Man with No Name- Removing Tuco's Bullets

  The hunter strode to the spot, bent to examine the marker. Storms and the fiercely beating sun had faded the paint but the name, Arch Stanton, was still plainly legible on the weathered headboard.

  He straightened and turned to find himself looking into the muzzle of Tuco’s pistol.

  “I am sorry about this, friend,” the bandit said, thumbing back the hammer, “but you know how it is sometimes, eh? There are two kinds of people in this world. Those with a little money and those with two hundred thousand. It is better to be one of those with two hundred thousand, eh, Whitey? This time I errs the one who is dissolving the partnership”

  He pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with an empty, metallic click.

  The hunter leaned an elbow on the headboard and watched impassively as Tuco whirled the cylinder, staring at it from bulging eyes. He slapped frantically at his gunbelt.

  “My bullets are all gone. You—you—”

  The hunter said, “I took them out last night after you went to sleep. You’re a little too handy at switching sides to suit my fancy.”

  “You could have got me killed,” Tuco yelled.

  “That would have been a pity—before you’d finished doing the heavy digging for me.” The hunter wrenched the headboard from the ground and tossed it at the bandit’s feet. “Get on with it. And use this instead of your bare hands to dig with. You’ll get the job done a lot quicker.”

- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly novel, chapter 19