The Silver Tombstone

Chapter Nineteen

Joe Cotter was perhaps four inches taller than Sam, but weighed only a few pounds more. That he was the strongest man in Arizona, as had been claimed for him, Johnny did not doubt when he saw the terrific strain on Sam Cragg’s face. The men, at the moment, were still struggling for grips. As fast as one secured a grip the other broke it.

Sam suddenly broke the deadlock by dropping to his knees and lunging forward. The result was that Cotter went spilling over his shoulder. Sam whirled to throw himself down on Cotter. The big man was too fast, however, His powerful legs doubled, his feet went out and caught Sam Cragg squarely in the midsection.

Sam was hurled backwards for more than a dozen feet. But he was up instantly. So was Joe Cotter. The two men sized each other up, then advanced simultaneously.

This time Cotter decided to slug it out. When he came within range, he feinted with his left, then smashed at Sam with his right. Sam rolled with the blow, taking it high on his shoulder, and came back with a smash that caught Joe Cotter on the chest with the sound of a mallet on a wooden block. Joe Cotter went back a step or two, then braced himself and waited for Sam to come in.

Sam swung with his fist, stopped the punch in mid-air and lunged for Cotter with his head and shoulders. Cotter locked his hands together and as Sam’s head hit his torso smashed down with the hands on the back of Sam’s neck.

Cotter went down but Sam fell on top of him, groggy from the savage rabbit punch. Cotter struggled to throw Sam off. He finally managed, but Sam’s hand snaked out and caught Cotter’s ankle. He jerked and Cotter crashed down once more.

Up to now both men had fought reasonably fair. But Cotter, in landing this time, lashed out with his foot and caught Sam squarely in the face with it. Blood gushed from Sam’s mouth. He reeled back.

“Goddam you!” he swore.

Cotter bounced to his feet. “Watch yourself from here on,” he snarled. “I’m going to beat you to a pulp.”

“Come ahead!” Sam challenged. He rushed in, took a terrific blow on his bleeding mouth, but stuck his right hand through Cotter’s crotch. His left he wrapped about the bigger man’s neck. He lifted Cotter then and hurled him to the ground so hard that Cotter cried out.

Then Sam repeated his mistake of swooping down upon the prostrate Cotter. And again Cotter’s feet caught him in the stomach and hurled him back.

Sam was still down this time, when Cotter charged him, kicking savagely. Sam took a horrible kick in the ribs, tried to roll away, but saw that he couldn’t dodge a second kick. His hands therefore shot out and caught Cotter’s foot. Cotter, unbalanced, fell beside Sam.

Sam clung to the foot, scrambled aside and came to his feet, still holding Cotter’s foot. He began twisting it. Cotter screamed.

“Let go of my foot!”

Viciously he kicked at Sam with his free foot. In a flash Sam had the second foot in his grip. He leaned back then and began turning. Like a hammer thrower throwing a weight, he raised Joe Cotter’s body from the sand, made a swift spin and let go.

Cotter flew twenty feet through the air and landed on his head and shoulders. He was still conscious when Sam swooped down, applied the crotch and half Nelson once more, raised him high in the air and slammed him to the earth with every ounce of strength in his body.

Cotter’s muscles quivered, but he remained on the ground this time. Sam Cragg turned to Johnny and the others, perspiration and blood streaming from his face.

“Okay, Johnny?” he asked.

“Not bad, Sam. Not bad at all.”

A bullet chipped stone from the edge of the door. The sharp crack of a rifle followed immediately. Johnny Fletcher whirled, saw two men descending the mountain of shale. He made a flying jump for the shotgun Sam had thrown away when tackling Joe Cotter. He got his hands on it just as sand was kicked up a few inches away by a second bullet.

He made for the doorway of Old Jim Walker’s house, but was delayed for one desperate moment by Dan Tompkins, who in turn was trying to squeeze past both Sam and Charles Ralston.

A rifle cracked a third time and the jam at the door was broken by sheer force at the cost of a little skin. Then all four men were inside the living room of the ruined mansion and Johnny was whirling back toward the window aperture nearby.

He risked a quick glance out and a bullet fanned his cheek. Swearing roundly, Johnny poked out the shotgun muzzle and pulled the trigger. There were yells of pain outside. Johnny looked out and saw both Danny Sage and Mike Henderson scrambling back up the slope of shale, out of range of the shotgun.

Johnny ducked under the window ledge, turned to Charles Ralston. “Where’s that pop gun you were looking for awhile ago?”

Charles Ralston dropped to his knees beside his bag. He tore it open and searched frantically for his gun. After a moment he turned. “Here...!”

Johnny groaned when he saw the tiny .32 caliber pistol. “I thought you had a gun.” Nevertheless, he took it.

Sam exclaimed, “What’s the matter with the shotgun?”

“It’s a double-barreled gun. You fired one shell and I just fired the other. I only hope they don’t know we haven’t any more shells for it.”

A bullet ricocheted off the windowsill and smashed into the wall beyond. Johnny took a quick peek outside, saw that both Henderson and Sage had halted on the slope, about halfway up. They were about a hundred yards away, beyond shotgun — and .32 caliber pistol — range.

The two men began firing methodically now, sending bullets through the open doorway and window. Ralston, Tompkins, Sam and Johnny either dropped flat or remained on their knees, directly under the window.

A moment or two passed before Johnny remembered that Tompkins had reached for his hip when he and Sam had come up. “What’s the matter with your rod?” he asked.

Tompkins swallowed hard. “I been using it for bluff. Uh, the firing pin’s been broke two-three months now.”

The shooting outside stopped. “Come on out!” yelled the voice of Danny Sage. “You haven’t got a chance.”

Johnny raised his head to look out of the window. “Go to hell!”

The answer to that was a bullet through the window and after a moment, another. There was a pause of about a half minute, then a third bullet came through.

Johnny exclaimed, “That’s the same gun shooting.” He crawled suddenly on his hands and knees to the door, glanced out quickly.

“Henderson’s out there alone!” he cried “Danny Sage is sneaking around to the rear... Wait here...!”

He scuttled across the floor to an open doorway leading back into the house. Safe in a hallway, covered with a foot of sand, he came to his feet and started running through the rooms.

There were quite a few of them, for Walker’s mansion had been a large one, but as the doors were all off their hinges it was a job of straight running and he negotiated the distance in quick time.

When he burst out of the rear door he was just in time to see Danny Sage coming around the corner. He thrust out the revolver and sent two quick snap shots at the Indian. Danny turned and ran back the way he had come.

Johnny hesitated, wondering if he should go back to the front of the house. The situation was impossible. He couldn’t keep running from the front to the rear and then back again. Sooner or later Sage and Henderson would guess that there was only one gun in the entire house — a gun with four remaining cartridges.

Sam Cragg came padding up behind Johnny, and decided Johnny upon his course of action.

“Come on,” he said in a low tone to Sam, “we’ll let them hold the fort.”

“Without a gun?”

“Without a gun!” retorted Johnny. “None of this is our fight in the first place.”

He started off, across the sand in the general direction of a heap of rocks and boulders a hundred yards or so behind the house. He bent low, running swiftly and Sam Cragg pounded behind him.

They were within a few feet of the first boulders when a bullet kicked up gravel ahead of Johnny. He whirled, and swore. He had forgotten the eminence in front of the house. From the top of it Mike Henderson could see clear across the ruins. And he could shoot across the house, too... A range of about three hundred yards, not too much for a good rifleman.

Johnny dove for the shelter of the boulders. A bullet took off Sam’s right heel and he cried out as he tripped and fell headlong. But he scrambled up quickly and came to take shelter behind the oblong rock where Johnny was already sprawled.

“Here we go again,” Johnny snarled, “acting as clay pigeons.”

A bullet whacked into the stone above Johnny’s head with a dull thuck!

Johnny rolled over on his side, looked up. “The tombstone!” he exclaimed.

“Huh?”

“Jim Fargo’s.” Johnny reached up. “Look — the inscription... ‘Jim Fargo, Died here, July 18, 1883. He was a loyal friend.’ ”

“Let’s get away from here,” Sam Cragg said uneasily. “You know I don’t like graves, and besides, this one’s caved in.”

“What?” Johnny fixed his eyes on the depression behind Sam. Then he turned carefully, crawled forward two or three feet, then down into a hole.

“Nix, Johnny!” Sam complained behind Johnny.

Johnny reached back with the pistol. “Take this,” he said over his shoulder.

Sam took the gun and Johnny lowered himself head first down into the hole, until only his heels remained above ground. Then suddenly he began thrashing his legs and Sam, whirling, reached out and caught Johnny’s heels.

“Pull me up!” came Johnny’s smothered voice.

Sam braced himself in the loose sand and heaved. A bullet kicked up sand only a couple of feet away, but Sam persisted and slowly tugged Johnny out of the hole.

Johnny crawled back behind the shelter of the tombstone. He was seething with excitement. “That wasn’t any cave-in, Sam!” he exclaimed. “It was dug.”

“Who’d dig into an old grave?”

“Tompkins,” said Johnny promptly. “There’s solid rock live feet under this sand.”

“So what?”

“The answer’s in the book over in the car. I had just about guessed it anyway, but this is a dead giveaway. It’s the reason for...”

He broke off and raised his head suddenly.

Sam heard it too. “A police siren!” he gasped.

“The cops!”

It was a siren, all right. And it was near, on the road just a few hundred yards away. It rose in pitch, then began dying out in a long wail.

Johnny looked around the tombstone, saw both Mike Henderson and Danny Sage climbing to the top of the slag mountain. For a moment they stood on the very crest, their rifles raised high. Then they threw down their weapons.

Johnny got to his feet. “The state police stopped in at the filling station.”

“I guess we never had a chance,” Sam said, wearily.

“What do you mean?”

“We go to jail, don’t we?”

“What for? The case is solved, isn’t it?”

“What case?”

“The murder of Hugh Kitchen — naturally. What else have the cops got against us?”

Sam blinked. “I don’t know — what have they?”

“Not a thing!” Then he winced. “Except that bill at the filling station.”

“All right, you men...” yelled a loud voice. “Come on in!”