Dusty Zebra : And Other Stories

CHAPTER ONE Hemp Greeting for a Stranger

The gallows were grim and shining new with the yellowness of lumber that had never braved the elements. Like a deliberate signboard of warning, they stood in the vacant lot, gleaming in the sun.

Steve Burns’ hands tightened on the reins and even though the day was bright and warm, he felt the coldness of the challenging gallows.

“Getting fancy,” he told himself, staring at the gallows. Most places were satisfied with a good stout cottonwood. But not Skull Crossing—they had this man-made apparatus that was evidently ready for business.

Slowly Burns swung the horse around and headed down the street.

Burns pulled up in front of the livery barn and spoke to an oldster tipped back on a chair.

“Got some extra hay and oats?” he asked.

“Yup,” the man told him and then added, “the saloon’s just down that dirt street.”

Burns grinned and slid from the gray, handing over the reins.

“Was looking at that contraption up the street,” he said. “Must be expecting some heavy business.”

The livery man spat through a broken front tooth. “Already got the business. Fixing to string up some ornery hombres the sheriff caught out in the hills. Mex gang that’s been raising hell for a year or two. Dang near cleaned out the valley.”

“Noticed some abandoned ranches coming in,” said Burns. “Wondered what it was all about.”

“Yup,” declared the man. “Getting so it wasn’t safe to go out nights. Hay stacks burned. People killed. Cattle all run off.”

“So the ranchers up and left,” said Burns.

“That’s it, stranger. Spent a lot of time trying to hunt down the lobos, but they never found their hideout. Bad country, them hills out back where they holed up.”

“But the sheriff found the gang.”

The livery man spat through the broken tooth again. “Tell you how it is, stranger. Sheriff sort of works up a little extra steam every time election date gets close.”

“Think I’ll head for a drink,” said Burns and walked down the empty street.

After the blaze of sun outside, the interior of the Longhorn bar was a place of shadows. Burns stopped just inside the swinging doors, stood blinking until forms began to take dim shape. The bartender leaned on the bar, staring out the window. In one corner some men were playing cards and others stood around and watched.

Burns strode toward the bar. “Set it out,” he told the barkeep. “I aim to cut some dust out of my throat.”

The bartender moved deliberately, reaching for a bottle.

“Burns!” The word snapped like a whip across the room.

Steve spun from the bar, hands streaking for his guns.

In the dim light he saw one of the men who had been watching the game coming toward him.

The man’s face was a blur and his body blended with the shadows that still hung in the corner. But there was no mistaking the poise of the body, no question about those moving hands, already hitting leather.

Burns’ mind clicked blank with sudden concentration, everything else wiped out except that figure in the center of the room. Time stretched taut in the brittle silence and Burns, watching the smudge of the other’s face, knew that his own hands were moving swiftly, that his guns were coming out…as if by rote.

Burns dodged swiftly and behind him he heard the crash of shattered glass as a bullet swept past his cheek and hit the backbar.

Then Steve’s own guns were now talking, bucking against his wrists, coughing with a twin precision that set the glasses to jiggling on the bar.

Before him the smudge of face bent forward, hung for a single instant as the shadowy body jerked to the impact of the bullets, then slid to the floor.

Steve let his hands fall to his side, smelled the acrid smoke that trickled from his gun barrels, stared at the black, hunched thing in the center of the room.

Men were stirring out of the corner, plainer now that his eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, moving slowly and cautiously, with their hands hanging at their sides.

Feet pounded on the porch outside and the batwing doors smashed open. A huge man entered and walked toward Steve Burns. Wary, with thumbs hooked in his gunbelt, and the sunlight from the open doors striking fire against the nickel-plated star pinned upon his vest.

He stopped six feet away and stared, eyes squinted until they were little more than slits. He nodded at the guns.

“You’re handy with them things.”

“Only when I have to be,” Burns answered.

“How come that Kagel knew you?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Steve replied.

“He called you by name,” the sheriff growled. “You must have met him somewhere.”

Burns shook his head. “He had my name, all right. But I don’t recognize his handle. Maybe it’s a new one.”

“Maybe if we rolled him over,” suggested a voice and Burns’ eyes flicked toward the man who’d spoken. Squat, square of shoulders, smooth. Pearl stickpin gleaming in the black cravat that bunched above the ornate vest.

Slowly Steve holstered his guns. “Let’s take a look,” he said. “I’ll tell you if I know him.”

It was the last thing that he wanted to do, he admitted to himself. But it was a thing he had to do. One suspicious move and the burly sheriff would be making trouble.

They moved across the floor to stand above the dead man. Callously, the sheriff turned the body over with his toe and it flopped grotesquely on its back, arms flung out, limp head lolling.

Burns’ face felt stiff, as if a mask had enclosed his flesh. He couldn’t show the slightest flicker of expression, he knew, for the sheriff would be watching with those squinted eyes.

Slowly he shook his head. “Never saw him before,” he said. “Can’t imagine who he is.”

And that, he told himself, was the damnest lie he had ever told. For there was no doubt about the dead man on the floor. His name wasn’t Kagel, of course, and he looked some older than the day that he had left Devil’s Gulch, swearing vengeance on the man who drove him out.

“I think I’ll get that drink,” said Burns.

“Just a minute,” the sheriff called.

Burns stood silent, while the star-man squinted at him.

“Figuring on staying for a while?” the sheriff asked.

“Hadn’t thought about it, sheriff.”

“Take my advice,” the lawman told him. “Have a drink and get some grub. Have a sleep if you really need it. But then you better slope.”

Burns reached into a vest pocket, hauled out a sack of tobacco. His fingers shook a little as he thumbed the book of leaves.

“Ordering me out?” he said.

“I’m giving you some time.”

“I think I’ll stay a while,” Burns told him calmly.

The sheriff’s face flushed and his fingers twitched impatiently toward his guns, but his thumbs stayed anchored on the belt.

Burns spilled tobacco into the paper. “You see,” he said, “this is the first place I was ever ordered out of. If I let it happen to me, folks might get the idea I was just a saddle tramp.”

“I told you to vamoose,” the sheriff rumbled. “We got our bellies plumb full of slickers that come in with their guns tied down.”

Burns lifted the cigarette to his mouth, licked the flap, twirled it shut. His lips scarcely moved as he spoke. “Sheriff, the only way I ever argue is with my guns. Maybe you would like to…”

“Hold it,” warned the man with the fancy vest. He addressed the sheriff. “Look, Egan, he didn’t pick the fight, Kagel called him. Must have been out of his head or something. Burns here says he never saw the man before.”

“That’s what he says,” declared the sheriff, “but it sounds damn funny to me.”

“He had to defend himself,” argued the other. “Kagel had the first shot. He already had his guns half out when he yelled at Burns. Under those circumstances, I don’t see why Burns can’t stick around long as he’s a mind to.”

The sheriff started to speak, stammered. “All right,” he finally said. “All right, I guess that he can stay.”

He swung on Burns like a raging grizzly. “Only don’t go flourishing them guns. This here county is cleaning up and we don’t stand for off-hand shooting.”

Burns grinned sourly. “Just tell the boys not to prod me none.”

Brusquely the sheriff turned on his heel and headed for the door. Steve stood, looking after him. Funny, he told himself. Damn funny. That big bear of a sheriff folding up to fancy vest.

Fingers tapped him on the elbow and he turned around.

“Name is Carson,” said the man with the fancy vest, holding out his hand. “Joe Carson. Own this place.”

Burns put out his hand and shook. Carson’s hand was flabby and his handclasp matched it.

“Don’t mind the sheriff,” said Carson. “It’s near election time and he is on the prod. Always is, come election time. Looking for things that will help the votes.”

“Like rounding up the cow thieves?”

“Something like that,” Carson agreed. “Probably had those rustlers staked out for months ahead and hauled them in when it would do some good.”

Burns moved to the bar, Carson at his elbow.

“Good shooting,” the bartender told him. “Seen lots of it in my day. But nothing quite like that.”

“Thanks,” said Burns. “Slow, though. He got in the first one.”

“And smashed up the backbar,” declared the bartender, bitterly. “Damn it all, I do hate messy shooting. Neat and clean, I says. That’s the way to do it.”

“Go ahead, drink up,” invited Carson. “The bottle’s on the house.”

Burns poured a drink and downed it.

“Maybe you’re looking for a job,” asked Carson. “If you are, I’d like to talk to you.”

Burns hesitated. “Well, not a job exactly. I’m looking for a man.”

“Not Kagel?” asked Carson.

Burns shook his head. “A friend. Name of Custer—Bob Custer. Used to live around here.”

“You won’t find him, mister,” the bartender told Burns. “He up and pulled his freight a month or two ago.”

“One of the ranchers that were driven out?”

The bartender nodded.

Burns downed a second drink of whiskey. “Doesn’t sound like Bob,” he protested. “All hell couldn’t scare him out.”

“None of them had a thing to stay for,” Carson said. “Their cattle were gone and some of their places burned. They tried banding together, but it didn’t do no good. Didn’t have the men to protect themselves. When they were one place, the gang would strike at another. Only outfit that survived was Newman’s Lazy K. Newman had men enough to fight off the wild bunch.”

Burns shook his head, bewildered. “Funny that a bunch of cow thieves would go in for burning and killings. Mostly they’re just interested in cows.”

“Ranchers picked off a few of them,” said Carson. “Got their dander up. For a while…”

The batwings flapped and a voice drawled. “Just take it easy, gents. Keep on doing what you’re doing.”

Burns stiffened and the whiskey in the glass he held slopped onto the bar. In the mirror, he saw Carson’s face go white. The bartender stood frozen with a rag in one hand and a wet glass in the other.

“We’re holding up the bank,” the man in the doorway said, “and we don’t want any trouble.”

From down the street came the sound of a single shot.

“Somebody,” said the man in the doorway, “thought that we were fooling.”

“Apparently you aren’t,” Burns told him.

“If you think we are,” replied the voice, “just turn around and try me.”

Burns spun on his heels, knees folding beneath him so that he slid toward the floor, hands going for his guns. A bullet chunked in the wood above his head and the sound of the bandit’s coughing gun crashed through the stillness of the bar.

“Take it easy, bub,” said the bandit slowly. “Take it easy, bub. Stay right where you are.”

Burns’ guns, almost clear of leather, slid back as his fingers loosened.

“Take it easy, bub … take it easy, bub …”

The voice didn’t sound exactly right, muffled by the blue bandanna mask, but the words were right. How long had it been since he’d heard those words? Five years or more … seven … maybe more than that.

“O.K.,” said Burns. “I was a fool to try it.”

He hunkered on his heels, hands on the floor, studying the man. Tall, straight, with a jaunty angle to his hat and wisps of tawny hair sticking out beneath it. The gun hand was steady and the figure tensed, but the voice had been cool, full of self assurance.

A ripple of shots came from down the street. A horse’s hoofs started up and drummed into the distance.

“Steady,” said the man in the doorway. “Don’t get fidgety. One move and I’ll fill you with lead!”

Queer to be sitting here, thought Burns, while a bank robbery’s going on just a door or two away. Like spectators watching a horse race—or like a dream where a man sees something happening and can’t raise a hand to stop it.

Someone was shouting now, yelling out orders. A sixgun banged and a rifle barked. Hoofs drummed again, hoofs that became a thunder in the street.

The man in the door moved swiftly. A quick heel sounded on the steps and just outside a man yelled to a horse. The rolling rush of hoofs went past the saloon and thundered down the street. Gunfire broke loose, went along the street in a ragged wave.

Burns leaped to his feet, bounded for the still-swinging doors.

Two dozen horsemen were racing out of town, horses hunched down and humping like scared rabbits, kicking up a cloud of dust, while guns from doors and windows sent a hail of lead after them. There were no answering shots. There was no need of any. The retreating bandits were already out of range.

Burns heard Carson come out of the door behind him. Together they stood side by side, watching the swirl of dust move out of sight.

Burns shook his head. “Big bunch,” he said. “Bank robbers as a rule don’t ride that many together.”

“Smart way of doing it,” said Carson, almost admiringly. “Ride in and take over the town. Have it over and done with before a man can make a move.”

Down the street Sheriff Egan was bellowing, rounding up a posse. Up the street a few enthusiastic souls still banged away.

“Looks like the sheriff will have a chance to win another vote or two,” Burns said in a low tone.

CHAPTER TWO Gun the Man Down!

The bartender had said that Bob Custer had pulled freight. But the barkeep had been wrong. For the man who had stood with leveled gun in the doorway of the Longhorn bar had been Bob Custer.

Even with the mask covering his face, you couldn’t mistake a jasper like Bob Custer, Steve told himself. Not with the jaunty angle to his hat, the tawny hair that refused to stay in place, the words he used …

“Take it easy, bub,” he’d said and those had been words that he had used before. Words that he had used when the two of them had ridden together before Burns took the job in Devil’s Gulch.

He had recognized Steve and had deliberately used that expression to keep his old partner from using his guns.

Sitting on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, Steve smoothed the faded letter on his knee, read the words again as the lamp on the little table guttered in the wind:

A nice, quiet valley! Well, maybe it had been, when Bob had written that letter, almost two years before.

Carefully Steve folded the letter, replaced it in his wallet and walked to the window. Dusk was falling over Skull Crossing and the orange and yellow glow of lighted windows ran along the street. The thump of boots upon the sidewalk came to Burns’ ears as he stood staring out of the window. A horseman galloped past and it seemed to Burns that he could smell the acrid dust the pony’s hoofs had raised in its haste.

If you ever figure on leaving Devil’s Gulch … Somehow, Bob Custer, even then, two years ago, must have known that the day would come when a man couldn’t go on living in a town where the ghosts of dead men walked in broad daylight. He knew even then that Steve would want to hang up his guns and get away from the constant whispering of, “That’s Steve Burns, he shot about fifty men—cleaned up Devils’ Gulch—he’s poison with a gun.”

“Good evening,” said a voice from the doorway and Burns swung from the window, saw the man leaning against the jamb.

“You the gent,” asked the man, “who perforated Kagel?”

Burns nodded, watching the man warily. A youngish fellow with slicked back hair and a bulldog pipe hanging from his mouth.

“I’m Humphrey,” said the man. “Jay Humphrey. Editor of the Tribune. Got the room just across the hall from you. Saw your door was open.”

“Glad to know you, Humphrey,” said Burns, but he didn’t try to make his voice sound as if he were.

“Understand your name is Burns,” said Humphrey. “Wouldn’t be Steve Burns, would you, from Devil’s Gulch?”

“That’s right,” Burns told him, tight-lipped. “You aren’t gunning for me, too?”

“Hell, no,” protested Humphrey. “I just record the news. I never try to make it.”

Burns hauled out his tobacco sack, started to build a smoke.

“Catch the bank robbers?” he asked.

Humphrey shook his head. “Egan came back with the posse just a while ago. The bandits got away into the hills. Osborne’s sorer than a boil.”

“Osborne the banker?” asked Burns.

“That’s correct,” said Humphrey. “Egan’s sending out to the Lazy K for help. Figures on taking everyone he can lay his hands on out into the hills tomorrow.”

Burns snapped a matchhead on his thumb nail, lit the smoke. “I can imagine that Osborne is sore,” he said. “The sheriff will never catch that gang, waiting until morning.”

He grinned at Humphrey. “You don’t sound too sore yourself. Must not have lost much money in the holdup.”

“Not a dime,” said Humphrey. “The only ones that had money in the bank were the Lazy K, Carson and old man Osborne himself. Rest of us just use the bank for borrowing.”

“High interest, I suppose,” said Burns.

“It isn’t interest,” Humphrey told him. “It’s highway robbery.”

He straightened from the door jamb. “Got to be going,” he said. “Got some work to do. Don’t suppose you’ll be riding with the posse in the morning?”

Burns hoisted his eyebrows. “Why should I? It’s no skin off my nose what happens to the town. I ride in peaceable and what happens to me? Someone tries to plug me.”

“Don’t blame you,” said Humphrey. “Drop into the office sometime. I got a bottle hid away for my friend.”

Burns stood in the center of the room, listening to the sound of the man’s feet going down the hall.

Humphrey had come for something. That, he knew, was certain. Some information. Something that he wanted to know. He hadn’t asked any questions, except about that Devil’s Gulch business and about riding with the posse. But that last had been a funny one. Men just passing through seldom rode with posses.

Humphrey couldn’t suspect that he knew Bob Custer…probably no one in town even suspected Custer had been involved in the holdup. And that only made the visit more senseless than ever.

Burns let smoke trickle from his nostrils, knitted his brow.

Funny, that Custer could be tangled with a bank gang. Never had a wild streak in him. Always wanting to stop somewhere and settle down.

Bob Custer and some other ranchers were driven out of the valley by a bunch of cow thieves that didn’t act the way cow thieves should act. Cow thieves as a rule don’t burn and kill. They gather them some critters and get the hell out as fast as they can go.

Custer took part in the holdup of a bank, but it was a funny sort of holdup. Not the way bank men ordinarily work. The bunch was too big for one thing and …

Burns jumped as the door creaked, hand reaching for his gun. But even as his fingers touched the grip, he stopped, frozen in astonishment.

A girl stood in the room, back against the door, hands behind her, looking at him with blue eyes that seemed to sparkle in the smoky lamplight.

“You Steve Burns?” she asked.

Burns nodded, staring at her. The faded levis she wore were splotched with dust and the sleeves of the blue work shirt were so long she’d turned up the cuffs. Brown hair spilled around her shoulders and her hat hung at her back by a thong around her throat.

“Bob Custer sent me,” she said quietly.

Burns rose slowly, fumbled his hat off his head and stood with it in his hand.

“I was figuring maybe that he would get in touch with me,” he said, “but I never thought he would send a girl.”

“I was the only one that could come. It would be too dangerous for any of the others. But no one would pay any attention to me. Probably wouldn’t even know me.”

Her eyes laughed at him. “Besides, I sneaked around in back after it was getting dark.”

“Look, miss,” pleaded Burns. “Maybe you would just slow up a bit and let me get it straight. About it being dangerous. About the bank robbery this…”

“That’s what Bob wants to talk to you about,” declared the girl. “He’s afraid you’ll think that he really is a bandit—that all of us are out robbing banks and shooting folks and…”

“You were doing a right good job of it today,” said Burns.

Her hand reached out and gripped his arm. “But don’t you see that’s what Bob wants to talk to you about. Wants to explain how we are hiding in the hills, fighting back against the men who drove us off our land.”

“Wait a second,” gasped Burns. “You mean that Carson, Osborne and the Lazy K were the ones who drove the ranchers out?”

“Only Carson, really,” the girl told him. “He’s the town boss here. Osborne plays in with him and Newman out at the Lazy K is just the foreman. Carson owns the ranch and uses it as a hideout for his gunslicks.”

“I should have guessed it,” Burns said, almost as if talking to himself. “I should have spotted it right off. The phoney story about the rustlers and the burning…”

Steps came rapidly along the hall and Burns, reaching out, pulled the girl away from the door, stepped toward it, hand reaching for a gun.

Breathlessly they waited, but the steps went past, turned in at another door farther down the hall.

“You got to get out of here,” Burns whispered. “There’s too much chance of someone spotting you.”

“Bob asked me to bring you out to the hills,” the girl whispered back. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Sure, I’ll come. What the hell. Bob Custer’s the best friend I ever had. If he’s in trouble, it’s time I was sitting in and calling for a hand.”

“I’ll meet you on the road just west of town.” She started for the door, but Burns halted her with a gesture. Swiftly, he stepped to the table, blew out the lamp.

“I’ll be there just as soon as I can get my horse,” he said.

He heard the doorknob turned.

“Just a minute,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Since you know my name, miss, maybe …”

“Ann,” she said.

The door opened and closed softly and her footsteps were faint tappings.

Burns stood for a moment, listening, then socked his hat on his head, walked out of the room and down the stairs. There was no sign of Ann. Probably, he told himself, she sneaked out the back way. Probably had her horse out there, back of the hotel.

There was no one in the lobby and he strode across it, came out on the porch.

The town was quiet. Somewhere a drunken puncher gurgled on a song and two horses stood slack-hipped at a hitch rack across the street.

Steve shucked up his gunbelt, stepped swiftly from the porch and headed for the livery barn.

A whining thing brushed past him and thudded into the hotel’s side. A heavy rifle coughed hollowing in the night.

Burns flung himself toward the dark alley between the hotel and barber shop, hands clawing for his guns even as his legs drove him toward the place of safety.

The rifle coughed again and another bullet chewed into the siding, throwing bright splinters that flashed like tiny spears of light in the glow that came from the window just above them.

Burns hit the alley running and kept on, stumbling in the darkness.

And as he ran, thoughts hammered in his skull.

Someone knew who he was. Probably Carson had planted that rifleman in the building across the street.

The livery stable, he remembered, was to the west. He had to reach there quickly, get his horse and ride—west out of town to meet the girl.

A sudden thought stopped him in his stride. That girl! Was she really who she said she was? How was he to be sure that Custer had sent her? Maybe she was nothing more than bait to Carson’s trap. A ruse to get him out of the hotel. If he rode to meet her, that might be another trap.

He shook his head, befuddled. He’d been a blundering fool, should have demanded some proof of the girl’s identity. But it was too late now.

Carson was out to get him—for no one else would have planted that rifleman. Probably out to get anyone who rode into town and looked as if he might be troublesome.

Carson had said a word for him, he remembered, but that probably meant nothing now. Maybe Carson had figured on hiring him for one of his gunslicks until he’d shown too much interest in the empty valley and had asked about Bob Custer.

There was no one in sight at the alley’s end and Burns swung to the west, slipped along the buildings, gun out, eyes and ears alert for danger.

From the street behind him came the uproar of shouting voices. Probably, he thought, grimly, those rifle shots had emptied every business place.

“Got to be fast about it,” he told himself. “Another minute and the whole town will be on top of me.”

Out of the silence ahead a pebble clicked and Burns froze against the building. Behind him the boards gave way and pushed inward as his shoulder pressed against them. In the darkness there was another sound, the slither of a foot, of a man moving up ahead coming toward him.

Steve froze tighter against the building, felt the boards against his back swing farther inward. Putting his hand behind him, he pushed and a hinge squealed faintly, like the sound of a cricket in the grass.

It was a door, he knew. A door leading into the rear of one of the buildings, although he could not know which one.

Backing silently into the darkness, he felt the floor beneath his boots, ducked swiftly into the cavernous blackness.

From outside came the scuff of boots, the scuff of several boots. More than one man out there, he told himself.

Reaching out with his toe, he found the door’s edge, exerted gentle pressure. The door swung easily. The hinges squeaked just once then the latch clicked softly.

Relaxing from the strung-up tension of a moment before, he caught the sweetish smell of whiskey in the darkness, heard the subdued mumble of voices that came from just behind him.

His eyes made out the shapes of things piled against the wall. Kegs and cases and a pile of empty bottles, thrown helter-skelter in the corner.

A voice came higher than the others, cutting through the mumble.

“But, damn it, Egan, Gardner never misses. He’s pure death with that gun of his. That’s why I picked him for the job.”

The sheriff’s throaty rumble answered. “But he did miss, Carson. Shot twice and missed slick and clean each time. The boys are out hunting down the hombre.”

Straightening up, Burns tiptoed back into the darkness, nearer to the sound of the voices.

The sheriff said: “Just wait. You’ll hear a gunshot pretty quick. That’ll be the end of him.”

“The end of someone else more than likely,” growled Carson. “You don’t seem to get it into your thick skull who this man is. Steve Burns, the toughest marshal that ever packed a star. Cleaned up Devil’s Gulch single-handed and you know what kind of a place that was. A jasper like that would have to ride in just when we’d gotten things to rolling. Wonder if Custer sent for him…”

The back door, the one Burns had latched a moment or so before, burst open with a crash.

Burns wheeled, stepped swiftly backward, felt his body wedge between two piles of cases.

“Hey!” yelled a voice. “Hey, in there!”

There were three figures in the doorway and one of them was struggling, fighting furiously and silently to break from the clutch of the other two.

The sheriff’s voice boomed. “That’s Gardner. They got him!”

A door opened and a flood of light splashed into the room, lighting up the three who struggled in the doorway.

From his position between the cases, Steve Burns gasped and his guns jerked up.

The one who stood between the other two, the one who had been fighting to get free, was the girl with the blue eyes, the girl Bob Custer had sent to guide him to the hills!

CHAPTER THREE Satan’s Law and Order

Across the room, Burns saw Ann’s mouth shape a warning cry, saw the blank astonishment that slipped like a mask across the face of one of the men who stood beside her. He sensed rather than saw the lightning move that brought a gun flashing from the holster of the other man.

In that timeless space while the flashing gun was moving, Burns twisted his wrist and thumbed the hammer. The gun bucked in his hand and across the room the other gun was spinning in the lamplight that flooded from the inner door.

Spinning like a wheel of light while in the doorway the man who had drawn it was wilting like a sack from which the grain was pouring.

Shuffling feet scraped swiftly across the floor and Burns spun clear of the packing cases, pivoting on his toes. The burly sheriff was almost on top of him, his drawn six-gun dwarfed almost to toy size by the ham-like fist that clutched it.

The sheriff’s gun crashed in the closeness of the room and Burns felt a slash of fire rip across his ribs. Savagely he lashed out at the charging figure and his sixgun barrel slapped across the sheriff’s face.

The lawman staggered in midstride and stumbled. His gun dropped from his hands and his face suddenly was red with blood that spouted from his nose. Burns danced out of his way, brought up with a jolt against a pile of cases stacked against the wall.

Egan skidded to his knees, sprawled upon the floor.

The room crashed again with spitting thunder and a bullet crunched into a case scant inches from Burns’ head. Quickly Burns ducked, knees bending beneath him, dropping his body to a crouching position.

Through the gunsmoke that filled the place, Burns saw Carson standing to one side of the doorway. A crooked smile was on his lips and his gun was leveling for another shot.

Swiftly Burns angled his own sixgun around, thumbed the hammer. The shot was wild, but it spoiled the saloon man’s aim. Carson’s bullet plowed a furrow along the floor, hurling shining splinters in the murky light.

Another gun crashed and the half open door beside which Carson was standing jumped on its hinges at the impact of the bullet.

Carson jerked back, moving swiftly, dived for the safety of an empty case standing on the floor.

Steve spun on his heels, leaping for the back door. He saw Ann standing in the doorway, gun in hand, smoke still drooling from its muzzle. The man who had stood beside her, the one with the look of blank astonishment on his face, was huddled on the floor.

“Quick!” Burns yelled at her. “Outside!”

She hesitated for a second, staring at him.

With a single bound, he was at the door and reaching out for her. Lifting her, he swung her into the darkness, set her roughly on her feet. From behind them a sixgun snarled.

“Run!” gasped Burns. “The livery stable. Two horses. I’ll hold them off.”

She clung to him. “I hit him,” she said. “He was just standing there and I grabbed the gun out of his holster and hit him on the head.”

Burns shoved her away. “The barn,” he shouted at her. “Get us horses!”

The girl was running and Steve loped after her, watchful, guns ready to be used.

Another gun barked from a building’s corner and Burns heard the bullet whine through the grass at ankle height. He held his fire.

“They can’t be sure where we are,” he told himself. “No use showing them.”

Ahead of him he saw Ann’s shadowy figure duck into an open door, knew it must be the rear entrance to the livery barn. Reaching it, he stood in the darkness by the door, waiting, watching. But there was no sign of pursuit. Perhaps no one knew exactly where they’d gone. Perhaps most of them didn’t even know what was happening. Of the gang back in the saloon’s back room, Carson would be the only one in any shape to tell them. One man was dead, another had been knocked out by the girl, and the sheriff would need a little while to get his wits together.

Swiftly, Steve ducked into the door, ran down the aisle that smelled of hay, of oiled leather, of sweaty saddle blankets.

One horse was sidling along the aisle and Burns spoke to it soothingly. The animal snorted and backed away. Leaping, Burns caught the reins.

“Where are you?” he shouted at the girl and her voice came back.

“Here. I got another horse.”

She was backing it out of the stall.

Burns flicked his eyes up and down the row of stalls, wishing for his own gray, although his mind told him there was no time to wait, no time to choose. No time even to get on saddles. They’d have to ride without them. Bridles was the best that they could do.

If he only knew where his own horse had been put. If only…

“Hey, what’s going on?” a voice called sharply.

Burns swung around. It was the livery man, striding toward him.

Burns jerked up his gun.

“See this?” he asked.

The livery man stopped abruptly.

“Just turn around and walk ahead of us,” Burns told him. “Real slow. And shed your artillery as you go.”

Slowly the man swung around, hands fumbling at his gun belt.

“One wrong move,” warned Burns, “and I’ll blow you plumb to hell.”

The gun belt dropped from off the man’s waist and the man himself plodded on ahead, hands half raised.

Behind him, Burns heard the soft, muffled thud of his own horse and the girl’s.

“When we get to the door,” Burns told Ann, “we’ll climb these ponies and hit the street full gallop. Swing to the west and keep on going. If there’s any shooting, don’t try to shoot back. I’ll take care of that.”

To the livery man, he said: “That’s far enough for you. Just stand where you are and don’t let out a yelp.”

Burns swung abruptly, leaped for the back of his horse. The animal, accustomed to a saddle, crouched in fright, then sprang for the doorway, burst into the street.

Deftly, Burns swung the horse around, brought his sixgun up to a firing position. Someone stormed out of a restaurant doorway, yelling at him and from far up the street a rifle started up with hollow coughing.

The sound of hoofs swept out of the barn and went past him. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve caught a quick glimpse of the girl, bent low on the saddleless horse, thundering down the street.

A bullet hummed over his head and another skipped along the sidewalk, like a stone on water, gouging out clouds of splinters as it went.

In front of the Longhorn bar men were running for their horses. Others were leaping for their saddles.

With a yell, Steve reined his horse around, taking the direction the girl had gone. Lighted windows spun past as the horse stretched out and ran as if his life depended on it.

Then the town of Skull Crossing was behind him and he was following the drumfire of hoofbeats that he knew was the other horse ahead.

The moon rode just above the eastern horizon and flooded the valley with a crystal light.

Burns frowned. If only the night could have been dark, Ann and he might have had a better chance. But with the moon almost full, pursuit would be easy. Soon the horses and their riders would be streaming out upon their trail.

The horse thundered down an incline, splashed across a shallow stream, plunged up the other bank and breasted the rise.

Ann and her mount were no longer to be seen, but the trail was plain and the horse followed it unerringly. If there’s a place to turn off, Burns told himself, she’ll stop there and wait for me.

The horse suddenly shied as a running figure came out of the shadows. Burns’ hand, snaking for his gun-butt, stopped short. The running figure, he saw, was Ann. She was stumbling down the trail in the moonlight, waving as if to stop him.

She had lost her hat and the shirt was ripped open at the shoulder. Dirt smudges marched across her face.

“The horse,” she gasped. “Threw me off. Scared of a snake…”

He reached down a hand and she grasped it.

“Up you come,” he said, and heaved.

The horse shied and reared, and Burns talked to it soothingly.

“Hang on,” he said to Ann.

Her arms tightened around his waist. “I’m all right,” she told him. “If I’d had a saddle he never would have thrown me. But he jumped so quick that I just flew off.”

“You hurt?”

“Skinned up some. That’s all. Landed on my shoulder and skidded.”

“We got to keep moving,” Burns told her. “There’s a big gang in town. Running for their horses when I left.”

“The Lazy K mob,” said Ann. “Egan must have sent for them.”

The horse was stretching out again, running with an easy lope that ate up ground.

“You’ll have to tell me when to leave the trail,” said Burns.

“I will,” she said.

They crossed another stream that tumbled from the hills down into the valley and the horse lunged up the bank.

“We sure got you in a mess,” said Ann. “I know Bob didn’t figure it this way. He just wanted to talk to you. Wanted to get you straightened out. Didn’t want you to ride away thinking he had taken to robbing banks.”

“I would have dealt me a hand anyhow,” Burns told her, “just as soon as I got the lay. Didn’t like Carson from the very first. A greasy sort of hombre.”

They rode in silence for a moment.

“I came to see Bob anyway,” said Burns. “Got a letter from him a couple of years ago. Said he needed a partner. Figured maybe that he still did. Figured maybe I could find a place where I could hang up the guns.”

He laughed shortly. “Guess I’ll need them for a while.”

For a long while nothing further was spoken, then Ann said: “I hear something.”

Straining his ears, Steve heard it, too. Heard it above the whistle of wind in his ears, the steady beat of the pony’s feet—a distant drum of hoofs.

“That’s the posse,” said Burns. “I was hoping they’d hold off for a while.”

At the end of ten minutes they turned off the trail, plunged into the tangle of hills that crowded against the valley.

The horse stumbled beneath them, regained his stride. But it was not as smooth and firm as it had been before—nor quite as fast.

Behind them the drum of hoofs was closer, louder. Once a man yelled and the yell cut above the rolling sound of pursuit.

The horse stumbled again, then went on, but this time the stride was broken, limping.

Burns pulled to a halt and slid off.

“Go on,” he yelled at the girl. “Tell Bob I’ll try to hold them off.”

“But, Steve …”

“Go on!” he yelled. “Ride!”

He hit the horse with his hat and the animal leaped away. The girl, he saw, had grabbed the reins, was bending low. Then the hoofs clattered up a rocky gorge and pounded into the distance.

For a moment Burns stood at the mouth of the gorge, eyes taking in the scene. Not too bad a place to make a stand, he told himself, and yet it could be better.

But there was one thing clear. He had to stop them, hold them up a while for Ann to make her getaway. Had to try to hold out until Bob Custer could send his men sweeping down upon the posse.

Swiftly he ran up the gorge, dodging around the boulders, heading for a tangle of rock and juniper to one side of the gorge. As he ran he heard the nearing thunder of the posse.

Jerking loose his guns, he leaped behind the rocks and junipers, crouched waiting, breath whistling in his throat.

Suddenly the horses and their riders burst over the brow of the hill, stormed down toward the gorge. Twenty five or thirty of them, Burns made out, counting swiftly. Too many—more than he’d thought there’d be.

Moistening his lips, he lifted the guns. The palms of his hands were wet and he wrapped his fingers with a tighter grip.

They charged up the gorge in a massed bunch and Burns tensed in his hiding place. Slowly, deliberately, his trigger fingers tightened.

The first rider reached the boulder that he had marked and Burns’ guns were hammering in his grip, spitting fire, blasting the night wide open with their talk.

Screams and yells burst out and the posse swirled madly for a moment with horses rearing and fighting the bits, men fighting to break free from the riders who were packed around them.

One man threw up his arms, his scream was drowned by the gurgle of blood welling in his throat. A horse jack-rabbited up the hillside, kicking at the bouncing thing that dragged beside it, foot caught in the stirrup.

Then, suddenly, the gorge was clear—clear except for three sprawled figures. One was bigger than the other two and that one, Burns knew, was a horse that one of his bullets had caught.

Horses were galloping wildly, reins dragging, while men raced like scurrying shadows for a patch of undergrowth, for a boulder, for anything that might serve as shelter from the storm of lead.

Flat on his belly, Burns fed cartridges into his guns. A gun coughed angrily and a bullet howled off a boulder, turning end over end into the moonlight night.

Another gun spat like a startled cat and the bullet crunched with a chewing sound through the screen of juniper, smacked into the earth. A third gun talked and then a fourth. Lead snarled and whined.

Huddled against the biggest boulder, Burns held his fire. Let them shoot. Let them burn a little powder. After a while they’ll wonder what they’re shooting at—now they’re just shooting blind, working off some steam.

A branch, clipped by one of the buzzing bullets, fell on top of his hat and he shook it off with a jerk of his head. Another plowed ground three inches from his boot.

It was more than he had bargained for, he admitted grimly. Twenty men or more against his guns. Right in the middle of the jackpot and plumb out of blue chips.

The guns quieted and there were rustling noises—the sound of men moving forward, working closer to his position, crawling up the hill so they could get above him.

Squinting through the tangle of junipers, he waited. Out in the moonlight a stealthy figure moved, inching along like a drifting shadow. Burns brought one gun up, waited tensely. The shadow moved again and the gun in his hand barked into the night. The shadow screamed and jerked half upright, then fell back, a huddled shape sprawling on the hillside.

Guns shrieked and hammered and the junipers danced wildly with the bullets. Hugging the ground, Burns felt the breath of death wing past, whispering in his ear. Sand geysered and sprayed into his face. A burning thing raked across his elbow. Screaming lead slid wildly from the boulders and went yowling away. They were doing their best to get him.

Another shadow moved and Burns jerked up his gun, triggered swiftly. The shadow yelled, leaped from the ground, became a running man. Burns’ trigger finger worked again and the man bent in the middle, hit the ground with his shoulders and pinwheeled into the gully.

Guns yammered and the hillside and gully were full of winking muzzles that spat out leaden death.

The boulders and thicket of juniper lay no more than ten feet from the lip of the dry stream bed that sluiced down the gully.

The guns were quiet again. They were waiting for a moving target.

Burns crouched, gathering his feet beneath him. Then he moved, straight toward the dry wash, hurling himself across the moonlit space.

One gun cracked and then he was over the edge, tumbling down into the darkness, steeling himself against the boulders and gravel that would bite into his body.

His shoulder crashed into something soft and yielding, something that grunted and swore, something that lumbered out of his way.

Scrambling to his feet, Burns swung around, face to face with Sheriff Egan.

The impact had knocked the gun from the sheriff’s hand and the sheriff was ambling toward him with a huge fist cocked.

Burns swung up his gun, but even as he did the fist exploded in his face and he felt himself lifted from his feet and sailing backward. He crashed into the gravelly bank behind him and for a moment his head seemed to burst and spin with screaming colors. Then he was crawling on his hands and knees, gasping for breath, while his stomach churned with an icy coldness and his knees and arms were so weak they ached.

A savage voice cut across his brain: “You damn fool, why didn’t you shoot him?”

The sheriff growled and Carson’s voice said: “Well, then, by Lord, I will.”

A third voice came. “If you shoot him, Carson, it’ll be the last thing you ever do. I’ll drill you where you stand.”

Cold seconds dripped by, breathless and taut.

The voice that had threatened Carson came again and this time Burns’ befuddled brain remembered it—the voice of the man who had stood propped against the door jamb with the pipe hanging from his mouth.

“Law and order, Carson. That’s what you’re pulling for and it’s what I’m pulling for and we’re going to have it if I have to shoot you to get it.”

Leather rasped as Carson holstered his gun.

“O.K., Humphrey,” he said. “You win. Law and order, it is. He’ll get a trial.”

“Hell of a lot of good it’ll do him,” the sheriff growled.

A boot prodded him viciously.

“Come on, get up,” someone rasped. “You’re lucky. We’re heaving you in jail.”

CHAPTER FOUR The Scapegoats Vamoose

Steve hunkered in a corner of the single room that served as the Skull Crossing jail. He glared sourly at the two barred windows which let in some moonlight.

From the opposite corner came the sound of breathing, deep and regular—not of one alone, but of several people. Burns listened carefully, but the breathing rose and fell with monotonous regularity of sleep.

Funny, how sound those hombres can sleep, Burns told himself. Never figured anyone could sleep that good when he was going to be hung. His elbow was sore where the bullet had nicked it back there in the gully and his stomach still was squeamish—but he’d done the thing he’d set out to do. They’d never find Ann now.

Funny how that newspaper hombre had up and saved the beans. If it hadn’t been for that, Burns knew, Carson would have shot him in cold blood out there in the gully.

Burns shook his head. Queer setup. Carson and the sheriff were in cahoots, that much as least was certain. But they had the town buffaloed into thinking they were bringing law and order to Skull Crossing.

Rounding up those cow thieves over there in the corner had been a master stroke that convinced the town on this law and order business and assured the sheriff’s re-election. Fixing up that gallows was another thing. Lots more impressive than a cottonwood. Sort of civilized and fancy. Make the people think justice had finally come to stay.

One of the men stirred in the corner and Burns suddenly realized that the regular breathing had stopped.

“Hey, amigo,” a voice whispered. “What they throw you in for?”

“I shot somebody,” Burns told him.

“Ah, that’s bad,” the voice said. “We only steal the cows and look at us. They hang us for only steal some cows.”

He shuffled out of the darkness and came into the moonlight. Other men followed him, three of them, and squatted down behind him when he stopped in front of Burns.

“Who you shoot?” he asked.

Burns shook his head. “I wouldn’t know. I’m not acquainted here.”

“I hope it was the sheriff.”

“Not the sheriff,” said Burns. “I only hit the sheriff. In the face with a gun.”

“Hear that?” said the man to the other three. “He hit the sheriff, right in his big, fat face.”

“You tell him, Raymond,” said one of the others.

“Shut up!” snapped Raymond.

Raymond hunkered down to face Burns. The moonlight fell across his face and Burns saw that it was dirty and wolfish, a man who would cut your throat when you weren’t looking.

“You want to stay in here?” he asked.

Burns shook his head. “I don’t intend to stay.”

Raymond traced a pattern on the dirt floor with a grimy finger.

“You figure out a way to leave?” he asked.

“Not yet,” said Burns. “I will.”

“How much you give to go?”

Steve’s mouth snapped tight. “I haven’t any money.”

Raymond’s finger retraced the pattern carefully.

“You see some people in town?” he asked.

Burns nodded.

“Man with scar across his face,” said Raymond. “Call himself Gunderson, maybe. Maybe something else.”

“What about him?” asked Burns.

“He get us into this,” snarled Raymond. “He come to us, he say easy pickings here. So we come and we have easy pickings and then one day he leave us and the sheriff come.”

Raymond made a motion with his forefinger across his throat, made a noise like a spurting jugular.

“We think he sell us out,” he said.

“You think he’d still stick around here if he’d sold you out?”

Raymond’s face wrinkled like a worried hound dog’s. “Something funny,” he said. “Something smell. Judge, he won’t let us tell about this man in court. Judge, he won’t let us say a thing. Like maybe judge he know about this man and don’t want us to spill the beans.”

“Red headed man?” asked Burns. “Scar across his face. Finger missing on his left hand.”

“That’s him. That’s him. You know him.”

“He jumped me this afternoon,” said Burns.

“And you? Of course, you kill him?”

“Of course,” said Burns.

Raymond let the breath out of his lungs slowly.

“You hear that?” he asked the other three.

He swung back on Burns.

“Name of Gunderson? You sure?”

“Name of Kagel,” said Burns. “But that doesn’t make any difference. I knew him once before and his name was Taylor.”

“Man of many names,” said Raymond quickly.

“He sure took you for a ride,” Burns told them. “Helped Carson hang it on you. Carson had to find some scapegoat to explain the range terror that he used to drive the ranchers out and so he got Kagel or Gunderson or whatever you want to call him to fix you fellows up as the fall guys.”

Raymond’s eyes narrowed. “Tricked?”

“That’s it,” said Burns. “Carson’s outfit stole and burned and killed and you were blamed for it—they’re hanging you for it.”

Raymond rocked quietly on his toes and laughed softly to himself.

“No, we not hang. We got it all fixed up.”

He rose to his feet. “Come,” he said.

He shuffled toward the other end of the room and Burns followed, trailed by the other three. A packing box stood near one corner and Raymond indicated it.

“Table,” he said. “Play the monte on him.”

He laid hands on the box, grunted, shoved it to one side.

“Look,” he said, pointing.

Burns knelt on the dirt floor, staring. A dark hole gaped up at him. Behind him he heard Raymond chuckling.

“We dig,” said Raymond. “We dig like hell. Use old pie plate. Hide dirt under blankets. Tonight we finish him. Now we go.”

He clapped a friendly hand on Burns’ shoulder.

“You kill the gringo dog. You go, too.”

“A while ago,” said Burns, “you talked of money.”

Raymond spread his hands, embarrassed. “But that was before we know about this gringo. You save us the trouble of finding him and doing what was needed. You leave with us. You ride with us.”

“I leave with you,” said Burns, “but I won’t ride with you. I got other things to do.”

“As you wish,” said Raymond. “I go first. You follow me.”

The tunnel was small—just big enough for a man to squeeze his way, dark and earthy. Slowly Burns worked his way along with clawing hands and kicking boots, thrusting himself along the downward dip, along the level run that passed beneath the walls of the jail, then up, with the stars shining through the opening above him.

Raymond reached down a hand and Burns caught it and was hauled up. The hole emerged a matter of six feet or so beyond the rear of the building, just within the limit of the shadow cast by the moon that now was sliding down the western sky.

Burns squatted on his heels, ears alert, eyes busy with the shadows, while Raymond hovered over the hole, lending help to his three companions.

Getting to their feet the five of them moved into the deeper darkness next to the building.

“We go now,” Raymond said softly. “We get some horses. You sure,” urged Raymond, “that you stay here?”

“I have to stay,” Burns told him. “I got some folks to see.”

Raymond held out his hand. “Adios,” he said.

“Adios,” said Burns, “and look. Lay off the gray horse. He’s mine.”

“You betcha,” said Raymond. “We pass up the gray one.”

“And take it easy,” warned Burns. “Don’t bring the whole town down on top of us. Better ride east. That west country, toward the hills, may be full of Carson’s gunslicks.”

“Sure Mike,” said Raymond.

He moved away and his three companions followed. Burns stood watching them. A few yards away they stopped again, lifted hands in salute. Burns waved back at them, then turned and cat-walked swiftly through the darkness behind the buildings.

A smoky lantern set on the dump burned dimly in the back room of the Tribune. Humphrey, perched on a high-legged stool, was busy setting type, the bulldog pipe clenched between his jaws.

Standing just outside the window, Burns stared in at the editor, then moved softly to the back door.

From down the street came a startled yelp, a shot, then the wild clatter of hoofs building up some distance. Another shot boomed hollowly and silence came again, a thick and breathless silence that hung above the town.

The back door shrilled open on screeching hinges and Humphrey appeared within the frame staring at the darkness.

“I’m coming in,” Burns told him softly, “and don’t make a squawk.”

Humphrey started, then saw Burns.

“Oh, it’s you again.”

Burns strode across the doorway, shut the door behind him.

“I thought I heard some shooting out in back,” said Humphrey.

“It was up in front,” Burns told him. “The cow thieves just escaped.”

He clacked his tongue. “And that pretty gallows, standing out there waiting.”

Humphrey relit his pipe, eyes fixed on Burns, face lighted up by the flaring match.

“You haven’t got a gun back here?” asked Burns.

“Nope,” said Humphrey. “Got one up in front.”

“Just was going to warn you not to try to use it if you had,” Burns told him. “I came to do some talking.”

Humphrey motioned at the pot-bellied stove in the center of the room and the battered coffee pot that perched on top of it.

“How about a cup?” he asked.

Burns nodded.

Humphrey paced to the stove, lifted the pot.

“Don’t ever be a newspaperman,” he said. “Hell of a job. You work all hours of the day and night.”

“I just sort of wanted to ask you,” declared Burns, “why you stepped in and saved my hide tonight.”

Humphrey wrinkled his brow. “Revulsion, I guess. Get tired every now and then of Carson’s high handed ways. Runs the town, you know. Have to play ball with him, but shooting a man in cold blood is just a bit too much.”

“Aren’t you just a bit afraid he’ll think it over some and get hostile about you pulling a gun on him?”

“Maybe,” admitted Humphrey. “But, hell, that’s the only kind of language a hombre like Carson understands. And if he wants to argue about it, he knows where to find me.”

Humphrey sucked noisily on his pipe, squinted quizzically at Burns. “Aren’t you taking a chance, my friend? Sitting around like this with me.”

“You mean you figure I’d ought to be building up some miles—why I’m still hanging around these parts?”

Humphrey nodded. “That is precisely the thought that went across my mind.”

“Can’t do it,” Burns told him. “Got a date with Carson.”

“What you so steamed up over Carson for?” demanded Humphrey. “Here you ride cold into town and before a day is over you’ve worked up a feud with our leading citizen.”

“I’m against anyone who drives his neighbors out,” said Burns. “Don’t take very kindly to shooting up a peaceful valley and running off cattle and burning houses. Don’t seem very honest to me.”

“Well, I be damned,” declared Humphrey. “Why didn’t I think of it before. Seems natural now, of course. Figured everything wasn’t on the square, but I never figured Carson would have the gall to do a thing like that.”

“He covered up his tracks right good,” said Burns. “Seems to have most of the people fooled. Reckon you all thought it was a gang of night riders.”

Humphrey hesitated. “Yes, I guess so. Although it seemed sort of funny to me that four puny Mexicans could raise quite so much unadulterated hell.”

“They didn’t,” Burns told him. “Carson’s gunslicks out on the Lazy K were the ones that did it. Them Mexicans were just the scapegoats. Served two purposes really. Covered up Carson’s tracks and served as bait to keep Carson’s sheriff snug in his office. Carson could have fixed up a crooked election and elected him anyway, but it was simpler this way. Easier to fool the people into voting for him.”

Humphrey squinted at Burns in the dim lantern light. “How come you dealt yourself a hand?” he asked. “Custer or some of the others send for you?”

“Nope,” Burns told him, “I’m looking for a place to hang up my guns.”

“Far as I can see you ain’t fixing on hanging them up right away.”

Fists hammered on the front door and Humphrey spun about.

“Quick,” he hissed at Burns. “Out you go.”

Burns did not move, stood watching Humphrey walk swiftly for the door. Then he stepped out of sight of the door, into the shadow of the shop.

The front door grated open and a voice boomed at Humphrey.

“Thought I’d find you here.”

“Come in, Osborne,” said Humphrey.

Osborne—that would be the banker, Burns knew. Soft footed, he ducked around the press and type cabinets, moved closer to the door between the front and back rooms.

A chair creaked under Osborne’s weight and the man spoke again.

“I suppose you know that Burns escaped.”

“Hadn’t heard of it,” said Humphrey. “Been back in the shop, catching up on some work I had to do.”

“Well, he did,” growled Osborne. “Took the Mexicans with him.”

“Imagine Egan is fit to be tied,” said Humphrey.

“Carson is the one that’s really sore,” said Osborne. “If you hadn’t interfered out there tonight Burns would have been out of the way for good and all.”

The banker cleared his throat. “I been sitting up going over the bank records,” he said. “I find you owe us quite a bit of money.”

“A thousand dollars,” said Humphrey.

“Plus interest,” Osborne pointed out.

“You told me to forget the whole thing until I was in shape to pay it.”

“Right,” said Osborne. “We liked you. But in view of the present situation, something will have to be done about it. The note already is ninety days overdue.”

“There isn’t a thing I can do about it,” said Humphrey.

“Then I’ll have to start some action,” said the banker. “I been letting it ride along because you seemed a smart young fellow …”

“Because,” asked Humphrey, “I kept my mouth shut?”

Silence swept the office, a tense and terrible silence.

“Kept my mouth shut,” said Humphrey, finally, “about you and Carson and Egan taking over the valley.”

Osborne sighed and his chair creaked.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It would have been nice to have let you keep on living. Just running you out of town would have been enough. But after this …”

Burns’ hand snatched out for a short steel bar that lay on the make-up stone, was at the door in two quick strides—all poised.

Osborne still sat in the chair across the desk from Humphrey, but he held a sixgun in his hand. Humphrey, half risen from his chair, was frozen, half standing, hands clenching the desk edge, white face staring at the weapon’s muzzle.

Burns hurled the bar with terrific force. It whistled in the air, whirling end for end, smashed with a crunching sound into the banker’s gun arm.

The arm flopped down and dangled, the gun spilling from the trailing fingers to clatter on the floor beside the fallen bar. Osborne sat motionless, as if stunned, still staring straight ahead.

Slowly Humphrey straightened up, then stooped and opened a desk drawer. When his hand came out it held a gun.

“If you so much as open your mouth,” he told Osborne, “I’ll fill you full of this!”

Burns slouched in the doorway. “What’re we going to do with the ornery cuss,” he asked, “now that we got him?”

“Personally,” said Humphrey, “I favor hanging, but we can’t do that without due process of law. And Carson’s crooked judge would turn him loose.”

Osborne’s lips moved in his frightened face, but Humphrey twitched the gun and he did not speak.

“Better tie him up,” said Burns, “and cache him some place. Probably be a good witness against Carson and his gang. His kind always turn state evidence.”

“There’s an old shed out back,” said Humphrey. “Keep my paper stock in there.”

“Good place,” decided Burns. “We got to be careful tying him up. That one arm of his is broke surer than hell.”

CHAPTER FIVE Hang Your Guns!

The jail office was dark and Burns ducked quickly inside, slid to one side of the door, flat against the wall, and listened. There was no sound of breathing, nothing to indicate there was a second person in the room.

Probably all of them out chasing the Mexicans, Burns told himself. Probably think they are chasing me, too.

Unmoving, he stood flattened against the wall and gradually his eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness until he could make out the dimness of furniture—the battered desk, the swivel chair in front of it, the dull gleam of a spittoon at one corner of it.

Something else gleamed on the desk and Burns sucked in his breath. There they were—just where Egan had tossed them.

Swiftly, he strode across to the desk, picked up the gunbelt and the guns. He strapped the belt around him, took the guns out one by one and checked them. Still loaded, except for two empties in one that he had used back there in the hills before he made the dash for the dry wash. After he had reloaded he put them back in the holsters.

The sound of racing hoofs tensed him where he stood. Instinctively, he started for the door and then turned back. There was no time for that, he knew.

Like a trapped animal, he stood in the center of the room and probed the darkness for some way of escape. A spidery ladder in the hallway between the office and the cell-room caught his eye. A ladder! Probably leading up to an attic above the office, maybe a place for the jailer to sleep and cook his meals.

The hoof-beats were nearer now and there was more than one horse.

Burns leaped for the hallway, scrambled frantically up the ladder. A dark hole loomed above him, just wide enough for his shoulders to squeeze through. His hands clawed at the smooth boards of the floor and he hoisted himself into the attic even as the hoof beats came to an explosive halt just outside the jail.

He lay flat on the floor and listened to the tramp of heavy feet as they came into the office, heard the mumble of many voices.

A closer sound, a stealthy padding, edged into his brain and he moved swiftly, alarm growing in his mind, but even as he moved, hands came out of the darkness and closed around his throat.

Maddened by unreasoning fear, Burns fought to break away, arching his back, twisting, bucking like a locoed horse, tearing at the hands that throttled him. But the fingers held and tightened while the breath whistled in his throat and darkness churned within his brain.

From somewhere far away he heard the rasp of a striking match, a tiny, terrible sound that penetrated through the buzzing in his skull—the rattle of a lamp chimney being lifted. Then light flared in his face and even as he fought he knew that someone in the sheriff’s office had lit a lamp and the light was sifting through the attic hole.

The fingers were steel bands now that shut off even the whistle in his throat and inside his head the black ball grew and even while he still clawed feebly at the constricting fingers, the blackness exploded with a shrieking roar and was a pinwheel of light that hissed within his brain.

He felt himself pitching forward, head slamming on the floor—then, suddenly, the fingers had left his throat and there was an arm around his shoulders, lifting him into a sitting position. He gulped great breaths of air and inside his brain the pinwheel slowed down and there was a soft voice in his ear, a frightened voice.

“Take it easy, bub,” the voice said. “Just take it easy, now. I didn’t know it was you. So help me, I didn’t know.”

Words rose to Burns’ tongue, but his tongue refused to say them. He choked and gasped, gulped for air.

Bob Custer! Custer choking him, not knowing who it was. he sat up straighter and stared at the man who squatted face to face with him.

In the office below boots crunched across the floor.

A voice said sharply: “Be still, can’t you. I tell you I heard something up there in the attic.”

The sheriff’s voice rumbled back: “Ah, hell, Carson, you’re spooky, that’s all. This Burns has got you on the prod.”

“Spooky, eh,” said Carson, viciously. “Where are Burns’ guns?”

“On the desk,” the sheriff said. “Right where I left them, on the …”

His rumble trailed off and ran down. “Maybe,” the sheriff agreed, reluctantly, “you did hear something after all.”

Crouched beside the ladder hole, Burns and Custer heard the sheriff stalk into the corridor, could sense the man standing down below, staring at the hole.

His bellow came up to them. “Burns, you better come down. If you don’t we’ll plumb come up and root you out.”

Custer’s voice was sharp and crisp. “You got two of us to root out, sheriff. You better bring plenty of men along when you come to do it. Men that are ready to die!”

Boots scuffed hurriedly back along the corridor and Carson shrieked angrily: “Go on up and get them! What are you standing there for?”

“First man that does, gets it in the guts,” said Custer and although he did not speak above an ordinary tone, there was no doubt that those in the office heard him.

A gun coughed sullenly from downstairs and a bullet splintered the floor a good ten feet from the attic hole, plunked against the roof.

Burns rubbed his aching throat.

“What was you doing, messing around a jail?”

“Figured you might be in it,” Custer told him. “Ann told me you stood off the posse and when I got there I couldn’t find hide nor hair of you. Figured, then, they hadn’t killed you outright.”

“Why didn’t you bring your men?”

“Couldn’t. Got worried about things, you see, and started back alone. Met Ann on the trail.”

In the office another gun crashed and another bullet chewed its way through the attic floor.

“We sure are in one hell of a fix,” Burns said, dolefully. “Cooped up in this place. Sooner or later they’ll figure out a way to smoke us out.”

Other guns were bellowing now, bullets chunking faster and faster through the flooring.

The sheriff was bellowing. “Stop that shooting! You ain’t doing any good. You ain’t coming within a mile of them.”

Carson’s voice dripped acid at him. “Just how do you plan to get them, sheriff?”

“Starve them out,” the sheriff told him. “They can’t get out, nohow. All we got to do is just sit…”

“I have a better way,” snapped Carson. His feet moved purposefully across the floor.

“Hey,” the sheriff yelled, “you can’t do that. You’ll burn down the place.”

“Sure,” said Carson. “That’s exactly what I mean to do.”

The light that sifted up through the attic hole danced weirdly as Carson lifted the lamp, poised it for the throw.

“No!” screamed the sheriff.

Glass crashed in the corridor below the hole and a sheet of flame puffed out, flame that flared, then licked swiftly up the walls.

Burns leaped to his feet, stood stricken as the ladder hole became a fiery mouth…a mouth that gushed flame and smoke, lighting up the attic.

Custer grabbed at his arm.

“Quick,” he gasped. “Through the roof.”

Burns jerked his arm free. “They’d pot us like squirrels,” he said.

Swiftly he ran his eye around the room, saw the hatchet lying on the rickety table. With a leap, he was at the table, snatching up the hatchet.

“The floor,” he yelled.

Smoke billowed down upon them and the flame, funneled through the ladder hole, reached and curled against the roof.

Kneeling, Burns inserted the hatchet blade in a crack between two flooring boards, pried with all his might. Nails creaked protestingly.

“Grab hold,” he yelled at Custer. “Pull!”

He coughed as smoke swept down to the end of the room. A glowing spark fell on the back of his neck, burned agonizingly.

Cooler air puffed up from the cell room as Custer ripped away a board, flung it to one side. Nails screeched again as Burns pried at another board. Squealing thinly, it came loose.

“Drop down,” Burns yelled at Custer.

“But…”

“Get down there!” shrieked Burns. “It’s the only way.”

He reached out, tugged at Custer, and the man let himself down, dropped to the earth floor.

Hurling the hatchet away, Burns followed him, thudded on the floor. Staggering, he righted himself, stood for a moment to get his bearing in the flame lighted room.

The box that had served as a table stood in its corner and beside it gaped the tunnel.

“Follow me,” said Burns.

On his hands and knees he crawled into the hole, wriggled his way along, saw the circle of light appear ahead of him.

Cautiously, he poked his head out.

Flames leaping from the roof of the jail lighted up the night and in the flickering light, Burns saw two men standing off to one side, guns in hand, watching the roof intently.

Waiting for us to chop our way out, he told himself. Swell chance we’d had if we’d tried to do it.

Gathering his body together, bracing his hands, he flung himself out of the tunnel, stumbled as he hit the ground, fought desperately to keep his balance. Hands clawing at his guns, he spun on his toes.

Yelling, the two men were swinging around to face him and his guns came up.

Flame speared out at him and lead chugged past his cheek. Then his guns were hammering, left and right, left and right—with that old rhythmic cadence that spelled sudden death.

Out in the flame lighted night the two men were staggering, one of them slumping like a sack, the other fighting to keep on his feet, fighting to bring up his gun again. Still fighting, he tilted forward, slammed downward on his face.

A mighty fist slapped Burns in his shoulder and he stumbled, spinning sidewise with the impact of the blow. Behind him a sixgun bellowed angrily and a whining thing threw a shower of dust and pebbles as it struck the ground before him.

Another gun was growling, coughing with jerky gasps and Burns, still dizzy from the blow, righted himself and faced around, lifted his guns. But only one hand, the right one, came up. The other dangled and the gun had fallen from his fingers. His shoulder was numb and his forearm tingled and a tiny rivulet of blood was trickling through his shirt.

Sheriff Egan was lumbering toward him, guns in both fists, and as he walked he staggered, uncertainly, like a blind man who has lost his cane.

Beside the tunnel’s mouth Custer crouched, gun leaping in his hand, the muzzle flare splashing angrily against the flame-etched night.

The sheriff stumbled again and then sat down, like a huge tired bear. The guns dropped out of his hands and his arms hung limp and he sat there watching them. As the flames flared up from the burning jail, Burns saw that a look of stupid wonder had spread across his face.

Custer was up now and racing toward the darkness, away from the fiery pillar, yelling as he ran.

“Come on, Steve! They’ll be after us like a swarm of…”

A gun belched out of the darkness and Custer went limp even as he ran, struck the ground like a sodden sack, somersaulted and lay still.

Steve started forward.

“Bob!” he shrieked. “Bob!”

The hidden gun snarled again and a mighty hand swept the hat from Burns’ head, swept it off and sent it wheeling on its rim toward the burning jail.

Steve spun on his toe in midstride, jerking his body to one side. The gun out in the darkness was a drooling mouth of red and Burns heard the bullet whisper past. His gun hand jerked up and his finger tightened. The sixgun bellowed—yammering at the point where the red mouth had opened in the night.

Even before the hammer clicked on an empty cartridge, Burns was running, head down, legs driving like pistons beneath him, his numbed left shoulder and arm a dead weight that seemed to unbalance him as he ran.

A patch of weeds loomed ahead and he hurled himself for them, smashed into them, wriggled frantically forward and then lay still.

Gasping, he hugged the earth, awkwardly reloaded the sixgun with his one good hand.

Above him the weeds whispered in a rising dawn wind and the licking flames from the jail sent flickering shadows across his hiding place.

He grasped the sixgun with a fierce grip, felt a dull rage burning through his body.

Bob Custer was dead, shot down by someone who had raced out into the darkness to trap them between his guns and the flaming building. Someone who had waited until they stood there outlined against the fire.

The grass rustled in the tiny puffs of breeze and Burns lifted himself cautiously, staring through the weeds. Directly in front of him, not more than a dozen feet away, was a wooden post. Slowly, realization dawning in his brain, his eyes followed it up to the grim crossbar of new, unweathered lumber.

It was the gallows—the gallows that he had seen riding in the afternoon before. The gallows that had been waiting to hang four men who now were free, but who had been ticketed to die for a thing they’d never done.

Just four more men who had been slated to die so that Carson might hold the valley he’d swept with steel and fire—

A voice, thinned by distance, came to his ear:

“He’s in there somewhere. Over by the gallows. I want you men to cover that ground. Run him out …”

A whiplash report broke off the words and a bullet screeched off the gallows post. Another gun roared and the weeds bent before the storm of hissing lead.

Steve dropped back to the ground, hugged it tight.

That had been Carson’s voice—Carson rounding up his men like pack of hounds to hunt him down. Men who would cover every inch of the weed patch with bullets to flush him out.

It had been Carson who had been out there in the darkness, Carson whose bullet had cut down Bob Custer—Carson who had planted the rifleman in the window across from the hotel—Carson who had wanted to shoot him in cold blood out there in the hills. He had quite a few debts to settle with him.

Bullets rattled in the weed stalks, plunked into the ground, hissed through the grass.

Burns’ fist tightened on his gun and there was a tightness in his throat and his tongue was saying something that was almost a prayer:

“Just let me get one good shot at him—just one good shot—that’s all I ask—just one good shot …”

He crawled in unison to the words that rattled in his brain, as if they were a march to go on his hands and knees.

Crawled, not away from the flaming, jabbering guns, but toward them, crawling with grim determination, spurred on by hate and the hope of vengeance.

I’m the only one left, he thought. The only one left to stand up for Bob Custer and the things he stood for. For homes and grazing cattle, for Saturday nights in town, for a place to hang one’s guns.

Long ago, he thought, I was looking for a place to hang my guns. Because I was sick of gunsmoke, sick of bloodshed, sick of fighting. But there’ll never be a place now to hang those guns—they’ll keep on talking till my hands can’t hold them.

He gathered his feet under him, tensing for the effort that would heave his body upward. A bullet kicked dust in his face. Another clipped weeds above his head.

From far away came a drumming sound, a rhythmic sound that beat faintly through the night—a sound that grew and hammered as an undertone to the snarling of the guns that swept the weed patch.

Steve heaved himself clear of the weeds, snapped up his gun.

Before him, advancing like a line of skirmishers, were dark figures, etched against the glowing pile of coals where the jail had stood.

His gun bounced in his fist and one of the dark figures threw up its hands and yelled, pitched forward.

A bullet twitched at Burns’ shirt and the sixgun barked again. Another of the men in front of him jerked backwards, folding up and falling. Like a shadow show, thought Burns.

Fingernails of fire raked across his legs and droning lead stirred the air whining past his cheek. In front of him specks of flame were dancing, like fireflies in the night.

A man was lunging at him—a man with a white shirt and a black tie whipping in the wind. Flame lanced from the hand of the lunging figure and pain lashed across Burns’ ribs.

Carson—Carson coming at him! Carson with his white shirt and fancy vest and the bunched cravat that had come loose and was flapping in the wind.

Steve felt the gun buck against his wrist, heard Carson’s sudden cry, saw the man stumbling on unsteady feet.

There were other cries—cries and the drum of hoofs. Hoofs that came thundering down the street and stormed across the vacant ground back of the smouldering jail. The high clear sound of hoofs and the yells of men and the shapes of running horses that charged the line of skirmishers. Charged them with whoops of vengeance and the spat of gunfire and the slow drift of powdersmoke blue against the glow.

Burns felt his knees buckling beneath him, felt the gun slip reluctantly from fingers that slowly went lax—held himself erect with sheer determination, watching Carson staggering toward him.

Carson’s right hand, Burns saw, was a bloody smear where the bullet had smashed bone and flesh. But his left hand was in his coat pocket, fumbling …

Bells of alarm rang through Burns’ brain and he drove his beaten body forward in a spring even as Carson’s hand came out of the pocket and steel glimmered as he lifted it to strike.

Burns felt his body smashing into Carson’s, saw the gleaming knife start its downward thrust, threw up his arm to ward off the blow. The knife point caught his wrist and slashed downward to the elbow, but Carson was stumbling backward, giving ground, knocked off his balance by the body block.

With a yell of rage Steve twisted his wrist, caught Carson’s hand in a steel trap grip, wrenched with a savage jerk. The knife flew from suddenly deadened fingers and Carson was going down, Burns on top of him.

The red haze in front of Burns’ eyes spun in a tightening circle and the black crept in, constricting the red until it was no more than a spinning ball.

Hands were on his shoulder, lifting him, tearing loose his fingers, dragging him back to a sense of consciousness.

“Take it easy, bub,” a voice said. “We want to have a few to bring into court.”

Burns struggled with the hands, fighting to get free.

“Bob,” he mumbled. “It can’t be you. You’re dead.”

“Not so you’d notice,” Custer told him. “The bullet nicked me on the head. Knocked me out. Woke up good as new.”

Burns shook off the hands, struggled to his feet, stood there swaying, suddenly aware of the crowd that hemmed him in, aware of the throb that beat across his shoulder.

Straight before him he saw a face, a face half covered by bushy whiskers.

“Stranger,” said the whiskers, “you sure will do to ride the river with.”

Burns tried to make his tongue work, but somehow it failed.

“I’m Randall,” said the man. “Jim Randall. Ann’s father. Guess I can tell you this crowd will do almost anything you want.”

Burns croaked at him. “Shucks, I don’t want nothing, Randall. Maybe just a peg somewhere to hang my guns.”

“We cleaned them out,” said Randall. “Those that ain’t dead are high-tailing it out of here so fast they’re burning up the grass. Now we can come back and settle down.”

A small figure in a torn shirt and dusty levis pushed past Randall, ran toward Burns.

“You shouldn’t have done it,” cried Ann. “You shouldn’t have stayed back there on the trail…”

Burns put out his one good arm and drew her close. “That was just the start of it,” he said. “This is the end.”

He looked at Randall. “Maybe there’s a place,” he asked, “Where a man could stake a homestead?”

Randall regarded the two of them smilingly.

“I wouldn’t wonder a bit,” he said, “but what there is.”