Sure," Ben Randolph said. "Sooner or later. But what about
meantime?... how many people will he have to kill before somebody gets
angry or nervy enough to kill _him_? That's my job, Joe--to take care
of this kind of thing. Those people he'd kill are depending on me to
get between him and them. Don't you see?"

* * * * *

I got up. "Sure, Ben, I see. I just wish _you_ didn't."

He let out another mouthful of smoke. "You got any idea what he meant
about thinking his gun into his hand?"

"Not the slightest. Some crazy explanation he made up to account for
his sudden speed, I reckon."

Another puff. "You figure I'm a dead man, Joe, huh?"

"It looks kind of that way."

"Yeah, it kind of does, don't it?"

At four that afternoon Buck Tarrant came riding into town like he
owned it. He sat his battered old saddle like a rajah on an elephant,
and he held his right hand low beside his hip in an exaggerated
gunman's stance. With his floppy hat over at a cocky angle, and his
big eyes and scrawny frame, he'd have looked funny as hell trying to
look like a tough hombre--except that he _was_ tough now, and
everybody in town knew it because I'd warned them. Otherwise somebody
might have jibed him, and the way things were now, that could lead to
a sudden grave.

Nobody said a word all along the street as he rode to the hitchrail in
front of the Once Again and dismounted. There wasn't many people
around _to_ say anything--most everybody was inside, and all you could
see of them was a shadow of movement behind a window there, the
flutter of a curtain there.

Only a few men sat in chairs along the boardwalks under the porches,
or leaned against the porchposts, and they just sort of stared around,
looking at Buck for a second and then looking off again if he turned
toward them.

I was standing near to where Buck hitched up. He swaggered up the
steps of the saloon, his right hand poised, his bulging eyes full of
hell.

"You tell him?" he asked.

I nodded. "He'll look you up, like you said."

Buck laughed shortly. "I'll be waiting. I don't like that lanky
bastard. I reckon I got some scores to settle with him." He looked at
me, and his face twisted into what he thought was a tough snarl.
Funny--you could see he really wasn't tough down inside. There wasn't
any hard core of confidence and strength. His toughness was in his
holster, and all the rest of him was acting to match up to it.

"You kn