Sinner Man

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Jim Alden stood at the bar and listened to the brash youth insult him. He sensed the drifting of men from the bar, until only he and the local hellion stood at the oak. Jim looked straight ahead, as if paying the other man no mind, but he was watching in the back-bar mirror. At the running down of the young tough’s words, silence held the saloon a moment. From outside, where evening shadows lay long over the Arizona mining town of Comstock Forge, a man pushed through the batwings.

He was in good humor, and laughing. The silence in the saloon caught and killed the laugh. The newcomer edged over to the group of men who had withdrawn from the bar.

“It’s Jim Alden,” somebody whispered to him, “the gunfighter. The man who killed Purvis and Johnston.”

Jim felt the weight of their eyes on him. He heard the man at the bar insult him with a laugh. You’re asking for it, Jim thought, and Purvis or Johnston would have killed you for what you’ve said already.

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