Showdown

Deaf to her, to what remained of the crowd parting like the Red Sea, in a quarter-turn, I faced a skinny teenaged boy dressed in buckskin, not six feet tall or twenty feet away, narrow shoulders, mismatched guns holstered over slim hips. Underfed. A swift scan of the roof of the black marble building caught the crown of a hat floating just above the rim.

Now I frowned, squinting one eye. "Ain't gonna yell draw, are you?"

"You tell 'em, Clint," somebody shouted. Even I had to grin at that.

Sporadic laughter from the crowd faded to dead silence, the young man wrinkling his nose into a baby's scowl, obviously too young for the joke.

"Calling you out," he said, arrogantly raising his pointy chin. "Heard you're the man from up north."

"I'm from out west originally," I replied. Somebody snickered lightly nearby, but I wasn't looking away.

The boy put his face into that baby scowl again. "Ain't you the one kilt my brother?"

"And which one was that?"

"Shank," the boy said, his hands drifting to the butts of his guns. "Shank was my big brother."

A wink from that rooftop, I slapped my hip and fired. A yelp like a battered pup, Shank's little brother spun to look. A body met the ground with a meaty thud raising a cloud of dust, leather hat seesawed after. His shiny weapon just a puff of dirt close by.
Hands on his guns, Shank's little brother whirled to my leveled revolver, smoke trailing yet from the muzzle.

"Even I ain't that fast, kid," I said.

Dettagli