PAGE 6
Afraid of a Gun
by
“I want the two biggest handguns you got, Jeff, and a mess of cartridges. Fix ’em up for me and I’ll be back to get ’em in a little while.”
He knew that Jeff answered him, but he could not separate Jeff’s words from the roaring in his head.
The warmer air of the street once more. The ankle-deep dust of the roadway pulling at his feet. The opposite sidewalk. Doc Johnstone’s door. Somebody helping him up the narrow stairs. A couch or table under him; he could see and hear better now that he was lying down.
“Fix me up in a hurry, Doc! I got a lot of things to tend to.”
The doctor’s smooth professional voice:
“You’ve nothing to attend to for a while except taking care of yourself.”
“I got to travel a lot, Doc. Hurry!”
“You’re all right, Sack. There’s no need of your going away. I saw Yust down you first from my window, and half a dozen others saw it. Self-defence if there ever was a case of it!”
“‘Tain’t that!” A nice man was Doc, but there was a lot he didn’t understand. “I got a lot of places to go to, a lot of men I got to see.”
“Certainly. Certainly. Just as soon as you like.”
“You don’t understand, Doc!” The doc was talking to him like he was a child to be humoured, or a drunk. “My God, Doc! I got to back-track my whole life, and I ain’t young no more. There’s men I got to find in Baltimore, and Australia, and Brazil, and California, and God knows where—all. And some of ’em will take a heap of finding. I got to do a lot of shootin’. I ain’t young no more, and it’s a mighty big job. I got to get going! You got to hurry me up, Doc! You got to…”
Owen Sack’s voice thickened to a mumble, to a murmur, and subsided.