"¶ ¶" "Afternoon." "I'm trying to get across your fence." "Is there a cattle gate or do I just jump over it?" "You got business on this side?" "Only pleasure, friend." "San Francisco, but your fence is in my way." "You know what?" "You'd have to see Mr. Advent about that." "He's the owner." "We just work here." "All right." "Where's Mr. Advent?" "Come to think of it," "I guess you'd have to be on this side to do that, though." "I see." "Hate to tell you, but there ain't no gate." "So I reckon you'll have to go around." "Around?" "Yep." "Mr. Advent's instructions were most solemn." "He said anything on our side stays on our side." "Anything out stays out." "That's a true fact." "Well, I do appreciate your courtesy." "¶ ¶" "Wait a minute!" "That's six dollars worth of calf." "You think it's worth killing a man for?" "That calf's on my land." "Therefore it's mine." "I'm just protecting my property." "Aah..." "Now, according to your principle, that gun no longer belongs to him." "All I want is what's mine." "If that calf's on my land, it's mine." "Well, as far as I can see, only half of this calf's on your property." "No, that full calf is mine." "He gets hisself caught in the fence, he's still mine." "The other half is on this side." "Well..." "I don't hold with calf stealing." "Unless you're doing the taking." "All right, gentlemen." "Let's cut the calf in half, according to the principle of Solomon, in the case of the two mothers who claim the same child." "Would you, sir, like to do the cutting?" "No, sir!" "Yeah." "Yeah, I guess that would be true." "Half a calf is better than none, huh?" "Yeah, uh-huh." "Yah!" "Yeah." "You Mr. Advent?" "That's right." "Well, behold, Mr. Advent, the calf has returned to the right side." "The side of justice." "Righteousness." "I hold you responsible for the death of an animal that belonged to me." "Like the man said, a six-dollar calf." "You go to blazes." "I'm going to collect for that calf, Lee." "I'm gonna collect." "A man that rigid..." "Build a fence all the way across a valley with only one little jog in it?" "That's not a fence." "That's an act of insanity." "That little jog in the fence, that's what's poisoning him." "Sometimes I think, "Take all the land he wants." "It's just a straight fence."" "I'd give it to him, too." "Exceptin' I promised not to." "There was two brothers of the same father." "George, George Advent." "You just see him here at the jog." "He wanted the fence." "Sam, Sam Advent, the other brother, he didn't care." "So, they set out from the opposite ends of the valley, laying out that fence." "When they come to the meeting point, why, the fence didn't meet." "So they just joined up with that jog." "Poisoned George." "Poisoned him." "Ruined his sense of propriety, or something." "Mind you, there was nothing on one side of the fence that wasn't on the other, but George, he just couldn't stand it." "Come about hard feelings between the brothers." "Sam, he wouldn't sell out to George, and he wouldn't let him straighten that fence line." "Well, sir... after a while, George got so ornery that Sam just couldn't stand it." "Still, in all, he didn't feel like giving in to him." "So he lead out." "Left his side of the fence to rot." "Well, I run into Sam one day, and we swapped an old gold claim of mine." "The deal was even Steven, providing I never let that fence get straightened out." "Well, I've kept my word." "And now, all George's hate is let out on me." "You all alone?" "Well, me and my boy Lawson, yeah." "Well, I think you're going to need some help with Mr. Advent." "Oh, son." "Why, I fight with Advent every other Tuesday." "I'd be lonely without Advent to fight." "He always like this?" "No, no." "You've shaken him up some." "I tell you, you stay the night, eh?" "Lawson!" "Lawson, come out here." "We got company." "This is Mr. Paladin." "This is my boy Lawson." "By adoption, sort of." "Howdy." "Lawson." "Uh, he don't hold no papers on me." "There ain't nothing legal, no matter what he says." "I don't have to stay adopted less'n I want to." "He don't own me." "No, I don't own him." "I wouldn't want to." "Who'd want to own scrubbed timber?" "Lawson, you go in there and fix another place at the table." "Mr. Paladin's staying the night." "How come on my night to cook?" "Well, I wanted to get an outside opinion on whether you are the worst cook he ever saw or not." "It's a good thing for you it's me cooking and not him tonight," "Mr. Paladin." "He'd poison you for sure." "Go in there and fix that place before I soak ya." "Just don't you forget I can walk out of here and leave you as lonely as a timber wolf any time I want." "Just don't you forget that!" "Okay!" "Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea." "That's a good boy." "It's just that we ain't got no woman around here to kind of soften us up, and make us mind our manners." "We just talk that way." "That's the way we are." "I found him." "I used to do a lot of prospecting, you know?" "And I found him wandering around in the mountains." "He'd run away from the Injuns." "They'd killed off his family and took him to raise." "Well, first off, he didn't want to come with me." "He said he didn't see no sense of running away from the Injuns because they was too bossy, and then turning himself over to me." "Well, I could see his point." "So I fixed up that little deal with him." "No papers, mind you." "No papers." "I figure, what we got is stronger than papers." "Lawson!" "You get that water hotted up while we take care of the horses, huh?" "Well..." "Fit for swill for hogs, huh?" "You can let him talk for himself." "Now, don't you let him talk you into nothin'." "You tell the truth, Mr. Paladin." "Swell cooking, ain't it?" "Well..." "Tell him the truth." "Well, to tell the truth, um... that other stuff that we had..." "Oh, that there was pot roast." "Yeah, well, some of it was roasted and some of it wasn't." "And the potatoes?" "Some of them were cooked to a crisp and some of them were raw." "You must have a secret to get both ends that way in the same pot." "Well, how 'bout this here pie?" "Yeah, tell him about the pie." "Well, the pie, uh, it's soggy on the outside and, uh, bitter on the inside." "Well, then, you'd better wash that down with some coffee." "I made some good coffee here." "Yeah." "Strong." "You got to do the dishes!" "That's the truth!" "Got to do the dishes!" "Yeah, that's the way it is." "Whoever complains about the cooking has got to do the dishes." "Peaceful." "I got the boy." "Ain't never gonna get rich, but we live pretty well." "Aside from teasing each other about the cooking." "And aside from Advent the other side of the fence." "Well, Mr. Advent may not stay on the other side of that fence." "He might be working himself up to obey." "Maybe he's forgot and he's just content to have me and the fence to occupy his mind." "Man capable of shooting an animal out of pure spite is capable of doing anything at all." "Might be." "Might be at that." "I reckon we'll just have sleep light, eh?" "Yeah, well..." "Mr. Lee, a fence has two sides." "Even this one." "I'm agreeable with that." "Why don't you give in?" "I've seen fences that didn't bother me none." "They wind, the same way the land winds." "Nothing in nature is that straight." "I wouldn't let Advent straighten that jog in the fence now, even if I hadn't promised his brother not to." "That little crook in the fence, it pleasures me." "Would you give in?" "I don't know." "Well, I thought about it once." "Changed my mind, though." "Oh, why?" "Well, I got to thinking about how straight that blamed fence would be and I couldn't sleep a wink all night." "I'll keep an eye on things out here." "Why don't you get yourself some rest." "Yep." "I thought I heard something, too." "There's horses coming this way." "That's what 'tis, then" "That boy's still got Injun ears." "That's far enough!" "Lee..." "I've come to collect for the calf." "Mr. Advent, I didn't build that fence, but it's there." "And this side is my property." "If you or your men take one step nearer my house," "I'll blow you apart." "Anybody who owes me pays me." "Come back tomorrow, Advent, and we'll talk sane, man-to-man." "Lawson, get water!" "I got some water, Mr. Paladin!" "Here's the water, Mr. Paladin!" "Come back here!" "Come back here!" "All alone now, Mr. Advent." "So go away and leave us be." "Leave us be and we'll both forget this night." "I never thought I'd pass on this soon." "And I thought I still had some years left." "I ain't never made out no will." "You-you got a knife on you, ain't you?" "I ain't got the strength to ask twice." "My knife's in your pocket, Mr. Lee." "Oh." "Give me your wrist, boy." "Give it." "Ain't no papers between us, boy." "But you and me is kin." "One flesh and one blood." "And you're my witness." "You seen." "This boy is bone, flesh and blood, my son and heir." "And all I own..." "or possess, all that's owing to me is rightfully his." "And I... being of sound mind do so de-declare." "Lawson." "Lawson, maybe an Indian wouldn't cry about this." "But you're not an Indian anymore." "You're the son of Abraham Lee." "And you can cry for him." "Hold it." "Step back." "She's straight!" "If Sammy were only here to see this!" "She's straight!" "At last, she's straight!" "She's gonna be..." "This is all mine again." "I'm getting everything straight." "And-and you're trespassing." "We're not trespassing yet." "We're gonna bury Mr. Lee on his own land." "You don't understand." "My daddy divided this right down the middle." "This was all a mistake." "And I'm gonna rectify it." "Lawson, get the shovels!" "Now, you don't know where my boundaries are, 'cause I didn't have them posted." "Well, I'm telling you where they are." "Now, get off!" "Your fence is gonna keep growing till everything in the whole world's inside them." "What do you have inside those fences?" "3,000 head of cattle and still you're not satisfied?" "You had to covet one more calf, and if you'd gotten that, you wouldn't have had enough!" "You hold it right there!" "Now, you bury that old coot anywhere you want to but not on my land." "I'm gonna bury that old coot on his land." "Mr. Advent, your greed increases by what it feeds on." "You'll never have enough." "Never." "You would not be satisfied until you had six feet of earth, all your own." "Lord, I commend to your mercy this man who lies in the ground he loves, safe on his own land." "And, Lord, I commend to your mercy this man also, this man who lies in the earth as he lived- half on his own land and half on his neighbor's." "You know, Lawson, if you're lucky... by the time you're a grown man, that fence will all be rusted away." "It's my land, ain't it?" "I can do whatever I want with it, can't I?" "What do you want with a fence?" "Well, I want to keep the jog in it, that's what I want." "Want to keep that old jog in there." "Well, you reckon he'd like that?" "I reckon he'd like that." "Lawson." "What do you want?" "You know, it's time now that you started to think about the people you're gonna have to meet and get along with as you go on through life." "The idea of hospitality is that your guests should enjoy themselves." "You're making enemies." "Well, what are you getting at?" "Well, do you suppose" "I could give you some lessons in elementary stew?" "¶ "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. ¶"