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156 Tamale Ridge by: Chuck Cusimano

felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to beat this man but he wanted to force the fight with me and I

knew I wasn’t going to get whipped.

“Just quit,” I told him. “You’re going to get hurt if you come at me again.”

“Romaldo’s not scared of you GRINGO!”

“Then take your whipping like a man!” I said.

This time when he came at me I punched him square in the face and hit him two more times

before he could fall all the way down. The fight was over.

I didn’t feel good about it but there wasn’t any to avoid it.

CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Billy Watkins lurked around the flat, staying on the fringe of trees that bordered the big flat.

He held a rifle in his hands and waited for a chance to put a bullet in the big man’s back that had

whipped him. He wanted Lucy’s attention only for one reason. She couldn’t stand Billy and it

showed every time he came into the Café. The talk was all over town, that the big Navajo had

knocked him out with one punch and he still had to hear all about his swollen, black eye.

He would be patient and get his chance to get even. After all this would not be the first man he

had killed.

He still remembered how he got his hands on some of Emilio Sanchezs’ coyote poison and

waited until someone else was around the place to take the blame then putting some in that old

Trents’ coffee cup. He would have put some in the Mexicans cup too but that Juan fella wasn’t

around when he got his chance to sneak into the cabin. He barely got out of the cabin and back

in some brush before Trent and the government trapper named Emilio Sanchez, went in to sit

down to eat together. Billy Watkins was itching to kill again.

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