I doubt that he knew—no more than Hill Coe could have known that on that sunny, still plains morning, in perfect shooting light, the arc of his life would break.

But there it was: he missed. The bullet cut the prairie grass, fifty yards behind the wall. The twenty bottles still stood there, untouched: Katerina Garza had won the gamble.

It was so unexpected that for a moment none of us could quite believe it had happened. Had he really fired the gun and missed the bottle, or were we all in a dream?

The gunfighters were simply dumbfounded; not a word was uttered. Hill Coe glanced down at his pistol, a look of faint puzzlement on his face—it must have been hard for him to believe that the wild shot which sliced the grass had come from his own reliable gun.

I believe even Billy was embarrassed for the old marshal.

“That sure didn’t take long,” he said, looking at Joe with a crooked grin.

Pleasant Burnell came out of his shock and whirled on La Tulipe.

“This old yellow nigger caused it,” he said. “She witched Hill. We ought to drown her.”

La Tulipe smiled.

“There ain’t water enough to drown me in this country,” she said. “There ain’t wood enough to hang me, either.”

“You could die just as dead from a bullet, though,” Wild Horse Jerry pointed out. “And there’s plenty of dirt around here for making graves.”

He looked around as if he expected to be applauded for his wit.

“If there’s any graves made, you’ll be the first to get cozy in one, Jerry,” Billy Bone said. “I consider you a card cheat anyway.”

“Why, Bill, that’s a black insult,” Jerry said in an unfriendly tone.

I had a sense that a fight was looming, though no one had actually moved. Katie Garza still had her pistol in her hand. Billy motioned for me to step back, out of the field of fire.

“Don’t anybody shoot this old Yankee, now,” he said. “He’s not armed.”

Probably he had seen me take my derringers out of my boots that morning. I had never had the occasion to fire one, and they raised terrible blisters.

I don’t know what might have happened, or who might have fallen in the coming fray, if Simp Dixon hadn’t chosen that moment to wake up.

Simp, a short, fat man who could never keep his shirttails in, had been napping on a warm spot not far north of the wall. Target shooting evidently didn’t jolt his slumbers much.

Simp suddenly popped up and sauntered into our midst, his shirttails out and a bleary, hung-over look in his eye.

“Boys, if it’s my turn, I’m ready,” he said.