Chapter 9, Part Two

The eyewitnesses said they had never seen anything like it. Jack Miles drew and shot so rapidly that a blink would not have only missed the draw, but the shot one immediately succeeding the first. Yet, in that short blink, one would have also missed Jack Miles dropping to his knees, letting the gun hit the deck, and grabbing his wrist, numb from the shock. For the first shot was not Jack’s, but Tim’s. A bystander remarked that the victor of the duel must have known beforehand when Miles was to pull his gun, because he could not have possibly reacted that fast. Tim Wheeler had no comment.

He took Jack Miles back to the town of his crimes, and saw him hanged. Shortly thereafter, Tim Wheeler, the friendly, affable, talkative farmboy mysteriously transformed into the only man to have ever outdrawn the most feared man in the country became Sheriff of a little town in the middle of Missouri.

The time had come for the small-town sheriff to meet a man with a grudge as large as New York City.