“Jake,” I said, “I always wondered why you favored that one crutch over the other, and all of a sudden it come to me.”
With my free hand I reached over and picked up the crutch. There was a rifle barrel right down the length of that crutch, and a grip trigger on the handle. All he had to do was swing that crutch up and squeeze her off. I’d heard of trick guns, belt-buckle guns and the like, but this one surely beat all.
His hand was drawing his hideout.
“You want another one, Jake? You’re dead already, why make it worse?”
He looked at me. “Damn you, Sackett. An’ damn that old lady, damn her to hell, she - “
“You were out of your class, Jake. No tin-horn’s ever going to come it over a woman like that. She’s the solid stuff, Jake, all the way through, and you were never anything but a cheatin’ tin-horn four-flusher.”
Em came in and stood by my side.
“I’m sorry for them knees, Jake Flanner,” she said, “but you killed my man. You killed Talon, a better man than you could ever be.”
“Damn you,” he whispered, “I - “
He faded out and lay there, dead as a man could ever get, and the thing that hit me so hard was how such a man could cause the death of so much a better man like Talon.
“Em,” I said, “there’s nothin’ more for us here. The boys will be worried. Let’s mount up and ride back to the Empty.”
“You look kinda peaked, son. Are you up to it?”
“If you can do it, I can do it, Em. Let’s make some dust.”
So we rode down the trail together, Em and me, and we met the boys a-comin’ up.
Ride the Dark Trail (1972) Page 17
