"Precisely, sir. The bullet smashed his arm, but it didn't touch him otherwise."
"He was dead, wasn't he?"
"Oh, yes," said Herkimer. "Very, very dead."
XIII
Adams thumbed the lighter and waited for the flame to steady. His eyes were fixed on Sutton and there was no softness in them, but there was softness and irritability and a certain faint unsureness in the man himself, hidden well, but there.
That staring, Sutton told himself, is an old trick of his. He glares at you and keeps his face frozen like a sphinx and if you aren't used to him and on to all his tricks, he'll have you thinking that he is God Almighty.
But he doesn't do the glaring quite as well as he used to do it. There's strain in him now and there was no strain in him twenty years ago. Just hardness, then. Granite, and now the granite is beginning to weather.
There's something on his mind. There's something that isn't going well.
Adams passed the lighter flame over the loaded bowl of his pipe, back and forth deliberately, taking his time, making Sutton wait.
"You know, of course," said Sutton, speaking quietly, "that I can't be frank with you."