we may end up dead with a bullet in the head. - for arthur.
"Why, you know how to handle a gun, I reckon. Though if we do this right we can take that camp without firin a single shot, which I s’pose would be the better end of the deal anyway seein as I’m awfully low on bullets at the moment.”
If he’d just gone and shown his face around camp some more as of late, that problem might’ve taken care of itself; but Arthur wasn’t all too keen on what amounted to near-constant bickering these days. Gone so long, he could just sigh it all out; like an ill-begotten humor lodged in his spleen that no amount of snake-oil could cure better than a lungful of forest air, clean and crisp and cathartic.
He believed he could breathe more easily out here; and if he believed that, he might as well will his body into following suit. It was worth a shot, at least. He owed himself that much.
And he owed this feller a smooth haul, if only so they could both move on in the next town. He would fill up his cartridges, Arthur reckoned, and whatever Jerry Lee had planned next was gonna be Jerry Lee’s problem. He looked him over, bow slung over his right shoulder, and then he nodded towards the camp some two hundred feet north of them.
“Lemme take care of that and we’ll call it even, yeah? And stop wettin your pants, you won’t get shot.” And added, somewhat awkward: “Not on my watch anyway.”
