Free Magnificent Guns of Seneca 6 by Bernard Schaffer Page B

silent.   All safe.   Sam unholstered his Colt Defender and laid it on the nightstand next to his pillow.   He stopped suddenly and lowered his head to listen.
     
    Someone else was awake in the house.  
     
    He walked over to Jem’s door and pushed it open quietly, hearing the crickets singing through the open bedroom window.   Dual moonlight filled the room up with pale blue.   Jem’s eyes were clenched shut.   A little too clenched.   “What are you doing up so late?” Sam said.  
     
    “I couldn’t sleep cause you and Claire were outside.”
     
    The boy’s pocketknife was laying on the nightstand next to him with the blade open, at the ready.   “What’s that for?” Sam said.
     
    “Nothing.   I was just listening to make sure you were both okay.   In case he came back.”
     
    “Oh,” Sam said softly.   He walked over to the nightstand and picked the knife up.   “What were you gonna do with this?   Whittle him to death?”
     
    Jem grunted in protest, “You’re the one who told me anything could be a weapon.”
     
    Sam nodded, “You’re right.   So what’s the matter, you don’t think the old man has what it takes to protect the family anymore?”
     
    “No, I didn’t say that.   I just thought, you know, what if?”
     
    “What if,” Sam whispered.   “Let me tell you about what if.   When I first hired on as a deputy sheriff I was greener than the grass in a rainforest.   I didn’t know how to talk to anyone.   I thought yelling at them was the only way to get them to listen to me.   I was mean, because I thought it made me sound tough.   But you know what it made me sound instead?   Stupid.”   He closed Jem’s knife and put it back on the nightstand, making sure it was out of the boy’s reach.   “Anyways, Lyle says to me one day—”
     
    “Who’s Lyle?”
     
    “The old sheriff. So anyway, Lyle says to me one day, ‘Boy, you ain’t gonna last long around here yelling at folks like that.   One day, you gonna need help and won’t nobody be around.   Plenty a’ lawmen got their lives saved by townsfolk who jumped in.   So always remember this here.   Treat everybody you meet like they was a million bucks.   And no matter what, always have a plan to kill `em.’”
     
    Jem laughed sharply and Sam chuckled with him but told him to keep his voice down.   “Old Lyle sure was a character.   But I always remembered what he said and that, plus a little of your 'what if' is the reason I’m sitting here talking to you right now.”
     
    Jem sat up in his bed.   “What happened?”
     
    “I was riding in one morning, getting the lay of the land like I do.   Making sure nobody stole the town overnight, you know?   The sun was just coming up and it made the whole valley sparkle like…like…I don’t know.   Rubies, or something.   Real peaceful.   Then some woman comes running up on me, shouting, ‘Mister Clayton!   Mister Clayton!   Hal Bellows is killing his wife!   She’s screaming for help!’   So I ride over there and go in real slow, right?   Only an idiot rushes headfirst into uncertainty.   I stop and listen, and I don’t hear a damn thing.   It’s totally quiet.”
     
    “Were they dead?” Jem whispered.
     
    “Hush,” Sam said.   “First off, if they was dead, you just ruined the story.   Second, why you gotta always be so morbid?”
     
    Jem shrugged and asked him to go on.  
     
    “So I go up to the front door, creeping up real quiet.   It’s silent as a graveyard in the house.   I look through the windows and don’t see nothing.   Finally, I knock on the door and Hal Bellows opens it up.  
     
    "‘Morning, Sheriff.   Everything all right?’  
     
    "I says, ‘I was about to ask you the same thing, Hal.’
     
    "He gets all puzzled and taken aback then.   ‘What do you mean?’
     
    "I say, ‘I mean one of your neighbors told me you were having a knockdown fight with the missus.’”
     
    “No she