Novel 1959 - The First Fast Draw (v5.0) Read Online Free

before Judgment. Seeing he liked it so much, I picketed him there, and then took my Spencer and strolled down toward the swamp.
    Ever go back to a place and walk down the paths you walked as a boy? The old paths, the unforgotten paths? The sun was hot on the green leaves and grass, the path was overgrown, and the blackberries had straggled over it and were choked with grass…many a time I snagged myself on those briars, and tore my shirt, too. The biggest, blackest and juiciest berries always seemed to hang in the places hardest to get at.
    Every step was a memory for me, and time to time I’d just stop and stand there, remembering. The mist used to rise off these swamps sometimes in the mornings. The tops of trees in the low ground would be like islands lost in a vast sea of cloud. Here was where the deer used to come to eat the green grass and get into Pa’s corn—many a time I got me a deer down at the end of the cornfield.
    It was warm and lazy in the sun and a big bumblebee buzzed fatly among the leaves. Folks are always talking about how busy a bee is, shows they never really watched a bee. A bee makes so much fuss with all his perambulating around that folks think they’re doing a sight of work, but believe me, I’ve watched bees by the hour and I can tell you all that buzzing is a big fraud. The bees I’ve watched always buzzed in the sunniest places around the best-smelling flowers, just loafing their heads off fusting around in the play of sun and shadow at the swamp’s edge. Busy? Not so’s you could notice.
    Used to be deer along the swamp edge but tonight my luck was played out, so I contented myself with a duck who got up lazy from the water, the dark, dark water among the lily pads. The Spencer took his head off just as he was clearing water so when I started back toward the place I had my supper. And then I heard voices and knew it was the sound of trouble.
    Three mounted men at their horses in the yard, sizing up my mule. There was a tall man astride a mighty handsome bay gelding, and the next man was Joel Reese about whom I could remember nothing good, and the third man was a fellow with a face to remember—if a man was smart.
    “Whose mule is that?” The man on the bay gelding was talking. There was authority in his voice, but my first impression was he was an empty man, impressed overmuch with himself, but knowing all the time there was nothing inside him. “You told me the place was deserted, Reese.”
    “Some rider-by or all-nighter,” Reese explained. “The place has been abandoned for years and sometimes folks stop the night when passing through.”
    Looked to me like this was my time to talk up, for they had not seen me yet. “The place isn’t abandoned and it is not for sale,” I said. “I’ll be living here myself.”
    They turned sharp around to look at me, and Joel Reese grinned at me, with a mean glint in his little eyes. “Colonel, this is that Cullen Baker I told you about.”
    The colonel had a cold eye, and there was nothing pleasant in his eyes when he looked at me, but I’d looked into eyes over a gun barrel that were colder than these.
    It was that third man who was holding my attention. The colonel was no fighting man and Reese would only fight if he had an edge, a big edge. But the other man was a different kettle of fish. That third man was a full-fledged red-in-the-comb fighting man who had grown his own spurs. I knew the type.
    “Seems I should know you.” I looked directly at him for the first time.
    “The name is John Tower. I’ve come into the country since you left.”
    “Were you ever west of the Rockies?”
    Tower’s eyes became suddenly alive. “Could be,” he said. “A man gets around.”
    The colonel interrupted. “Baker, you fought with the Confederacy. You are known hereabouts as a troublemaker. We will have no trouble from you, do you hear? The slightest evidence of trouble from you, or interference with the Reconstruction program, and