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all the excuse Lassen needed. He had six bullets in Fruit Jar before you could snap your fingers, and even from where I was I could see that his head was practically blown off.

5
    B y the time I got there, there was a pretty big crowd gathered. Mostly boes like me, and the rest the few people who lived in town. Someone had dropped a tow sack over Fruit Jar; the upper part of him, that is. His legs were sticking out, and the dirty soles of his feet were showing through the holes in his shoes.
    “Hell,” the garage owner was scowling at Bud Lassen, “that was a hell of a thing to do. Killing a man over a few lousy gallons of gas.”
    “I told him to halt, didn’t I?” Lassen sounded a little defensive. “You all heard me tell him to halt.”
    “So what? You didn’t need to shoot him, dammit!”
    Lassen said he thought Fruit Jar was going to draw a gun on him. “It looked to me like he was reaching in his pocket. What the hell? You expect me to hold still while some thief takes potshots at me?”
    There was a low murmur from the crowd. A pretty unpleasant murmur. Lassen’s eyes shifted uneasily and fell on me, and he tried to work up a warm smile.
    “You, Burwell. You knew this thief, didn’t you? Had a pretty tough reputation, didn’t he?”
    “He had a reputation for getting drunk,” I said. “Which hardly made him unique out here.”
    There were laughs. Ugly laughs. Lassen’s eyes flickered angrily, but he kept on trying. “A mean vicious drunk, wasn’t he, Tommy? When he got drunk he might do almost anything, right?”
    “No, it isn’t right,” I said. “In fact, it’s a damned lie and you know it.”
    “Why, you—!” He took a step toward me.
    “The only mean vicious guy around here is you,” I said. “And you don’t have to get drunk to be that way.”
    That did it. He whipped his gun out, kind of swinging it in an arc to push the crowd back, then leveling it at me.
    “Get in that car, Burwell! I’m taking you to Matacora.”
    “Not me, you’re not,” I said. “Anyway, what are you taking me in for?”
    “For investigation. Now, move! ”
    “Huh-uh,” I said. “I start to Matacora with you I’d never get there.”
    He slipped his gun, grabbing it around the trigger guard; getting ready to slam me with the barrel. “I’m telling you one more time, punk. You get in that buggy, or.…”
    “He’ll do it.” Four Trey Whitey stepped between us. “He’ll go with you, Lassen, and I’ll go along with him.”
    Lassen hesitated, his tongue flicking his lips. “I don’t want you, Whitey. Just Burwell.”
    “We’ll both go,” Four Trey insisted. “And we’ll have a good frisk before we leave. How about it, friend?…” He winked at the garage owner. “Mind doing the honors?”
    “You bet,” said the garage owner. “You just bet I will!”
    He gave us as good a frisk as I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen plenty. Searching us from head to foot and proving in front of everyone that we weren’t armed. That pretty well spoiled any little plans Lassen had. He wouldn’t dare shoot us or rough us up now. Since we’d never be held in Matacora, I wondered that he’d bother to take us in at all. But he had more plans than I’d figured on.
    “All right,” he grunted. “You want it that way, you’ll get it that way. Pile into the front seat.”
    We got into the front with Four Trey driving. Lassen got in behind us, his gun still drawn, and we took off for Matacora.
    It was eighty-five miles away. Eighty-five miles without a filling station or a store or a house or any place where a man might get a drink of water or a bite to eat. Nothing but some of the sorriest land in the world—a desert that even a mule jackrabbit couldn’t have crossed without a lunch pail and a canteen. So when we were about midway in those eighty-five miles, more than forty miles from Matacora or the town we had come from, Bud Lassen unloaded us. He forced us out of the car and drove off by himself.
    It