"Well, you see the sheriff always wears steel rims on his heels like
he was a horse. He's kind of close with his money is old Anderson,
I'll tell a man! We hear the ring of them heels on the porch, and
pretty soon in comes the sheriff, herding a gent in ahead of him. And
who d'you think that gent was? It was Reeve! Yes, sir, the old sheriff
had stepped out and grabbed his man. He wasn't there quick enough to
stop the killing of Armstrong, but he got there fast enough to nab
Reeve. Seems that when he was riding up to the house he heard a shot
fired, and then he seen a man run out of the house and jump on his
hoss, and the sheriff didn't stop to ask no questions. He just out
with his gat and drills the gent's hoss. And while Reeve was
struggling on the ground, with the hoss flopping around and dying, the
sheriff runs up and sticks the irons on Reeve. Then he goes into the
house and finds Armstrong lying shot through the heart. Clear as day!
Reeve loses a lot of money, and when it comes to a pinch he hates to
see that money gone when he could get it back for the price of one
slug. So he outs with his gun and shoots Armstrong. And the worst part
of it was that Armstrong didn't have no gun on at the time. The
sheriff found Armstrong's gun hanging on the wall along with his
cartridge belt. Yep, it was plain murder, and Pete Reeve'll hang as
high as the sky--and a good thing, too!"
This story was a shock to Bull for a reason that would not have
affected most men. That a man who had had the courage to stand up and
face Uncle Bill in a fair duel should have been so cowardly, so
venomous as to take a mean advantage of a gambling companion seemed to
Bull altogether too strange to be reasonable. Certainly, if he had had
a difference with this fellow, thought Bull, Pete Reeve was the man to
let the other use his own weapons before he fought. But to shoot him
down across a table, unwarned--this was too much to believe! And yet
it was the truth, and Pete Reeve was to hang for it.
The big man sat shaking his head. "And they found the money on Pete
Reeve?" he asked gloomily. "They found the money he took off this
Armstrong?"
"There's the funny part of the yarn," said the proprietor glibly.
"Pete had the nerve to shoot the gent down in cold blood, but when he
seen him fall he lost his nerve. He didn't wait to grab the money, but
ran out and jumped on his hoss and tried to get away. So there you
are. But it pretty often happens that way! Take the oldest gunfighter
in the world, and, if his stomach ain't resting just right, it sort of
upsets him to see a crimson stain. I seen it happen that way with the
worst of 'em, and in the old days they used to be a rough crowd in my
barroom. They don't turn out that style of gent no more!" He sighed as
his mind flickered back into the heroic past.
"And Reeve--he admits he done the killing?" Bull asked hopelessly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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