"When you catch him," the girl added, "just give him this. Ask if this doesn't belong to him." She thrust into Johnson's hand a large clasp knife. There were blood stains on the blades and handle. Lafe nodded and put it in his pocket. He did not even inquire how the girl had come by it.
About dusk, on the following day, Johnson sighted Bass moving quietly up a ravine on the west side of The Hatter. Some cottonwoods intervened to spoil a shot. Lafe made a detour and quickened his pace, hoping to head him off. As he emerged from the ravine on to a mesa, Bass perceived him. Instead of fleeing, he turned his horse and threw up an arm as a caution to Lafe to halt.
"What do you want?" he cried.
"I want you. Better come along quiet. It'll save trouble."
"I wouldn't choose to, thanks. No. I reckon I won't."
Johnson was not one to take chances with an assassin. He began to pump his Winchester. At the second shot Bass's horse lurched forward on to his knees with a scream and stretched out, its legs stiff. His rider scrambled clear and shot Johnson through the fleshy part of his right forearm before he could pull again.
The boss had drawn his six-shooter and was coming on. He coolly changed the weapon to his left hand and threw down on him at twenty yards.
It had often been asserted in Badger that the sheriff could not miss at any distance under two hundred feet. This was scarcely an exaggeration. He had pulled only once when Bass held up empty hands in token of surrender. His gun lay on the ground and two fingers of his right hand were gone.
"I reckon I ought to have killed you, Mordecai," said Lafe, "but I couldn't forget that me and you had slept under the same blankets. Do you remember that roundup on the Lazy L? What'd you do this for?"
"I knew you'd think I did it," was all Bass said, and he began to make a ligature out of his handkerchief.