The cold place inside Caleb went colder.But Sheila’s eyes stayed locked on his, steady and fierce, and he knew she understood exactly what he was trying to do.Keep him talking.Keep him angry.Wait for one breath of chance.
“Never mind her.You plan on killing me out of revenge for your old man?”
“I’ve been looking forward to this ever since you shot him in the back going out of that jail.”
“That’s what you think?”Caleb scoffed.“Jack Clanton came looking for me.And he wouldn’t be reasoned with.”
“That’s a lie.I heard it all from them ranch hands that saw it.”
“I don’t know what they told you, but if I shot him going out of that jail, there ain’t no way I would’ve stayed sheriff up there after that.”Caleb held his gaze.“And when I went riding out to that ranch on other business a month or so later, why didn’t those ranch hands call me on it?I’ll tell you why.Cuz it ain’t true.”
“You’re a coward and a damn liar.”
“That so?”Caleb spat on the ground.“I don’t shoot men in the back, like your friend Grat Horner.And I don’t creep up and cut their throats from behind neither.Ain’t that the way Wendell got it?”
“Wendell was a pain in my ass.Always pushing me.Knocking me down in front of other people.”Dodger jerked Sheila off-balance but kept the Remington pointed at her head.“He got what he had coming.”
“I say you’re a low-down coward and a bully, just like your old man.He got a real thrill out of beating women.”
Caleb didn’t look, but he saw Sheila’s hand slip into the pocket of her duster.
Good girl, he thought.Easy now.
Dodger’s eyes grew wide, and the smirk was gone.“Don’t you talk shit.”
“I’d wager he beat your own mama, ain’t that right?”
The killer’s mouth was twitching, pulling to the side.“He never done nothing.My pa?—”
“A man like that, always trying to puff himself up.Always thinking that beating on his wife or his children would make him a man.”
“Shut up.My pa was a real man.”
“Your pa was a stupid, low-life weasel and yellow-bellied, to boot.Just like you.”
Dodger stared, unable to say a word.
“If you’re waiting for Horner to tell you what to do now, little boy, you’re gonna have to ask him in Hell.Cuz that’s where he is, and that’s where you’re heading.”
“I don’t need nobody to tell me that you’re the one gonna die,” Dodger rasped, white with fury.
“You’re forgetting about the Code of the Gunslinger, Dodger,” he said coolly.
As the gunslinger began to turn the muzzle of his six-shooter from Sheila’s temple toward Caleb, he hesitated.“What Code?”
The moment he paused, Sheila’s hand flared out to the side.An instant later, she drove the blade of her knife into the outlaw’s thigh and pitched herself forward, grabbing for his gun hand.
Dodger let out a shriek of pain and outrage.
Jake Bell’s knife came out of Caleb’s boot and flashed through the Colorado night, striking Dodger square and hard.
The outlaw’s mouth dropped open in shock.For one stunned second, he seemed not to understand what had happened.Then his eyes cut back to Caleb, full of rage and disbelief.
With Sheila still hanging on to his wrist, Dodger reached for the other Remington, still pouched at his hip.
His pistol cleared leather and was coming up fast.But not fast enough.
Caleb snatched one of his Colts from his feet and with a single movement, fired.
