Now, in the cow country the drawing of a gun is one and the same movement with the firing of it, and why Cinnabar Joe hesitated he did not know.

Purdy laughed:  “Put her down, Cinnabar.  Yeh won’t shoot, now.  Yeh see, I kind of figgered yeh might be sort o’ riled up, so I left my gun in my slicker.  Shootin’ a unarmed man don’t git yeh nothin’ but a chanct to stretch a rope.”

The bartender returned the gun to its place.  “Where’d you git that dope, Jack?” he asked, in a dull voice.

“Well, seein’ as yeh hain’t so blood-thirsty no more, I’ll tell yeh.  I swung down into the bad lands couple weeks ago huntin’ a bunch of mares that strayed off the south slope.  I was follerin’ down a mud-crack that opens into Big Dry when all to onct my horse jumps sideways an’ like to got me.  The reason fer which was a feller layin’ on the ground where his horse had busted him agin’ a rock.  His back was broke an’ he was mumblin’; which he must of laid there a day, mebbe two, cause his tongue an’ lips was dried up till I couldn’t hardly make out what he was sayin’.  I catched here an’ there a word about holdin’ up a train an’ he was mumblin’ your name now an’ agin so I fetched some water from a hole a mile away an’ camped.  He et a little bacon later but he was half crazy with the pain in his back.  He’d yell when I walked near him on the ground, said it jarred him, an’ when I tried to move him a little he fainted plumb away.  But he come to agin an’ begged me fer to hand him his Colt that had lit about ten feet away so he could finish the job.  I seen they wasn’t no use tryin’ to git him nowheres.  He was all in.  But his mutterin’ had interested me consid’ble.  I figgers if he’s a hold-up, chances is he’s got a nice fat cache hid away somewheres, an’ seein’ he hain’t never goin’ to need it I might’s well have the handlin’ of it as let it rot where it’s at.  I tells him so an’ agrees that if he tips off his cache to me I’ll retaliate by givin’ him the gun.  He swears he ain’t got no cache.  He’s blow’d everything he had, his nerve’s gone, an’ he’s headin’ fer Wolf River fer to gouge yeh out of some dinero.  He claims yeh collected reward on them two yeh got in the Yellowstone an’ what’s more the dudes tuk up a collection of a thousan’ bucks an’ give it to yeh besides. You was his cache.  So he handed me the dope I just sprung on yeh, an’ he says besides that you an’ him’s the only ones left.  The other one got his’n down in Mexico where he’d throw’d in with some Greaser bandits.”

“An’ what——­ Did you give him the gun?” asked the bartender.

Purdy nodded:  “Sure.  He’ done a good job, too.  He was game, all right, never whimpered nor hung back on the halter.  Jest stuck the gun in his mouth an’ pulled the trigger.  I was goin’ to bury him but I heard them mares whinner down to the water-hole so I left him fer the buzzards an’ the coyotes.