Catlow (1963) Read Online Free PDF

Mexican in the country. He spoke it smoothly and easily to the senoritas, and he was a popular man about Piedras Negras, across the river from Eagle Pass. He laughed easily, was friendly, and swapped horses and bought drinks. He was so popular that when the tall, cold-eyed man rode into town and asked questions, Catlow was informed within half an hour.
    There had been rumors that Parkman had sent a hired killer after him, and the rumors had reached Catlow as well as most of the population of the Mexican village.
    Matt Giles was a methodical man. He had begun his killing as a mere boy in the Moderators and Regulators wars of northeast Texas, and had graduated to a sharp-shooter in the Confederate Army.
    Discharged when the war ended, he drifted back to Texas and the word got around that he was a safe, reliable man for the kind of job he did. Parkman had retained him twice before this.
    Matt Giles had never seen Bijah Catlow, but he had listened to all the stories, knew what he looked like, and privately decided that Catlow was a bag of wind. Arrived in Piedras Negras, he had no trouble locating Catlow--he was the talk of the town.
    The local law approached Bijah ... in fact, they had been drinking and poker-playing companions for some weeks now.
    "Our jail," the person of the law suggested, "will hold another prisoner ... for years, if necessary. This man--this Senor Giles--I could arrest him."
    "Leave him alone," Bijah said. "If he wants me, I'll make it easy for him."
    Bijah Catlow, whose entire life had been predicated on the impulsive and the unregulated, suddenly became the most regulated of men. He took to rising at a certain hour, going to the cantina at a certain hour, taking a siesta according to Mexican custom, and exercising his horse by a ride each afternoon, and each afternoon he went the same way.
    The people of Piedras Negras watched and worried. Bijah Catlow was, indeed, making it easy for the gringo killer.
    Giles watched, and studied Catlow's movements. Never having known the man, he could not guess his pattern of living had been altered, and to such a methodical man as Giles, the methodical ways of Catlow seemed right and logical.
    Carefully, he studied the route to the cantina, but it offered no good cover. By this time Giles knew that Bijah had friends in Piedras Negras, and he knew there might be trouble before he got away. Therefore the killing had to be done where he was offered a good chance of escape, and where he could, preferably, kill with one shot.
    Going to or from the cantina, Catlow was always surrounded by a group of friends, and it soon became obvious to Giles that the only place where a killing would be safe would be along the road where Catlow exercised his horse. It also became obvious that along this route there was only one place that offered Giles the opportunity he wanted.
    There was a pile of boulders and brush about sixty yards from the trail Catlow rode, and a gully behind that pile which offered a hidden approach to the position. It was made to order.
    Giles was a painstaking man, but not an imaginative one, and it was his lack of imagination that brought him to the fatal climax. He watched, and he made his choice, and on the seventh day after his arrival in Piedras Negras he slipped out of town and took his position among the rocks. He sighted the exact spot where Catlow's head would be, planned his second and third shots if such were needed--although they never had been.
    Then he settled down among the rocks and waited.
    Suddenly, some distance off, he saw Catlow coming, riding easily on the handsome black horse. Giles felt a moment of swift envy ... how he would have loved to own that horse!
    He lifted his rifle and waited. Only a few minutes more.
    Suddenly the rider on the black horse veered sharply from the trail, and Giles swore. Now, what the--!
    An instant later a voice behind him said, "Fooled you, didn't we?"
    It is given to few men to know the moment of death, but Matt