Lando (1962) Read Online Free PDF Page B

... moved to Texas from Tennessee." He gestured to the others. "These here are gen-u-ine Texans."
    He hunkered down beside the fire as the others dismounted, and I passed him the coffee pot. He was wearing more pistols than I ever did see, most men being content with one. He had two belted on in holsters and a third shoved down in his waistband.
    Unless I was mistaken, he had another, smaller one in his coat pocket.
    Loading a cap-and-ball pistol took time, so a man apt to need a lot of shooting often took to packing more than one gun. There was an outlaw up Missouri way who sometimes carried as many as six when on a raid. Others carried interchangeable cylinders so they could flip out an empty and replace it with a loaded one.
    When the Tinker walked up to the fire they saw the other knives.
    "You don't carry a pistol?"
    "I can use these faster than any man can use a gun."
    The youngest of them laughed. "You're saying that to the wrong man. Cullen here, he's learned to draw and fire in the same instant."
    The Tinker glanced at the big man. "Are you Cullen Baker?" [The First Fast Draw, Bantam Books, 1959]
    "That I am." He indicated the quiet-seeming man beside him. "This here's Bob Lee, and that's Bill Longley."
    "I'm the Tinker, and this here is Orlando Sackett."
    "You're dark enough for an Indian," Cullen Baker said to the Tinker, "but you don't shape up to be one."
    "I am a gypsy," Tinker said, and I looked around, surprised. I'd heard tell of gypsies, but never figured to know one. They were said to be a canny folk, wanderers and tinkerers, and he was all of that.
    Cullen Baker and his friends were hungry, but they were also tired, and nigh to falling asleep while they ate.
    "If you boys want to sleep," I said, "you just have at it. The Tinker and me will stand watch."
    "You're borrowing trouble just to feed us," Bob Lee said. "We've stood out against the Carpetbag law, so Governor Davis' police are out after us."
    "We're outcasts," Baker said.
    "My people have been outcasts as long as the memory of man," the Tinker said.
    "No Sackett," I said, "so far as I know, was ever an outlaw or an outcast. On the other hand, no Sackett ever turned a man from his fire. You're welcome to stop with us."
    When they had stripped the gear from their horses the other two went back into the brush to sleep, avoiding the fire; but Cullen Baker lingered, drinking coffee.
    "What started you west?" he asked.
    "Why," I told him, "it was one of those old-timey gospel-shouters set me to considering it.
    He preached lively against sin. He was a stomper and a shouter, but a breast-beater and a whisperer, too.
    "When he got right down to calling them to the Lord, he whispered and he pleaded, and right there he lost me. Seems if the Lord really wants a man it doesn't need all that fuss to get him worked up to it. If a man isn't ready for the Lord, then the Lord isn't ready for him, and it's a straight-forward proposition between man and God without any wringing of the hands or hell-fire shouting.
    "When that preacher started his Bible-shouting and talking large about the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah, I was mighty taken with him. He seemed more familiar with the sins of those foreign places than he did with those of Richmond or Atlanta, but mostly he was set against movers.
    "Sinful folk, he said, and the Lord intended folks to stay to home, till the earth, and come to church of a Sunday. By moving, they set their feet on unrighteous paths.
    "Fact was, he talked so much about sin that I got right interested, and figured to look into it. A man ought to know enough to make a choice; and pa, he always advised me to look to both sides of a proposition.
    "Back in the hills mighty few folks ever got right down to bed-rock sinning. Here and there a body drank too much 'shine and took to fighting, but rarely did he covet his neighbor's wife up to doing anything about it, because his neighbor had a squirrel rifle.
    "That parson ranted and raved about painted