Hombre

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Book: Hombre by Elmore Leonard Read Free Book Online
Authors: Elmore Leonard
Tags: Fiction, Western
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something?”
    “Maybe if we get thirsty,” Russell said, “we’ll go to Delgado’s and have mescal .”
    Lamarr Dean didn’t move, even with his head turned in that awkward position. He stared up at Russell, and I’m certain that right then something was dawning on him.
    He said, “You do that.” For a few more secondshe looked up at Russell, then nudged his horse and started off again with his back to us and holding to a walking pace to show that he wasn’t afraid of anything.
    I kept watching him—thirty, forty, fifty feet away then, about that far when Russell’s voice said, “Get down,” not suddenly, but calmly and in a quiet tone.
    I dropped down on the seat, ducking my head, and Russell said, “All the way down —”
    And that last word wasn’t quiet, still it wasn’t yelled or excited. I saw the Spencer suddenly up to his face and I dropped, looking around to see where I was going and catching a glimpse of Lamarr Dean sixty feet out and wheeling his mount and bringing the Colt gun straight out in front of him, thinking he had time to be sure and bam the Spencer went off in my ear and Lamarr Dean went out of that saddle like he’d been clubbed in the face, his horse swerving, then running.
    Russell must have been sure of his shot, for he was already reloaded and tracking the horse, and, when he fired, the horse stumbled and rolled and tried to get up. And out past the horse you could see Braden coming in. Coming, then swerving as that Spencer went off again, banging hard close to me and cracking thin out in the open. There wasthe sound of Braden’s revolver twice and I hugged the floor of the boot, looking up to see just the barrel of the Spencer. Russell was full length behind it now, resting the barrel on the front rail, tracking Braden with the sights and not hurrying his fire. Braden swerved again and this time kept going all the way around full circle and back the way he had come toward the small figure way out there that was Mrs. Favor, so you knew Russell had come close. At least Braden didn’t want any part of him right then.
    I raised up. Russell was loading again, now that there was time, taking a loading tube from his blanket and putting seven of the .56-56 slugs in it and shoving the tube up through the stock of the Spencer.
    “They’ll all come back now,” I said. “Won’t they?”
    “As sure as we have what they want,” Russell said.
     
    There was a space there where nothing happened. I saw Dr. Favor and Mendez and the McLaren girl, all three of them in a row, crouched against the cutbank where they’d gone when the shooting started. It was quiet now, but still nobody moved.
    Russell was buckling on his cartridge belt, over his left shoulder and down across his chest, workingit around so that the full cartridge loops were all in front. While he did this, his eyes never left the two specks way out on the meadow.
    We had some time, but I did not think of it then. Braden had to get Early and the Mexican before he came back and they could be a mile off running the stage horses. I kept thinking of how Russell had brought up his Spencer and put it on Lamarr Dean, the way a man might aim at a tin can on a fence, and killed him with one shot. Then he had dropped the horse that was running away with the water bag. He had killed a man, sure of it, and in the same second he had known he must get the horse and he did that too.
    The space where nothing happened lasted maybe a minute altogether. Then it was over for good.
    Russell moved past me, frontwards, stepping on the wheel and then jumping. He was carrying his Spencer of course, and in the other hand his blanket roll and the canteen he and Mendez had used. (Little things you remember: there was no strap on the canteen, only two metal rings a strap had once been fastened to, and Russell hooked a finger through one of the rings to carry it.)
    I don’t think he even looked at the others, but started off down the road we had come up,

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