"I've done it before."
Smoky Delbert, happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Thornton couldn't afford to be found out. Smoky would blackmail him.
Thornton paying Delbert's hospital bills.
"Did I hit him square?"
"A good neck shot."
Factory-loaded ammunition that almost never failed to mushroom. Hand-loaded cartridges that might fail.
John Wilson fumbled in his pocket. "Doggone, I seem to have lost my pipe."
Al, forever losing his tobacco pouch, had gone to see Carl Thornton the day Thornton fired Ted.
Ted wiped his knife blade on the snow, stood up and sheathed his knife. He looped a length of rope around the great buck's antlers.
"He'll be easy to get out of here," he said.