The Pistol Read Online Free PDF Page B

yourself, that’s all. I wouldn’t want to have to sock you. But as for butt-stroking a guy,” he said righteously, “I myself wouldn’t never even considra doing something like that to a guy who was on my own country’s side in this war.” He grinned, and confident of his physical superiority turned his face away from Mast, down toward where his rifle lay, offering his back.
    It was Mast’s moment, the one Mast had hoped for. Quickly, he lifted his left arm and tossed the heavy rock as if putting a shot, off over O’Brien’s head toward the fence, then shifted his rifle to his left hand to be ready. The rock crashed down on the rocky slope, making a loud noise they could hear even above the buffeting of the wind, and O’Brien leaped up crouching, bringing up his rifle.
    “What was that?” he whispered.
    “Did you hear it too?” Mast whispered. He took one step forward quietly and bending forward a little, reached with his right hand in under O’Brien’s right arm that was holding the pistol-grip of his rifle up at the ready. He snatched his pistol back, out of O’Brien’s belt, and backed off with it.
    O’Brien spun around and looked at Mast disbelievingly.
    “Don’t come near me,” Mast said. “Or I’ll brain you with it. Sure as hell.” He nodded in answer to the unspoken question. “Yes, it was me. I tossed that rock out over your head.”
    Slowly O’Brien swung his massive head around toward where the rock had fallen, then swung it back again, his pale green eyes staring at Mast. “You dirty bastard!” he said furiously. For a moment it looked as though he might lay his rifle down and charge. “You dirty, sneaking, cheating bastard!” But the upraised pistol in Mast’s hand ready to mash down on him was clearly too much odds to give away to any man.
    “Come on,” Mast taunted, gaining confidence from O’Brien’s hesitation. “Come on, O’Brien. You want my pistol, I’ll give it to you—Right in the jaw.” All his frustrated outrage and helpless fury of before boiled up in him, and for a moment he wished O’Brien really would come on, so he could smash him with it.
    O’Brien straightened up leisurely and set his riflebutt on the bare rock underfoot and leaned on the muzzle, an attempt at a nonchalance that did not entirely come off. “Smart guy!” was all he said. “Goddamn smart guy!” But the chagrin and sense of loss he felt couldn’t be entirely hidden. In just the short space he had had it, had felt it there, securely, in his belt, the pistol had obviously become his. It was his own pistol he had lost back to Mast.
    “Smarter than you, at any rate,” Mast said, and allowed himself a grin. “By any counts. Now get on back to your own damned post and walk it like you’re supposed to do and get off of mine. Thief.”
    “Go to hell, smart guy,” O’Brien sneered. But he went. “Just watch out, smart guy, that’s all,” he called back ominously.
    “I’ll watch,” Mast called. “Especially you I’ll watch.”
    Happily, just simply physiologically content at possessing it once again, but at the same time burning with fury and violated ethics whenever he thought of what O’Brien had tried to pull, Mast rubbed his pistol affectionately for a few moments and inspected it, feeling creep over him again comfortingly that sense of possible salvation, of that extra little margin which people without pistols didn’t have, that chance of being saved. Sheer horror assailed him when he thought of how close he really had come to losing it. He worked the slide back and forth a couple of times, as he had been so carefully taught by the Army, to make sure there was no forgotten round in the chamber, then slammed the cartridge-heavy clip back up into the butt, then hefted it in his hand.
    It was really beautiful, by God! As an afterthought Mast pulled out of his hip pocket the oily issue handkerchief he kept there for going over both his weapons, and he rubbed the pistol all