Relentless Read Free Page B

some more, tried to swing at me, and made a choking sound convincing enough so that I let him go long enough to throw up in the chamber pot.
        While he was wiping off his mouth with the back of his hand, I handed him the steaming cup of coffee. He needed a shave, a bath, and a little humility.
        “Who the hell are you?”
        “The first clue,” I said, tapping my marshal’s star, “is that I’m the law.”
        “I shoot somebody last night?”
        “You probably tried.”
        He sipped some coffee, made a face. “This tastes like shit.”
        “Drink it anyway.”
        He was gradually coming awake. He glanced at the bureau. “What’re those?”
        “Bullets.”
        “I know they’re bullets.” Then he looked down at his guns and said, “Hey, those’re my bullets.”
        “That’s right.” I took out my Colt. Held my hand out, palm up, emptied my own gun. Set the six bullets on the bureau next to his. “And this is my gun.”
        “What the hell you trying to prove anyway?”
        “That you’d be crazy to fight me.”
        “You killin’ Sansom doesn’t scare me none.”
        “I didn’t kill Sansom. Sansom killed Sansom. He was so drunk, he fell into my bullet. He stumbled at the exact moment my bullet was going past him. It was a warning shot was all.”
        He touched a trembling hand to his forehead. This was probably too much for him to grasp in the first hot, dehydrated, spooky moments of hangover. “So what’s the point of empty guns?”
        “When you finish your coffee, I want you to draw down on me.”
        “With an empty gun?”
        “That’s right.”
        “Why would I do that?”
        “Because if there were bullets in our guns, I’d kill you. And I don’t think your mom or your sister or whoever’s in that picture over there would appreciate that.”
        He grinned with bad teeth, his wisp of a mustache looking like spider legs on his upper lip. “You gonna teach me a lesson, huh?”
        “I’m going to try. And if you’re smart, it’s a lesson you’ll remember.”
        “This is damned silly. People’ll laugh when they hear it.”
        “It’s not any sillier than fighting with bullets. Most things can be worked out by talking them through. Unless the people involved are drunk or stupid. Now put that damned coffee down and draw on me.”
        He made a big show of starting to feint to the left, setting his coffee on the bureau. But what he did, of course, was angle to the right and grab one of his guns. Even with his momentary head start, my Colt was clear and pointing right at his chest before his had even cleared leather.
        “You sonofabitch.”
        “You’d be dead, kid.”
        “You got me at a bad time. I’m still sorta drunk from last night.”
        “Kid, I spent six years in the Army. Dullest job I ever had. We mostly pulled sentry duty. But instead of walking post, we played a lot of cards and worked on our draws. I was about your age. I got pretty fast, but I was slow compared to a lot of the other soldiers. There never was a Wild West, kid. Not in the way you think there was. There were a lot of drunken back-shooters and ambushers and men like Sansom who were so drunk they stumbled into bullets. But actual gunfights between sober men? The old duels in the South, those were gunfights. And they had strict rules. But you’re trying to live out some bullshit you read about in a dime novel. That’s up to you, kid. But you’re not going to live it out in this town, you understand? There’s a train at three and a stage at four. Take your choice. Be on one or the other.”
        “I rode in with my own horse.”
        “Tough shit. Train or stage. I’ll have deputies at each depot to make sure you get on board.”
        “What if I don’t?”
        “Then you go to