“They was too interested in their conversation,” Co-
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hoes said. “Family does that to you, you know. Now we can just go back to where we was.”
Ching Domino started to move toward the chuck- wagon.
“Where you going?”
“To pick up my hardware.” Domino was still staring at Cohoes and the .45. Billy had knelt down beside his dead brother.
“You can first take that hardware off the soldier boy there,” Cohoes said.
Ching Domino couldn’t believe what he had seen. Cohoes! Why, Cohoes handled that weapon like it was a part of him! But he turned his attention now to the young soldier kneeling beside Hogan. Billy got slowly to his feet.
“I’ll take that gun,” Ching Domino said. “Just unbuckle your belt and let ’er fall.”
For a moment Billy just looked at the approaching gunfighter, with Cohoes covering him from behind. He was remembering what Larry had taught him: always stay loose, use whatever cover was handy, and try to get the other fellow off balance.
“Mister,” Billy Golightly said, “you can go piss up a rope. You are not taking any gun off the United States Army.”
“Do as he says, soldier boy!”
And then Billy Golightly said something that startled him even as the words came out. “Cohoes and Domino— you are both under arrest.”
The surprise on Ching Domino’s face turned into a big grin as he closed in on Billy, and just for an instant he was in direct line with Cohoes. In that flashing moment, Billy Golightly, loose as a rope, drew, stepping to his right, and drilled Elihu Cohoes right in his gunhand. And
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in the same movement, without even a breath between, he smashed Ching Domino in the belly with the Scoff, and as the big man grunted, bending a little, he raked the gun barrel across his jaw.
Billy Golightly was well in charge of the situation when Matt Kincaid, Windy Mandalian, and the men of his own platoon rode in.
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