Showdown

Chapter Twenty-seven

You could barely get into Daly's tiny hospital room for all the good stuff people had brought him. You had flowers, you had several boxes of candy, you had enough magazines to give you cataracts, you had new shirts, new jeans, new boots, a new hairbrush, and on and on.

And you had Lucy.

She was in his room every chance she got. They had this odd sort of crush on each other, and Prine didn't care at all.

He'd sit there and watch Daly flirt with her and then watch her flirt right back. And all he'd do was smile.

All this passed, of course, in time.

Daly left the hospital—he still had bursitis and all the other itises, but his shooting arm was all right again, anyway—and Lucy and Prine got married, and Lucy in the middle of the night woke up one time and knew that she was with child. And Bob Carlyle retired from being deputy. And Daly decided it was time for him to retire, too, so Prine was made sheriff.

He needed the raise in pay. That October, Lucy got pregnant again.