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Updated: June 18, 2025
And the gun-fighters were eager to get into the game. They were right on hand, to make a stand in front of the enemy if need be but preferably to murder the foe from behind. Which was ever the way with the Western bad man.
Would you think any better of me if I'd quit in the pinch and let McBain get away with my mine? Wasn't he just a plain robber, only without the nerve, hiring gun-fighters to do the rough work? Why, Mary, I feel proud, every time I think about it, that I went there and did what I did. I feel like a man that has done a great duty and I can't stand it to have you disapprove.
'You thought you did, but that was before you faced the man you intended to kill. Blome, you're one of these dandy, cock-of-the-walk four-flushers. I'll tell you how I know. Because I've met the real gun-fighters, an' there never was one of them yet who bragged or talked. Now don't you go round blowin' any more.
Say, boys, take on with me I'll double your money; and what's more I'll stand up for my rights!" He looked around at the line of gun-fighters, but their set lips did not answer his smile. Only in their eyes, those subtle mirrors of the mind, did he read the passing reflex of their scorn. "You're scared, you coward," went on Rimrock scathingly as McBain looked warily about.
They became man-killers first from stern necessity. In that day the man who was not quick on the trigger had little chance with the outlaws among whom he had to live. Slade and "Wild Bill," with both of whom I became closely associated, were men of nerve and courage. But both, having earned the reputation of gun-fighters, became too eager to live up to it. Eventually both became outlaws.
My sharp eye, running over him, caught a row of notches on the bone handle of the big Colt he packed. It was then that the marshal, the Ranger in me, went hot under the collar. The custom that desperadoes and gun-fighters had of cutting a notch on their guns for every man killed was one of which the mere mention made my gorge rise.
He wagged his long beard and spat impressively but nobody paid any attention to him. They realized at last that they were up against gun-fighters men picked for quick shooting and iron nerves and working under the orders of one man.
An' after the war, when he was marshal of Silver City, he cleaned out the bad men an' gun-fighters. He's been in almost every state in the Union. He could wrestle any man at the railings in his day, an' he was bully of the raftsmen of the Susquehanna when he was only a youngster. His father killed a man in a standup fight with a blow of his fist when he was sixty years old.
This even-break business goes all right among gun-fighters, but the Mormons call killing murder. They've outlawed Culver, and Snap will be outlawed next." "Your father hinted that Snap would find the desert too small for him and me?" "Jack, you can't be too careful. I've wanted to speak to you about it. Snap will ride in here some day and then " Dave's pause was not reassuring.
Even old Dave, thought sober, was disqualified, and Algy was asleep. Bostwick and McCoppet had made ample provision against attack at the claim. Their miners, who set to work at once to enlarge the facilities for extracting the gold from the ground, were gun-fighters first and toilers afterward. The place was guarded night and day, visitors being ordered off with a strictness exceptionally rigid.
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