Chapter 10

It did not seem to make much difference which alley I chose, so I took the one to the left of the one the shooter had used. The people of Paddock were unusually smart, I guess, because there was an alley between each pair of buildings thereby providing a fire break in case any building caught fire. The fire breaks were on the order of five feet wide, so there was plenty of room for free movement.

I had my shotgun ready by the time I got to the selected alley opening, and I held it so that it was ready to shoot at anything that looked dangerous. Heaven help an innocent bystander who happened to show up at that moment. The alley was empty as I entered and stayed that way except for me during the few seconds that it took for me to run to the other end. The building I was passing on my right was a general store and the one on my left was a gunshop. Neither fact was important at the time, but it does serve to point out how much attention I was paying to my surroundings.

I figured that I had to be chasing after Jess McFarland, since I could not imagine anyone else who would shoot at me out of hand like that. You cannot imagine how much joy it gave me to finally get so close to the man whom I had hated for nearly three years. I had no immediate idea of how I would do it, but I planned to kill the bastard in the most painful manner that I could arrange. But, first, I had to catch up to him.

I came to the corner of the building I was racing past and skidded to a halt. As I mentioned before, one does not run very fast in cowboy boots, so I had switched some time earlier to a lower heel. The heel on my boots was only high enough for safety in the stirrup and not for working cattle—something I could not do because of my knee, anyway. Therefore, even with my bad knee, I could still run faster than most men when I put forth the effort.

I looked around the corner of the building and saw a man staring down the other alley. That had to be the man who had just shot at me, but I could not be sure. He was partly hidden by a water barrel, so I could not be certain that he was Jess McFarland. I was fearful of shooting an innocent, so I did not shoot the moment I caught sight of the man, but I did swing my shotgun toward him just in case.

The guy I was looking at was pretty foolish because he seemed to have all of his attention focused on the wrong alley. Oops, I had better keep that in mind just in case that my assassin had help. I looked around with that thought in mind, and it was a damned good thing that I did. Just as I saw the galoot behind the gunshop, he shouted, "JESS, HERE HE IS!"

The man raised his pistol to take a shot at me, but he was woefully slow from his point of view. I was able to whip my sawed-off shotgun around and fire a load at the man who had shouted. That kind of thing was not going to result in the most accurate of target acquisition; however, it was the kind of shooting that a shotgun was made for.

I had swung just a trifle too far and the ball part of my buck and ball struck the building wall a glancing blow. That tore away the paper wrap that was holding the shot together, and the shot scattered willy-nilly. The result was that the man caught many of the buckshot slugs in his chest and neck, and that was fatal.

I had little time to contemplate this as I ducked back between the buildings. Just as I made it around the corner, McFarland fired and took out a chunk of wood right where I had been standing. I could hear him cursing his luck as I dropped to the ground.

It took only seconds to reload the spent shell. I rolled back out from the alley and aimed my shotgun toward where I had last seen McFarland standing. Naturally, he was not standing there, but I had expected him to move. He was now crouched behind that water barrel, and I could see just a bit of his right shoulder poking out beyond the protective barrel. Never one to pause too long looking for an improved situation, I fired both barrels of my shotgun simultaneously. Wow, the recoil was terrific because I could not roll with the impact. It did not break my shoulder, but, to this day, I cannot help wondering why.

The effect on the barrel and McFarland was spectacular. The range was so short that it was as if I had fired a small cannon at the barrel. Both balls must have hit the barrel in exactly the proper combination to chew a massive bite from the upper part of the barrel. Buckshot and wooden splinters were hurled at McFarland, and the resulting damage was concentrated on his right shoulder.

For practical purposes, McFarland's right arm was hanging from his body by a few threads of flesh and some remnants of his shirt. McFarland was lying on his back and screaming in pain. It was a cinch that his fighting days were over just from the damage done to his right arm and shoulder.

Automatically, I reloaded my shotgun, but I slung it over my back as I stood up to examine the results of the shotgun blast. I could not resist walking up to McFarland and kicking him in his wound to get his attention. That did cause him to look at me and I held up my left hand which was now holding a pistol. As with his compatriots that fateful day, I made a point of holding up my hand so that he could see it. "Surprise, I am left-handed." I am not sure that the significance got through all of his pain and into his brain, but I was happy.