He wanted to show them to us."
"Yes. You let him see you admired him."
"I liked the things on his stall."
"Well, he has killed nearly thirty people."
"In duels?"
"Good Lord! NO! Assassinations. His shoemaker annoyed him by
sending in a bill. He went to the man's stall, found him standing
with his child in his arms and blew out his brains. He blundered
against a passer-by in the road and shot him. Those are his feats.
Sometimes his pistols go off in the bazaar just by accident."
"Does nobody kill him?"
"I wanted to," said Benham and became thoughtful for a time. "I
think I ought to have made some sort of quarrel. But then as I am
an Englishman he might have hesitated. He would have funked a
strange beast like me. And I couldn't have shot him if he had
hesitated. And if he hadn't--"
"But doesn't a blood feud come down on him?"
"It only comes down on his family. The shoemaker's son thought the
matter over and squared accounts by putting the muzzle of a gun into
the small of the back of our bully's uncle. It was easier that
way.
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