“The Last Shot” by Frank O’Rourke

 

John Brandon stopped that night in a stand of pines on the last, long slope above the Shovel valley, eating two sandwiches and drinking cold, flat coffee from his canteen. Darkness had settled when he spread one blanket under the pines and lay back, with the soft, grass-sweetened wind stirring the treetops above him, shaking the first dead leaves over his bed. His horse cropped grass with tired dignity about the perimeter of its stake rope. John Brandon thought of his younger brother and replaced this sad memory with the face of another man--the man he hoped to find in the town up this valley and then, forcing body and mind into rest, he slept deeply through the early fall night.

A rare short story from one of my favorite authors in the genre. This story first appeared in a 1949 issue of Esquire magazine.

It is a formulaic tale of revenge, but it is always Mr. O’Rourke’s keen observational eye that elevates.

His feel of the land, his sense of place is reminiscent of Thoreau’s; senses that truly sense, an intellect that grasps these sensations and remembers.

His grasp and feel for people is equally acute.

One feels a craftsman that was alive in the world is at the helm.

Another quill in Mr. O’Rourke’s already full cap.