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Why, all in that same second, while I was righting myself and getting the bead onto Jess Tatum's breast, I seen his first shot Stackpole's I mean kick up the dust not twenty feet in front of him and less than halfway to where Tatum was. I was as cool as I am now, and I seen this quite plain.
In an hour we set forth at a steady gallop eastward. Our horses were Kentucky-bred, strengthened by the mesquite grass of the west. Ben Tatum's steeds may have been swifter, and he had a good lead; but if he had heard the punctual thuds of the hoofs of those trailers of ours, born in the heart of feudland, he might have felt that retribution was creeping up on the hoof-prints of his dapper nags.
And now, this is what I want to say: The most dangerous individual who could possibly get that treasure would be the Princess Yasmini. There are several women here whom I might interest in keeping an eye on her Tatum's wife, and Miss Bent, and Miss O'Hara, and the Goole sisters lots of 'em. But they'd all talk.
Why, all in that same second, while I was righting myself and getting the bead onto Jess Tatum's breast, I seen his first shot Stackpole's, I mean kick up the dust not twenty feet in front of him and less than halfway to where Tatum was. I was as cool as I am now, and I seen this quite plain.
Three empty chambers in Tatum's gun and two in Stackpole's seemed conclusive evidence to the sheriff and the coroner that night and to the coroner's jurors next day that five shots had been fired. On one point, though, for all her fright, the woman was positive, and to this she stuck in the face of questions and cross-questions.
I knew that Ben Tatum's card to play was flight flight until he came within the safer territory of his own henchmen and supporters. He knew that the man pursuing him would follow the trail to any end where it might lead. During the ride Sam talked of the prospect for rain, of the price of beef, and of the musical glasses.
All now in the same breath and in a jumble of shock and terror she saw Dudley Stackpole emerge into full sight, and standing clear a pace from his doorway return the fire; saw the thudding frantic hoofs of the nigh horse spurn Harve Tatum's body aside the kick broke his right leg, it turned out saw Jess Tatum suddenly halt and stagger back as though jerked by an unseen hand; saw him drop his weapon and straighten again, and with both hands clutched to his throat run forward, head thrown back and feet drumming; heard him give one strange bubbling, strangled scream it was the blood in his throat made this outcry sound thus and saw him fall on his face, twitching and heaving, not thirty feet from where Dudley Stackpole stood, his pistol upraised and ready for more firing.
Three empty chambers in Tatum's gun and two in Stackpole's seemed conclusive evidence to the sheriff and the coroner that night and to the coroner's jurors next day that five shots had been fired. On one point, though, for all her fright, the woman was positive, and to this she stuck in the face of questions and cross-questions.
"But if they had thought to cut into Jess Tatum's body after he was dead, or to probe for the bullet in him, they would have known that it was not Dudley Stackpole who really shot him, but somebody else; and then I suppose suspicion might have fell upon me, although I doubt it.
It was when Sammy was eighteen, the best dressed, the best horsed and the idlest to be found from Little Turkey Track to the Fur Cove, from Tatum's to Big Buck Gap that he went one day, riding his sorrel filly, down to Hepzibah, ostensibly to do some errands for Aunt Cornelia, but in fact simply in search of a good time.
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