A Death in the House : And Other Stories

CHAPTER ONE Death Pays for an Insult

Grant Culver was walking along, minding his own business and thinking of Nancy Atwood, when the man bumped into him and sent him staggering off the sidewalk into mud that was Gun Gulch’s main street.

Culver lit flat on his back. His hat flew off and was ground beneath the wheels of a passing wagon. His carpetbag slipped out of his hand and splashed into a waterhole a good six feet away. On the porch of the Crystal Bar a crowd of loafers laughed uproariously, bent over, slapping one another on the back.

Culver sat up, the cold ooze seeping through his clothing, and eyed the laughing crowd. Sort of an initiation, he figured. A joke they played on tenderfeet.

He rose to his feet and singled out the man who had pushed him, a bear of a man who was roaring with laughter.

Culver waded to the boardwalk, mud and water dripping from his clothes. He gained the walk and stood wiping his hands on the front of his coat. The laughter quieted and the man who had bumped him turned around and faced him. Culver studied him, saw the sneer on his face.

“I presume,” Culver said, “that it was an accident.”

The man took his time in answering, his little pig-eyes small and red and watchful.

“Hell, no,” he said. “I done it on purpose.”

Deliberately, Culver wiped the back of his right hand against his coat and as the hand traveled down the fabric it became a fist, a fist that struck with savage, blistering speed.

It came so fast the man didn’t even duck. It smacked against his chin with a hollow, thudding sound to lift him from his feet and slam him back. He landed in the mud with a splash that sent yellow water geysering high into the air.

Culver snapped a quick look over his shoulder at the jaspers on the porch, but they had not moved. They stood like frozen men, waiting for the earth to open underneath their feet.

Out in the street Culver’s antagonist had lumbered upright, was heaving himself back onto the boardwalk. He stood there, shaking his hands to rid them of the clinging mud and on the porch back of Culver the silence was deep.

“You win, mister,” Culver told the muddy man. “You made a bigger splash than I did.”

The man lumbered forward a step or two, pig-eyes glaring from above the bushy beard. Then his arm was moving, coming up and crooking, pistoning down for the gun butt at his side.

Culver’s fingers snapped around his six-gun’s grip and spun it free of leather. His wrist jerked to the impact of the recoil.

Out on the sidewalk the bear-like man straightened out of his gunning crouch, straightened until it seemed that he was standing on his tiptoes, while a tiny stream of red came out of his forehead.

He tottered, the gun dropped from his fingers, then he fell, like a tree would fall, stiff and straight. His head and shoulders splashed into the mud, but his boots stayed on the sidewalk.

Culver turned to face the porch. Slowly he lifted his six and blew across the muzzle to clear away the smoke.

“Perhaps,” he suggested softly, “one of you gentlemen wouldn’t mind stepping out into the street to get my carpetbag.”

They stood still and silent, watching him with steady cold eyes, but he noticed that their hands were very careful not to move toward their belts.

Culver sighed. “I should hate to insist,” he told them.

One of them moved out of the crowd and started down the stairs, hobbling on the wooden peg that served him for a right leg. The peg tapped loudly in the silence as the man inched slowly down the steps.

“Wait a second,” Culver said sharply. “You aren’t the one to do it. You didn’t laugh half loud enough when I was lying out there.”

He singled out a man with his six-gun barrel. “Now, that gent there,” he told the crowd, “was fair beside himself. I never saw a man get so much entertainment out of such a simple thing. …”

“If you think I’m going out to get your bag,” the man roared at him, “you’re loco.”

Culver shrugged one shoulder. “I suppose you have a gun,” he said.

He saw the man’s face go white and drawn.

He blustered. “If you think. …”

“Shoot or wade,” Culver told him, almost indifferently.

Another man spoke quietly, sharply. “For God’s sake, Perkins, go and get it. You wouldn’t have a chance.”

Perkins looked around, searching the faces that ringed him in.

His shoulders drooped. “All right,” he said.

He came slowly down the steps, crossed the sidewalk, stepped gingerly out into the mud. The mud was to his knees when he reached the bag, tugged it out of the grip of the clinging gumbo and brought it back. Carefully he set it on the sidewalk, climbed the stairs again.

Culver searched the faces on the porch.

“Satisfied?” he asked.

One or two heads nodded.

“Just want to be sure no one feels he’s been slighted,” Culver told them.

No one seemed to be. He holstered the six-gun, picked up the carpetbag.

“One thing you fellows have to remember,” he told them. “It’s damn bad manners to push strangers into mud-holes.”

He turned and headed down the sidewalk, but behind him came a tapping and a hailing voice. “Just a minute, mister.”

He swung around and saw the peg-legged gent hurrying after him. “What can I do for you?” he asked.

Peg-leg fished a notebook from his pocket, flipped the pages, took a pencil stub from behind his ear and wet it on his tongue.

“I wonder if I could have your name,” he said.

Culver started at the question. “Why, I suppose you can. Culver. Grant Culver.”

The man wrote with cramped and laboring fingers.

“From where?” he asked.

“From the Mississippi,” Culver told him. “Sometimes the Missouri.”

“The jasper you smoked out,” said Peg-leg, “was Stover. He had a big time pushing people in the mud. Thought it was a joke.”

He closed the notebook and put it in his pocket, stuck the pencil stub behind his ear. “Thank you very much,” he said and started to turn away.

“Say, wait a second,” Culver told him. “What’s all this about?”

“Vital statistics,” Peg-leg said.

“You mean you get the names of everyone who comes to town.”

“Most of them,” Peg-leg said. “Once in a while I miss a few.”

“Have you got a Nancy and Robert Atwood? They should have come in yesterday.”

Peg-leg got out his notebook, thumbed it through. “Yep, here they are. Got in yesterday. Staying at the Antlers Hotel just down the street. Gal’s a looker. Brother’s an engineer and damn poor poker player.”

He snapped the book shut, put it in his pocket. “That will be a buck,” he said.

“A what?”

“A buck. A dollar. A cartwheel. For information. I don’t give out information free of charge.”

Culver gasped. “Oh, I see,” he said. He took a dollar from his pocket, handed it to the man. He took it, touched his ragged hat by way of thanks.

“Anytime you want to know something just come to me,” he said. “If I don’t know, I’ll find out.”

“I wonder—” Culver began.

“Yes. What is it? Want to know something else?” Peg-leg’s hand was dipping in his pocket for the book.

Culver shook his head. “Nope. Just skip it. Some other time, perhaps.”

“Okay,” Peg-leg said cheerfully. He turned around and hobbled down the street.

Culver stared after him, scrubbing his chin thoughtfully with his hand. Then he picked up his bag and headed down the street toward the Antlers Hotel.

Gun Gulch was a seething brew of humanity turned mad by the gold-germ running in its veins. Its one main street was churned to a strip of paste-like, sucking mud by chugging wagon wheels, by the pounding, straining hoofs of horses bringing in the freight that built the false-front stores and stocked them with the needs of the frontier brood.

Back in Antelope town, Culver had been told in way of warning:

“Gun Gulch is a tough town. You walk in the middle of the street and you mind your business.”

And that, he thought, standing at the window of his room, was right. Walk in the middle of the street, unless you got pushed off. Deliberately, by a man with a black beard and pig-eyes that watched every move you made.

The name of the place had been the Crystal Bar. That would be Hamilton’s place. Hamilton might have heard of Farson, might be able to tell him something of him. Certainly, if Farson passed through Gun Gulch, Hamilton would have known it.

Culver frowned, thinking back on his past associations with Hamilton. A man that made a little shiver run up your shoulder-blades. A man whose handshake was like grabbing a flabby fish that was sweating just a little. And the worst of it was that if Hamilton had no word of Farson, he would have to ask the man for a job. That dollar he had given Peg-leg had been almost his last.

Maybe Peg-leg had Farson in his notebook. He had almost asked him and then had decided against it. Hamilton would keep his mouth shut and Peg-leg probably wouldn’t. Culver grinned, remembering the little man tapping along on his wooden peg.

The first lamps of evening were blooming out of the windows along the street, throwing splashes of orange and yellow light across the crowded sidewalks and out into the muddy road. A wagon went past, piled high with freight. From where he stood, Culver could hear the high, shrill profanity of the teamster above the babble of the street.

Letting himself out the door, he headed for the stairs, had almost reached them when a voice called from the hall behind him. He swung around and saw Nancy Atwood, standing in front of an open door almost opposite his own.

“Grant Culver,” she said, “will you come and say hello to me.”

He walked toward her, smiling. “I was wondering when I’d see you. A man with a wooden leg told me you had put up here.”

“I do declare,” she told him, “after you’d traveled all the way with us I’d thought you could have kept on until we got to Gun Gulch.”

He shook his head. “I had to stop at Antelope to ask about a man.”

“A friend of yours?” Nancy asked.

“I don’t rightly know. He used to be.”

Pretty, he thought, looking at her. Pretty as a picture with her raven hair piled atop her head. She was wearing a flame-colored dress that left her shoulders bare.

“You’re going out, Grant?” she asked.

“I thought I would. If—”

She silenced him with a gesture of her hand. “You might watch for Bob,” she said then. “I’m just a little—well, a little bit afraid.”

He laughed at her easily. “Gun Gulch may be tough, Nancy, but not as bad as that. Your brother can take care of himself.”

Her voice choked a little. “He’s been gambling,” she said. “He denies it, but I know he has. And he’s so poor at it and we have so little money.”

“And you want me to break up the game?”

“Well, not exactly that. You might see what you can do to get him out of it as tactfully as possible.”

He frowned. “Your brother has a job here?”

She nodded. “Yes, he has. But the man he has to see is out at some diggings somewhere and Bob has to wait until he comes back to town.”

“I’ll see if I can spot him,” he told her.

She smiled at him. “Thanks, Grant,” she said. “Good night.”

He watched until she shut the door, then moved on down the hall and out onto the street of Gun Gulch.

CHAPTER TWO The Man Named Hamilton

The Crystal Bar was a smoke-blurred din, a place of lights and music, talk and tinkle, with the undertone of feet shuffling on sawdust. For a moment, Culver stood in the door, staring out over the milling crowd that filled the place. The lights blazed from the ceiling, their brilliance softened by the trails of cigar smoke that snaked up in bluish ribbons. Glassware flashed and scintillated on the back bar and the barkeepers moved about almost like dancing men.

Culver moved down the room, going slowly, shouldering his way through the press of humanity. Foot by foot he worked his way toward the bar.

A bartender growled at him: “What’s yours?”

“Nothing right now,” Culver told him. “Where can I find Hamilton?”

“What the hell!” The barkeep stopped in mid-sentence, stared at him. His manner changed and he almost fawned.

“The boss said you were to see him just as soon as you come in.”

“Thanks,” Culver said.

The bartender leaned across the bar. “Have one on the house before you go.” He grasped a bottle by the neck, seized a glass.

Culver shook his head.

“Mister,” said the barkeep, “you may not know it, but you’re the talk of the town.”

“How come?” Culver asked.

“Stover was the fastest gunslick this place had ever seen,” the barkeep told him.

Culver shook his head. “Slow,” he said. “Terrible, awful slow.”

He swung around, pushed his way toward the center of the room.

The shot came like a thunderclap that split across the talk, a burst of blasting noise that drowned out all sound and set the ceiling lamps to swaying on their chains.

The crowd surged back and left a cleared space in the center of the room, a place of scuffed-up sawdust and green tables and smoke-filtered light.

Culver stood stock still, staring at the figure on the floor.

Bob Atwood!

Bob Atwood, who had ridden in the stagecoach with him all the way from St. Louis. Nancy Atwood’s brother.

Culver lifted his eyes and stared at the man who stood behind the table, a man with his hat tilted on the back of his head, teeth showing in a firm, white line beneath the jaunty mustache, and with a smoking gun clutched tightly in his hand.

The man was looking at Culver and from where he stood Culver could see the crinkles deepen at the corners of his eyes.

“So,” said the man.

Culver felt his muscles tightening, fought to relax them.

The man across the table was Perkins, he who had waded out into the street to get his carpetbag.

The gun was coming up, slowly, surely, and there was no chance to beat it.

“Perkins,” Culver said, “you’re a lousy shot. You just winged your man.”

Perkins’ eyes flickered for a moment toward Bob Atwood on the floor and as they did Culver’s arm moved swiftly, arm and wrist and fingers a sudden chain of strength and speed that brought the six-gun spinning from its holster.

Perkins’ hand jerked nervously and his gun belched smoke and fire. Culver felt the whining bullet spin past his head, heard the crash of glass as it slammed into the back bar mirror.

“You had your shot,” Culver told him, bleakly. “Now, by God, it’s my turn.”

Perkins stood rigid before him, face a deadly white, gun grasped in his hand and tilted toward the ceiling. Slowly, deliberately, Culver’s thumb pulled back the hammer and the click of the six-gun’s mechanism was a harsh and startling sound. Perkins whimpered. His hand suddenly was shaking and the gun dropped from it.

Without a word, Culver holstered his own gun, turned to the man upon the floor. Atwood was sitting up, hand clutching his shoulder, staring at Culver.

Culver crossed to him. “Can you get up?” he asked.

Atwood nodded. “He dealt from the bottom of the deck,” he said. “I caught him at it.”

CHAPTER THREE Wanted—A Spy!

Hamilton reached into the bottom drawer of the battered desk, came up with a box of cigars. “Light up, Culver.”

Chewing the end off the smoke, Culver studied the man. About the same as ever, he decided. A little harder, a bit more vicious, slightly older than he’d been back on the river. But he was the same Calvin Hamilton.

“Sorry about your friend,” Hamilton said. “Hope he will be all right.”

Culver struck a match. “Got him back to the hotel and put him to bed. Got a doctor for him right away.”

Culver ran the match back and forth across the tip of the cigar, eyes taking in the room. An old iron safe behind the desk, a couple of chairs, carpet on the floor, framed sporting prints scattered on the walls.

Hamilton leaned back in the creaking armchair, inserted his thumbs in the armholes of his vest.

“Surprised to see you here,” he said. “River dry up?”

Culver shook his head. “Out looking for a man. Supposed to have come here. Name of Mark Farson. Maybe you heard of him.”

Hamilton rocked slowly in the chair, brow furrowed. “Can’t say I did,” he declared. “But I might have missed him. There are so many people. Someone I should know?”

“Guess you wouldn’t,” Culver told him. “Came after you had left. Got to be pretty friendly with him.”

Culver snapped the match stick in two, flipped it from him with his thumb. “Figured he was about my best friend, I guess. Would have gone through hell barefooted for that kid.”

Back of the desk, Hamilton’s eyes squinted shrewdly. “Loan him some money?”

“Worse than that,” said Culver. “Heard of Gun Gulch, you see. Heard it was a good town. So we pooled our killings and he came out here ahead to sort of look it over. He was to let me know if it was worth investing.”

Culver blew smoke toward the ceiling, vaguely wished he had the money to buy cigars like the fine weed between his fingers.

“Didn’t hear a word of him,” he said. “Not a single word since he left. So I came along to check up. Figured something might have happened to the kid.”

“Run out on you,” Hamilton said, flatly.

Culver looked at him, but the face was a smooth, white mask. “Beginning to think that very thing myself.”

There was a long silence while Culver smoked and Hamilton teetered in the chair.

“Now what?” Hamilton finally asked.

“Nothing, I guess,” said Culver. “No trace of him. Can’t even be sure that he came here. I asked all along the line, but there was nothing doing. Doesn’t prove he didn’t come, of course, but I have no proof that he did.”

“Want to stick around for a few days before you go back,” Hamilton told him, easily. “Interesting town.”

Culver shook his head. “Can’t go back. I’m next door to dead broke.”

He waited but the man across the desk kept silent.

Finally Culver said, “Thought you might have a job for me. I still can handle a deck all right and I know my players.”

Hamilton eyes him closely, cunning in his face. “Figure you could do a trick or two?”

“Not a chance,” Culver told him, curtly. “I always played them straight. No funny business. I won because I was a better player than the other fellow. Stands to reason I would have been. It was my business, but just his way of having fun.”

“Can’t do it that way here,” Hamilton declared. “This is a short shot proposition. Mines may peter out any day. Got to clean up when you can. Got a lot of cash invested. Have to get it back.”

He tilted forward in the chair, took his thumbs out of the armholes of the vest. “How about a loan?” he asked.

Culver shook his head. “I’ll look around a bit.”

“Come to think of it,” said Hamilton, “I might be able to give you a job.”

“Swamping out, maybe,” Culver said, bitterly.

“Nope, a good job. There’s a place across the street, see. Goes by the name of Golden Slipper. Given me a lot of trouble. Hombre by the name of Brown runs it. Barney Brown. Things going on over there I’d like to know about.”

Culver hurled the half smoked cigar into the spittoon angrily. “I’m no spy,” he said, shortly.

“Let’s talk sense.” Hamilton spoke easily. “You’re the only man I can trust. Maybe we don’t like one another, but I can trust you and that’s more than I can say for anyone else around here. All you’ve got to do is go over and see Brown. He will grab you in a minute. Cripes, after you killing one of my men and all, he’ll—”

Culver sat bolt upright in the chair. “One of your men!”

Hamilton laughed at him shortly. “Sure, Stover. I thought you knew.”

“Hell, no,” said Culver. “He was just someone that got in my hair. Wouldn’t have nothing come of it if he hadn’t gone for his gun. Then, naturally, I had to. …”

“Certainly,” Hamilton told him. “Certainly. No need to make excuses.”

“Perkins one of your men, too, I suppose.”

Hamilton nodded.

“Lord, what a mangy lot.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said Hamilton. “Hard to get good men. That’s why I need you.”

Culver rose. “The answer is no, Hamilton. I’m not doing any spying for you or any other man.”

Hamilton leaned back again and inserted his thumbs into his vest, rocked gently.

“If I were you, Culver, I’d walk sort of easy. Stover had some friends, you know.”

“I suppose that’s a threat,” said Culver.

“Frankly,” Hamilton told him, “that’s just exactly what it is.”

The street had quieted somewhat, but men still moved along the sidewalks and shrieks of drunken laughter came from the open windows. Across the street was the Golden Slipper and next to it a print shop. GUN GULCH GAZETTE said the uneven sign scrawled across the window in black paint. Behind the window a man perched on a stool at a type cabinet, shoulders bent above his work.

A hand tugged at Culver’s sleeve and he turned around. The man with the peg-leg stood beside him.

“Good evening,” said Peg-leg. He pulled the notebook from his pocket, took the pencil stub from behind his ear. “Wonder if you would tell me how to spell Atwood’s name. Afraid I got it wrong. Don’t mind about the other words, but I like to get the names right.”

“I thought you had his name once!”

“Did,” said Peg-leg. “But I got to put it down again. He got shot, you know.”

“You mean you put down all the shootings?”

“Most of them,” said Peg-leg, proudly. “Maybe I miss a few of the piddling ones, but I catch the main ones.”

Culver grinned. “You should be a newspaper reporter.”

Peg-leg scratched his ear. “Am, sort of. Jake, over there at the Gazette, gets lots of his stuff from me. Folks pay me to get things in the paper about them and Jake gives me a drink or buys me a dinner for bringing him the stuff, so it works out all right both ways.”

“By the way,” asked Culver, “what’s your name?”

“It’s Harvey,” said the man, “but they mostly call me Crip.”

He poised the pencil above the notebook. “Now, if you will tell me how to spell Atwood?”

Culver told him, then asked a question: “How do I get across the street? Have to wade?”

The peg-legged man chuckled. “Feller up the street has a plank throwed across the mud. He charges you a buck.”

Across the street and his dollar paid, Culver stood for a moment in front of the Golden Slipper, listening to the sound of revelry that came from behind the door.

“Brown will snap you up,” Hamilton had said.

Culver shrugged. If the worst came to the worst, he would have to do it, but not yet.

He went on past the place, turned in at the printshop door.

The man sitting on the stool looked up as he came in.

“You’re Jake, I suppose?” said Culver.

The man put aside the type stick, slid off the stool and came toward him.

“That’s it, stranger. Jake Palmer is the handle.”

“Mine is Culver.” Culver put out his hand and the man took it in his bony, ink-stained paw.

“You must be the gent that plumb perforated Stover.”

Culver nodded.

“What can I do for you, stranger?” Jake asked. “Any hombre that removes a skunk like Stover is a friend of mine.”

“Thought maybe you could help me,” Culver told him. “I’m looking for a friend by the name of Farson. Mark Farson. Thought maybe you had heard of him.”

Jake put up one hand and scratched his hair-thin head. “Seems as how there was a gent by that name around a while back. But I can’t rightly remember. Didn’t hang around long, seems to me.”

He showed snagged, tobacco-stained teeth in an apologetic grim. “Sorry I can’t be no more help than that.”

“Crip told me about you,” said Culver. “I figured maybe you might know.”

Jake shook his head. “That Crip gets me into more trouble. Goes around claiming he’s collecting news for me. If it wasn’t that he was cracked he’d been buzzard meat long ago. Got enough stuff in that danged notebook of his to convict half the town if it could be proved.”

“He seemed all right to me,” said Culver.

“He ain’t,” insisted Jake. “He’s crazy as a coot and everybody knows it. That’s why they don’t pay attention to him. If they did, he’d be so full of holes he downright wouldn’t hold whiskey.”

“Seems like a lively place,” declared Culver. “Crip probably finds plenty to write down.”

“Mister,” Jake declared, solemnly, “this town ain’t seen nothing yet. Hell is bound to pop one of these days and when it does you’ll walk up to your ankles in blood out there in the street. Hamilton and Brown are getting all squared off. …”

“Hamilton?”

“Bet your boots. Him and Brown, you see, have got the only two big places here. The little ones don’t count. Don’t amount to shucks to them palaces of sin run by Hamilton and Brown. Both of them making money hand over fist and they still ain’t satisfied. Each one of them wants to run the other out. Been importing gunslicks and one of these days there’s going to be a showdown.”

From the back of the shop came a high, shrill voice:

“Pa, you worked long enough. Quit your jawing and close up. Land sakes, you work all the time.”

Jake grinned lop-sidedly. “That’s my wife,” he said. “Guess you better go, mister. Thanks for dropping in.”

It was almost as if a weight had been lifted from Culver. For long miles on the way from St. Louis, he had thought of Farson, had argued with himself, blamed himself for the black suspicion that hovered in his brain. Mark hadn’t run away, he told himself, exultantly. He hadn’t run away.

When Culver got back to where the plank had been the plank and man were gone. Gazing ruefully at the muddy street, he sat down on the step of a harness shop and rolled up both pants legs. If he had to wade that muck out there, there was no sense getting his pants muddy as well as his boots.

From up the street came a tapping sound, a broken, hobbling sound. He listened for a moment, puzzled, then it came to him. It was Crip stumping down the walk. He rose from the step, walked to the edge of the sidewalk and stepped into the mud.

Suddenly the tapping ceased, then began again, faster, hurried, as if the man were running, dodging and ducking as he ran. Boots thumped heavily and there was the sound of scuffling.

A gasping voice cried: “No! No!”

Spinning around, Culver leaped back to the sidewalk, sprinted up the street toward the noise that suddenly was silent. And as he ran his hand snapped back and snatched the sixgun from its holster.

Ahead of him orange flame blossomed in the night and even as it did a howling thing went past him and smashed into the window of a building. Glass crashed and tinkled and the bright orange flame flared again.

Culver brought up his gun, worked the trigger swiftly, ducking sideways as he fired, heading for the pitch-dark mouth of an alleyway between two buildings.

Out ahead of him the six-gun yammered, its blasting reverberating between the buildings, and Culver heard the sodden chunking of the bullets slamming into the clapboards by his side. Then he was in the alleyway, backing on cat-like feet, six-gun ready.

Something caught the back of his ankles and tripped him. He tried to catch himself, but failed, flung back his left hand to break the fall, felt the harshness of coarse fabric underneath his fingers. He hit a yielding, rounded object and rolled to one side, put out an exploring hand, stiffened with horror at the thing he found. It was Crip.

In the darkness, Culver slid his fingers along the dead man’s back, found the sticky place that surrounded the horn hilt of a knife. Crouched in the darkness between the two buildings, Culver’s mind clicked rapidly.

The peg-legged man had been knifed out there on the street, had crawled into the alleyway before death had overtaken him. Killed by someone who had used a knife for silence, but someone who had been desperate enough to use a gun when he faced detection.

Crazy, Jake had said back there in the printshop, crazy as a coot. Dead long ago if he hadn’t been. And now he was dead. Even craziness couldn’t hold off death.

Tensed above the body, Culver found the dead man’s pocket, slid his hand swiftly into it. His fingers touched the notebook and closed about it, pulled it free.

Then, on his feet again, he was racing down the alleyway, ears strained for the sound of running boots that did not come.

Back in his hotel room, Culver closed and locked the door behind him, stood for a moment listening for the slightest stir to come out of the blackness of the room. But the room was dead. He found the lamp and lighted it, strode to the window and pulled down the blind.

Pulling a chair close to the lamp table, he took the notebook from his pocket, leafed swiftly through the pages. Items caught his eyes and he stopped to read:

Stover, thought Culver. Stover had been the man out on the walk, the man with the bushy beard and the pig-like eyes. So Stover had robbed a stranger of $500 and no one, said Crip’s crabbed scrawl, knew about it. No one but Crip, who had written it down. Crip, who wasn’t so good at other spelling, but liked to get the names right. A gossip book, things that Gun Gulch knew and things it didn’t know. Things that a man would know only if he hung around and listened and put two and two together … a man who was a little cracked or he’d been dead long ago.

The book slipped in his fingers and he lost the page. He bent his head and opened it again, searching for a date. May. June. And suddenly, there it was.

Culver stiffened in his chair, his hand tightening into a fist that crushed and wrinkled the book in its savage grasp.

And now Crip himself was dead. Dead, more than likely because of that very entry in the book. Killed because Hamilton was afraid that it might be there, because he knew that Crip had many things in the book that no other man should know. That especially a man named Culver should not know.

Culver rose from the chair, blew out the light and let himself into the hall.

Downstairs he stopped and tossed the book onto the desk.

“Will you put this in your safe?” he asked.

The clerk picked up the book and stared at it nervously.

“Know it?” asked Culver.

The clerk gulped and nodded.

“Someone killed Crip to get that book,” said Culver. “Only I got there first.”

“But … but … where are you going, sir?”

“I’m going out to collect a debt,” said Culver.

CHAPTER FOUR When a Hero Fails

Hamilton glanced up swiftly from his desk at the sound of the footstep, froze at the sight of the gun in Culver’s hand.

Culver chuckled softly. “How are you, Cal?” he asked.

Hamilton’s lips moved drily in his face. “How did you get in?”

“Through the basement window,” said Culver. “All the others were locked. The place was dark but I saw the light in your window here.”

One of Hamilton’s hands slid along the desk top and Culver snapped at him: “Keep those paws where they are. Don’t go reaching for a drawer!”

Hamilton slid his hand back again and Culver moved into the room, closed the door behind him. Piles of bills and heaps of silver coin were piled upon the desk top and in front of Hamilton was a heavy ledger.

“Counting up the profits?” asked Culver.

Hamilton didn’t answer and he went on. “I been wondering what you do when you make a windfall. Ten thousand dollars, say. Put it in the book, all regular-like and neat?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hamilton said.

“Suppose you kill a man,” said Culver. “Or have someone kill him for you. Suppose he has a money belt with ten thousand dollars in it. What do you do with that?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Hamilton. “It’s never happened. I never thought about it.”

“I’d hate to have a memory like yours,” Culver told him, softly. “Bad for business. Imagine going around and forgetting a wad of cash like that.”

“Look,” said Hamilton. “I’m busy!”

Culver snarled savagely. “Don’t try to high-hat me, Cal. You can’t run a sandy on me because I know you from the bottom up. In case you’ve forgotten, I’m talking about Farson.”

“Farson?”

“Yes, Farson. The man you had Perkins kill.”

Hamilton shrugged. “Perkins probably has killed a lot of men I don’t know about.”

“Not Farson,” said Culver, evenly. “You knew about him, all right.”

“You haven’t any proof,” Hamilton pointed out.

“A book,” said Culver.

Hamilton snickered. “Crip’s book. It would never stand in law.”

“I’m not talking about the law, Hamilton. I’m talking about a debt.”

“A debt?”

“That’s right. Ten thousand bucks. That money Farson had belonged to me.”

“You mean—”

“I mean I want the money back.”

“That’s all?”

“All for right now,” Culver told him. “After I get the cash I’m going out and find Perkins and when I’m done with him I’ll come back for you. I’ll give you that much chance, Cal. I’ll give you time to run if you want to run.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I sure hope you don’t,” said Culver.

One of Hamilton’s hands twitched nervously. “Look, Culver, we’re old friends. We knew one another back there on the river.”

Culver grinned wryly. “You’re stretching the truth some when you say that we were friends. How about starting to count out the money.”

“I haven’t got it here,” said Hamilton. “I’d have to get into the safe.”

“Okay,” said Culver. “Start getting into it.”

He moved around the desk, gun held ready. “One wrong move,” he warned, “and you’ll never finish what you’re doing.”

Hamilton swiveled the chair around, got out of it and knelt before the safe. His fingers went out to the dial and turned it, fumbling as they worked.

“You gave in pretty easy,” Culver told him. “If you got any aces up your sleeve don’t try to pull them out.”

The dial clicked and Hamilton pulled the handle of the safe. In the silence of the room, Culver heard the bolts shoot back. The hinges squealed a little as the door came open.

Another sound, a noise that was scarcely heard, brought Culver spinning around, away from the kneeling man to face the door. Perkins stood in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob, the other clutching a six-gun.

Culver jerked his own gun up, finger already tightening on the trigger. Perkins’ gun coughed harshly, like a rasping throat, and burning fire sliced its way across the knuckles of Culver’s gun hand. He felt his fingers loosen and the gun jumped from them as it fired, bouncing high into the air, then spinning to the floor.

Perkins’ gun was leveling again and behind it the man’s face was a mask of hate. Culver backed toward the wall, step by slow step.

Hamilton had swung away from the safe, was still squatting on his heels, but he also held a gun. That’s why he gave in so easy, Culver told himself. He had the gun in there and he gambled on it. But he never would have made it if it hadn’t been for Perkins. He’d never had a chance to reach for it.

Culver felt the wall at his back and stood rigid, watching Perkins pace toward him, gun leveled, face twisted into livid hatefulness.

Hamilton’s voice cut through the tenseness of the silence. “Perkins! Perkins, don’t shoot!”

Perkins’ eyes did not waver from Culver. He asked: “Why not?”

“He’s got the book!” Hamilton yelled. “He’s got Crip’s book. He’s the one that scared you off and took the book.”

“Hell, all we have to do,” snarled Perkins, “is to cut him down and take it.”

“You fool!” Hamilton screamed. “You don’t think he has it on him? He’s too smart to have it on him.”

“You’re right, Cal,” Culver said. “I haven’t got it on me.”

Perkins moved closer. “Where is it?” he asked.

Culver shook his head.

“Don’t push your luck too far,” Perkins told him, fiercely. “I got a thing or two to settle with you and I might forget myself.”

“We might make a deal,” said Culver.

“I’m not dealing,” snapped Perkins. “Not with a man who hasn’t any chips.”

His right hand slammed the gun muzzle into Culver’s stomach, his left came up and struck, a savage open-handed blow that rocked Culver’s head.

“Next time,” snarled Perkins, “I will use my fist. I’ll knock every tooth you have down your dirty throat.”

Culver surged away from the wall, arms half lifted, but the gun barrel boring into his stomach drove him back.

“Gut-shot men die slow and hard,” said Perkins grimly, “but they always die. Try that once again and I’ll let you have it.”

Culver saw Perkins’ fist coming and he tried to duck, but it caught him alongside the jaw and drove his head back against the wall. The fist came up again and pain exploded in his brain. He felt himself falling and a shock went through him as he hit the floor. A heavy boot slammed into his ribs and knocked him over, flat upon his back.

Through the hazy grayness that filled the room, he heard Hamilton’s bawling voice.

“Perkins! Lay off for a minute. Give him a chance to talk.”

He was on his hands and knees now, head hanging toward the floor, and he wondered how he got there. The last he had remembered was lying on his back.

He shook his head and saw the dark drops that sprayed upon the floor. He lifted an unsteady hand and wiped his chin and his hand was red.

Eyes clearing, he stared along the worn pattern of the carpeting that covered the floor, and sucked in his breath. There, not more than five feet in front of him, was the gun that he had dropped. One chance; that was all that he would have.

He gathered his knees beneath him, tensed, then leaped. Pain wracked his body at the effort and his fumbling hand felt the touch of metal. His fingers tightened on the grip.

A boot crashed into his stomach and half lifted him, sent a wave of nausea through him, turned him into a watery mass of retching sickness. He felt the gun slipping from his fingers, groped for it in the blackness that rolled along the floor.

A hand reached out and grabbed the nape of his neck in steel-trap fingers, hauled him up.

In front of him he saw a face of twisted rage and a working mouth that screamed profanity. His bleary eyes caught the glint of a slashing six-gun barrel and then the barrel came down and his brain exploded.

For a long moment he lay in a torpor that was merciful, then slowly, bit by bit, he became aware of his battered body. His stomach was a piece of lead that held him down and behind his back his hands and wrists were a sharp, red ache.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, careful so that the lancing light would not hit them again. But there was no light. He lay still, eyes moving slowly to try to pick up something substantial in the darkness. One by one, he made out the dark, crouched presence of furniture. The posters of the brass bed on which he lay, catching the slight glimmer of stars through the window at his back. The table that stood beside the bed with the lamp upon it.

He moved an arm to reach out and touch the table at his side, and his arm moved an inch or two and would move no more. Sharp pain lanced from wrist to elbow.

Methodically, mechanically, he narrowed down his mind to consider his hands and his brain traced out the tortured lines of bloody rawness where the ropes bit into yielding flesh. His feet, too, lashed together at the ankles.

They would be coming back. Hamilton with his cold ruthlessness, Perkins with his twisted hate. They would come back to make him talk, and when he talked, they’d kill him.

He had to get out before the two came back. Somehow he had to escape this room. And the window was the only way. A man could break a window with his shoulder, heave his body through. He shuddered at the thought of jagged broken glass, but it was the only way.

Carefully, noiselessly, he swung his feet off the bed, pulled them around until he could stand up. Coldness seeped into him as he stood there in the dark, coldness and a terrible sense of helplessness. He hopped, slowly, carefully, inch by inch. One hop, then another, would take him to the window.

Something tugged at his wrists and he halted, stood with cold sweat breaking out on him. His wrists not only were tied together, but were secured to the bed!

He pivoted cautiously and stared at the table with the lamp upon it. A lamp meant that there would be matches. He bent forward from the waist to bring his eyes closer to the table top, and there the matches were, a water tumbler full of them, sitting near the edge.

Cautiously, he hopped backwards, waggling fingers searching for the table’s edge. He found it and halted, forced his arms backward to carry the fingers to the water tumbler.

Awkwardly one finger caught the tumbler’s top, tipped it over so that the matches spilled on the table top. Scraping, fumbling, his fingers pulled the matches in a pile, then groped to find the rope that bound him to the bed.

Carefully, fumbling time after time, he piled the slack in the rope atop the matches, then stood rigid for a moment, gasping for breath.

What he had to do next would take steadiness, sureness. He could not flinch or fumble. If he knocked the matches on the floor, if he …

He managed to get a single match between two fingers, pressed the head against the table’s edge, then swiftly flipped it up. Light flared in the room and dancing shadows jigged along the wall.

He held his breath,, kept the fingers closed tight upon the flaming stick, carried it back until another finger touched the pile of matches and the rope, then dropped it.

For a moment nothing happened, then another match caught with a sputter and a second, then at least a dozen, with a sudden flare of flame and the smell of burning sulphur.

Sudden flaring heat bit into his hands and the matches flared again with a sudden puff, lighting the room with a ghastly yellow glare. Another odor came through the smell of sulphur, the stench of burning rope.

He waited and the flame of the burning match-heap bit into his hands. He waited while the shadows danced and died upon the wall, then suddenly heaved himself forward. The rope caught, held for a single instant, then snapped and hurled him forward, flat upon his face. He rolled onto his side, jack-knifed with his feet, heard the crash of the falling table as his boots slammed into it.

Sitting on the floor, he stared in horror at the flame that ate into the bedding. His thrashing feet had knocked the table over, dumped the burning matches squarely on the bed.

He heaved himself upright with a single motion, hopped desperately toward the window. Behind him the flames crackled angrily as they worked into the corn-husks. In a minute, he knew, the room would be an inferno, a roaring sheet of fire. Scant second were left to reach the window.

He stumbled and went to his knees, surged up again. The hot breath of the fire lapped against his back. Feet were running on the stairs and voices shouted. Someone had heard the table crash.

The window was before him and he gave one last hop. He stumbled and his body hit the wall and held. Desperately, he dragged his feet beneath him, lowered his shoulder to press against the window.

The boots were running across the floor just outside the door. There was no time to lose. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sheet of flame curl toward the ceiling, leave the papered wall black and flecked with glowing ash.

The sash buckled beneath his straining shoulder and the window popped like the explosion of a gun. Glass tinkled on the floor and the sash crashed outward. A blast of air swept into the room and the flames leaped high, mushrooming on the ceiling.

Culver thrust his head and chest through the broken window, saw the sloping roof of a shed beneath him. Lucky, said his brain. Lucky that it’s there to break your fall.

He shoved with all the power that was in his feet, felt his body sliding out the window. A knife-like piece of broken glass slashed through his trousers and gouged into his thigh. Then he was falling. He hit the slant roof and rolled, then fell again.

The ground came up and smacked him, drove the breath from out of his lungs. He rolled and kept on rolling, out of the mud and into a patch of weeds.

Crouched in the weed patch, he tried to orient himself. There was the livery barn and a vacant lot and beyond that the Antlers Hotel. The hotel, he told himself, was the place to go.

He surged to his feet and hopped, hopped with every ounce of strength that was in his body. Grass caught at his feet and tripped him and he got up again, hopped on, in a desperate race with time.

Men were yelling on the street, feet were pounding on the sidewalks. Someone was shouting in a bull-like voice, over and over again: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

He wasted precious seconds to glance over his shoulder, saw that the Crystal Bar was a mass of twisting flame all along its second story. He glanced around again, stared upward at the hotel windows, suddenly shouted at a figure standing in one lighted square.

“Nancy! Nancy! It’s Culver!”

He stumbled to his knees, fought his way upright again.

Nancy Atwood had opened her window, was leaning out.

“Nancy!” he shouted.

His feet caught on a discarded wooden box and he went down again into a tangled, beaten heap.

CHAPTER FIVE Fist Fight in Hell

The ground was soft and cool beneath him and the shouting of the men out in the street was a muted sound, as if from far away. Culver lay face down and waited. His mind was, for the moment, blank, resting too from the horror of the fire, from the unreasoning fear of an animal that is trapped and cornered.

Beating hoofs went by and roused him, twisted him upward from the ground. A horse went past, mane flying in the garish light of the burning building, feet pounding in terror. Someone had gotten into the livery barn and was turning loose the horses before the fire could spread from the flaming barroom.

He struggled to his knees, tried to rise to his feet, sank back again when his tortured ankles screamed in pain. Other horses galloped past, wild eyes gleaming in the light. Above the yelling of the men out in the street came the clank of buckets. A fire-fighting line was being formed, passing buckets filled with water from man to man, probably to wet down the livery barn. For there could be no hope of saving the Crystal Bar. The place was a torch that towered into the night, a pillar of curling fire topped by dense black smoke, seen faintly in the first grayness of the coming dawn.

“Grant!”

Culver twisted around, saw the girl running toward him, coat wrapped about her, hair flying across her shoulders.

“Nancy!” he shouted. “Over here, Nancy.”

He struggled to his feet as she came up.

She stopped before him, for a moment said no word, staring at him, face flushed by the flaring fire.

“What happened?” she asked.

“There’s a knife in my vest pocket,” he told her. “That is, if it hasn’t fallen out. No, the lower one on the right.”

Her fingers found it, brought it out.

“It was because of Bob,” she sobbed. “You got into all this trouble because of what you did for him. He told me.”

He shook his head. “It was something else,” he said.

She hacked at the rope that bound his wrists and he felt it loosen and fall away. His arms fell to his side and he lifted them in front of him. The wrists looked like so much raw meat and the hands were streaked with blood.

“Now your feet,” said Nancy. “Sit down so I can get at them.”

“Let me,” he said.

He reached out his hand and she gave him the knife. Seated, he hacked at the cords savagely.

“But what’s it all about?” she asked. “The fire and you out here like this.”

“Plenty,” he told her. “You see, I set the fire.”

He snapped the blade of the knife, returned it to his pocket.

“That man you were asking about all the way out,” said Nancy. “You found him?”

Culver shook his head. “No, I didn’t find him, but I found what happened to him. And this is just a start.”

He reeled to his feet, stamped to bring back the circulation.

“You better get back inside,” he said. “It’s no place for you out here. Thanks for coming down.”

Above the crackle of the fire and the shouting in the street, he heard the rush of feet behind him, swung around. With a yell of warning, he thrust out a hand at Nancy, sent her reeling back.

Perkins was running forward through the flame-streaked darkness. The gun in his hand glittered.

Culver ducked swiftly, heard the angry hum of the bullet above his shoulder. His fingers scooped along the ground and clutched the edge of the wooden box that had tripped him. Straightening quickly, he hurled it in an overhanded throw at the charging man.

The six-gun barked again. Then the box crunched into Perkins, sent him reeling sidewise, staggering.

Culver leaped forward savagely and felt the heat of the muzzle flare as the gun coughed. Then his hand chopped down with a savage blow that caught the wrist behind the gun. And even as he struck, he swung again, a looping right that started at his belt and came up in a jarring smash against Perkins’ jaw. Perkins dropped the gun.

Culver stepped in close with punching fists that worked like driving pistons. Perkins gave ground slowly, stubbornly, covering up.

Culver’s foot caught in a tangled clump of grass, threw him off balance, gave Perkins the chance that he had been awaiting. Culver sensed the smashing fist rather than saw it, got his elbow up, but only partially blocked it. It skidded along his forearm and exploded on his jaw.

Perkins’ right was coming in again and he ducked against it, slammed up blindly with his left. He felt his fist strike yielding flesh and sink into it with a hollow thud. Then Perkins’ blow connected and jarred him to his toes. Culver’s right worked automatically, lashing out with a desperate strength.

Perkins’ head was a punching bag swaying in the mist … a head that bobbed and tossed. Culver stepped close and swung his left and the head snapped over, rocking on the neck. Culver’s right came up, a blow that started from boot-top level, that gained speed as it came, that had the hunched, pivoting power of 180 pounds of bone and muscle behind it.

The head was gone and Culver did not know where he was, for the head had been all that he had to go by. He raised one of his hands and ran it across his eyes, stared at the flaming wreckage of the Crystal Bar. Perkins was a dark shape on the ground, a twisted, battered shape.

Culver felt a hand upon his arm and turned around. It was Nancy Atwood. He lifted a hand and ran it across his mouth, wiping off the blood that trickled from a battered lip.

“Here,” she said and he saw that she was holding a six-gun.

Numbly he reached out and took it, thrust it in the waistband of his trousers.

“Where did you get it?” he demanded.

“I picked it up,” said Nancy. “It was the one he dropped when you hit him. I was trying to—”

He gasped. “You mean you were trying to shoot Perkins.”

She nodded, half sobbing. “But you were always in the way. I was afraid of hitting you.”

He lifted an awkward arm around her shoulder, drew her close. “You’re all right,” he said, thickly.

She looked up into his face. “What’s it all about, Grant?”

He told her briefly, quickly. “They killed Mark for his money. My money. The money he had in his belt. Killed him and buried him at night, somewhere in the hills. And it’s not the only case. There have been others like it. Men killed, men robbed and cheated.

“The river was dying,” he said. “Fewer boats were traveling and the passenger lists were thinner. Mark and I figured we ought to move to fresher fields and so he came out ahead to look them over. Headed for here first because we’d heard Gun Gulch was a good town.”

He shivered in the rising wind of dawn.

“Let’s go back to the hotel,” said the girl. “Bob will be wondering what it’s all about and a little soap and water wouldn’t hurt your face.”

Side by side they walked across the vacant lot toward the sidewalk.

The fire in the Crystal Bar had almost burned itself out, but the street still rang with turmoil. Horses, freed from the livery stable, moved like ghosts in the first gray light of dawn. Culver stared over his shoulder at the smouldering ruins of the Crystal Bar and a faint, grim smile tugged at his lips. I didn’t do it deliberately, he told himself, but I sure paid Hamilton off for a part of what he did.

Nancy stopped short, clutching Culver’s arm. “Look, Grant. That man out there. What are they doing to him?”

Culver stared at the circle of men standing in the muddy street, shouting at the man they had thrust onto a wagon box. Even from where he stood, he could see the rope around the man’s neck and the deathly, twisted pallor that sat upon his face.

“You get back to the hotel, quick,” he snapped at the girl.

With swift strides he crossed the vacant lot, stepped onto the sidewalk. From the opposite side of the street a bull voice bellowed. “Somebody start getting them horses. We ain’t got all night to waste.”

Another voice laughed. “Hold onto your shirt, Mike. It’s almost morning now.”

Culver reached out and tapped the shoulder of the man who stood in front of him. “What’s going on?” he asked.

The man turned around and Culver saw that it was Jake, the printer.

Jake spat deliberately into the mud before he answered. “We’re going to hang the lousy son,” he said. “Just as soon as we round up some horses to take him out where we can find a tree, we’re going to string him up. Got to do something to convince folks around here it ain’t healthy to go out and burn down other people’s property.”

He spat in the mud again. “Course, no one gives a damn about the Crystal Bar, but it’s a menace, that’s what it is. That fire might of spread to the livery barn. Might have burned down half the town. The boys worked hard to save it and they ain’t in no mood for shilly-shallying.”

Culver sucked his breath in sharply. “You mean you figure that fellow set the fire?”

“Set it or had someone set it,” said Jake. “Logical man to do it. Hated Hamilton’s guts, he did. Feller I was telling you about. Barney Brown, over at the Golden Slipper.”

“But you aren’t giving him a chance,” protested Culver. “You should have a trial. Let him have a say about this hanging business.”

“Hell,” Jake said, disgustedly, “he’d deny he done it. Stands to reason he would. Him and Hamilton was fixing for a showdown and Barney got the jump on Hamilton, that’s all. Other way around, if the Golden Slipper had burned down, we’d hang Hamilton.”

Culver lifted his head, stared at Barney Brown. The man was scared clean through. Standing there in the wagonbox with the rope around his neck he suddenly was pitiful. His waistcoat was unbuttoned and his cravat fluttered in the wind. His hand came up nervously and clutched the rope that hung around his shoulders, then jerked away as if his fingers had touched a red-hot iron.

The crowd roared with laughter and the bull-like voice jeered:

“Don’t like the feel of it, Barney? Just wait until we tighten it a little.”

Someone yelled, “Where are those damn horses.”

“Let’s grab hold of that wagon and take it out ourselves,” shouted someone else. “We got enough men here. We can do it easy.”

Culver felt revulsion twisting at his vitals. A pack of cowards, he told himself. A pack of wolves. Big and smart and loud-mouthed because there were a lot of them because they could do whatever they wanted to do with Barney Brown and no one would hurt them.

He raised his voice. “You gents got the wrong man,” he shouted at them.

Silence fell, a shocked and restless silence. Heads turned to stare at him.

A growl came from the crowd, a fierce angry sound. The voice of the pack that is being robbed of the deer it has pulled down.

Beyond the wagon a huge man was moving forward, lumbering through the sea of faces, and the crowd parted quickly to let him pass.

Motionless on the sidewalk, Culver stood and watched him come. Huge and hairy, massive of shoulder, with a bushy beard and hair that hung down his neck and curled upward in a drake’s tail above the collar of his heavy woolen shirt.

It was the man with the bull voice, he knew. The man who had shouted the loudest and angriest, who had jeered at Brown … the man the men called Mike.

Six feet away Mike stopped, stood with arms akimbo, staring up at Culver.

“You said something, stranger?” he asked and his voice was like a drum beating in the street.

“I said you had the wrong man,” said Culver. “I’m the one who set that fire.”

A murmur ran through the crowd and it stirred suddenly, then settled back again, like a pack of wolves.

“All right,” said Mike, “we’ll hang you instead of Brown.”

He took a slow step forward and the crowd surged into life. Angry voices spat screaming words at Culver and through the words he heard the splashing, sucking sound of feet moving through the mud.

From behind him, a cyclonic figure flung itself at Culver, coat flying in the wind. A hand reached out and snatched the six-gun from his waistband, brought it up. Culver’s hand flashed out to grasp the gun and the flare of the muzzle blast was a hot breath against his palm.

Out in the muddy street, Mike reeled back, bull voice bellowing, hand clapped to his right forearm.

The crowd stopped, stood stock-still, the angry words frozen in their mouths, boots rooted in the mud.

Culver’s fingers closed upon the gun, wrenched it away from Nancy Atwood.

“I thought I told you—” he began, but she interrupted him in a rush of tumbling words.

“You big lummox, you’d stand there and never stir, even when you had a gun. Can’t you see what would happen to you if you didn’t stop them?”

Her voice caught and broke and she stood on the sidewalk, huddled against the terror of the moment, hands pulling the coat tight around her body.

Culver hefted the six-gun in his hand, looked out over the crowd.

“You boys still want to hang me?” he asked, softly.

They did not stir or move.

Culver looked at Mike. The man looked back, hand still clutching his forearm, blood oozing out between his fingers.

“How about it, Mike?” asked Grant Culver.

The big man shifted his footing. “Maybe we were a bit worked up,” he said. “Maybe we should of asked if you had a reason for starting that fire.”

Culver grinned. “That’s more like it. You can’t hang a man legal without having a trial. I’m plumb ready to stand trial any time.”

A buzzing thing snarled past his ear and from the vacant lot came the coughing spang of a high-powered rifle.

Gun still in hand, Culver whirled around. The rifle coughed again and he felt the searing burn of the bullet as it spun across his ribs.

Out in the vacant lot Calvin Hamilton was running in great leaps toward a saddled horse by the hotel corner. Culver sprang forward, six-gun talking as he ran. Hamilton stumbled once, but regained his feet, ran on. With a yell, he vaulted into the saddle and the horse hammered out of sight behind the building.

Breath gasping in his throat, Culver rounded the hotel corner. From somewhere ahead a rifle hammered and he heard the whine of a heavy bullet passing overhead.

In the space between the hotel and barber shop swift hoofs pounded and a startled horse leaped out into the open.

“Whoa, boy!” Culver yelled.

Moving swiftly forward as the animal wheeled to run, Culver leaped desperately, caught the flying mane in a steel-trap grasp. His toes dragged for a moment as the horse sidled, then he sprang and the horse rose on its hind legs, fighting. Culver clung desperately, digging in his heels.

Then the horse was down again and running … running in the right direction. In the direction that Hamilton had taken.

CHAPTER SIX Trail’s End

No saddle, no bridle, just a horse. One of the horses that had been turned out of the livery barn when it had been feared that it might catch fire.

No bridle, but the horse was going in the right direction, angling from behind the buildings to come into the street, striking the trail that led out of town, running with driving legs spurred by surprise and fear.

Far up the trail, Culver could see Hamilton and his mount, hazy figures in the gray dawn light. Culver bent low along the horse’s neck, spoke soothing words aimed at the laid-back ears. If the horse only would keep going, perhaps he could handle him even without a bridle. Cuff his head to turn him in the right direction, kick him in the ribs in lieu of spurs.

He rode bent forward, the whistle of the wind a roaring in his ears punctuated by the pounding hoofbeats of the working legs beneath him.

Hamilton had disappeared in a dip in the trail, but he reappeared again. Culver strained his eyes. The man seemed closer than he had before. Hope rose in him.

“Maybe we can overhaul him, hoss,” he said. “Maybe you and I can do it.”

He reached for the waistband of his trousers, hauled out the six-gun. And even as he did it, a sudden thought struck him with paralyzing force. Perkins had fired the gun twice. Nancy had used it once. That had left three cartridges. Culver’s heart sank at the thought that came. How many times had he, himself, pulled the trigger when he ran across the vacant lot in pursuit of Hamilton?

With fumbling fingers, he spun the cylinder, gulped in relief. There was one live shell. He’d only used two shots back there in the vacant lot. But one shell! One bullet! One bullet against the bullets that Hamilton must carry in the heavy rifle!

The trial was rising into higher land, was becoming ever more twisted and tortuous than it had been before. To the left the land sloped up in jagged cliffs and rocky talus slides, with scrawny pines struggling for footholds, while to the right the ground plunged down in frozen anguish.

He was gaining on Hamilton. Culver knew. Each time the man reappeared after being hidden by an angle in the trail, he had lost ground. Once he swiveled in his saddle and raised the gun to his shoulder, but brought it down again without pulling the trigger.

Culver leaned downward, patted the horse’s neck. “Keep going,” he told him. “Keep on going.”

Up ahead a rifle roared and even as it did, Culver heard the spat of the heavy bullet hitting flesh. Beneath him the horse broke its gait and stumbled, front knees folding in mid-stride. The outstretched head pitched forward and Culver felt himself spin into the air.

On hands and knees, Culver dived for the side of the trail, forced his way into a sprawling clump of cedars that clambered over two tilted boulders. The rifle spanged again and the bullet pinged against one of the boulders, went howling into space.

Hugging the ground, Culver glanced toward the trail. The horse lay crumpled in the road, with a pool of blood darkening the wheel ruts. Hamilton, he knew, had deliberately shot the animal. Had gambled rifle against sixgun in a shoot-out on this rocky mountainside.

Culver grimaced. The odds were heavier than Hamilton could guess. With only one cartridge left in the six-shooter, he had virtually no chance at all. Up on the slope the rifle churned three quick shots and the bullets chunked wickedly into the cedar brake.

He’s trying to smoke me out, Culver told himself. Only thing to do would be to work up the hill to the left of Hamilton’s position, taking advantage of screening boulders and scrawny thickets of evergreen. Get above Hamilton so that he would have to come out. Culver surged to his feet and ran, bent low, zig-zagging, fighting his way up the debris-strewn slope.

Something slapped Culver in the shoulder and he was going over, plunging in a dizzy spin toward the jumbled rocks that lay under-foot. As if they did not belong to him, as if they were separate entities, he knew that his feet were fighting to hold him upright. But there was nothing they could do.

He reached out a hand and the hand fell limp. The fingers curled around a head-sized rock, curled and gripped and then slid off and sprawled upon the ground.

Hamilton got me, he thought. Got me just like he got Farson and Crip. Only this time he did it with his own hands instead of someone else’s. He’ll be coming out, figuring I am dead. Only he’ll probably come over to make sure and when he finds I’m not he’ll put another bullet into me.

Culver lay face down upon the rocks and felt their coolness through his clothing. Pretty soon, he thought, that shoulder will begin to hurt like hell. Only probably, by that time I will be dead. If I move now, I’m dead, for Hamilton must be walking up and he’ll have the rifle ready. To the right he heard the scrape of leather on rock and knew the man was coming. Why not use that cartridge? Why not take a chance? It wouldn’t be the first time. Back on the river they said that Grant Culver would take a chance on anything. On the flip of a card, on the trickle of two raindrops running down a window, on impossible chances with a gun … on almost anything.

“A mean man to tangle with,” they said, ”because he doesn’t give a damn.”

And why should he now? He was as good as dead. When Hamilton saw he still had life in him, he would blast it out with a bullet from the rifle.

Culver lay and listened to the crunch of feet, to the rattle of the stones that loosened and rattled down the hillside. Thirty feet away, thought Culver. Ten paces. I’ll let him come a little closer. He counted the steps. One, two, three, four … five paces now!

He tensed himself, wedged one toe against a rock, and then heaved upward, like a wounded bear rising on hind legs. His hand was moving for the gun sticking in his waistband, moving with the old precision, with the same detached efficiency which it always used.

Before him Hamilton had stopped, mouth open in astonishment, feet spread apart as if he’d frozen in mid-stride when Culver moved. But the rifle was coming up, the barrel a shining sweep of metal that pointed from the hip. Culver felt the six-gun come free and tilt upward in his fist. The rifle muzzle spit flame and smoke and a savage hand clutched at Culver’s shirt and twitched it viciously.

Triumph surged in Culver’s brain and his hand was sure. The six-gun bucked against his palm and the sound of its ugly bark echoed in his ears.

Out on the rocks, Hamilton stumbled forward, as if he had started to run and tripped. His hand came open and the rifle dropped and the man was pitching forward.

Culver let his gun-hand sag, stood and watched Hamilton hit the ground. A dawn wind came rustling up the hillside and stirred the cedar brakes. Hamilton was a huddled darkness on the rocks.

“Mark,” said Culver, “I guess I’ll go back to the river. This isn’t the kind of country for the likes of us.”

He stuffed the six-gun back into his waistband, staggered down the hill on unsteady feet. The shoulder was hurting now, aching with a pounding pain that hammered through his body.

From the trail below came the sound of hoofs. The boys from Gun Gulch, he thought, coming out to see what it’s all about. He reached the trail as they hammered up the slope.

Mike, the burly man Nancy had shot, was in the lead. A lump beneath his shirt sleeve betrayed a bandaged arm. Behind him was Jake, the printer, with about a dozen others. They pulled up, sat their horses in the trail, staring at him.

He shook his head at them. “Too late, gents,” he said. “You missed all the fun. Hamilton is up there.”

Mike chuckled in his beard. “Been having considerable fun yourself,” he said. “Looks like Hamilton might have pegged you.”

“He did,” Culver told him. “But I pegged him back.”

“Hang it, Mike,” snapped Jake, “don’t sit there gabbing. The man is all shot up. Let’s get him back to town.”

“Sure, sure,” agreed Mike. ”The lady will give us hell if we don’t get him back.” He ruffled his beard with a ham-like hand and chuckled. “First time I ever got shot by a woman, so help me.”

“We found Perkins out in the vacant lot,” said Jake, “and he spilled his guts. We’re going to string him up just as soon as we get back.”

“You mean there won’t be any trial for me?”

“No trial,” said Jake.

“Then,” said Culver, “I’ll be going down to the river. Not so exciting, maybe, but a whole lot healthier.”

“Look, stranger,” protested Mike, “we was just figuring how maybe you would stay here.”

Culver shook his head. “I’m a gambling man,” he told them. “My place is back on the boats again.”

“Always deal them straight?” asked Jake.

“Sure,” said Culver. “A man that can’t deal them straight and win had better quit the game.”

“Just the man we want,” said Jake.

“But—”

Mike interrupted. “Seems as how Brown figures on getting out of Gun Gulch. He’s offering the Golden Slipper for sale … real cheap.”

“The boys,” said Jake, “would like to have you run it. Long as they’re going to lose their money anyhow, they’d rather lose it honest.”

“If you’re a little short on cash,” Mike told him, “the boys will pass the hat.”

Culver laughed quietly. “Don’t see how I can disappoint you gents.”

Mike climbed off his horse. “Take it easy with that shoulder,” he said. “Up you go.”

“But you—”

“Hell,” growled Mike, “I take a long walk every morning, anyhow.”

He held up a massive paw and Culver took it, felt the smooth, hard grip.

“You better get going,” said Mike. “The little lady’s waiting for you.”