Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF Page A

had come to town Thorne was waiting for me with a horse whip. When I’d started to dismount, he came at me with the whip, but seeing it coming I swung on the mule again and slammed him with my bare heels. Thorne was coming at me, but before he saw what was coming the mule was charging him. He drew back the whip too late, and the mule struck him with a shoulder and knocked him into the dust with half the town looking on. And then I had ridden out of town.
    The next thing was worst of all, for the Thornes were good haters and they believed themselves the best in the community, with a reputation to uphold. We were working in the field, Pa and me, and four men came for me. Pa tried to stop them and one knocked him out with a club, and then they set on me with the whip. When they were through I was bloody and miserable, but not a sound did I make until they were gone. Then bloody and scarce able to walk, I helped Pa home and to bed, and put cold cloths on his head. Then I got down Pa’s shotgun and started for town.
    Haas and Gibson, two of the men who had done the whipping, were drinking their bonus in the saloon. When I got down from the mule it was past dark and the street was nigh empty. Up in front of the hotel I saw a man stop and look back, and then I’d stepped inside. Haas saw me first.
    “Gib!” His voice was shaking. “Gib,
look!
”
    Gibson turned and he reached for the pistol under his coat, and I shot, but not to kill. The shotgun was heavy loaded but I shot between them, close-standing as they were, and both men went down, both of them catching some shot.
    They lay there shocked and bloody in the sawdust. “I done you no harm,” I told them, “but you set on me an’ Pa. Was I you I’d stay clear of us from now on, an’ if Pa dies I’ll kill the both of you.”
    Turning toward the door I stopped. “Don’t you set up to give this boy no beating again, because I got the difference.”
    That was the summer I was fifteen.
    Folks fought shy of me the few times I did come to town and I didn’t come except when must be. Most of the year I spent in the swamps along the Sulphur, hunting, trapping, staying away from people, except the Caddos. But that had been the beginning of it. From then on I’d the reputation of a bad one and folks kept their daughters away from me, and even the men stayed clear of me.
    Pa worked on, but he was never quite the same after that blow on the skull. Maybe it wasn’t so much the blow what did the harm, but the feeling that here where he’d planned to start over, to build something of a place for Ma and me, here he had failed to do so. It was no fault of his, but he lost heart then and the fire went out of him. After Ma died he just continued on and went through the motions, but Pa was gone and I knew it.
    Katy Thorne had reminded me and it all came back, the sound of Ma mixing batter in a wooden bowl, the weariness in Pa’s face as he came up from the field, the morning singing of the birds, and the sullen splash of fish in the still water, the sound of dogs raising a coon out there on a still moonlit night.
    These things had meant home to me, but Ma and Pa were gone and the memories of hunting wild cattle in the Big Thicket to the south was an empty memory, and the smell of damp earth and the warm sun of planting time…I had been a fool to come back.
    “I’ve no cause to love the Thornes,” I said, “only Will. I liked Will.”
    “I come here to gather flowers,” she said. “I was surprised when I saw you.”
    Walking to the house I put my rifle down and started plucking the duck.
    “You only fired once.”
    “There was only one duck.”
    She was silent, watching me as I worked. “A duck should hang for a while.”
    “He’ll do his hanging inside me then. This is my supper.”
    “It’s a small supper for a hungry man. Come to Blackthorne for supper. There’s a baked ham.”
    “Do you know what you’re asking, ma’am? Cullen Baker to come to Blackthorne? I