Free Past All Dishonor by James M. Cain

there?”
    “It don’t just happen.”
    “Have it your way.”
    “Roger, you asked me something just now. I don’t want anything of the kind. I’d hate it. But if it makes you happy, if you’re willing to have that and leave, you can go on down to the house and I’ll be with you directly.”
    “What do you mean, leave?”
    “Get out of Virginia City, go back where you came from, do what you’re supposed to do, the wonderful things you told me about, the first night we were together, forget me and this place and everything else you’re not in any way fit for.”
    “... All right then.”
    “You’ll be a lot happier.”
    “What about this other hombre? This Brewer?”
    “That’s none of your business.”
    She stepped in the lobby, snapped her fingers for a boy, told him to get her carriage. I paid for my drinks and started on down.
    I had just crossed C, taking the short steps you always took to keep from sliding down the hill, when I heard the footsteps behind me. They came in a rush, like somebody rolling a drum, and then all of a sudden I was hitting and kicking with everything I had, and getting it through my head, too late, that what I had really done, with that trip through the roulette wheels, was collect a gang at my heels, and a gang that was out to get me, first chance it got, on account of what I’d done to the union. I’ll fight anybody if I have to, but nobody’s good enough to fight ten, or twenty, or however many there were. I went down, and they began kicking and stomping and spitting. A kick missed me, and caught my coat pocket, and gold coins spilled over the street in a shower, and went bouncing and rolling down the hill, even past D Street. They left me and ran after the money, yelling like Indians and fighting each other about it. A deputy rounded the corner at C Street and drew his gun and still they kept on hollering and fighting and picking up gold. He helped me up and asked what had happened. I told him nothing, and as soon as he left me and started toward the ruckus, I slipped away. Because in front of the hotel I could see her and Biloxi getting into a pony trap, and I didn’t any more have the thousand dollars.

7
    A FTER I WOKE UP a few nights, hearing those feet come at me from behind, I got out the .36 I took from the fellow in Sacramento. But I wouldn’t have kept it if it hadn’t been for the fellow in Scholl & Roberts where I went to exchange it for a .44, and get me some caps and paper cartridges. He listened, then asked me what I expected to shoot. “Nobody, if I can help it. Otherwise, anybody looking for trouble.”
    “But not no elephants?”
    “They got elephants here?”
    “Not that I know of.”
    “Then why do you ask?”
    “Mister, my job is to sell guns, and if you want a .44 I’ve got a .44. But short of a elephant, I’d like you to tell me something a .44 will kill that a .36 won’t, and do it better.”
    “Dead is dead. What’s better?”
    “Better is quicker.”
    “You take this awful serious.”
    “Don’t you?”
    I kind of shut up then and let him talk: “There’s four main points to shooting, and only four: the draw, the aim, the fire, and the recoil. But they’re all important, equally important.”
    “I begin to get the idea there’s no unimportant points.”
    “That is correct, but you’d be surprised how many unimportant things men get their minds on, like how pretty they look, how much noise they make, how loud their artillery entitles them to talk—all good points on Sunday morning in church, where they got the Ten Commandments. But on Sunday night in the saloon, where all they got is the Golden Rule, do unto others as they would do to you, only do it first, only important things are going to do you any good. First now, consider the draw. A .44, you’ve got to carry it on a belt holster, no matter whether you sling it on your right hip, your left hip, or across your belly. You’ve got to strap that holster end to one leg,