"Holden, two years ago in Frederickstown, you killed a man." "I'm taking you in to stand trail for murder, even if we have to walk across that desert." " Mr. Paladin." " Hey Boy." "Where is E. R?" "The sage Yang Ti has said that a man who is blind may get scent the truth." "Obviously Yang Ti was a man of some discernment." "Yes, maybe, but he was killed by a jealous husband." " Evening." " Good evening." "Perhaps you'd share a liqueur with me," "I'm not here to enjoy myself, Mr. Paladin." "No?" "Would you..." "Would you kill a man named Bram Holden for me?" "Bram Holden?" "Bram Holden of Thornberg?" " Yes." " No." "No, I don't take money for killing men." "And if I did, Bram Holden would be one of the last I'd try." "Now, listen." "Two years ago in Frederickstown, he beat my husband to death with a roofer's hatchet, and he's never been tried for this." "Here is an indictment from a Grand Jury." "This is a warrant for his arrest." "This is an order for arraignment." "And there is documentary evidence to convict him." "Now, what is Thornberg, a foreign country?" "They say none of these things are any good in Thornberg." "Not without a passport from Bram Holden." "All right, I'll be completely honest with you." "I have paid two men to try to kill Holden." "Now, one of them tried, and I have never heard from him." "And the other just took my money and left." "Now, Mr. Paladin, you are my last hope." "Thornberg is a foreign country and Bram Holden is its king." "You tried to pay for the assassination of a king in his own stronghold." "Then you won't do it either, huh?" "No." "No, I won't kill him." "But I will bring him back for trial." "But..." "Well, I must tell you I can only pay your expenses." "I gave all my money to the others." "There's a very small reward posted." "Well, let's do this one for you." "Hey Boy?" "Brandy." "Bram Holden?" "Hey, are you drunk or something?" "This is Mr. Holden's private office." "Barber?" "They must have lit out the back way." "Come on." "Who are you?" "My name's Paladin." "Now get mounted." "What do you want?" "Money?" "Then what?" "Two years ago at Frederickstown you killed a man named James Raleigh." "Could be, what about it?" "I'm taking you in to stand trial for that murder." "You are crazy." "Now, you get mounted, or you get tied over that saddle." "You don't know me, mister." "Ha!" "Ha!" "Now, you listen to me." "There's not going to be any easy way out of this for you." "I told you they'd catch up to us." "Hey!" "If you're going to kill me, you'd better do it right now." "But you're not going to kill me, are you?" "Because you got no place to run now." "Unless you want track out 80 miles across that open desert." "Now, you're making sense." "Now, I told you they're ain't gonna be any easy way out of this for you." "Come on." "I knew you were crazy." "I knew you were crazy." "A man can't live half a day out there." "Way them prints blown off, it's been three, maybe four hours, since they took off into there." "And the way them dunes roll through there, you could spend half your life searching and not find a herd of elephants." "That's a mean way to die, too." "I ain't about to track out in there and find out." "I got ideas on dying more comfortable than that." "Water." "Water." "Gone." "It's gone." "Come on." "Come on." "Get up." "Come on." "That's 100%% % goat milk broth." "I curdle it right in here myself." "You see if that don't perk up the hairs up on you." "Tasty, ain't it?" "Well, that does have quite a taste." "You got my guns?" "Stowed away tight inside." "I ain't exactly the trusting type." "I wouldn't have come by the name of Possum if I was." "You'd have been cooked dead before another sun fell." "Him, too." "He's still ticking." "You or him the law man?" "Neither one." "Ain't make no never-mind to me." "Another swill of this?" "No thanks." "Prospecting?" "Manner of speaking, but you wasn't." "No." "Possum, what's the nearest point of civilization?" "Oh, Puma Gulch." "A trading store there." "Except I ain't heading that way." "I'd be happy to pay you." "No." "Three hundred dollars?" "Five hundred dollars?" "Well, I..." "Delphium Encyclopedia of Knowledge." "I bought the whole set off a salesman in Tucson." "I read me up to the M's before my eyes watered out." "Maybe you or him might read me along the way?" "A thousand dollars?" "Said I wasn't going that way." "And I figure I owe you a reason." "White Moon." "Martha's what I called her." "I took her from the Chinooks when she was fourteen." "Box of Georgia tobacco and two brass fancy buttons off an old lodge suit I had me." "That's what she cost, and she was worth it, every bit of it." "Chinooks, they never wanted her, being she was half white the way she was." "Only fourteen, but she worked that mine pulley like a husky boy, and she heeled better than any mule I ever seen." "Come to feel for that woman, I did." "Want some crawlie stew?" "Plenty of good white lizard meat in it." "Not right now, thanks." "Well, I had me a brother, too." "Arnie was his name." "Blood for blood, same as mine." "You best water him down, son." "Winter, summer, winter again, we dug for ore." "Then he just up and plain stole it, and took Martha." "When she sickened up on the trail, he left her to die rather than face me." "So I've been hunting after him ever since, and that's just what I'm doing this very day." "So, like I say, you're welcome." "Take of my food, share my wagon." "Ride my way, or walk your own." "Which is your way?" "Thornberg." "You hear that, Paladin, Thornberg." "What's this?" "Cornshine or something?" "Looks like we won't be a traveling to Thornberg after all." "I been a long time finding for you, Arnie." "Arnie?" "That's Arnie?" "I never been a four square Providence man, but I guess that's what it was." "Something just took me and my team by the nape and set us tracking off this way." "I guess I just couldn't be cheated out of you dying before I could get to you, Arnie." "What's he talking about?" "I'm talking about killing you, Arnie." "Only not quick." "You understand me, Arnie?" "Stop calling me that." "My name is Bram Holden and I own this country, you silly old desert coot," "I own right where you're standing." "So get that gun out of my face." "You ain't gonna nerve me into killing you." "Not yet." "Martha was two days of dying out on that trail where you left her." "You figure you can last that long, Arnie?" "Arnie?" "I don't know you." "I don't know any Arnie." "Tell him who I am, Paladin." "Well, the name he uses is Bram Holden." "Maybe now, but he's Arnie." "Nine years, a man don't forget his brother." "Well, your brother he may be, but I'm taking him in to stand trial for murder." "Oh, I suspect they give him a trial." "And when I'm through with him, you're welcome to take back whatever's left." "You're making yourself a big mistake if you do anything to me." "Well, it has been nine years." "You like a little huckleberry squeezings?" "Cut your thirst, Mr. Holden." "That's more like it." "Left-handed." "That's the first test." "So I'm left handed." "That don't prove nothing." "Yeah, Arnie was left-handed." "Possum, this your trial?" "Well, it's part of it." "He's just plain crazy." "Yeah, I guess maybe I am." "Nine years I've been thinking of different ways to kill you." "That's how I go to sleep at night, just dreaming on it." "Remember that Blackfoot medicine man we found all staked out just short of dead, on Turpin flats?" "I don't remember no medicine man, and I don't remember you." "They skinned him alive in strips." "Left just enough so the sun could get at him and the crawlies and the ants." "Shut up." "You hear me?" "Just shut up." "Yeah, then I got me a book and I read about the things they do in China and lands like that." "Nine years gives a man plenty of time to think, Arnie." "Paladin, you've been paid to take me in for trial." "Tell him." "It's the truth." "You don't have to do nothing to me, Possum." "He gets me there, they're gonna hang me anyway." "Oh, I'm gonna give you a trial." "It's only fair, when I figure the things I'm gonna do to you." "Well, Arnie's trail went through" "El Paso, Nogales, Tucson." "It kind of petered out on me in a town called Frederickstown." "You ever been there?" "No." "No, I never..." "All right." "All right, so I have been there." "What about it?" "It don't prove nothing." "I'm not his brother." "I'm not Arnie!" "What are you gonna do?" "I read me a book about some Arab slave traders." "I don't want to hear about it." "What they used to do when a spike got white hot." "I don't want to hear about it." "I can get you money, a lot of money." "You think I stole your ore?" "Well, you tell me how much it was, I'll pay you three times over." "I promise." "Now, these Arab fellas, when they get a spike burning hot then..." "Why do you want to keep talking that way?" "Ain't you got no decency?" "Why don't you kill me outright?" "You got a gun." "Go on, kill me, please." "Possum, there's no key to these." "What are you doing to do with me when you start you work on him?" "Oh, I ain't got no quarrel with you." "Kill him you got to kill me." "You know the things he's done, and then don't let me take my pleasure on him?" "Possum, he's not worth your life." "I'd hate to make that the price of taking him back for trial." "All right, Arnie, you better hike up your sleeve." "No, you ain't gonna chop me!" "Oh, don't matter now if they hang me four times over, now that I've done the one thing I've been living to do." "You gonna take me in?" "Yeah." "Will you read to me out of my books on the way in?" "Yeah, I'll read to you out of the books." ""The skull indicates outwardly" ""the quality of the mind within." ""Calm or disturbed." "Home abiding or criminal." ""Mad or sane." ""The skilled phrenologist can prescribe for ills," ""warn of criminal intention, or diagnose the killer."" "You reckon it's so?" "It's possible." " What's next?" " Phlogiston." "Oh, yeah." "Phlogiston is the modern principle of fire as a material substance, derived from the Greeks." "Possum, this encyclopedia was published in 1763." "Well, science don't change none." "Get on with her." "Antiphlogiston is a substance which combines with phlogiston to produce fire and heat." "Whoa." "Whoa." "Too bad we didn't have a few more days." "We could have got through every last book, couldn't we?" "We need a Federal Marshall." "I reckon, you'll find one in Elko." "About thirteen miles." "Thank you." " That's him." " That's who?" "Arnie, that's him." "Didn't you see the way he's wearing his gun?" "Left-handed." "I finally tracked him down." "Give me my..." "I got to kill him." "Possum, that guns not loaded." "Oh, let me go." "I gotta kill him." "Possum, what about the body in the back of this wagon?" "Who?" "Don't you understand?" "I'm afraid I do." "Now get giddap." "Ha!" ""Have Gun Will Travel"" "Reads the card of a man" "A knight without armor in a savage land" "His fast gun for hire" "Heeds the calling wind" "A soldier of fortune" "Is the man called Paladin" "Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?" "Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home"