Death's eyes glittered with the joy of combat. The sheriff's were weary with sadness.
Death moved first, his hand speeding to his gun, but with a speed almost too quick for the eye to follow, the sheriff's gun seemed to leap into his hand.
Death was flung violently backward to the ground, his gun falling from his hand, his eyes already glazing. His body twitched as two more bullets tore in him, and then he lay still.
The sheriff stood there for a moment, then slowly put his gun back into the holster.
He turned his back on the dead man and began to walk down the street.
People began to flock out of the buildings.
They watched the sheriff, their faces bright with battle lust. He did not return their glances.
The girl came out onto a porch.
The sheriff stopped in front of her. The girl's eyes were dim with tears.
The sheriff's were wide and unblinking.
An expression of contempt suddenly came into his face.
Disgust with her demand for blood, disgust for a town full of people who wanted nothing but their own form of sacrifice.
His hand moved up to his shirt and tore off the badge. He flung it into the dirt at her feet and turned away.
The girl looked down at the badge in shock, then up at the sheriff's retreating back.
She started to move after him, then stopped.
Far down the street, the sheriff was mounting his horse. He turned it toward the hills. His shoulders slumping and head bowed, wearily he moved out of their lives and into the bright, glaring sunlight, as the screen began to fade.
There was silence as the lights came up in the theater.
Rina turned to the banker, who smiled embarrassedly at her and cleared his throat.
"That's the first time a movie ever did this to me."
Oddly enough, she felt a lump in her own throat. "Me, too," she said huskily.
He took her arm.
"There's Bernie Norman over there. I want to go over and congratulate him."
They pushed their way through a crowd of enthusiastic well-wishers.
Norman was a heavy-set man with dark jowls; his eyes were bright and elated.
"How about that guy, Nevada Smith?" he asked. "Did you ever see anything like it?
Still want me to get Tom Mix for a picture?"
The banker laughed and Rina looked up at him. He didn't laugh very often.
"Tom Mix?" He chortled. "Who's he?"
Norman hit the banker on the back.
"This picture will net two million," he said happily.
"And I got Nevada Smith starting another picture right away!"
The limousine turned into a driveway at the foot of the hill. It passed under an iron gateway over which the now familiar insignia was emblazoned and began to wind its way up the narrow roadway to the top of the hill.
Rina looked out the window and saw the huge house, its white roof turning blood orange in the falling sun.
She began to feel strange.
What was she doing here?
This wasn't the Nevada she knew.
Suddenly, frantically, she opened her purse and began to search through it for Nevada's cablegram.
Then it was in her hand and she felt calmer as she read it.
She remembered sending him a wire from Switzerland last month.
It had been three years since she had heard from him. Three years in which she had kept on running.
The first six months she spent in Boston, then boredom set in. New York was next, then London, Paris, Rome, Madrid, Constantinople, Berlin.
There were the parties, the hungers, the fierce affairs, the passionate men, the voracious women.
And the more she ran, the more frightened and alone she became.
And then came the morning in Zurich when she awoke with the sun shining in her eyes.
She lay naked in bed, a white sheet thrown over her.
Her mouth was dry and parched; she felt as if she hadn't had a drink of water in months.
She reached for the carafe on the night table and when it wasn't there, she first realized she wasn't in her own room.
She sat up in a room that was furnished in expensive European fashion but wasn't familiar at all.
She looked around for her robe but there wasn't a single item of her clothing anywhere.
Vaguely she wondered where she was.