the Daybreakers (1960) Read Online Free PDF Page A

for him; suddenly it came over me that Reed Carney was nothing but a tinhorn. He fancied himself as a tough man and a gunfighter, but he didn't really want anybody shooting at him. The trouble with having a reputation as a tough man is that the time always comes when you have to be a tough man. It's a whole lot different.
    Nothing exciting or thrilling about a gunfight. She's a mighty cold proposition for both parties. One or t'other is to be killed or hurt bad, maybe both. Some folks take chances because they've got it in their minds they're somebody special, that something will protect them. It is always, they figure, somebody else who dies.
    Only it ain't thataway. You can die. You can be snuffed out like you never existed at all and a few minutes after you're buried nobody will care except maybe your wife or your mother. You stick your finger in the water and you pull it out, and that's how much of a hole you leave when you're gone.
    Reed Carney had been thinking of himself as a mighty dangerous man and he had talked himself into a shoot out. Maybe it was something in his walk or the way he looked or in the fact that he stopped when I started toward him. Mayhap it was something sensed rather than seen, that something within me that made me different than other men. Only suddenly I knew that by the time he had taken ten steps toward me the fight had begun to peter out of him, that for the first time he was realizing that I was going to be shooting at him to kill.
    Panic can hit a man. You never really know. You can have a man bluffed and then something wild hits him and you're in a real honest-to-warchief shooting. Those others were going to wait for Reed, but I'd leave them to Cap. Reed was my problem and I knew he wanted to kill me. Or rather, he wanted it known around that he'd killed me.
    As I walked toward him I knew Reed knew he should draw, and he felt sure he was going to draw, but he just stood there. Then he knew that if he didn't draw it would be too late.
    The sweat was streaming down his cheeks although it wasn't a hot evening. Only I just kept walking up on him, closing in. He took a step back and his lips parted like he was having trouble breathing, and he knew that if he didn't draw on me then he would never be the same man again as long as he lived.
    When I stopped I was within arm's length of him and he was breathing like he'd run a long way uphill.
    "I'd kill you, Reed."
    It was the first time I'd ever called him by his first name and his eyes looked right into mine, startled, like a youngster's.
    "You want to be a big man, Reed, but you'll never make it with a gun. You just ain't trimmed right for it. If you'd moved for that gun you'd be dead now ... cold and dead in the dust down there with only the memory of a gnawing rat of pain in your belly.
    "Now you reach down mighty careful, Reed, and you unbuckle your belt and let it fall. Then you turn around and walk away."
    It was still. A tiny puff of wind stirred dust, then died out. Somewhere on the porch of the Drovers' Cottage a board creaked as somebody shifted weight. Out on the prairie a meadow lark sang.
    "Unbuckle the belt!"
    His eyes were fastened on mine, large and open. Sweat trickled down his cheeks in rivulets. His tongue fumbled at his lips and then his fingers reached for his belt buckle. As he let the belt fall there was a gasp from somewhere, and for a split second everything hung by a hair. There was a moment then when he might have grabbed for a gun but my eyes had him and he let the belt go.
    "Was I you I'd straddle my bronc and light a shuck out of here. You got lots of country to choose from."
    He backed off, then turned and started to walk away, and then as he realized what he'd done he walked faster and faster. He stumbled once, caught himself, and kept going. After a moment I scooped up the gun belt with my left hand and turned back toward the Drovers' Cottage.
    They were all on the porch. Orrin, Laura Pritts and her Pa, and Don