Far Bright Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

heart.
    “What’s the matter with you then?”
    “I feel like I’m pissing porcupines.”
    “Something out there?”
    Extra Billy made a sour face and shrugged—something.
    “Best get to the doc when we return.”
    “Sir,” Extra Billy then said, taking off his Stetson and holding it by its curled brim with both hands.
    “Speak up.”
    “Did you ever think of getting married?”
    “I ain’t jumping into any ocean, if that’s what you mean.”
    “I was just asking.”
    “I never looked for any woman to make me happy.”
    “I was just asking.”
    “Well, I have never been asked that type of question before.”
    “I was thinking about it.”
    “You had surely better see the doc then.”
    “Yessir,” Extra Billy said, and directionless he shuffled off.
    Bandy returned to his side. He’d scrubbed his face and there was color showing in his cheeks. His lips and nostrils he’d lubricated with Vaseline and they shined.
    “Does he ever say if I’m doing okay?” Bandy said.
    “Who?”
    “Who do you think? Your brother.” The boy had recently experienced a severe dressing-down from his brother. While practicing sword work on horseback he’d managed to cut the ears off a horse. Cutting the ears off a horse in mounted sword exercise or battle was not unusual; you just didn’t do it when Xenophon was your instructor.
    “If you weren’t doing all right he’d let you know.”
    “I don’t think he likes me.”
    “Well, son. He’s often unfriendly to people he likes. He ignores me completely,” and to this the boy made a bashful grin.
    He looked into the sun and his eyes filled with tears from the light and he wiped them away. He refocused his eyes. From somewhere came a bounce of light, as if the sun was being dazzled with a mirror.
    “Did you see that?” he asked.
    “What?’
    “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head.
    He then asked the boy if he’d changed his socks and when the boy said he did he told him to get up where Extra Billy had been, to stay out of sight, to see and not be seen, and the boy obeyed.
    He rolled a cigarette and reclined against the curve of a dished boulder and let his eyes close. He slowed his breathing and his heart softened and it wasn’t long before he could hear his own blood.
    “Sir, permission to speak.” He started against the rock, his right hand to the .45 he carried in a shoulder rig. It was Preston, a hand at his chin, waiting to speak.
    “Quit the preamble and state your business,” he said, dusting cigarette ashes from his shirtfront.
    “If a thing comes into my head, I just have to say it.”
    “That’s good to know.”
    “I have a weakness for pretty girls.”
    “All men do.”
    “Last night I drank too much and I threw up. I embarrassed myself.”
    “That ain’t all you did.”
    “Before you judge me, do you know everything that happened?”
    “I know enough.”
    “What do you know?”
    “I know you shouldn’t ought to have cut that girl.”
    “You hold it against me what happened, but I tell you she was stealing my money.”
    “I surely don’t want to listen to all your puke,” he said, adjusting the brim of his Stetson. He could not believe how incredible this one. Last night when he found him he was drunk and the woman’s blood was saturating the little bed where she’d taken him behind the curtain.
    “I am not a bad man,” Preston said as he toed the dirt with his boot.
    “I don’t care if you’re the pope of Rome. You’re lucky I don’t stick a knife in you right now.”
    “Give me another chance. Please.”
    “Is that what you’re used to?” he said, but to this Preston had no reply. He folded his arms across his chest and with one foot in front of the other, he stared down at the ground.
    Napoleon closed his eyes and opened them and cast them to the high rocks where Bandy was, the crown of his Stetson in view.
    “I know someone by what they say and do,” Napoleon finally said.
    “But a man doesn’t know what