The Gun Fight Read Online Free

over?”
    Henry Oliver crossed his dark-trousered legs. “That’s what I don’t figure,” he said, vaguely mysterious. “The boy accused Benton of—” He looked around carefully. “Of playing around with his girl.”
    “No! You me—” Jesse’s voice broke off, startedly. “Louisa Harper? Playin’ around?” His voice rose and fell in jagged peaks and valleys of expression. “I can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “Strangest thing I ever heard. John Benton. Huh.” His nervous right hand clicked the scissor blades in the air and he went on cutting. “Be damned,” he said.
    “Well you could have knocked me down with your finger,” Henry Oliver said. “Surprised the life out of me, naturally.”
    “Well, naturally,” Jesse said, shaking his head, an intent look on his thick-featured face.
    “And I wasn’t the only one there,” said Henry Oliver. “Bill Fisher was there. And young Joe Sutton. And Pat heard too, yes, Pat heard it all. Strange, all right.”
    Jesse kept shaking his head. “You . . . think it’s true?” he asked.
    “Well . . .” Henry Oliver’s brow tightened. “I couldn’t say,” he ventured solemnly. “Offhand, I’d say no but . . . well, you can’t tell, you just can’t tell about those things. I know I wouldn’t want to be the one to start a story like that. John Benton’s too big a man around here to . . .” His voice drifted off and the shop was still except for the clicking scissor blades.
    “Yes, he’s admired, all right,” Jesse said then as if there had been no lapse in the conversation. “Always thought he’s been overrated but . . . well, that’s nothing to do with this.” He shook his head, cutting absorbedly. “Louisa Harper, huh?” he said. “Now ain’t that somethin’.”
    “Oh,” Henry Oliver said, almost grudgingly, his thick shoulders shrugging slightly, “it might be a mistake, of course.”
    “Sure. Sure, that’s right, it could be a mistake,” Jesse said, agreeing with a customer.
    Twenty minutes later, Henry Oliver walked out of the shop and Jesse sat down again to look at his paper. But he didn’t read it, he just sat there staring at the blurred print and thinking about what Mr. Oliver had said.
    “Sure,” he muttered to himself. “Sure. I can see it; him a hero and all.” He licked his fat lips. “Louisa Harper, huh? I wouldn’t mind—”
    He broke off abruptly as another customer entered. There was the taking off of the coat, the sitting down in the gilded metal and black leather chair, the tying of the cloth, the comment on the weather, the assent, theplucking up of the long scissors, the tentative clicking of blades.
    “Heard about the big fight?” Jesse asked his customer.
    “No. When was this?” the man asked casually.
    “Just a while ago,” said Jesse. “In the Zorilla Saloon. Robby Coles and John Benton.”
    “No.” The man looked up interestedly. “Benton?”
    “Yup.” Jesse’s head nodded in short, decisive arcs as he worked, purse-lipped, on the man’s hair. “Had a fight over Robby Cole’s girl, Louisa Harper.”
    “You don’t tell me,” the man said, face strained with interest.
    “That’s right,” Jesse said calmly. “That’s right.” His small eyes narrowed. “ ’Course it might be a mistake but it
seems
. . . there’s been somethin’ between Benton and the girl.”
    The customer’s eyes rose to the mirror on the wall and he and Jesse looked at each other with the half-repressed fascination of little boys who believe they have unearthed something of unique prurience.
    “
Well
,” the man said.
    As they went on talking, the sound of their conversation drifted out the door into the air of Kellville.

Chapter Four
    M atthew Coles was never on any horse but his chestnut gelding. He did not ride well and was a man who would not let himself be observed doing anything less than perfectly. The chestnut was a mild animal, easily seated, but one which managed to