"It's good your boots is on!" said P. Gibbs, ironically.
But he did not fire. Blake stood perfectly still, awaiting the shot, and
feebly laughing.
So the two remained for some moments, until Blake suddenly sank to the
floor, quite exhausted. He died within a half-hour on the saloon floor, his
head resting in the palm of P. Gibbs, who knelt by his side and tried to
revive him.
At the next dawn, a man whom they called Big Andy started East, and the
piece of paper that Blake handed to P. Gibbs was not all that he took with
him. The United States marshal arrived and duly closed Gibbs's saloon,
which reopened very shortly afterward, minus the $5,000 offer.
And Big Andy found the widow of Busted Blake, to whom he told a bit of
fiction in accounting for the legacy conveyed by him to her that would have
imposed upon the most incredulous legatee. When she had recovered from
the surprise of finding herself and her child provided with the means of
surviving the possible loss of her situation, she forgave the late Busted,
and there was a flow of tears unusual to a boarding-house parlour and
unnerving to Big Andy.
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