The Last Gentleman

take a special course in management at the Harvard Business School.”
    â€œGood Lord, what do I care what Lamar does?”
    The engineer kept a wary eye on him. “And that while he is in Boston, Myra is going to stay with Rita in New York.”
    â€œMyra Thigpen? I see. Do you want to know something? It figures.”
    â€œRita is already gone. Myra is leaving after—afterwards.”
    â€œSo Rita is gone.” Sutter gazed into the empty sky, which instead of turning rosy with sunset was simply going out like a light.
    As the other watched him, Sutter began idly picking off dudes, sighting the Colt at one after another of the passing women, idly yet with a regardlessness which was alarming. It was a very small thing, no more than that Sutter did not take pains to conceal the pistol from the women, but for some reason the engineer’s heart began to pound against his ribs.
    â€œOn the other hand,” Sutter was saying between shots, “it is also possible to die without significance and that is hardly an improvement of one’s state of life. I knew a man once, not my own patient I am glad to say, who was sitting with his family one Sunday evening watching Lassie, who had befriended a crippled duck and was protecting him from varmints. During the commercial he got up and got out his old army forty-five. When his family asked him what he intended to do, he told them he was going outside to shoot a varmint. So he went outside to the garage and got into the family’s second car, a Dodge Dart, and blew the top of his head off. Now that’s a lot of damn foolishness, isn’t it?”
    â€œYes sir,” said the engineer, who was now more irritated than frightened by Sutter’s antics with the pistol. Nor did he any longer believe Sutter’s dire little case histories. “The other thing I want to tell you is that—” he said as Cookie rang second call with the branding iron. “Kitty said to tell you that the, ah, legal difficulties in your case have been cleared up and that—”
    â€œYou mean the coast is clear.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œPoppy has fixed things up and Doc Holliday can come back home to Valdosta.”
    â€œSir, you have an enormous contribution to make—” began the engineer.
    Sutter rose so suddenly that the younger man was afraid he’d made him angry again. But Sutter’s attention was elsewhere.
    Following his eye, the engineer alighted upon one of the guests who had left the O.K. Corral next door and was presently coming abreast of Doc’s cottage. To judge from her Levis, which were stiff and blue, she was a new arrival. The old civil sorrowful air of the East still clung to her; she walked as if she still wore a dress. Though she had hooked her thumbs into her pockets, she had not yet got into the way of making herself free of herself and of swinging her legs like a man. She even wore a cowgirl hat, not at all the thing here, which had fallen down her back and was supported by a string at her throat. But she was abstracted and did not care, and instead of ambling along with the others, she went musing alone, tongue set against her teeth and hissing a solitary little tune. There was about her the wryness and ruefulness of a twenty-eight-year-old who has been staggered by a not quite mortal blow and has her own woman’s way of getting over it and in fact has already done so. She knew how to muse along a path and hiss a little tune and keep herself to herself.
    Sutter rose creakily but cheerfully and rubbed his dry reedy hands together. “I do believe it is time to eat. Will you join me?”
    â€œNo sir. I promised Jamie I’d be back by seven.”
    To his relief, Sutter left the Colt in his chair and had, apparently, forgotten about it
    â€œI’ll be in by nine.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€œBarrett, I think you’d better call the family.”
    â€œBut I just—”
    â€œTell them they’d better get out here.”
    â€œYes sir.”
    â€˜Tell them I said so.”
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œSomebody will have to be here to take care of things after Jamie’s death.”
    â€œI’ll be here.”
    â€œSome member of the family.”
    â€œYou’ll be here.”
    â€œNo, Barrett, I’ll not be here.”
    â€œWhy not?” asked the other angrily—he had had enough of Sutter’s