say?"
"Nineteen!" his friend Wynt offered. "What's your bid, Sherm?" he asked the third one.
"For that blonde?" Sherm said. "Twenty-five dollars."
Prado took two steps forward from the bar, swung around to face them.
"Who asked her first?" he said.
"You did, Prado," Wynt said. "Then wait your goddamn turn!"
"Sure, Prado, sure. You, then me, then Sherm."
"Then Big Red," Sherm said and that made them all burst out in raucous laughter.
"After us comes Big Red!" Prado bawled. "We'll take her down for a present!" More laughter.
"Well, let's go, let's go," Wynt said eagerly. Prado turned, stood again with thumbs hooked inside his belt. His gaze was leveled insolently at the girl's profile and now she gave up the pretense of dealing, swung her head to face him.
"Come on over here," Prado ordered. She said nothing, sat motionless, but a sudden rise of her breasts betrayed her fear to every man in the room. "I said to come over here," Prado said again.
Wynt laughed, goadingly. "You ain't doin' so hot, Pra do," he taunted.
"We'll see, by damn!" He started forward, his bullneck bowed.
"Leave her be!" the bartender shouted raggedly and in his hands was a double-barrelled shotgun. The man's face was white and the weapon trembled uncontrollably in his grasp. Prado had stopped and now he looked back over his shoulder.
"Get out!" the barman said wildly. "Get out of here, the three of you!"
"Sure," Prado said, his own voice ominously controlled. "We'll get out if you say so." As he spoke he began a si dling movement to his left. The shotgun barrel swung with him, as if drawn by a magnet, kept swinging until the barman could no longer observe Wynt. That one's hairy hand reached out for the bottle, furtively. His fin gers wrapped themselves around the neck.
"We'll get out," Prado was still saying. "We'll do what ever you say, buddy."
Several things happened then, so closely spaced they seemed all of one piece.
Wynt's arm flashed overhead, the bottle held like a club.
The girl tried to scream a warning.
From the dark corner in the back of the room a Colt .45 jumped and roared. Wynt was suddenly holding noth ing over his head but his fist, which he stared at won deringly.
Things continued to happen. The bartender whirled around and Prado closed in, tore the shotgun loose from his grip and flung it aside. Now he gave his full attention to the tall figure looming above the table in the corner.
"Fan out, boys!" he snapped, taking a backward step himself, his body in a tight crouch, his gaze as unwaver ing as a cobra's. Sherm moved away from him, further down the bar. Wynt glided in the opposite direction and now they had their opponent ringed with a wall at his back.
Slick crew, Buchanan thought, revising his estimate of Missouri gunfighters upwards.
The Colt's thundering voice demolished the silence and its big slug took Prado squarely in the middle, slammed him to his knees.
Well, don't look at me like that, brother. You called this tune and now you pay the fiddler.
"Jesus!" Wynt yelled piercingly and Buchanan gave it to him up high, at the collarbone. Wynt turned with his wound and stumbled like a drunken man toward the street, his simple mind unable to cope with the swift and bewildering turn of events.
Buchanan holstered the busy Colt, took two leisurely steps into the brighter light.
"You," he said to Sherm, "get to draw. Let's go."
Sherm filled his barrel chest with a deep breath, licked his dry lips.
"Some other time, brother," he said hollowly. "You're a little too anxious."
"Then pick up the ladies' man and be on your way."
Sherm glanced briefly at the unmoving Prado. "He looks dead to me," he said.
"Bury him then."
Sherm obviously didn't like that, but the alternative had even less appeal. He got Prado under the armpits, dragged him unceremoniously across the saloon floor, through the doors. They swung back and forth on their leather hinges and the soft creaking seemed to be the last sound left in the
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