The Beyonders Read Online Free PDF Page B

don't want. What you aim to do?"
    "Maybe do you a favor," said Gander Eye easily. "Why don't I do the thing for you? Shoot you dead."
    Duffy's eyes closed all the way, and only one of them opened. He moaned in his throat.
    "If I done that," went on Gander Eye. "I'd be just a murderer. I could pray it out. You wouldn't have shot yourself, you'd come clear."
    "And you'd be flung under the jail for murder."
    "No, I'd put the gun in your hand and folks would think you'd done it. Slowly would mourn because you'd died for her." Again he held out his hand. "Give it here."
    "You hold your tater," said Duffy, flourishing the pistol. "If you killed me and I let it happen, that'd still be suicide."
    "Not if you shut your eyes tight," said Gander Eye. "Then you wouldn't see it coming. It would be a surprise for you."
    "And you'd do this thing for me?"
    "Yes," said Gander Eye. "We been choice friends this long time, and I know you'd do it for me. " He watched Duffy. "When you're in your coffin, I'll come pick my banjo and sing you a song." He thought a moment. "I'll sing 'Bury Me on the Side of the Mountain.' "
    "Do that," said Duffy. "Sing that one."
    He shoved the pistol across the table and Gander Eye picked it up. He flipped open the cylinder. Five cartridges were in the chambers, and the sixth was empty for the hammer to come down on it.
    "Easy," warned Duffy. "That there trigger is hair-set."
    "I've shot with this gun." Gander Eye pushed the cylinder back. "Now stand over yonder beside the door and look thisaway."
    "You said close my eyes." Duffy got up unsteadily and shuffled across the room. "Said not to watch, not know when it happens."
    "That's right, close your eyes."
    Duffy closed them, set his feet apart. "Ready," he breathed.
    Sitting squarely, Gander Eye set his right elbow on the table and steadied his right wrist with his left hand, mountain marksman fashion. He caught and held half a breath of air and thumbed back the hammer. Closing his left eye, he sighted expertly and touched the trigger.
    The gun went off ringingly. Duffy reeled halfway around, eyes staring. On the left side of his head, just above the ear, blood sprang brightly from the gash Gander Eye had contrived to make there.
    "Stand still," Gander Eye said happily. "I'll try it again."
    Duffy snatched the knob, tore the door open, and rushed out. His wild scream winged up to the moon high above him. Crookedly he ran out on Main Street, stopped, and screamed more loudly still.
    Startled voices rose in the dark here and there. From Longcohr's house Peggy came running. She wore purple-and-pink pajamas. The jacket front was open, and her naked breasts surged and tossed like billows.
    "Duffy!" she shrilled out, and hurried close to him. "Whatever in the name of gracious happened to you?"
    "I near about got myself killed," he gurgled.
    She flung her arms around him and plastered herself to him. It was in that posture that William Longcohr found them when he emerged from the house in trousers and T-shirt with a shotgun in his ready hands.
    "Papa," cried Peggy, "Duffy's in a fix. He barely got away with his life."
    "He ain't away with it yet," said Longcohr, surveying the considerable disarray of his daughter. "Not without he tells me when you two is to be a-getting married. "
    Duffy was holding Peggy, too, shoved up against her.
    "I see what you mean," he said, not really plaintively.
    "I hoped you would," nodded Longcohr above the shotgun. "You get back in the house, Peggy. Now," he beckoned Duffy with his gun muzzle, "you and me's got about ten or twelve words to say to one another, and tomorrow we'll all go to the license bureau at the county seat."
    Gander Eye had followed Duffy no farther into the open than he had needed to see what happened. Now he walked back inside. Picking up the jar of blockade whiskey, he took his biggest drink of the evening and grinned to himself and at everything. His plan to banish the notion of suicide from Duffy's mind had worked, had