''Cause I'm a-goin' to bore you, an' I
never kill a man till he goes fer his gun.'
"To thet I replies, more considerate: 'But it ain't fair. You'd
better get the fust shot.'
"Then the fool hollers, 'Redhead!'
"Thet settled him. I leaps over QUICK, slugged him one--lefthanded.
He staggered, but he didn't fall.... Then he straightens an' goes
fer his gun."
Larry halted again. He looked as if he had been insulted, and a
bitter irony sat upon his lips.
"I seen, when he dropped, thet he never got his hand to his gun at
all.... Jest as I'd reckoned.... Wal, what made me sick was that my
bullet went through him an' then some of them thin walls--an' hit a
girl in another house. She's bad hurt.... They ought to have walls
thet'd stop a bullet."
Neale heard the same narrative from the lips of Ancliffe, and it
differed only in the essential details of the cowboy's consummate
coolness. Ancliffe, who was an eye-witness of the encounter,
declared that drink or passion or bravado had no part in determining
Larry's conduct. Ancliffe talked at length about the cowboy.
Evidently he had been struck with Larry's singular manner and look
and action. Ancliffe had all an Englishman's intelligent observing
powers, and the conclusion he drew was that Larry had reacted to a
situation familiar to him.
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