Bad Man's Gulch by Max Brand

pistol poised in his hand. But his face was drawn and bitter.
    â€œAn’ that is what the McLanes have sunk to,” said Lazy Purdue. “My God, they ain’t men . . . they’re varmints!”
    â€œWhy didn’t you shoot?” she pleaded, shaking his arm in her excitement as she rode up to him. “You could have killed him six times while he was riding the first twenty yards.”
    He slipped the pistol back into his pocket and looked at her for a long moment before he replied. “My pistol jammed, I reckon,” he said. “I simply couldn’t pull the trigger.”
    â€œDid you see his face?” she continued.
    â€œNo,” he answered, “I didn’t see his face very clear. I reckon he must have been a McLane.”
    â€œYou
reckon
?” She laughed bitterly. “I tell you, I seen him as clear as day, an’ I’d swear it before God. That was Luke McLane, an’ he was tryin’ to get even with you for beatin’ his brother at the shootin’!”
    Lazy Purdue dismounted and picked up the revolver that he had shot from McLane’s hand.
    â€œAt least,” he said, smiling slowly as he examined the battered weapon, “Luke McLane won’t be pulling the trigger with his right hand for quite some time.”
    He refused to speak of the affair again on the wayhome, and, when he kissed her good night, he seemed to have forgotten the incident. But the next morning he ordered his horse saddled, and rode out without giving a destination. He rode north from the house, so that anyone watching him might not suspect his destination, but, as soon as he was out of sight, he took the first crossroad and cut straight south. He had never ridden that way before, but he seemed to know the roads by instinct, and took every turn certainly.
    His mind was busy as he rode, and it was busy with the feud. There was some way out. He felt for the six-shooter in his pocket and smiled. He thought of another thing and frowned. Then an inspiration came to him. It was a desperate thing to attempt, and a dangerous one, but he had seen it work once in a barroom in southwestern Texas, and he was confident that, if it worked there, it would work here. He checked his horse for a moment, and emptied his gun’s chambers at the side of the road.
    In ten minutes more he was before the McLane verandah, his horse tethered to the hitching post, and was knocking at the door of the house. A Negro opened it, and then half closed it when he saw the visitor.
    â€œI wish to see Tom McLane,” said Lazy Purdue.
    The Negro bobbed his head hastily and disappeared down the hall. A moment later Tom McLane appeared, followed by the hulking figure of his son Henry.
    â€œSuh,” said Tom McLane gravely, “will you do me the honor of entering my house?” He bowed the way in with clumsy but careful courtesy.
    In a moment more the three men were alone in a room. It was plain that Henry McLane carried hissuspicions of this visit, for he lurked at a distance with his hand ever near to his hip pocket. But his father was a different type, or a better judge of men.
    â€œI don’t want to be irritatin’,” began Lazy Purdue in his usual drawl, “but I’m powerful curious to know how Luke’s trigger hand is this mornin’.”
    Henry McLane cursed softly, and his father stiffened and turned somewhat pale, but his eyes held steadily to Purdue’s face.
    â€œThat was a dog’s trick my boy tried to play on ye,” he stated. “An’ I’m glad out o’ my heart that ye shot the gun out o’ his hand. He won’t use a gun for many a day, suh . . . an’, when he does, he’ll know enough to use it in a man’s way.”
    Lazy Purdue smiled gently upon him. “Down my way,” he murmured, “if a man tried a thing like that an’ didn’t pull the trick, the boys would be laughing yet. They’d be