Why should they be least ready at the grade? Because Chick said so?

If Brazil thought you had even a halfway better chance there he’d be readier than he was ever ready!

Why is being on the ground an advantage? Your back’s to him then!

He breathed in and out slowly and thought, more calmly: You’re facing him now. You’re looking right at him and you even know when he scratches himself.

He glanced over the side of the wagon. The trail dropped off abruptly, slanting steeply for twenty-five or thirty feet. Then thick brush. Brush and scrub pine and rock and beyond that a second slope that was more gradual.

But how do you make the Winchester wait five seconds?

He noticed loose stones along the edge of the trail and he thought: One of those could stop him long enough.

But how do you know there’ll be one where you jump off? We could come to a bare stretch just as-

He stopped…his eyes on Brazil. He watched Brazil raise the rifle barrel and rest it in the crook of his left arm. His right hand came up and across his chest and two fingers hooked into the shirt pocket to bring out the tobacco sack.

You’re looking at it, Bowen thought, knowing it, being sure of it, and feeling the excitement inside of him now and trying not to show it.

You don’t sit and think about it. You go or you don’t go.

The crook of Brazil’s left arm squeezed the barrel tightly as he poured tobacco into the troughed square of cigarette paper. Both of his hands were busy; both of them away from the trigger of the Winchester.

You go!

It was in his mind and out of his mind as he pushed himself from the wagon and went over the side of the ledge, not looking at Brazil, but hearing suddenly a hoarse yell as he hit the slope falling, sliding, raising dust, the abrupt leg shock of reaching the bottom, and now rolling and hearing another yell from above and another and lunging into the brush as a shotgun blast ripped the mesquite branches above him.