Page:Frederick Faust--Free Range Lanning.djvu/73

Rh "that a man needs when he's in trouble: a gun that's smooth as silk, a hoss full of running, and a friend."

For the gun Andy had his Colt in the holster, and he knew it like his own mind. There were newer models and trickier weapons, but none which worked so smoothly under the touch of Andy. Thinking of this, he produced it from the holster with a flick of his fingers. The sight had been filed away. When he was a boy in short trousers he had learned from Uncle Jasper the two main articles of a gun fighter's creed—that a revolver must be fired by pointing, not sighting, and that there must be nothing about it liable to hang in the holster to delay the draw. The great idea was to get the gun on your man with lightning speed, and then fire from the hip with merely a sense of direction to guide the bullet. Just as one raises his hand and points the finger. As a rule, one will point with astonishing closeness to the object, but it needs a wrist of iron, and many a long year of practice, to do that accurate pointing when there is a .45 gun in the hand. Uncle Jasper had given him that training, and he blessed the old man for it now.

He had a gun, therefore, and one necessity was his. Sorely he needed a horse of quality as few men needed one. And he needed still more a friend, a haven in time of crisis, an adviser in difficulties. And though Andy knew that it was death to go among men, he knew also that it was death to do without these two things.

He believed that there was one chance left to him, and that was to outdistance the news of the two killings by riding straight north. There he would stop at the first town, in some manner fill his pockets with money, and in some manner find both horse and friend.

Andrew Lanning was both simple and credulous; but it must be remembered that he had led a sheltered life,