he said, glaring back at her. “I guess I might’s well disappint you and tell the truth. James ain’t goin’ to kill nobody; he’s the biggest liar in the country. There’s a streak down his back as yellow as his teeth. He’ll go braggin’ around town for a couple days, and then he’ll sneak out when nobody’s lookin’ and be forgotten about. Besides, I tol’ the sheriff to hang around this end of town tonight, an’ if he sees James comin’ this way, he’ll make short work of him. So there. You go back to school and torture them poor kids. There’s some kind of parents’ meetin’ there tonight, ain’t there?”
“Yes,” she said dimly.
“Well, you stay for it. You might’s well not come home ’cause I ain’t goin’ to get killed and you’ll just be disappointed again. Understand?”
“Yes,” she repeated and suddenly seized him and kissed him right square on the mouth. He finally had to push her away, and it’s a fact that he didn’t push too hard.
Anyway, he didn’t have a thing to say about it, and even if he’d had, he wouldn’t have got the chance. She turned and rushed back the way she had come, and he was left alone—unless Satan could be considered company.
He cussed the crow until it came over and crawled into its cage, then he wheeled himself into the house. From the front room he could see the road that Luke James would have to come down if he intended to kill him. He wondered if Mary had believed the lies he had told her about James; but it was no matter, she was gone and that was all that she cared about.
Confound it—why did she have to kiss him like that? Why, a less shrewd man, or one who didn’t know as much about life as he did, might have been fooled into thinking she’d meant that kiss. And if he’d have been that kind of dumb cluck, he might have been sitting there right now making out a will that would have left her all his money.
But, fortunately, she hadn’t fooled him, and so he sat there without even the consolation of knowing someone loved him. And he even began to be impatient that the man who wanted to kill him was taking so long to come.
* * * *
At nine o’clock it was almost completely dark outside, and he lit a lamp, keeping it low so that he could still see the road. Satan, most of whose sayings consisted of sentences repeatedly hurled at him by Jake, noticed the change and observed, “One of these days I’ll wring your neck, you scrawny devil! Ha, ha, ha!”
“Another crack out of you and I’ll do it tonight,” Jake growled, and might have done just that if he hadn’t heard a soft step on the porch. He jerked his head up and saw the shadowy form of a big man peering at him through the window of the door, and in another second James was in the room.
Jake had never noticed before that James was as ugly as he looked tonight, particularly in the poor light. The shadows accentuated his busted, humped nose and his mean little eyes. Across his mouth was a wide red welt where Jake’s heavy belt buckle had hit him the night before. He had a .44 in his right hand and a bag full of something in his left.
“So you was fool enough to stay here alone tonight,” he rasped, closing the door behind him.
“Sometimes I think I’m a pretty big fool,” Jake answered.
“You proved it tonight,” James said. “And I’m goin’ to teach you it ain’t nice to butt into my fights. I’ve wanted to blast that nosey head of yours open for a long time.”
“You takin’ your lunch along so you won’t have to owlhoot with’ an empty stomach?” Jake said, indicating the sack.
“That ain’t no lunch.” James grinned. “I took the trouble to jimmy my way into the bank and shoot that tin box open they got in there. There ain’t no one follerin’, so I mustn’t have been heard. That’s the money in that sack. Most of it’s your money.”
“You’re welcome to it,” Jake said, but a lump clogged up his throat. When it got to brass tacks, he guessed he’d rather Mary got his money than Luke James. And as he stared at the little round hole in the end of the .44, he realized with a pang that he did not want to die just yet. He wanted to live a little longer, to make sure about that kiss. Just a little longer.
He knew he’d have been dead in another second if it hadn’t been for Satan, who chose that moment to lament that he wanted to take his horse along to heaven.
James’ trigger finger relaxed a trifle. “Let that crow out. He’s another nosey one, just, like you. And I want to blow his head off, too.”
Jake’s eyes fired. “If anyone blows that crow’s head off, I’ll do it,” he snarled.
James didn’t argue. He kicked the front off the reed cage, scaring Satan half to death, but the crow shortly recovered and strutted out onto the floor, smoothing his ruffled feathers with his beak.
Jake’s heart sank as James raised his gun to shoot Satan, but as he watched the bird, his heart began to rise again and beat very fast. Satan ignored the gun, but peered attentively at James’ face, cocking his head on one side in a meditative manner. Then he suddenly rose off his feet, beating his wings like a windmill, and dove straight for one of James’ gleaming eyes.
The gunman tried to leap out of the way of the sharp beak, but lost a piece of his nose to Satan as he shot wildly in the air. The crow was on him again instantly, and James, cursing, beat madly at it with his hands. He dropped his gun and fell against the wall as a sizable piece of his lip disappeared.
Jake grabbed the wheels of his chair and put all his strength into it as he ran his footrest into James’ shins—and the double onslaught was too much for the gunman. He collapsed howling to the floor, with Satan still intent on his eye and Jake reaching for the Colt on the floor.
Jake’s hand closed around the butt just as James regained his feet and jumped at him; he jerked it up and fired, and the gunman fell again, this time to remain, at the foot of his chair.
Jake hardly had time to recover from the excitement before he heard more footsteps running toward the house. Quickly he grabbed the sack of money James had dropped and shoved it under the blanket that covered his legs; then he leaned back and closed his eyes.
Mary and Bob Partridge burst into the house a moment later—and Mary instantly fell on Jake, threw her arms around his heck, and began to sob hysterically, “He’s dead; he’s dead!”
Jake was getting drenched with tears. He partly opened one eye.
“Oooooh—where am I?” he groaned. “W-what happened?”
Instead of the tears stopping, they increased.
“Oh, Uncle! You’re alive! Oh, thank Heaven!”
“No, thank the devil,” Jake muttered.
In a minute everyone was calm but Bob Partridge, who looked very worried.
“I don’t know whether I ought to mention it or not after this first shock,” he said. “But they’ve discovered that the bank was robbed sometime this evening. The sheriff thought that either James or a couple strangers who were in town this afternoon might have done it—but there isn’t any money on James. The other two are probably a long way from here by now. You may never see your money again.”
“This
