Free Monument Rock (Ss) (1998) by Louis L'amour Page A

there all sprawled out, and one of the Webb hands starte d for me and Pat Gleason levered a shell into the barrel of his Winchester. "Hold it , mister!" he said. "That was a fair fight!"
    They stood there, all of them, nobody quite knowing what to do, and then Maggie Rya n ran to me and with her hands under my arms I got to my feet. I stepped away fro m her and pushed her back toward the house. This was not yet over. Blood was runnin g from my side where the other wound had started to bleed.
    "Got you twice," Dave Gleason said.
    "No," I told him, "the one in my side was Kerry's. Only he was a few inches too low."
    "Korry got a bullet into you?" Mickey said. "If he did that he had a fair shake.
    He wasn't fast enough otherwise."
    "It's his," I said. "You can see the wound's not fresh."
    Yanel Webb stood there with his hands at his sides, not sure of what to say. An d his hands waited for him, for he was their boss and they rode for the brand, bu t knowing their kind I knew their hearts weren't in it.
    "Yanel," I said, "Priest was long overdue. Ride home. You've land enough, and whe n you want eggs and fresh vegetables, come down on the creek and trade with these people.
    "You and me," I said, "we've got to grow with the times. The day of the gun and th e free range is past. We've got to accept that or go like the buffalo went."
    He was reluctant to leave, and he stood there, knowing the truth of what I'd said , and knowing that nothing now stood between him and my first bullet.
    "He's calling them fair," Pat Gleason said. "I stand with him on that."
    Webb turned to his hands. "Well, boys," he said, "we'd best take Sad along and plan t him. I reckon we've played out our hand. These farmers best keep their crops fenced , though." It was his final chance to bluster. "If their fields are eaten or trampled , it's not my lookout!"
    They went then, and we watched them ride, and then I faced around and looked at th e Gleasons and they looked at me. Maggie Ryan had her arm around me and then she spok e up and said to them, "There's coffee on. Will you come in?"
    So we went in and the coffee was hot and black, and there by the table there wa s warm and pleasant talk of cattle and grass and what a man could do in a green growin g valley, with time on his hands.
    *

LAST DAY IN TOWN
    The riders moved forward in a body, then halted. "Strike a match, Reb!" Nathan Embree' s voice trembled with triumph. "We finally got one, I heard hi m fall."
    Reb Farrell slid from the saddle. "I see him! He's right over here!" A match whispere d on his jeans and the light flared.
    All necks craned forward. The man on the ground had a bullet through his head, bu t the face of the man was placid. It was a quiet face, seamed with care and years tha t had not been kind. The face of a man tired of the endless struggle of living. I t was the face of Reb Farrell's father.
    Numb with horror, Reb stared down at the man they had killed, the man who had fough t to give him some little education and a sense of honor, who had fought so hard an d lost, and who now was dead, killed, possibly by a bullet from the gun of the so n he loved.
    "My God!" Dave Barbot's exclamation was low. "Not Jim Farrell! It can't be!"
    Nathan Embree's own shock changed to sudden, bitte r fury. "So that was it? That was why you couldn't find any rustlers for me, Reb? Mayb e this explains how they always knew when an' where to strike! Maybe this explain s why they were always one jump ahead of us!"
    Reb Farrell stared unbelievingly at the body of his father, shocked as much by hi s father's presence here as by the feeling that he had himself shot him. He did no t hear the words of Nathan Embree. He did not hear Dave Barbot's refusal to agree.
    "You don't believe that, Nathan!" Dave's voice was sharp. "Reb's fought them harde r than anybody! He's recovered two herds for you!"
    "Uh-huh." There was cold certainty in Nathan Embree's voice. "Why did he find 'e m when nobody else could? Maybe it was