“An automatic, yes.” Gary pulled the gun from his hip pocket. “I carry this just in case. I was born and raised where men pack guns--but they didn’t ride with ’em cocked and in their hands ready to shoot, like we do in the movies. There’s a lot of hokum I do before the camera that gives me a pain. So if I should happen to need a gun, I’ve got one. But don’t you worry about James Blaine Hawkins. _He_ won’t show up again.” “I wouldn’t be none too sure of that,” Monty reiterated admonishingly. “He’s liable to get to thinkin’ it over in town and git his courage back. Things like Johnnywater has got don’t look so important when you’re away off somewhere just thinkin’ about it.” “I guess you’re right, at that,” Gary admitted. “He’ll probably get over the cat and the Voice, all right, and--that other spell of imagination. But without meaning to brag on myself, I think he’ll study it over a while before he comes around trying to bully me again. You see, Monty, the man’s an awful coward. I slapped him twice and even then he wouldn’t fight. He just backed up away from me and cooled right down.” “Them’s the kind uh skunks yuh want to look out for,” Monty declared sententiously. But Gary only laughed at him and called him the original gloom, and insisted upon talking of something altogether different. Monty, it transpired, had promised to help a man through haying over in Pahranagat Valley and meant to start the next day. He was frankly relieved to know that Gary was still all right. He had wanted to ride over to Johnnywater again before going to Pahranagat, but had had too much riding of his own to do. “But if you’re bent on hangin’ out there,” he said, after some futile argument, “I’ll ride on over when I get through with this job. What yuh-all trying to do over there, anyway? Hate yourself to death?” “Well, I hope I’m pleasing Pat,” Gary laughed evasively. “Well, I hate to be butting in,” Monty said diffidently, “but if she wanted yuh to stay over here and run Johnnywater, it don’t seem to me like she’d ’a’ sent this Hawkins feller over with a five years’ contract to run the place on shares. Didn’t she send yuh no word about why she done it?” “She did not! I have a hunch Pat’s pretty sore at me. You see, she sprung this deal on me kinda sudden, right on top of a strawberry shortcake when I didn’t want to think. I told her what I thought about it--and I told it straight. So we had a little--er--argument. She up and threw my profile in my face, and called me flabby souled. So I up and left. And I didn’t go back to tell her good-by when I started over here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if little Pat Connolly is pretty well peeved.” Monty smoked and studied the matter. “Does she know you’re over here?” he asked abruptly. “Seems kinda funny to me, that she’d go and send Hawkins over here without sayin’ a word to yuh about it. She could ’a’ wrote, couldn’t she? If yuh-all didn’t tell her yuh was coming, how would she know yuh was here?”