Rex Stout - Target Practice

Fifteen minutes later I was brought to myself by hearing an automobile stop out in front.

I turned in time to see Jim Rowley, the doctor, jump out of his runabout and dash for the door of my office. Instantly I knew. I had the door open by the time he reached it. He blurted into my face:

“Dal Willett just phoned me — there’s a man hurt down there — he told me to stop and get you—”

Without stopping for a hat I rushed out and leaped in the car. Jim must have been surprised at the readiness with which I grasped his unusual information, but I had no idea there was need of discretion. Almost immediately he was at the wheel beside me and we were off at a leap, tearing down Main Street.

“What is it — who is it — how was he hurt?” I shouted at Jim, but he was busy turning a corner and didn’t answer. It was only a ten-minute walk from my office to the livery stable, and it took the car only a space of a dozen breaths. Before I knew it we were there.

Tom Connolly’s buggy was out in front, with his mare breathing hard, and a crowd of boys was peering in at the big door of the stable, with a woman or two among them, while others came running down the street from both directions, shouting to one another. As the car came to a stop opposite the door and Jim leaped out with his black case in his hand, I caught sight of a group of men standing within, gathered in a close circle, and one of the stable boys running from the rear with a pail of water.

I got out of the car and started toward the crowd at the door, which was being reenforced every moment by new arrivals. The doctor had disappeared inside, and I saw the circle of men make way for him, calling, “Here he is!” There was confusion everywhere, those coming up being greeted by a chorus of cries so that nothing could be understood. I had started to enter the stable, but halted on the threshold. Somehow I didn’t want to see what was in the center of that group of men—

At that moment I heard somebody behind me say to somebody else:

“It was Mac — you know, Mr. Willett’s horse — he kicked a man — it was a stranger come to hire a rig; I don’t know his name — he kicked him clear across the stable—”

Suddenly the group of men stirred and parted, and I saw the doctor rising to his feet. One of the men turned to the throng at the door, and before he spoke I knew by the expression on his face what the doctor had said.

Into the sudden silence about the doorway came the whisper:

“He’s dead.”

That evening after I came back from a ride out to old man Hawkins’s farm I sat with Dal Willett in his office. We didn’t talk much; I could see that Dal didn’t want to, though he was glad to have me there. And when I asked a question — forced out of me by curiosity — which I perhaps should not have asked, Dal shook his head.

“Of course I knew,” he said with a certain grimness. “And I sent him back there. But somehow I don’t feel responsible. Those iron-shod hoofs were the heels of fate, that’s all. Anyway, it’s between Mac and me.”

After a long pause he added:

“And God.”