They saw too, the Reverend Bond’s wife come rushing down St. Virgil Street with Louisa Harper. They watched the white-faced girl as she stood on the edge of the square, staring open-mouthed at the four figures on it. And they wondered.
He was still on his knees when Julia reached him. Both his arms were crossed tightly over his chest and stomach like those of a little boy who had eaten too many green apples and fallen sick. His blood was running over his arms and dripping on the ground.
She stood before her husband for several moments, one hand covering her lips, in her throat a sickened moaning as she looked down at him.
Abruptly, then, she gasped his name and fell to her knees beside him.
Slowly, in tiny, jerking movements, he raised his face to her. It was the face of a man who could not understand what had happened to him. For almost ten seconds, he stared at her, eyes dazed and unmoving, mouth hanging open.
Then, without a sound, he fell against her, dead.
She held his body in her arms, her face distorted by grief, dry sobs stabbing at her throat, hands stroking numbly at his back. She would remember for the rest of her life how it felt to have his warm blood running across her hands like water.
Fifty yards away, a father was leading his son, speaking to him in a stiff, proud voice.
“You’re a brave boy,” he said. “You did what had to be done. You’re a very brave boy. We’re all proud of you.”
He failed to notice the look his son directed at him; one of sickened hatred and disgust.
He only became aware of what his son was feeling when Robby jerked his left arm free and staggered away, moving past Louisa without a word, his face a rigid mask of pain as he strode unevenly across the square.
It was three minutes after three P.M., September 14, 1879. The end of the third day.
Richard Matheson, The Gun Fight
(Series: # )
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