Neal backed slowly out of the door, through the second door into the aisle before the cages, watching Rathburn like a cat.
Rathburn slipped his own weapon into his left hip pocket and with his left hand dug into his trousers pocket for the key to the cage. He didn’t take his eyes from Neal’s as he brought it out and inserted it in the lock. His right hand continued to hang above the gun he had taken from the jailer.
“Sheriff,” he said with a cold ring in his voice, “this may seem like an insult, but I’m goin’ to ask you to unlock that cage and go in. You can take your time if you want, but I warn you fair that if any one should start coming up the steps outside I’ll try to smoke you up.”
For answer Neal, with the glitter still in his eyes, stepped to the cage door, unlocked it, and swung it open.
He took a step, whirled like a flash––and the deafening report of guns crashed and reverberated within the jail’s walls.
Neal staggered back within the cage, his gun clattering 92 to the floor, his right hand dropping to his side.
“If I hadn’t been up against a strange gun I wouldn’t have hit your finger, sheriff,” said Rathburn mockingly. “I was shootin’ at your gun.”
He shut the cage door quickly, locked it, and stuck the key in his pocket. Then he threw the jailer’s gun in through the bars and thrust his own weapon in its holster.
“I want you gentlemen inside, an’ armed,” he said laughingly. “If the jailer will be so good as to read what’s written on the paper on the bench, he’ll learn something to his advantage. Sheriff, you an’ Brown were wrong in this, but the devil of it is you’ll never know why.”
He left Neal pondering this cryptic sally, ran to the front door, opened it, and disappeared.