Destined to Die by George G. Gilman

he did not possess the brand of patience that would enable him to stand there in unmoving silence for an infinite number of minutes.
    ‘Gold?’
    Some insects which had started to buzz were silenced by the shout.
    ‘Gold, you sonofabitch! They say you reckon yourself a real hotshot with them two guns of yours! Are you that, boy?’
    He sounded like he was from one of the Southern states, but his accent was not so downhome Tennessee as that of the Gershels, or even Joanne Engel.
    ‘So why don’t you face up to it like a man? Face to face? What do you say, boy?’
    The insects were buzzing again, no longer concerned by the shouting voice.
    ‘Maybe you’re as good as they say! So you get a chance! I’ll toss away this here rifle! Count on three and I’ll step out into the open! Colt in the holster! Pace it out until one of us thinks he can drop the other! What do you say, boy?’
    Gold looked at the back of his hand. The wound had stopped seeping blood and the lips were clean.
    Something thudded heavily to the ground close to where the sniper was standing.
    ‘There goes the rifle, boy! You ready? One ... two ... three!’
    Gold blew out of the side of his mouth to shift a fly off his cheek.
    ‘Frig you, Gold!’ For the first time, there was a note of fear in the man’s voice. Which he recognised himself. And tried to negate with a harsh laugh. ‘So you don’t want to play it my way! Well, if you can see me, you can see I ain’t dumb! It was just a piece of tree branch I tossed away!’
    Gold clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.
    ‘And I’m comin’ to get you! Because I know you can’t be too far away from where I last saw you. And I figure I’ll spot you and you’ll have an extra hole in your body long before I’m close enough for any hand-gunslinger!’
    Gold jutted out his lower lip and blew a draught of cool air over his sweat-sheened face. More than half a minute had gone before he first heard the setting down of a booted foot in the clearing. Then another and another. Slow and measured. The strides long. Advancing to within perhaps forty feet of where Larkin was sprawled at the side of the felled trees and the fire. Then crabwise to keep outside of effective revolver range.
    Then the man cracked: ‘All right, you shithead!’ He fired a shot. ‘If you ain’t dead already...’ Another shot ‘... then your time’s up now!’
    He lunged into a run as he shrieked the words and exploded shot after shot. Coming fast through the drifting smoke toward the felled trees against which his bullets were impacting.
    Gold clicked his tongue to mark off each shot as it was jacked from the magazine of the rifle and blasted from the muzzle. And he began his move as the last but one shell was levered into the breech, the stirring of the brush covered by running footfalls, shrieked obscenities and the sounds of the gun being prepared to fire, then fired.
    The eagle-butted Peacemaker was swivelled on its stud to be levelled from the hip and he protected his face with his right forearm. The sting of the older wounds in his legs was negated by the sharper pains of new tears in the skin. The heel of his right hand was scratched from the base of the finger to the wrist.
    ‘...friggin’ shithead bastard sonofabitchin’...’
    The final bullet exploded from the rifle and sprayed splinters of bark over the unfeeling face of John Lloyd Larkin.
    Gold had simply taken a chance, after seven shells were exploded, that the sniper’s repeater was a Winchester. Sheriff Walt Glazer of Standing, with whom he had hunted in the past, owned a Winchester. Most men’s repeaters were Winchesters. With a magazine capacity of twelve shells. Now, as Baraaby Gold lunged out of the brush and came to a halt, the sniper whirled into a half-turn, pumped the lever action to send a spent shellcase spinning through the air, and squeezed the trigger.
    ‘You’re fresh out, mister.’
    The range was ten feet, the man clear of the