Hashita reached in his loincloth and pulled out a short-barreled revolver. The nickel plate was peeled, the barrel rusted. He opened the cylinder to show me the gun was unloaded.
“Excuse please,” he said. “Honorable pupil take gun, hold in right hand, raise gun, and pull trigger. Quickly please!”
I took the gun.
Bertha Cool’s face held the expression which I have sometimes thought must adorn the faces of women at bullfights.
“Quickly please,” Hashita repeated.
I raised the gun.
He reached smoothly forward and contemptuously pushed my hand down. “Not so slow please. Pretend I am very bad man. You raise gun. Very quickly you pull trigger before I move.”
I remembered reading somewhere that the Western bad-man had been at his most deadly efficiency when he was cocking the gun while raising it. It was a double-action revolver, and I started pulling the trigger as I snapped the gun up.
Hashita was standing in front of me, a broad target. I could feel the hammer coming back as I jerked my wrist.
Suddenly, Hashita wasn’t there at all. He had simply dissolved into motion. I tried to move the revolver to follow that streak of human agility. It was like trying to keep pointing at a lightning flash.