Kitabı oku: «Gold», sayfa 15
Caught absolutely by surprise, the “Hound” stared fascinated into the pistol barrels, his jaw dropped, his face redder than ever, his eyes ridiculously protruding. I had recovered my wits and had backed against the bulletin board, a revolver in either hand, keeping an eye on the general company. Those who had burst in with the bully had stopped frozen in their tracks. The others were interested, but not particularly excited.
“I’m going to stay in this camp,” Johnny advised crisply, “and I’m not going to be bothered by big bluffs like you. I warn you, and all like you, to let me alone and keep away from me. You stay in camp, or you can leave camp, just as you please, but I warn you that I shoot you next time I lay eyes on you. Now, about face! March!”
Johnny’s voice had an edge of steel. The big man obeyed orders implicitly. He turned slowly, and sneaked out the door. His followers shambled toward the bar. Johnny passed them rather contemptuously under the review of his snapping eyes, and they shambled a trifle faster. Then, with elaborate nonchalance, we sauntered out.
“My Lord, Johnny!” I cried when we had reached the street, “that was fine! I didn’t know you had it in you!”
“Damn the luck!” he cried, kicking a tin can. “Oh, damn!”
He muttered to himself a moment, then turned to me with humorous despair.
“What a stupid, useless mess!” he cried. “The minute that fellow came into the room I saw we were let in for a row; so I went at it quick before he had got organized. He didn’t expect that. He thought he’d have to work us into it.”
“It certainly got him,” said I.
“But it just starts us all wrong here,” complained Johnny. “We are marked men.”
“We’ll just have to look out for him a little. I don’t believe he’s really dangerous. He looks to me a lot like a bluffer.”
“Oh, him!” said Johnny contemputously, “he doesn’t worry me any. It’s all the rest of them. I’ve practically challenged all the hard cases in camp, don’t you see? I’m no longer an inconspicuous newcomer. Every tough character with any real nerve will want to tackle me now, just to try me out.”
From the impulsive and unanalytical Johnny this was surprising enough, and my face must have showed it.
“I’ve seen it worked out in my part of the country,” he explained sombrely. “I don’t want to bother with that sort of thing. I’m a peaceable citizen. Now I’ve got to walk around on tiptoe all the time watching for trouble. Oh, damn!”
“If you’re afraid─” I began.
“I’m not afraid,” said Johnny so simply that I believed him at once. “But I’m annoyed. And of course you recognized that barkeeper.”
“I thought I’d seen him before, but I don’t remember just where.”
“He’s one of those fellows we fired out of our canoe down at Chagres. You can bet he doesn’t love us any!”
“You move along to Porcupine to-morrow,” I suggested. “I can look after Yank all right. They won’t bother me.”
Johnny walked for some steps in silence.
“No, they won’t bother you,” he repeated slowly.
He thought for a moment, then he threw back his head. “But look here, Jim,” he said briskly, “you forget. I told that fellow and his friends that I was going to live in this place. I can’t leave now.”
“Nonsense,” said I. “What do you care for that gang?”
“It would look like running away. No, I certainly don’t intend to leave now.”
CHAPTER XXIX
THE CHALLENGE
We went out to see Yank, with the full intention of spending the evening and cheering him up. He was dozing, restless, waking and sleeping by fits and starts. We sat around in the awkward fashion peculiar to very young boys in the sickroom; and then, to our vast relief, were shoved out by Señora Moreña. With her we held a whispered conversation outside, and completed satisfactory arrangements for Yank’s keep. She was a chuckling, easy-going, motherly sort of creature, and we were very lucky to have her. Then we returned in the gathering dusk to our camp under the trees across the way.
A man rose from a seat against a tree trunk.
“Good evenin’, stranger,” said he.
“Good evening,” responded Johnny guardedly.
“You are the man who stuck up Scar-face Charley in Morton’s place, ain’t you?”
“What’s that to you?” replied Johnny. “Are you a friend of his?”
His habitual air of young carelessness had fallen from him; his eye was steady and frosty, his face set in stern lines. Before my wondering eyes he had grown ten years older in the last six hours. The other was lounging toward us–a short, slight man, with flaxen moustache and eyebrows, a colourless face, pale blue eyes, and a bald forehead from which the hat had been pushed back. He was chewing a straw.
“Well, I was just inquirin’ in a friendly sort of way,” replied the newcomer peaceably.
“I don’t know you,” stated Johnny shortly, “nor who you’re friends to, nor your camp. I deny your right to ask questions. Good night.”
“Well, good night,” agreed the other, still peaceable. “I reckon I gather considerable about you, anyhow.” He turned away. “I had a notion from what I heard that you was sort of picked on, and I dropped round, sort of friendly like; but Lord love you! I don’t care how many of you desperadoes kill each other. Go to it, and good riddance!” He cast his pale blue eyes on Johnny’s rigid figure. “Also, go to hell!” he remarked dispassionately.
Johnny stared at him puzzled.
“Hold on!” he called, after a moment. “Then you’re not a friend of this Hound?”
The stranger turned in slow surprise.
“Me? What are you talking about?” He looked from one to the other of us, then returned the few steps he had taken. “I believe you don’t know me. I’m Randall, Danny Randall.”
“Yes?” puzzled Johnny.
“Of Sonoma,” added Randall.
“I suppose I should know you, but I’m afraid I don’t,” confessed Johnny.
Randall turned back to the tree beneath which lay our effects.
“I believe I’ll just have a cup of coffee with you boys,” said he.
We blew up the fire, scoured the frying pan, made ourselves food. Randall brought a pail of water. We all ate together, without much conversation; then lit our pipes and piled on dry wood to make a brighter friendship fire.
“Now, boys,” said Randall, “I’m going to ask you some questions; and you can answer me or not, just as you please. Only I’ll say, it isn’t just curiosity.”
Johnny, who was studying him covertly from beneath the shadow of his hat, nodded briefly, but said nothing.
“How long have you been in the mines?”
“Since March.”
“Since March!” echoed Randall, as though a little bewildered at this reply. “Yet you never heard─What camp?”
Johnny studied a while.
“Hangman’s Gulch for six weeks,” said he. “Then just prospecting.”
“Where?”
“I don’t believe I’ll answer that question,” replied Johnny slowly.
“But somewhere back in the hills?” persisted Randall.
“Somewhere back in the hills,” agreed Johnny.
“Seems to me─” I broke in, but Johnny silenced me with a gesture. He was watching Randall intently, and thinking hard.
“Then you have been out of it for three months or so. That explains it. Now I don’t mind telling you I came up here this evening to size you up. I heard about your row with Scar-face Charley, and I wanted to see whether you were just another fighting desperado or an honest man. Well, I’m satisfied. I’m not going to ask you if you have much gold with you, for you wouldn’t tell me; but if you have, keep it with you. If you don’t, you’ll lose it. Keep in the middle of the road, and out of dark places. This is a tough camp; but there are a lot of us good men, too, and my business is to get us all to know each other. Things are getting bad, and we’ve got to get together. That’s why I came up to see you. Are you handy with a gun?” he asked abruptly.
“Fair,” said Johnny.
“You need to be. Let’s see if you are. Stand up. Try to get the draw on me. Now!”
Johnny reached for his pistol, but before his hand was fairly on the butt, Randall had thrust the muzzle of a small revolver beneath his nose. His pale blue eyes had lit with concentration, his bleached eyebrows were drawn together. For an instant the thought flashed across my mind that this was a genuine hold-up; and I am sure Johnny caught the same suspicion, for his figure stiffened. Then Randall dropped his hand.
“Very pretty,” said Johnny coolly. “How did you do that? I didn’t catch your motion.”
“From the sleeve,” said Randall. “It’s difficult, but it’s pretty, as you say; and if you learn to draw from the sleeve, I’ll guarantee you’ll get the draw on your man every time.”
“Show me,” said Johnny simply.
“That gun of yours is too big; it’s a holster weapon. Here, take this.”
He handed Johnny a beautifully balanced small Colt’s revolver, engraved, silver-plated, with polished rosewood handles. This he showed Johnny how to stow away in the sleeve, how to arrange it, how to grasp it, and the exact motion in snatching it away.
“It takes practice, lots of it, and then more of it,” said Randall. “It’s worse than useless unless you get it just right. If you made a mistake at the wrong time, the other man would get you sure.”
“Where can I get one of these?” asked Johnny.
“Good!” Randall approved his decision. “You see the necessity. You can’t. But a derringer is about as good, and Jones has them for sale. Now as for your holster gun: the whole trick of quick drawing is to throw your right shoulder forward and drag the gun from the holster with one forward sweep. Don’t lift it up and out. This way!” He snapped his hand past his hip and brought it away armed.
“Pretty,” repeated Johnny.
“Don’t waste much powder and ball shooting at a mark,” advised Randall. “It looks nice to cut out the ace of hearts at ten yards, but it doesn’t mean much. If you can shoot at all, you can shoot straight enough to hit a man at close range. Practise the draw.” He turned to me. “You’d better practise, too. Every man’s got to take care of himself these days. But you’re not due for trouble same as your friend is.”
“I’m obliged to you,” said Johnny.
“You are not. Now it’s up to you. I judged you didn’t know conditions here, and I thought it only right to warn you. There’s lots of good fellows in this camp; and some of the hard cases are a pretty good sort. Just keep organized, that’s all.”
“Now I wonder who Danny Randall is!” speculated Johnny after our visitor had departed. “He talked as though we ought to know all about it. I’m going to find out the first fellow I get acquainted with.”
Next morning we asked the Moreñas who was Danny Randall.
“El diabolo,” replied Moreña shortly; and trudged obstinately away to his work without vouchsafing further information.
“Which is interesting, but indefinite,” said Johnny.
We found Yank easier in body, and embarked on the sea of patience in which he was to float becalmed until his time was up. In reply to his inquiries as to our plans, we told him we were resting a few days, which was the truth. Then we went up to town and made two purchases; a small tent, and a derringer pistol. They cost us three hundred and fifty dollars. It was the quiet time of day; the miners had gone to work, and most of the gentlemen of leisure were not yet about. Nevertheless a dozen or so sat against the walls, smoking paper cigarettos. They all looked at us curiously; and several nodded at Johnny in a brief, tentative sort of fashion.
The rest of the day, and of several days following, we spent in putting up our tent, ditching it, arranging our cooking affairs, building rough seats, and generally making ourselves comfortable. We stretched these things to cover as long a space of time as possible, for we secretly dreaded facing the resumption of the old grind, and postponed it as long as we could. A good deal of the time we spent at Yank’s bedside, generally sitting silent and constrained, to the mutual discomfort of all three of us, I am sure. At odd intervals we practised conscientiously and solemnly at the “draw.” We would stand facing each other, the nipples of our revolvers uncapped, and would, at the given word, see who could cover the other first. We took turns at giving the word. At first we were not far apart; but Johnny quickly passed me in skill. I am always somewhat clumsy, but my friend was naturally quick and keen at all games of skill or dexterity. He was the sort of man who could bowl, or play pool, or billiards, or anything else rather better than the average accustomed player the first time he tried. He turned card tricks deftly. At the end of our three days’ loafing he caught me at the end of his pistol so regularly that there ceased to be any contest in it. I never did get the sleeve trick; but then, I never succeeded in fooling the merest infant with any of my attempts at legerdemain. Johnny could flip that little derringer out with a twist of his supple wrist as neatly as a snake darts its forked tongue. For ten minutes at a time he practised it, over and over, as regularly as well-oiled machinery.
“But that proves nothing as to how it would work out in real action,” said Johnny thoughtfully.
The afternoon of the third day, while we were resting from the heat beneath the shade of our tree, we were approached by three men.
“Howdy, boys,” said the first. “We hain’t seen you around camp lately, and thought mebbe you’d flew.”
“We are still here,” replied Johnny with smooth politeness. “As you see, we have been fixing our quarters to stay here.”
“Scar-face Charley is here, too,” observed the spokesman, “and he wanted me to tell you that he is going to be at the Bella Union at eight this evenin’, and he wants to know, will he see you? and to come heeled.”
“Thank you, gentlemen,” replied Johnny quietly. “If by accident you should happen to see the desperado in question–who, I assume, can be in no way your friend–I hope you will tell him that I, too, will be at the Bella Union at eight o’clock, and that I will come heeled.”
“You’ll be comin’ alone?” said the man, “or p’rhaps yore friend─”
“My friend, as you call him, is simply a miner, and has nothing to do with this,” interrupted Johnny emphatically.
“I thank you, sir,” said the spokesman, rising.
The other two, who had throughout said no word, followed his example.
“Do you know Danny Randall?” asked Johnny as they moved off.
If he had presented his derringer under their noses, they could not have stopped more suddenly. They stared at each other a moment.
“Is he a friend of yours?” inquired the spokesman after an uncertain moment.
“He likes fair play,” said Johnny enigmatically.
The trio moved off in the direction of town.
“We don’t know any more about Danny Randall than we did,” observed Johnny, “but I tried a shot in the dark.”
“Nevertheless,” I told him, “I’m going to be there; and you want to make up your mind to just that.”
“You will come, of course,” agreed Johnny. “I suppose I cannot keep you from that. But Jim,” he commanded earnestly, “you must swear to keep out of the row, unless it develops into a general one; and you must swear not to speak to me or make any sign no matter what happens. I must play a lone hand.”
He was firm on this point; and in the end I gave my promise, to his evident relief.
“This is our visitors’ day, evidently,” he observed. “Here come two more men. One of them is the doctor; I’d know that hat two miles.”
“The other is our friend Danny Randall,” said I.
Dr. Rankin greeted us with a cordiality I had not suspected in him. Randall nodded in his usual diffident fashion, and slid into the oak shadow, where he squatted on his heels.
“About this Scar-face Charley,” he said abruptly, “I hear he’s issued his defi, and you’ve taken him up. Do you know anything about this sort of thing?”
“Not a bit,” admitted Johnny frankly. “Is it a duel; and are you gentleman here to act as my seconds?”
“It is not,” stated the downright doctor. “It’s a barroom murder and you cannot get around it; and I, for one, don’t try. But now you’re in for it, and you’ve got to go through with it.”
“I intend to,” said Johnny.
“It’s not precisely that,” objected Danny Randall, “for, d’ye see, he’s sent you warning.”
“It’s about all the warning you’ll get!” snorted the doctor.
“There’s a sort of rule about it,” persisted Randall. “And that’s what I’m here to tell you. He’ll try to come up on you suddenly, probably from behind; and he’ll say ‘draw and defend yourself,’ and shoot you as soon after that as he can. You want to see him first, that’s all.”
“Thanks,” said Johnny.
“And,” exploded the doctor, “if you don’t kill that fellow, by the Eternal, when you get a chance─”
“You’ll give him a pill, Doctor,” interrupted Randall, with a little chuckle. “But look here,” he said to Johnny, “after all, this sort of a mess isn’t required of you. You say the word and I’ll take on this Scar-face Charley and run him out of town. He’s a good deal of a pest.”
“Thank you,” said Johnny stiffly; “I intend to paddle my own canoe.”
Randall nodded.
“I don’t know as we can help you any more,” said he. “I just thought you ought to be on to the way it’s done.”
“I’m obliged to you,” said Johnny warmly. “The only doubt in my mind was when I was privileged to open.”
“I’d pot him through the window with a shotgun first chance I got,” stated the doctor; “that sort of a ruffian is just like a mad dog.”
“Of course you would, Doctor,” said Randall with just the faintest suspicion of sarcasm in his voice. “Well, I guess we’ll be toddling.”
But I wanted some information, and I meant to have it.
“Who is this Scar-face Charley,” I asked.
“Got me,” replied Randall; “you fellows seemed to recognize him. Only he’s one of the gang, undoubtedly.”
“The gang?”
“Oh, the general run of hangers-on. Nobody knows how they live, but every one suspects. Some of them work, but not many. There are a heap of disappearances that no one knows anything about; and every once in a while a man is found drowned and floating; floating mind you!”
“What of that?” I asked; “drowned bodies usually float.”
“There’s no miner in these diggings but has gold enough in his belt to sink him. If a man floats, he’s been robbed, and you can tie to that reasoning. And the fellows are all well mounted, and given to mysterious disappearances.”
“In other words,” broke in the doctor, “they are an organized band of cut-throats and highway robbers making this honest camp a headquarters.”
“Pshaw, Doctor,” said Randall, “that’s by no means certain.”
“It’s certain enough,” insisted the doctor.
“I should think the miners would drive them out,” I said.
“Drive them out!” cried the doctor bitterly; “they’re too busy, and their own toes haven’t been trodden on, and they’re too willing to let well enough alone so as not to be interrupted in their confounded digging for gold.”
“They’re not organized and they are quite justly unwilling to get in a row with that gang when they know they’d be killed,” stated Randall quietly. “They’re getting on ‘well enough,’ and they’ll continue to be run by this lot of desperadoes until something desperate happens. They want to be let alone.”
The doctor recovered his equanimity with an effort.
“They present the curious spectacle,” said he thoughtfully, “of the individual man in a new untrammelled liberty trying to escape his moral obligations to society. He escapes them for a while, but they are there; and in the end he must pay in violence.”
Randall laughed and arose.
“If the doctor is going to begin that sort of thing, I’m going,” said he.
Our visitors took their departure.
“Oh, Doctor, one moment!” I called; then, as he returned. “Tell me, who and what is Danny Randall?”
“Danny Randall,” said the doctor, a humorous twinkle coming into his eyes, “is a gentleman of fortune.”
“And now we know a lot more than we did before!” said Johnny, as we watched the receding figures.
CHAPTER XXX
THE FIGHT
We ate a very silent supper, washed our dishes methodically, and walked up to town. The Bella Union was the largest of the three gambling houses–a log and canvas structure some forty feet long by perhaps twenty wide. A bar extended across one end, and the gaming tables were arranged down the middle. A dozen oil lamps with reflectors furnished illumination.
All five tables were doing a brisk business; when we paused at the door for a preliminary survey, the bar was lined with drinkers, and groups of twos and threes were slowly sauntering here and there or conversing at the tops of their voices with many guffaws. The air was thick with tobacco smoke. Johnny stepped just inside the door, moved sideways, and so stood with his back to the wall. His keen eyes went from group to group slowly, resting for a moment in turn on each of the five impassive gamblers and their lookouts, on the two barkeepers, and then one by one on the men with whom the place was crowded. Following his, my glance recognized at a corner of the bar Danny Randall with five rough-looking miners. He caught my eye and nodded. No one else appeared to notice us, though I imagined the noise of the place sank and rose again at the first moment of our entrance.
“Jim,” said Johnny to me quietly, “there’s Danny Randall at the other end of the room. Go join him. I want you to leave me to play my own game.”
I started to object.
“Please do as I say,” insisted Johnny. “I can take care of myself unless there’s a general row. In that case all my friends are better together.”
Without further protest I left him, and edged my way to the little group at the end of the bar. Randall nodded to me as I came up, and motioned to the barkeeper to set me out a glass, but said nothing. Ours was the only lot away from the gaming tables not talking. We sipped our drink and watched Johnny.
After surveying coolly the room, Johnny advanced to the farther of the gambling tables, and began to play. His back was toward the entrance. The game was roulette, and Johnny tossed down his bets methodically, studying with apparent absorption each shift of the wheel. To all appearance he was intent on the game, and nothing else; and he talked and laughed with his neighbours and the dealer as though his spirit were quite carefree.
For ten minutes we watched. Then a huge figure appeared in the blackness of the doorway, slipped through, and instantly to one side, so that his back was to the wall. Scar-face Charley had arrived.
He surveyed the place as we had done, almost instantly caught sight of Johnny, and immediately began to make his way across the room through the crowds of loungers. Johnny was laying a bet, bending over the table, joking with the impassive dealer, his back turned to the door, totally oblivious of his enemy’s approach. I started forward, instantly realized the hopelessness of either getting quickly through that crowd or of making myself heard, and leaned back, clutching the rail with both hands. Johnny was hesitating, his hand hovering uncertainly above the marked squares of the layout, in doubt exactly where to bet. Scar-face Charley shouldered his way through the loungers and reached the clear space immediately behind his unconscious victim. He stopped for an instant, squared his shoulders, and took one step forward. Johnny dropped his chips on the felt layout, contemplated his choice an instant–and suddenly whirled on his heel in a lightning about-face.
Although momentarily startled by this unexpected evidence that Johnny was not so far off guard as he had seemed, the desperado’s hand dropped swiftly to the butt of his pistol. At the same instant Johnny’s arm snapped forward in the familiar motion of drawing from the sleeve. The motion started clean and smooth, but half through, caught, dragged, halted. I gasped aloud, but had time for no more than that; Scar-face Charley’s revolver was already on the leap. Then at last Johnny’s derringer appeared, apparently as the result of a desperate effort. Almost with the motion, it barked, and the big man whirled to the floor, his pistol, already at half raise, clattering away. The whole episode from the beginning occupied the space of two eye-winks. Probably no one but myself and Danny Randall could have caught the slight hitch in Johnny’s draw; and indeed I doubt if anybody saw whence he had snatched the derringer.
A complete silence fell. It could have lasted only an instant; but Johnny seized that instant.
“Has this man any friends here?” he asked clearly.
His head was back, and his snapping black eyes seemed to see everywhere at once.
No one answered or stirred. Johnny held them for perhaps ten seconds, then deliberately turned back to the table.
“That’s my bet on the even,” said he. “Let her roll!”
The gambler lifted his face, white in the brilliant illumination directly over his head, and I thought to catch a flicker of something like admiration in his passionless eyes. Then with his left hand he spun the wheel.
The soft, dull whir and tiny clicking of the ball as it rebounded from the metal grooves struck across the tense stillness. As though this was the releasing signal, a roar of activity burst forth. Men all talked at once. The other tables and the bar were deserted, and everybody crowded down toward the lower end of the room. Danny Randall and his friends rushed determinedly to the centre of disturbance. Some men were carrying out Scar-face Charley. Others were talking excitedly. A little clear space surrounded the roulette table, at which, as may be imagined, Johnny was now the only player. Quite methodically he laid three more bets.
“I think that’s enough for now,” he told the dealer pleasantly, and turned away.
“Hullo! Randall! hullo! Frank!” he greeted us. “I’ve just won three bets straight. Let’s have a drink. Bring your friends,” he told Randall.
We turned toward the bar and way was instantly made for us. Johnny poured himself a big drink of whiskey. A number of curious men, mere boys most of them, had crowded close after us, and were standing staring at Johnny with a curiosity they made slight attempt to conceal. Johnny suddenly turned to them, holding high his whiskey in a hand as steady as a rock.
“Here’s to crime, boys!” he said, and drank it down at a gulp. Then he stood staring them uncomprisingly in the face, until they had slunk away. He called for and drank another whiskey, then abruptly moved toward the door.
“I think I’ll go turn in,” said he.
At the door he stopped.
“Good-night,” he said to Randall and his friends, who had followed us. “No, I am obliged to you,” he replied to a suggestion, “but I need no escort,” and he said it so firmly that all but Randall went back.
“I’m going to your camp with you, whether you need an escort or not,” said the latter.
Without a word Johnny walked away down the street, very straight. We hurried to catch up with him; and just as we did so he collapsed to the ground and was suddenly and violently sick. As I helped him to his feet, I could feel that his arm was trembling violently.
“Lord, fellows! I’m ashamed,” he gasped a little hysterically. “I didn’t know I had so little nerve!”
“Nerve!” suddenly roared Danny Randall; “confound your confounded impudence! If I ever hear you say another word like that, I’ll put a head on you, if it’s the last act of my life! You’re the gamest little chicken in this roost, and I’ll make you beg like a hound if you say you aren’t!”
Johnny laughed a little uncertainly over this contradiction.
“Did I kill him?” he asked.
“No, worse luck; just bored him through the collarbone. That heavy little derringer ball knocked him out.”
“I’m glad of that,” said Johnny.
“Which I am not,” stated Danny Randall with emphasis. “You ought to have killed him.”
“Thanks to you I wasn’t killed myself. I couldn’t have hoped to get the draw on him with my holster gun. He is as quick as a snake.”
“I thought you were going to bungle it,” said Randall. “What was the matter?”
“Front sight caught at the edge of my sleeve. I had to tear it loose by main strength. I’m going to file it off. What’s the use of a front sight at close range?”
I heaved a deep sigh.
“Well, I don’t want ever to be so scared again,” I confessed. “Will you tell me, by all that’s holy, why you turned your back on the door?”
“Well,” said Johnny seriously, “I wanted to get him close to me. If I had shown him that I’d seen him when he first came in the door, he’d have opened fire at once. And I’m a rotten shot. But I figured that if he thought I didn’t see him, he’d come across the room to me.”
“But he nearly got you by surprise.”
“Oh, no,” said Johnny; “I saw him all the time. I got his reflection from the glass over that picture of the beautiful lady sitting on the Old Crow Whiskey barrel. That’s why I picked out that table.”
“My son,” cried Danny Randall delightedly, “you’re a true sport. You’ve got a head, you have!”
“Well,” said Johnny, “I figured I’d have to do something; I’m such a rotten shot.”
