“‘You got a hell of a right to talk, you or any other Murdock man, when you’ve got a thing like that Pearl Brown runnin’ your most decent dump—a place like that Alamo.’
“Then the mayor called this Pearl Brown person a name or two, but hadn’t got through when this Ring—the red-headed, cantankerous cuss!—yells:
“‘Whatever her business is, Pearl Brown’s a straight, square, decent woman personally, and I’ll teach you to keep your tongue off her!’ And with that he hauls off and lams our mayor. Little fool! Why, the mayor could lick him with both hands tied behind him!
“Then it just seemed as if everybody that had it in for Ring, as well as them that tries to stand in with the mayor, all want a piece of Ring for a souvenir. And I reckon they’d have got it, too, if you and that big pardner of yours hadn’t butted in. You sure did knock seven kinds of hell out of the mayor, and if it was anybody but you, you can bet you’d not have got away with it. Folks do say that you got a habit of fillin’ up cemeteries when you get riled, and so— well—you got away with it.”
Smith sat hunched forward in his seat, his stare fixed on the working haunches of the wheel horses, his mind rambling over what he had heard. There was no use in trying to avoid a past reputation as a killer, no sense in striving to be a man of peace who wished for nothing more than nonmolestation, quietude, comfort, security. He was and would be, so far as he could foresee, wherever he went, Trigger Smith who “fanned” his gun from the hollow of his side and who traveled in a cloak of security because men were afraid of him.
But this other matter was of more interest and puzzled him. This matter of that red-headed firebrand Ring, the Reformer, always striving to reform something that had neither inclination nor intent to be reformed, getting mauled and kicked and beaten, perhaps to death, defending that young woman, Pearl Brown, who had defied him and his efforts until it had become a feud. Why should Ring fight for her when he himself had always fought her?
Smith at last gave it up as a problem insolvable, inexplicable. His brain wasn’t slow when it came to analysis of human motives, but it was bewildered by this situation. It was beyond his experience. And he was still pondering perplexedly, over this when the old vehicle pulled into Georgeville, rocked through its unpaved streets in a cloud of summer dust, and drew up at the two-story, veranda-fronted frame building, white-painted, with green blinds, that was then the only hospital within a wide radius.
The miner stood by with hands thrust into his pockets when a nurse, assisted by his mining partner, carried The Reformer in on a stretcher, and, still with hands in pockets, walked to and fro outside while awaiting the verdict.
“We can tell you nothing about it, except that his injuries aren’t fatal unless something internal shows up,” the doctor from Placer told Smith, after an hour’s wait. “There was no use in your making me come here with you, and I’m off for home again. Now about my fee⸺”
“Make it whatever it’s worth and take it out of that,” Smith said, thrusting a well-filled wallet toward the medical man.