He waited for me to move against him. When I didn't, he laughed and
swaggered to the door of the saloon. "Come on, Irish," he said over
his shoulder. "I'll buy you a drink of the best."
I followed him in, and he went over to the bar, walking heavy, and
looked old Menner right in the eye and said, "Give me a bottle of the
best stuff you got in the house."
* * * * *
Menner looked at the kid he'd kicked out of his place a dozen times,
and his face was white. He reached behind him and got a bottle and put
it on the bar.
"Two glasses," said Buck Tarrant.
Menner carefully put two glasses on the bar.
"_Clean_ glasses."
Menner polished two other glasses on his apron and set them down.
"You don't want no money for this likker, do you, Menner?" Buck asked.
"No, sir."
"You'd just take it home and spend it on that fat heifer of a wife you
got, and on them two little halfwit brats, wouldn't you?"
Menner nodded.
"Hell, they really ain't worth the trouble, are they?"
"No, sir."
Buck snickered and poured two shots and handed me one. He looked
around the saloon and saw that it was almost empty--just Menner behind
the bar, and a drunk asleep with his head on his arms at a table near
the back, and a little gent in fancy town clothes fingering his drink
at a table near the front window and not even looking at us.
"Where is everybody?" he asked Menner.
"Why, sir, I reckon they're home, most of them," Menner said. "It
being a hot day and all--"
"Bet it'll get hotter," Buck said, hard.
"Yes, sir."
"I guess they didn't want to really feel the heat, huh?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, it's going to get so hot, you old bastard, that everybody'll
feel it. You know that?"
"If you say so, sir."
"It might even get hot for you. Right now even. What do you think of
that, huh?"
"I--I--"
"You thrun me outa here a couple times, remember?"
"Y-yes ... but I--"
"Look at this!" Buck said--and his gun was in his hand, and he didn't
seem to have moved at all, not an inch. I was looking right at him
when he did it--his hand was on the bar, resting beside his shotglass,
and then suddenly his gun was in it and pointing right at old Menner's
belly.
"You know," Buck said, grinning at how Menner's fear was crawling all
over his face, "I can put a bullet right where I want to. Wanta see me
do it?"
His gun crashed, and flame leaped across the bar, and the mirror
behind the bar had a spiderweb of cracks radiating from a round black
hole.
Menner stood there, blood leaking down his neck from a split earlobe.
Buck's gun went off again, and the other earlobe was a red tatter.
And Buck's gun was back in its holster with the same speed it had come
out--I just couldn't see his hand move.
"That's enough for now," he told Menner. "This is right good likker,
and I guess I got to have somebody around to push it across the bar
for me, and you're as good as anybody to do jackass jobs like that."
* * * * *
He didn't ever look at Menner again. The old man leaned back against
the shelf behind the bar, trembling, two trickles of red running down
his neck and staining his shirt collar--I could see he wanted to touch
the places where he'd been shot, to see how bad they were or just to
rub at the pain, but he was afraid to raise a hand. He just stood
there, looking sick.
Buck was staring at the little man in town clothes, over by the
window. The little man had reared back at the shots, and now he was
sitting up in his chair, his eyes straight on Buck. The table in
front of him was wet where he'd spilled his drink when he'd jumped.
Buck looked at the little guy's fancy clothes and small mustache and
grinned. "Come on," he said to me, and picked up his drink and started
across the floor. "Find out who the dude is."
He pulled out a chair and sat down--and I saw he was careful to sit
facing the front door, and also where he could see out the window.