"'Don't look good to me,' he says. 'If a gunfighter is losing money, most like he'll fight to win it back. Maybe I'll go out and look that game over.'
"And saying that he slopes out of the room.
"Well, none of us took much stock in the sheriff going out to take care of Armstrong. You see Armstrong was the old sheriff, and he give Anderson a pretty stiff run for his money last election. They both been spending most of their time and energy the last few years hating each other. When one of 'em is in office the other goes around saying that the gent that has the plum is a crook; and then Anderson goes out, and Armstrong comes in, and Anderson says the same thing about Armstrong. Take 'em general and they always had the boys worried when they was together, for fear of a gunfight and bullets flying. And so, when Anderson stands up and says he's going out to see that Reeve don't do no harm to Armstrong, we all sat back and kind of laughed.
"But we laughed at the wrong thing. Long about an hour or so after dark we hear two men come walking up on the veranda, and one of 'em we knowed by the sound was the sheriff."
"How could you tell by the sound?" asked Bull innocently.
"Well, you see the sheriff always wears steel rims on his heels like he was a horse. He's kind of close with his money is old Anderson, I'll tell a man! We hear the ring of them heels on the porch, and pretty soon in comes the sheriff, herding a gent in ahead of him. And who d'you think that gent was? It was Reeve! Yes, sir, the old sheriff had stepped out and grabbed his man. He wasn't there quick enough to stop the killing of Armstrong, but he got there fast enough to nab Reeve. Seems that when he was riding up to the house he heard a shot fired, and then he seen a man run out of the house and jump on his hoss, and the sheriff didn't stop to ask no questions. He just out with his gat and drills the gent's hoss. And while Reeve was struggling on the ground, with the hoss flopping around and dying, the sheriff runs up and sticks the irons on Reeve. Then he goes into the house and finds Armstrong lying shot through the heart. Clear as day! Reeve loses a lot of money, and when it comes to a pinch he hates to see that money gone when he could get it back for the price of one slug. So he outs with his gun and shoots Armstrong. And the worst part of it was that Armstrong didn't have no gun on at the time. The sheriff found Armstrong's gun hanging on the wall along with his cartridge belt. Yep, it was plain murder, and Pete Reeve'll hang as high as the sky—and a good thing, too!"
This story was a shock to Bull for a reason that would not have affected most men. That a man who had had the courage to stand up and face Uncle Bill in a fair duel should have been so cowardly, so venomous as to take a mean advantage of a gambling companion seemed to Bull altogether too strange to be reasonable. Certainly, if he had had a difference with this fellow, thought Bull, Pete Reeve was the man to let the other use his own weapons before he fought. But to shoot him down across a table, unwarned—this was too much to believe! And yet it was the truth, and Pete Reeve was to hang for it.
The big man sat shaking his head. "And they found the money on Pete
Reeve?" he asked gloomily. "They found the money he took off this
Armstrong?"
"There's the funny part of the yarn," said the proprietor glibly. "Pete had the nerve to shoot the gent down in cold blood, but when he seen him fall he lost his nerve. He didn't wait to grab the money, but ran out and jumped on his hoss and tried to get away. So there you are. But it pretty often happens that way! Take the oldest gunfighter in the world, and, if his stomach ain't resting just right, it sort of upsets him to see a crimson stain. I seen it happen that way with the worst of 'em, and in the old days they used to be a rough crowd in my barroom. They don't turn out that style of gent no more!" He sighed as his mind flickered back into the heroic past.
"And Reeve—he admits he done the killing?" Bull asked hopelessly.