Page:Saga of Billy the Kid.djvu/254

A clatter of hoofs sounded in the street below the windows, passed into the distance, died out in dusty silence. Sheriff Garrett was off on the road to White Oaks.

Noon came. It was the dinner hour in Lincoln. Ollinger rose and stretched himself.

"I'll step over to the hotel and put on the feed-bag, Bell," he said. "Won't be gone over an hour. When I come back, you can go for grub."

He turned at the door and patted the shotgun held in the crook of his arm.

"Eighteen buckshot, Kid," he snarled. "Don't forget what I said. Make a break and you get 'em right between your shoulder blades."

On his way out of the building by the back stairs he stopped at the armoury and stood his shotgun against the wall just inside the door.

Standing at the east window, Billy the Kid watched him swagger down the road to La Rue's store. A cryptic, unpleasant little smile hung for a moment at the corner of the Kid's mouth.

The spring day was as warm as summer. Orchards about town and the fruit trees in the yards were in full bloom. Through the open window the Kid inhaled the faint fragrance of them. His ears were filled with the drowsy droning of bees. A robin was on her nest in a box-elder tree at the corner of the courthouse, her mate preening his wings on a neighbouring limb. These robins were the Kid's pets. He had seen them arrive from the South, had watched their courtship, their home-building, their start in domesticity. Every day he had saved bread from the meal which Old Man Goss brought in to him and had scattered crumbs along his window sill for the birds; and the robins had eaten his good will offerings, cocking