Then, the moment of paralysis gone, the
Kid suddenly leaped over his brother's body and ran to the window.
"It's Buck Thornton!" roared the Kid. Both of his big guns were already
in his hands. "Take that, you...."
Then Buck Thornton, making most of an unforeseen situation, did a thing
that he had never done before in his life, which he never would do
again. He turned and ran, stumbling through the darkness into which one
leap carried him.
For he knew that the Kid had no shadow of a shred of doubt that he had
killed Charley Bedloe, he knew that if he did not run for it, run like a
scared rabbit now, why then he'd have to kill the Kid or the Kid would
kill him. He had no wish to meet his death for the cowardly act of
another man and he had no wish to kill Kid Bedloe because another man
had murdered his brother. If there were anything left to him but to run
for it, he did not know what it was.
He found his horse, leaped into the saddle and turned out toward the
north.
"The Kid sure had his nerve, running right up to the window after
Charley dropped," he muttered, with the abrupt beginning of the first
bit of admiration he had ever felt for a man whom he had appraised as
even lower in the scale than "Rattlesnake" Pollard.
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