Well, I'd heard of men getting a gun out fast, but I'd never seen it. In the high-up mountains it was mostly rifles we used, and the repeating pistol was scarce twenty-odd years old, and mighty few of us had even seen one.
He just drew that pistol and shot that major right in the belly.
Me, I knocked him down.
He hit ground all in a heap and then he went sort of crazy. Rightly speaking, I expect he was crazy all the time. Later on, when the story was told around I began to hear of other things he'd done. Anyway, he came off the ground and rushed at me, and I hit him again.
There was trouble over that, and a sort of drum-head court-martial and he was discharged out of the service.
I heard afterward he'd joined Quantrill or Bloody Bill Anderson or one of those.
And now here he was, facing me across the table, and I knew he hadn't forgotten those times I'd hit him. I also knew he was dangerous as a cornered rattler and would strike, like a rattler in the "blind," without warning.
He was no rational man, and those others with him, they would do what he said.
Under my shirt I could feel cold sweat on my body, and I was scared. This here was a man I'd hoped never to see again, and I had walked right into hm. Only I had one advantage over the others he might have tangled with. I knew that when he started talking soft and easy, I'd have to be careful.
Another thing I knew. Before we parted one of us was going to die. There just couldn't be any other way.
"Thought you were an eastern man, Dyer," I said. Drawing back a chair, I sat down, but where none of them could get behind me without my seeing them. "I didn't expect to run into y out here."
"I don't expect you wanted to see me, did you, Sackett?"
"Why not?" I said carelessly. Then I added, "I hear one of your boys was good enough to bring my gold in off the desert. I take that kindly."
He smiled, and this time there was something like real humor in the smile. I could see he liked my way of putting it.
"I believe there was some mention of gold," he said, "but I understand it was found on the desert. I had no idea it belonged to you." He went on smiling at me. "I suppose you can identify it?"
Now I could see he was taunting me, being sure there was no way of identifying raw gold, but in that he was wrong. Truth was, I knew mighty little about such things, only what a body hears talking with miners and prospectors, but he didn't have to know that.
"Matter of fact," I said, "I can identify it. So can any good assayer. The amount of silver and other mineral associated with gold varies from place to place."
He didn't like that. Not so much because he thought I could identify the gold, as because he hadn't known this fact.
Sitting there, casual like and easy on the surface, I was doing some fast figuring. This was an unbalanced man, deadly fast with a six-shooter, andwitha hair-trigger temper. A normal man can be understood to some extent; but this man, though shrewd and calculating up to a point, was apt to do some damned fool thing--some damned deadly thing--on a momentary whim. It was like sitting on a keg of dynamite with a wet fuse.
You knew it was going to go, but you didn't know when.
The men he had with him were bandits, adventurers, drifters, men out to make easy money, or money that sounded easy, and they followed him because he had brains and daring, and because they feared to cross him. He had come south hunting money and trouble, and they were with him all the way.
The chances were that most of those men were good with guns.
Some were renegades left over from the War Between the States, others were just outlaws he'd picked up.
The way to whip a man is to keep him off-balance, and it seemed to me my best chance to get out of this alive, or with a shooting chance, was to keep him from thinking about it.
"'Member that time we met that outfit of Gray-backs on Owl Creek?" I said.
Glancing across the table at the others, I went on, "I never saw the like. Dyer here was on my left. There were six of us moving up to the creek in the late evening. It was coming up to dark, and it was still ... so still you could hear our clothes rustling as we walked.
"Dyer, he had himself a pair of Remington .36-31libre six-shooters that he spent a good part of his time polishing up. He had those guns belted on, and we all carried rifles.
"Well, sir, we were a-walking along, moving like a pack of Mescaleros, when suddenly we stepped into a clearing. And just as we done so, a party of Rebs came in from the other side, at least twenty in the outfit.
"They were as surprised as we were, only Dyer here, he acted quicker'n you could say scat.
He dropped his rifle where he stood and outs with those Remingtons ... you never heard such fire.
You'd have thought he had him one of those Smith-Percival magazine pistols that fire forty shots.
"He just opened up and went to blasting with both guns at once, and that whole party cut and run ... why, I don't think ary of us got off a shot, only Dyer. He downed three of them, wounded I don't know how many."
Folks somehow have a feeling when something is about to happen, and you'd be surprised how business had fallen off in just those few minutes since I came in. That first man who cashed in his chips, he began it. Maybe a dozen had drifted out since then.
But Sandeman Dyer was a man who liked to hear himself talked about. He sat back and ordered drinks, and we started talking up old times.
Yet all the time I was realizing that the fewer outsiders were in that place, the less chance I'd have. Not that Dyer would care much for witnesses. When it came on him to kill, nothing in the world was going to stop him ... it was a kind of madness.
The worst of it was, he was fast.
Was I quicker with a gun? I surely didn't know. The fact of the matter was, it wouldn't make an awful lot of difference, because when the shooting started, if he didn't get me the rest of them would. Only I made up my mind that no matter how much lead I took, I was going to keep shooting long enough to take him with me. For if ever a man needed to die, it was Sandeman Dyer.
So we talked the afternoon away, and finally I knew I had to let go of the bull.
What I mean is, I had a bull by the tail and I was safe as long as I hung on, but I had to let go sometime, and it was better to pick my own time than to wait until he got impatient.
So finally I said, "Well, it's been friendly, seeing you after all these years, but I've got to start back for Arizona. If you'll hand over my gold, I'll leave out of here."
His expression changed ever so little, his lids flickering just an instant as he adjusted to what I'd said. Our talk had kind of lulled everybody else into quiet. They were kind of scattered out, busy with their own activities, drinking, talking, sure there'd be no trouble.
They didn't know Dyer like I did.
"Why, sure!" He smiled at me with all the warmth of a hungry wolf. "I intended you to have it all the time." He turned his head to the man behind the bar. "Joe, open the safe and bring that sack of gold over here."
And right then, I knew.
It had to be when I put my hand on that gold ... or when I reached the door with it.
More than likely it would be the last, for he would want to drag it out. He might shoot me in the back, but it was more probable he'd let me get almost to the door, drawing his gun behind my back, and then he'd speak to me, and when I turned he would let me have it.
In my mind, I counted the steps to the door, and it was far, much too far ... and once I was out in the open room he'd have a clear shot at me.
Suddenly, I realized something else. The afternoon sunlight was falling through the window over our heads, and when I reached that place in the center of the room or a bit beyond and turned, I'd have the sun's glare in my eyes.