry. There's nothing in John's City for you any more.” Then he added, “Nothing at all.”
“Don't you think that's up for somebody else to decide, Joe?”
“She's already decided,” Joe Bannerman said roughly. “Next week she's getting married.”
I stiffened. At first the words had no meaning, and then I thought: Joe never liked me. This is just his way of trying to get rid of me. I even managed a smile when I said, “I guess I won't put much stock in that, Joe, until I hear Laurin say it herself.”
He glanced once at the house and then jerked his head toward the barn that he had come out of. “For God's sake, Tall, be sensible. Get that red horse in the barn before somebody sees you.”
There was something in his voice that made me rein Red over. I followed him, not quite knowing why, as he walked quickly to the other side of the barn, where the house was blocked from view. I dropped down from the saddle and said, “Now maybe you'll tell me what this is all about.”
Joe Bannerman dropped his saddle to the ground and seemed to search for the right words. He said, “I don't want you to get the idea that I'm doing this for your benefit, because I don't give a good round damn what happens to you. But I don't want any trouble around here if I can help it.” Then his voice got almost gentle. And I didn't understand that. “You ought to realize better than anybody else,” he went on, “that things have changed since... since you went away from John's City. You're a hunted man, Tall, with a price on your head.”
I said, “You wouldn't be having any ideas about that reward money, would you, Joe?”
“Don't be a damned fool!” he said angrily. “I just want to keep you from getting killed on my doorstep. Like I told you, there's nothing here for you. Why don't you just ride off and let us alone?”
“I'd still like to hear it from Laurin,” I said, “before I do any riding.” I started to turn toward the house again, but an urgency in Joe Bannerman's voice cut off the movement.
“Goddammit, Tall, listen to me! I'm trying to tell you that it's all over between you and Laurin.” Then he sighed wearily. “I guess you've got a lot of catching up to do. I'll try to give it to you as straight as I know how. Ray Novak's in that house, and he has orders from the federal government to get you. Ray was made a deputy United States marshal after the bluebellies were pulled out of Texas. I told you that things changed....”
I think I knew what was coming next. I tried to brace myself for it, but it didn't do any good when Joe Bannerman said, “It's Ray Novak that Laurin is in love with, Tall. Not you. She's afraid of you. You've got to be just a name on wanted posters, like this Pappy Garret that you've been riding with. You've got to be a killer, just like him.” He shook his head. “I don't know, maybe you had a right to kill that policeman on account of your father. But all those others... What is it, Tall, a disease of some kind? Can't you ever turn your back on a fight? Don't you know any way to settle an argument except with guns?”
Then he looked at me for what seemed a long time. “I guess you don't even know what I'm talking about,” he said. “That's the way you always were, never turning your back on a fight. And you never lost one before, did you, Tall? But you're losing one now. It's Ray Novak that Laurin's going to marry. Not you.”
I stood dumbly for a moment before the anger started to work inside me. I still didn't believe the part about Laurin. A thing like ours couldn't just end like that. But Ray Novak—at the very beginning of the trouble it had been Ray Novak, and now at the end it was the same way. I started for the house again, but Joe Bannerman stepped in my path.
“Tall, you can't go in there. Ray has been sworn in to get you.”
I said tightly, “Get out of my way.”
He didn't move.
I said, “This is my problem and I'll settle it my own way. If you try to stop me, Joe, I'll kill you.”
His face paled. Then I thought I saw that look in his eyes that I had seen once before—just before he told me that Pa was dead. For some reason that I didn't understand, he was feeling sorry for me, and I hated him for it.
Slowly, he stepped back out of my way. He said quietly, “I believe you would. Killing me wouldn't mean any more to you than stepping on an ant. It wouldn't mean a thing to you.”
“Don't be a damned fool,” I said. But he had already stepped back, watching me with that curious mixture of awe and fear that I had come to expect from men like him. He didn't try to stop me as I went around the side of the barn and headed for the back steps of the house. Maybe he didn't feel it was necessary, because it was too late to stop anything now. Ray Novak was waiting for me at the back door.
If he had made the slightest move I would have killed him right there. I realized that I had never really hated anybody but him. It would have been a pleasure to kill him, and I knew I could do it, no matter how much training his pa had given him with guns. But he didn't make a move. He didn't give me the excuse, and I'd never killed a man yet who hadn't made the first move.
He said mildly, “I guess you better come in, Tall.”
He was just a blurred figure behind the screen door and I couldn't see what his eyes were saying. Then another figure appeared behind him. It was Laurin.
