“And he meant it. He wasn’t talking
guff. Didn’t seem possible anybody could
shoot as fast and straight as that, but Perris was
all cut up because he’d missed and he didn’t
do no more singing for about half an hour. And
I needed that time for a lot of thinking. Made
up my mind that if anybody wanted to make trouble
for Perris they could count me out of the party.
“And he kept on singing, when he started again,
all the way to the ranch and me wondering when I was
going to go to sleep and fall off. I tried to
make talk. Seen a queer looking fob he wore for
his watch pocket. Asked him where he got it.
“‘Tell you about it,’ he says.
‘Comes from me being plumb peaceable.’
I remembered some of the things I’d heard about
Red Perris in Glosterville and didn’t say nothing.
I just swallowed hard and took a squint at a cloud.
‘Four or five years back,’ he says, ’when
they was more liquor and ambition floating around
these parts, I was up in a little cross-roads saloon
in Utah, near Gunterville. Saloon was pretty jammed
with folks, all strangers to me. I wasn’t
packing a gun. Never do when I’m in a crowd,
if I can help it. Well, I got into a little game
of stud, and things were running pretty easy for me
when a big gent across the table that had been losing
hard and drinking hard ups and says he allows I sure
have the cards talking. It sort of riled me.
I tell him pretty liberal what I think of him and
all like him. I go back into the past and give
him a nice little description all about his ancestors.
I aim to wind up with an invite to step outside and
have it out with fists, but he don’t wait.
Right in the middle of my sermon he outs with a gat
and blazes away at me. The slug drills me in
the thigh and I go down.
“’Well, this is the slug. And I been
wearing it to remind me that I particular want to
meet up with that same gent before he gets too old
for a gunfight!’”
Here Shorty paused and sighed, shaking his bullet-head.
And a deep murmur of appreciation passed around the
room. Shorty sank back again on the bunk and
turned his broad back on the crowd.
“Don’t nobody wake me for chuck,”
he warned them. “I’ve just finished
cramming a month into four days and I got a night off
coming.”
Instantly his snoring began but it was some moments
before anyone spoke. Then it was Little Joe in
his solemn bass voice.
“Sounds man-sized,” he declared.
“Wears a bullet for a watch-fob, busts hosses
for fun, sleeps one day a week, and don’t work
under a boss. Hervey, you’ll have to put
on kid gloves when you talk to that Perris, eh?
Hey, where you going?”
“He’s going out to think it over!”
chuckled another. “He needs air, and I
don’t blame him. Just as soon be foreman
over a wildcat as over a gent like Perris. There
goes the gong!”
THE BARGAIN
