The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [65]
“You’re not going to get a hell of a lot older,” Patman answered. “But I’ll tell you this. We didn’t bring Quaine and his Apaches here. You can believe that or not. I don’t much care. Just all of a sudden I don’t think you’re doing anybody much good being alive.”
De Sana’s mouth eased slightly as he smiled. “Why don’t you let your boy do his own fighting?” And with the words he looked calmed again, as if he didn’t care that a trap was tightening about him. Patman noticed it, because he had seen the panic on his face when he entered. Now he saw this calm returning and wondered if it was just a last-act bravado. It unnerved him a little to see a man so at ease with a gun turned on him and he lifted the pistol a foot off the table to make sure the outlaw had seen it.
“I’m not blind.”
“Just making sure, Lew,” Patman drawled.
De Sana seemed to relax even more now, and moved his hand to his back pocket, slowly, so the other man wouldn’t get the wrong idea. He said, “Mind if I have a smoke?” while he dug the tobacco and paper from his pocket.
Patman shook his head once from side to side, and his eyes squinted at the outlaw, wondering what the hell he was playing for. He looked closely as the man poured tobacco into the creased paper and didn’t see any of it shake loose to the floor. The fool’s got iron running through him, he thought.
De Sana looked up as he shaped the cigarette. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said.
“About the boy? He can take care of himself,” Patman answered.
“Why isn’t he here, then?” De Sana said it in a low voice, but there was a sting to the words.
Patman said, “He’s out courting your girlfriend,” and smiled, watching the dumbfounded expression freeze on the gunman’s face. “You might say I’m giving him a little fatherly hand here,” and the smile broadened.
De Sana’s thin body had stiffened. Now he breathed long and shrugged his shoulders. “So you’re playing the father,” he said. Standing half-sideways toward Patman, he pulled the unlit cigarette from his mouth and waved it at the man seated behind the table. “I got to reach for a match, Dad.”
“Long as you can do it with your left hand,” Patman said. Then added, “Son.”
De Sana smiled thinly and drew a match from his side pocket.
Patman watched the arm swing down against the thigh and saw the sudden flame in the dimness as it came back up. And at that split second he knew he had made his mistake.
He saw the other movement, another something swinging up, but it was off away from the sudden flare of the match and in the fraction of the moment it took him to realize what it was, it was too late. There was the explosion, the stab of flame, and the shock against his arm. At the same time he went up from the table and felt the weight of the handgun slipping from his fingers, as another explosion mixed with the smoke of the first and he felt the sledgehammer blow against his side. He went over with the chair and felt the packed-dirt floor slam against his back.
His hands clutched at his side instinctively, feeling the wetness that was there already, then winced in pain and dropped his right arm next to him on the floor. He closed his eyes hard, and when he opened them again he was looking at a pistol barrel, and above it De Sana’s drawn face.
Unsmiling, the outlaw said, “I don’t think you’d a made a very good father.” He turned quickly and sprinted out of the hut.
Patman closed his eyes again to see the swirling black that sucked at his brain. For a moment he felt a nausea in his stomach, then numbness seemed to creep over his body. A prickling numbness that was as soothing as the dark void that was spinning inside his head. I’m going to sleep, he thought. But before he did, he remembered hearing a shot come from outside, then another.
CIMA QUAINE WALKED over to him when he saw the boy look up quickly.