Free Riding for the Brand (Ss) (1986) by Louis L'amour

asked brightly. "You certainly look better. You've shaved."
    He grinned and rubbed his jaw. "I needed it.
    Almost two weeks in this bed. I must have been hit bad."
    "You lost a lot of blood. It's lucky you've a strong heart."
    "It ain't, isn't so strong any more"... He said, "I think it's grown mighty shaky here lately."
    Gail blushed. "Oh? It has? Your nurse, I suppose?"
    "She is pretty, isn't she?"
    Gail looked up, alarmed. "You mean, you his "No, honey"... He said, "you!"
    "Oh."... She looked at him and then looked down. "Well, I guess his "All right?"
    She smiled then, suddenly and warmly. "All right."
    "I had to ask you"... He said. "We had to marry."
    "Had to? Why?"
    "People would talk, a young, lovely girl like you over at my place all the time would they think you were looking at the view?"
    "If they did"... She replied quickly, "they'd be wrong!"
    "You're telling me?" He asked.
    *
    Author's Note:
    HIS BROTHER'S DEBT
    Gun fighters were many, most of them not known out of their own particular area. The few who did win attention were those who followed the trail towns as gamblers or peace officers.
    The so-called "bounty hunters"... Were almost unknown, and the few who did attempt to pursue that somewhat precarious trade worked at it only occasionally. Rewards were actually rare, difficult to collect, and usually the people of any particular area were only too glad to have a bad man leave the country. They did not want him brought back and they certainly did not want to pay for a killing when, if the situation demanded, they could do it themselves. In the few cases I know of the "bounty hunter" was despised, and no more popular than a rattle snake.
    A gun fighter was no more than a man who was good with a gun and had the misfortune to get into a gun battle and the good fortune to win it.
    After a few such difficulties he became known.
    There were many such men whose names never got into the movies.
    One such man was Johnny Owen, a slender, handsome man usually well-dressed. A man who gambled but neither smoked nor drank (there were many such men, but he was reputed to have killed twenty men, chiefly in self-defense as an officer of the law).
    *
    His Brother's Debt.
    "You're yellow, Casady"... Ben Kerr shouted.
    "Yellow as saffron! You ain't got the guts of a coyote! Draw, curse you. Fill your hand so I can kill you! You ain't to live"... Kerr stepped forward, his big hands spread over his gun butts. "Go ahead, reach!"
    Rock Casady, numb with fear, stepped slowly back, his face gray. To right and left were the amazed and incredulous faces of his friends, the men he had ridden with on the O Bar, staring unbelieving.
    Sweat broke out on his face. He felt his stomach retch and twist within him. Turning suddenly, he plunged blindly through the door and fled.
    Behind him, one by one, his shamefaced, unbelieving friends from the O Bar slowly sifted from the crowd. Heads hanging, they headed homeward. Rock Casady was yellow. The man they had worked with, sweated with, laughed with. The last man they would have suspected.
    Yellow.
    Westward, with the wind in his face and tears burning his eyes, his horse's hoofs beating out a mad tattoo upon the hard trail, fled Rock Casady, alone in the darkness.
    Nor did he stop. Avoiding towns and holding to the hills, he rode steadily westward. There were days when he starved and days when he found game, a quail or two, killed with unerring shots from a six-gun that never seemed to miss.
    Once he shot a deer. He rode wide of towns and deliberately erased his trail, although he knew no one was following him or cared where he went.
    Four months later, leaner, unshaven, and saddle weary, he rode into the yard of the Three Spoke Wheel. Foreman tom Bell saw him corning and glanced around at his boss, big Frank Stockman.
    "Look what's comin'. Looks like he's lived in the hills. On the dodge, maybe."
    "Huntin' grub, most likely. He's a strappin' big man, though, an' looks like a hand. Better ask him