"It's still night." "Almost dawning." "Now, I had a tooth pulled just six days ago, and it didn't quit hurting till yesterday." "You let me hurt for eight years, Paladin." ""I promise you a fair trial."" "That's what you said, wasn't it?" "Bartlett, I made you a promise and I couldn't keep it." "Now, do you want to get a little as well as give some, or do you want to let the matter drop?" "I've been on good behavior for eight years." "Eight long years, and my disposition never was that good." "But now, I'm going home." "I guess that saves you a beating." "All I want now is a good, hot bath." "With soap." "Bartlett." "I promised your wife I'd see you home alive." "When I've done that, I've settled it." "Was her mind set on me coming home?" "No sense being proud then, is there?" "If I got myself killed on the way home," "Emmy never would forgive me." "Or you." "How is she?" "She's not a girl anymore." "She's a handsome woman." "Anything else?" "My son." "His name is John Tecumseh Bartlett." "And he looks like you." "What does he think of me?" "Like his mother, he thinks you're ten feet high." "Gotomana." "Blackfoot loosely translated, that means "heavenly place."" "Huh?" "Want to pull up while I tighten up my saddle a little?" "I smell death on this street." "Three horses down there." "How many streets like this have I rolled down?" "I'd hoped it was all done with." "We could pull back, pick up the railroad about Kingstown." "I'd rather not." "I'd like to get that bath." "I won't think you're a coward if you back away." "I'll think you're a fool if you don't." "Well, it's a cinch to be one of them in that hotel." "Be another one up high." "Problem's that third one." "He gonna be in an alley someplace, or is he gonna be up high, too?" "You know them?" "No, I'd say he hired them." "Maybe gave them a hundred dollars each." "Do I know you, friend?" "You did once." "But it's been three years." "Harry Kessler." "Now I remember." "A cup of water bring me all this help and good intention?" "I was sure thirsty." "Could a man get a good, hot bath around here anywhere?" "You sure can." "I'll take her." "Let's go." "Kessler." "We were in there together, all right." "The guards were having a little entertainment." "A dull day." "They salted our food real good, and then didn't give us any water for a long time." "Then put us in a cell together and told us to have at it." "With a cup of water to the winner." "We fought for almost an hour." "I gave him the water." "I always was a perverse contentious man." "Did you know that?" "You finish that bath, and I'll take you on home." "30 miles of rough country." "We won't be home before noon tomorrow." "Meanwhile, the old man's out there somewhere." "Bartlett." "Yeah?" "The old man's dead." "For how long?" "Two months." "How many men did he hire to kill me?" "Five, I think." "He left all his money to his nephew in New Hampshire." "Stated that he didn't have any living sons." "Also, in the will, he bequeathed this to you." "With the provision that I deliver it." "Yeah." "A Winchester Model 76." "A Remington-Keene." "And a brass ten-gauge shotgun shell." "That's the three we met in town." "That short one's a flat.44 for a Henry rifle." "Yeah, I've used them." "But I don't recognize this." "That's for a Walker Colt." "1838 model." "Most powerful hand weapon ever built." "They used that in the War of the Texas Liberation, didn't they?" "That's right." "40 years." "Do you think that thing will still shoot?" "Somebody thinks it will." "Well, that leaves two." "Do you think, uh, Emmy will be glad to see me?" "I think so." "I don't know." "I was a fairly good-looking man when I left her." "30 and not even able to grow a good beard." "But I always had a nice, pleasant smile for the ladies." "Even my own wife." "Go to sleep." "What if she don't want me anymore?" "If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a moaning man!" "Now go to sleep." "I used to look out, mornings like this, through barred windows and think of you, Paladin." "Moving free." ""Give yourself up," you said." ""You done what you had to do." "And I'll give you a fair trial."" "You did say that, didn't you?" "I said it." "The old man's money and influence made it a lie." "The times I could've killed you with my bare hands." "That first year was bad." "I fought them real hard, and they held all the bullets." "But a man's will will just take him so far." "Kept you alive." "I know it kept me alive, but how long?" "That old man owned everything between here and the Mexican border." "When I come back from the war, he said I was a traitor." "And tried to run me out." "Did you see those two buttes to the west?" "That's where him and his boys caught up with me." "And that's where I killed his two sons." "Well, should we ride?" "This is my land." "If you laugh, today I won't even care." "I don't believe I'll laugh." "I rode with Jeb Stuart during the war." "Did you know that?" "A lot of good men rode with Jeb Stuart." "Why not you?" "We rode." "We really rode." "Rode right into Custer at Gettysburg." "That was a bad day." "Now, do you want to keep on riding or shall we just sit here and talk?" "I want some buckwheat cakes smothered in fresh butter and drowned in sugar syrup." "I wonder if Emmy can still cook." "I think so." "I swear I can smell that pot roast for supper." "From here?" "Why, sure." "God gave me a good nose to smell with." "A large one." "He didn't slight you none neither, come to think of it." "The house is this way." "You want to race, or you just use that fine-looking animal to sit on?" "Hello, Emmy." "My husband's ten feet tall." "You want to kiss me, mister, you stand that high." "I'm home, Emmy." "It's been a long time." "I love you, Emmy." "I love you, Mr. Bartlett." " Ouch." " That's for riding in here like a wild man and scaring the chickens out of a week's laying, and scaring me out of my wits, and-and raising the dust all over my new wash, and losing your temper and almost getting yourself killed," "and being put away for eight years!" "I'm home." "I did say I'd bring him back, and this time I kept my word." "Thank you." "Come here, Johnny." "Johnny, this is your pa." "Are you really him?" "Your mother says so, son." "John." "And she don't lie." "Sir, did you really kill five men in one day, and all alone?" "That story has been stretched some in the telling, son." "And killing a man is not a good thing, not unless you have no choice at all." "Would you shake my hand, boy?" "See anything?" "No." "I did hear a hoof strike a stone a while back." "Shod hoof?" "Possibly." "Couldn't have been a cow?" "It could have been a jackrabbit kicking a stone." "Could have been the wind." "These nights seem colder than they used to." "I've made up my mind about you, Paladin." "Well, now that is interesting." "You'll do, friend." "When doomsday comes, you'll do." "I guess that's my way of saying thanks." "It's just that I didn't want to get myself killed yet and leave Emmy and the boy alone." "I'd hoped you'd stay for a while." "I never did ask a man anything before in my life, and I don't like the feeling." "Bartlett..." "I owe you eight years." "And somehow, I don't think he'll wait that long." "You said "he" instead of "they." Why?" "Two men, two bullets..." "I don't know." "Why?" "You lived around here for a while." "You tell me why." "The old man wasn't an Apache, although he did think and act like one." "He sure had a perverse sense of humor." "Four mounted warriors, riding the vengeance trail, leading a fifth horse which carries only the spirit of those to be avenged, hmm?" "Five bullets but only four men, and you looking over your shoulder for the rest of your life, wondering about that fifth warrior." "If he's coming, if he even exists." "The old man would've done it that way." "He was a king, and he wanted me to bend my knee and wouldn't understand that I wouldn't do that." "That I was born free." "I'm going for a ride." "About dawn, if you should step out of that door, they might take the bait." "I'll do that." "At least they've kept away from Emmy and the boy until now." "Come back to me, John Bartlett." "There's wheat cakes and sugar syrup for breakfast." "You go back to bed, Emmy." "It's still early." "Then there was two." "I couldn't tell for sure." "Sounded like an army." "Did you bury them?" "Yes." "They both used Henrys." "One bullet, two rifles." "Same make, same caliber." "That old man was a charmer." "And that was some shot you made." "That wasn't my rifle." "Emmy made that." "Well, you do have yourself a wife." "There is still the fifth bullet." "You better have some breakfast before you go." "I'll stay on a while if you like." "No, thanks." "I think maybe that old man's having the last joke on me." "Well, at the best, there are Indians and wolves and snow over your head a good part of the time." "Hunger, loneliness, the danger of falling off a horse when you're alone, flash floods in the spring, marauders, and all the great unknowns of living, and still, Bartlett, it isn't as if you were alone." "Emmy will have breakfast ready pretty soon, and she'll want you to eat with us." "You tell Emmy no, but thank her for me." "I'll tell her." "Sometime, come back." "Sometime, perhaps." "When the name and the face no longer evoke a sting of memory, but only the knowledge that a pledge long broken has finally been healed." ""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" "Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?"