He turned and walked across the room. Liza was lookin g at me strangely, watching me for something. Me, I wa s confused, but now I was settling down. I was beginnin g to think.
"What became of Mary?" I asked.
His back was toward me and for a long time he di d not reply, nor did he move. Then he said quietly, "Sh e died in childbirth, Rye. If she'd lived I would probabl y have stayed right there.
"Remember old Sheriff Balcher? He tried to get m e to stay, but I wouldn't listen. I couldn't stay there wit h those memories, so I left."
Logan Pollard came back to the center of the room.
"Sit down, Rye. Please sit down."
It wasn't in me to quibble or to beat around the brush.
"Logan," I said, "you know why I'm here?"
The smile left his eyes. He looked at me, taut an d watchful. I knew then that all they said of the gunma n known as Ash Milo was true. He was a dangerous ma n . . . and a not entirely sane man.
I'd looked many times into the eyes of dangerous men , and I knew how they looked. But in his eyes there wa s something else . . . something extra.
"Of course. You've come for Liza. On that score I mus t disappoint you."
So here it was. Here was the line we drew, the lin e along which neither of us would yield. Yet I had to try.
"It isn't like you, Logan. You're holding her against he r will. That's not your sort of man."
He shrugged, a little irritable frown gathering aroun d his eyes. "Don't be a fool, Rye! She may not wish t o stay now, but she'll change. I'm not forcing her int o anything, just giving her time to change."
"If she were to change at all, Logan, it wouldn't be i n this place. No decent woman could live in such a place."
He stood with his feet a little apart, facing me. He wa s wearing gray-striped trousers and a white shirt with a blac k string tie. He looked good. He was, I expect, a might y handsome man. He also wore a gun.
"Rye, you're the man I've needed here. Stay with me.
Together we can live like feudal barons. We can have al l this!" He waved a hand at the hills. "We can have it t o ourselves!"
All this . . . an empire of rock and sand. Someday i t would be more, but that was a long way off, and no bunc h of outlaws would make it more. Yet this man had helpe d me. He had been my best friend, and for a long tim e my only friend. But now I knew I was going to have t o leave, and that our friendship was at an end. And I wa s going to take Liza with me. And it wasn't going to b e easy.
"No. I said it flatly. "No, Logan, I'm leaving. And I'm taking Liza with me if she wants to go."
Then I told him about the place back in Maryland. Onl y I was telling Liza, too. "I'm going to do what you advised , Logan. I'm going to get away from the need for killin g before I kill the wrong man, or before I lose all sense o f balance and kill too many."
He was very quiet. He rolled a smoke, and then h e looked up at me. This was Logan, but it was also th e man who had called himself T. J. Farris the man wh o had sent for John Lang. The man behind Ben Billings. I t was hard to believe how a man could change.
"You can go. Liza stays with me."
"No." He said it as if he didn't want to believe. "No.
She stays."
I glanced at Liza. "Will you go with me?"
"Yes, Rye. I will go with you."
"See?" My eyes swung back. "I "
Logan Pollard was smiling at me. That tight, strang e smile, so unlike the warm smile he used to have. He wa s smiling at me over a gun.
"Rye, I thought I taught you better. Never take you r eyes off a man."
"But you're my friend," I said.
His face did not change. He looked a little bored, I t hought. Only I'm not always a good judge.
"There are no friends. In this life you take what yo u want or it's taken from you. You can go now, Rye. Yo u can ride out of the badlands and stay out. I've told th e boys to let you go. I told Smoky Hill you were to go afte r I'd talked with you."
So there it was. He looked at me across a gun the wa y he had once looked at McGarry, only with that odd difference. He looked at me down the barrel of a gun and I k new he was, with that gun, one of the most dangerou s men in the West.
He had taught me other things. Never to draw unles s to shoot, never to shoot unless to kill.
The man standing behind that gun was a man wh o had never drawn but to kill. Rarely in the old days, bu t now I could see that with the death of Mary, somethin g had happened. The old Logan Pollard was gone.
And here before me in this tight, icy man with th e thin-drawn mouth was what I might become. This ma n who killed wantonly now, who could take a decent gir l and hold her until she was finally broken by his will.
And suddenly I knew. I knew that when I turned t o go he would kill me.
He would kill me because if I left I would return wit h armed men to wipe out the Roost. He had admitted I'd been left alone because he'd known how I would react.
"All right," I said. "I'll go. But I wish you'd think i t over. We've been friends, and-"
"Stop it!" His tension was mounting. He would have t o kill. I knew. "Consider yourself lucky. You did me a favo r by killing Chance Vader. Now get out of here. I'm returning the favor by letting you go."
Liza's eyes were wide and frightened. She was trying t o warn me, trying to tell me.
I turned, needing the one trick, the thing that woul d throw him off the one instant I needed, for there is a thing called reaction time, the space of delay between th e will and the action.
I started to turn, then suddenly looked back. "Logan,"
I said, "I've only read Plutarch four times."
He had been set to kill, and the remark threw him off.
It took an instant for his mind to react and in that instan t I threw myself aside and drew.
It was an action I had practiced when alone, droppin g aside and to one knee, the other leg outstretched. And I m ade the fastest draw of my life. I made it because I ha d to.
The Smith & Wesson .44 kicked hard against my palm.
In the instant I fired I saw his eyes white and ugly an d his gun blossom with fire. I was smashed back to the floor , heard the hammer of another bullet drive into the wal l back of me, and I fired twice.
Yet even as I fired, I saw the red on his shirt front , and I saw him knocked back and twisted by my shots, s o that his third shot went into the ceiling.
Rolling over, I came up fast. He swung his gun an d we both shot. He hit me. I felt the numbing shock of th e bullet. And then I fired and he fell, tumbling face down , the gun slipping from his hand.
For an instant I stared down at him, holding my gu n ready. He turned over and stared up at me, smiling faintly.
"Rye," he said. "Good old Rye. You learned, didn't you?"
His body tightened and twisted, held hard against pain , and then his muscles relaxed.
"Liza," I said, "get a rifle. Stand by the window. We'r e still in trouble."
He was lying there looking at me. "Think I alway s knew it, Rye. Think I always knew it would be you. Fat e . . . somehow."
He was dying, and he knew it, yet there was still dange r in the man, and I could not trust- him. He saw it in me , and smiled. "Good boy," he said. "Good boy."
We could hear them coming up the hill. We could hea r them all coming. Thirty or more of them, armed and dangerous men.
"I'm going East, Logan. You're the last. I'm goin g to put my guns away."
My guns were loaded again. He had taught me that.
Reload as soon as you stop shooting.
They had stopped outside. I stepped to the door. "Smok y Hill," I said. "You and Bronc. Come on in."
With Liza holding a rifle on the others, they entere d one by one.
&nbs
p; Logan Pollard looked up at them. He stared at the m for a minute, and then looked back at me. "Told yo u Plutarch would be good reading," he said. "I-"
And he died, just like that. He died there on the floor , and inside I felt sick and empty and lost.
Across his body I looked at them. "His real name wa s Logan Pollard," I said. "He was my best friend."
Nobody said anything. "I'm going out of here," I said.
"She's going with me. I came after her."
Smoky Hill rubbed his hands down his pants. Bron c rolled his quid in his jaws.
"Any argument?" I asked.
"Not any," Bronc said. "You go ahead."
They turned and walked outside and I took Liza by th e arm. She held back, just a minute. "You're wounded , Rye!"
"Get what we'll need," I said. "We can't give the m time to change their minds."
My side was stiff and sore. I could feel the wetness o f blood inside my shirt. But I felt all right. I could make out.
I'd have to.
"Rye . . . he was all right to me. He really was."
"I knew him," I said. "He was a good man."
Nobody said anything as we walked out and went dow n to the stables. Nobody made any argument. Maybe the y didn't want to face my guns. Maybe they were too stunne d to think about doing anything. Maybe there wasn't anything they wanted to do.
At a seep a dozen miles down the back trail, Liza looke d me over. One bullet had cut through the muscle at th e top of my shoulder. The second had hit a rib, breakin g it and cutting through the flesh and out the back. I'd lost blood.
We met Mustang Roberts and a posse of twenty me n coming down Nine Mile. Valley, trying to work out th e trail. We were riding along together when they saw us , and they just turned around and fell in behind.
And that was the way it was in the old days befor e the country grew up and men put their guns away.
Someday, and I hope it never comes, there may be a time when the Western hills are empty again and the lan d will go back to wilderness and the old, hard ways.
Enemies may come into our country and times will hav e changed, but then the boys will come dowsi from the ol d high hills and belt on their guns again.
They can do it if they have to. The guns are hung up , the cows roam fat and lazy, but the old spirit is still there , just as it was when the longhorns came up the trail fro m Texas, and the boys washed the creeks for gold.