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 know," he said, "I don't like you either, Irish. Maybe I oughta kill you. Hell, why not?" Now, the only reason I'd stayed out of doors that afternoon was I figured Buck had already had one chance to kill me and hadn't done it, so I must be safe. That's what I figured--he had nothing against me, so I was safe. And I had an idea that maybe, when the showdown came, I might be able to help out Ben Randolph somehow--if anything on God's Earth _could_ help him. Now, though, I wished to hell I hadn't stayed outside. I wished I was behind one of them windows, looking out at somebody else get told by Buck Tarrant that maybe he oughta kill him. "But I won't," Buck said, grinning nastily. "Because you done me a favor. You run off and told the sheriff just like I told you--just like the goddam white-livered Irish sheepherder you are. Ain't that so?" I nodded, my jaw set so hard with anger that the flesh felt stretched.