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Parmalee came from the store. "I guess it's all over," he said.
"Not quite," Ollie Hammer said, "not quite."
"Why not?" Parmalee suggested. "It's finished in there. If your people won
they'd be out here in the street, looking for the rest of us."
"What about your crowd? Won't they come out?"
Parmalee smiled. "They know we can handle it," he said calmly.
"You? You dude? You're leavin' it to Shadow, or that cousin of yours, or
whatever he is."
"Second cousin, I believe. Oh, they could handle it all right, Hammer, but if
you prefer me, I'm at your pleasure. Draw when you will."
"Now there's the gent," Ollie Hammer said, " 'draw when you will' " he
mimicked.
"All right I'll "
His hand flashed for his gun.
Parmalee's gun was an instant faster, his shot smashed Ollie's gun hand and
the
gun fell into the dust. "And to show you that was intentional," Parmalee
said,
and he fired again, the bullet smashing the gun's butt as it lay in the dust.
"I
really don't want to run up a score, Hammer," Parmalee said. "I'm a ranching
man, not a gunfighter."
"You ain't seen the last of this," Ollie Hammer said. "Huddy is still up on
the
mountain. When he's finished there won't be a Sackett left. And then there's
Rocker."
Parmalee put his gun back in the holster and walked across to Galloway. "What
about it? Shall we go up there and help Flagan?"
"Flagan don't need help. And right now he knows he's up there alone. He can
shoot at anything that moves. If we go up it'll just complicate things. Leave
him be."
He hitched up his pants. "Let's all go home. We got some siding to build.
We're
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goin' to have a barn-raisin' soon, and we're going to build us a house."
Galloway gestured toward the hills. "I want to come out of a morning and look
up
at those hills and know nothing can be very wrong as long as there's
something
so beautiful.
"My pa used to say that when corruption is visited upon the cities of men,
the
mountains and the deserts await him. The cities are for money but the high-up
hills are purely for the soul.
"I figure to live out my life right here where I can hear the water run and
see
the aspen leaves turn gold in the autumn and come green again with spring. I
want to wake up in the morning and see my own cattle feeding on the meadow,
and
hear the horses stomping in their stalls. I never had much chance for book
learnin', but this here is a kind of book anybody can read who'll stand still
long enough. This here is the La Plata country, and I've come home."
Chapter XVIII
The wind sang a broken song among the sentinel trees. Below the scattered
outposts were massed the dark battalions of the pines like an enemy ready to
march against me, and somewhere along the lower edge of that black line lay
the
man who held the rifle that had shot me, and the bullet with which he
intended
to kill me.
Vern Huddy had the taste of blood upon bis lips, and was a-thirst for more,
and
I lay with my body torn by his bullet, shuddering with every bream, my coat
gone
and night a-coming on, waiting for him to make his move.
Only thing good about it was that he didn't know exactly where I was. His
bullet
got me most of an hour before as I dove for shelter, but I'd wormed and
scrambled and crawled some little distance since then.
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I gouged snow from the almost frozen remains that had backed up against a
rock
near me. I let a handful melt in my mouth and felt the delicious coolness of
it
going down my throat, through my body.
Moving stones from under me I piled them around, digging myself deeper
against
the cold and Huddy's bullets. The weakening was upon me, and for two hours
before the bullet hit I'd been driven and outflanked at every turn by a man
who
was a past master at his trade, and who knew now that I was somewhere along
timberline with nowhere else to go. In his heart he was sure he was going to
get
me.
This was my last stop. Whatever happened must happen here. I told myself that
and I believed it. I could not go back because it was a wide-open space and
even
in the night there would be enough light to see me against that gray-white
expanse.
The hole made by the bullet I had plugged with moss, and now I was waiting
for
him to come in for the finish. If he came before I passed out I might get
him,
and if not he would surely get me.
It was growing dark. Down in the valleys below it was already dark and people
were sitting down to their tables to eat warm suppers in pleasant
surroundings.
Meg Rossiter was down there preparing supper for her pa, or helping, and
around
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