Two rapid shots cut the darkness and Shorty felt the air of a lead slug pass his cheek.
“Whupped!” he grunted and raised his hands. “I’ve laid down my hand, feller,” he called. “Foller suit, Pete, they got us foul.”
IX
A killer is, with mighty few exceptions, a killer because of his own desires. Black Jack, foreman for the LF, was no exception. He did not even, secretly or openly, offer the plea that he was a victim of circumstance. He had killed men. He would kill more men. His past was a sealed book, his future a gamble and thus he met each day as it came. Making no prayer, he branded as weak any man who believed in a God. A half-breed, and the blend was dangerously bad for he had inherited the baser traits of both races.
Now, as he looked along the barrel of his Winchester to find Pete Basset at the end of it, his white teeth flashed in a smile that was unpleasant to see. The bushy black beard hid the cruel lines about his mouth, but the narrow slits of black that were his eyes, glittered as the moonlight struck them. A brown finger pressed the trigger, then paused uncertainly.
The taint in his mixed blood, thrown back to some breech-clouted ancestor, now stayed his hand. He hated Pete Basset and a bullet between the boy’s eyes would be too mercifully quick an end. His trigger finger eased off.
Pete Basset, shocked and not a little disappointed at Shorty’s easy surrender, hesitated uncertainly, gun lowered, making no move to raise his hands nor return the fire. He realized with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach, that Black Jack and his men were well hidden and on higher ground that prevented a rush. He and Shorty, on the other hand, stood in plain view. Resistance meant death. Shorty had shown judgment, not a yellow streak. He dropped his gun and raised his hands.
Shorty, the lariat still in his hands, elevated his arms skyward and grinned weakly. The soft drip-drip of water from their soaked clothes on to the hard clay was the only sound that broke the quiet of the night.
Behind the willow clump, Black Jack lay aside his Winchester and drew his .45.