Jim Bailey had been right. Men talked
too much as a usual thing. Gary had talked too much.
Pete realized that his loyalty to the memory of Annersley had earned
him disrepute. He resented the injustice of this, and all his old
hatred of the law revived. Yet despite all logic of justice as against
law--he could see Gary's hand clutching against his chest, his staring
eyes, and the red ooze starting through those tense fingers--Pete
reasoned that had he not been so skilled and quick with a gun, he would
be in Gary's place now. As it was, he was alive and had a good horse
between his knees.
To ride an unshod horse in the southern desert is to invite disaster.
Toward evening, Pete pulled up at a water-hole, straightened the nails
in the horseshoes and tacked them on again with a piece of rock. They
would hold until he reached the desert town of Showdown--a place of
ill-repute and a rendezvous for outlawry and crime.
He rode on until he came within sight of the town--a dim huddle of low
buildings in the starlight. He swung off the trail, hobbled his horse,
fastened his rope to the hobbles, and tied that in turn to a long,
heavy slab of rock, and turned in.
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