“What in —— happened, Scotty?”
Scotty got to his feet and brushed off his knees. Then he went to the corner behind his desk and picked up a double-barreled shotgun. Breaking it open to see whether it was loaded, he limped back to the doorway in time to see the three horses go pounding out of town in a flurry of dust.
“Goin’ duck huntin’?” asked Porter sarcastically.
Scotty limped back and stood the gun in the corner.
“By ——, that makes me mad,” he said seriously. “I seen them AK fellers up by the store; so I goes up there to have a heart-to-heart talk with ’em. But before I get there, one of ’em takes a shot at me and almost knocked a hole in my right boot. And when I turned around they took another shot at me.”
“That don’t sound reasonable,” said Porter.
“I don’t give a —— how it sounds; I was there, wasn’t I?”
The shots had attracted some attention, and the sudden exit of the AK boys made things look suspicious. Scotty and Porter went up the street, where several men had gathered in front of the store, and were talking with Lee Barnhardt, who was telling them all about it.
“I tell you, it was deliberate,” he said. “I saw that cowboy take aim at me. Why, I heard that bullet sing past my ear, so close that the air from it staggered me.”
“Why did he shoot at you, Lee?” asked the storekeeper, Abe Moon, a tall, serious, tobacco-chewing person.