The two other groups filed down the hill and vanished into misty dusk. Hammer waited awhile. He had previously divided the gang into bands assigned to his lieutenants, reserving the best men for the group immediately under him. He spoke to them, softly but with metallic rapidity:
«Accordin’ t’ what I remember o’ Southvale, an’ to what I seen elsewhere, they don’t expect nothin’ like this. There’ve been no bandits here f’r a long time, an’ anyway they’d never think a gang had the skill and self-control t’ sneak through the fat lands farther south. So there’ll be no patrol, just a few cops on their beats—an’ too sleepy this time t’ give us much trouble. An’ nearly all the weapons ’re gonna be in the police station—which is what we’re gonna capture. With guns, we’ll control the town. But f’r the love of life, don’t start shootin’ till I say to. There may be armed citizens, an’ they c’n raise hell with us ’nless we handle ’em right.»
A low mutter of assent ran along that line of haggard, bearded, fierce-eyed men. Knives and axes glittered in the first dim dawn-flush, bows were strung and spears hefted. But there was no restlessness, no uncontrollable lust to be off and into battle. They had learned patience the hard way, the last sixteen years. They waited.
Timing wasn’t easy to judge, but Hammer had developed a sense for it which had enabled him to pull several coups in the past and served him now. When he figured the other groups were near the outskirts of town, he raised his hand in signal, slipped the safety catch on his gun, and started down the hill at a rapid trot.
The white mists rolled over the ground, but they needed nothing to muffle the soft pad of their feet, most bare and all trained in quietness. Grass whispered under their pace, a staked-out cow lowed, and a rooster greeted the first banners of day. Otherwise there was silence, and the town dreamed on in the cool twilight.
They came onto the cracked pavement of the road, and it was strange to be going on concrete again. They passed an outer zone of deserted houses. As Hammer had noticed elsewhere, Southvale had drawn into a compact defensive mass during the black years and not grown out of it since. As long as there were no fortified outposts, such an arrangement was easy to overrun. Still, the outlaws were enormously outnumbered, and had to counter-balance the disadvantage by the cold ruthlessness of direct action. Hammer stopped at the edge of habitation, told off half a dozen men to patrol the area, and led the rest on to the middle of town. They went more slowly now, senses strainingly alert, every nerve and muscle taut with the expectancy of danger.
Hoofs clattered from a side street. Hammer gestured to a bowman, who grinned and bent his weapon. A mounted policeman came into view a few blocks down. He wasn’t impressive, he had no sign of office except gun and tarnished badge, he was sleepy and eager to report to the station and then get home. His wife would have breakfast ready—
The bow twanged, a great bass throb of music in the silent misty street. The policeman pitched out of his saddle, the arrow through his breast, the astonishment on his face so ridiculous that a couple of gangmen guffawed. Hammer cursed; the horse had reared, screamed, and then galloped on down the street. The clattering echoes beat at the walls of the house like alarm-crying sentries.
A man stuck his head out the window of a dwelling. He was drowsy, but he saw the unkempt band outside and yelled—a choked gurgle it was, drowned in an arrow’s blood-track before it had been properly born.
«Snagtooth an’ Mex, get in that house an’ silence anyone else!» rapped Hammer. «You five»—he swept an arm in an unconsciously imperial gesture—«take care o’ anyone else here who heard. The rest come on!»
They ran down the street, disregarding noise but not making much anyway. The town had changed considerably, but Hammer remembered the layout. The police station, he thought briefly and wryly, he knew very well—just about every Saturday night, in the old days.
They burst onto that block and raced for the station. There it was, the same square and solid structure, dingy now with years, the trimmings gone, but there were horses hitched before it and the door stood ajar—
Through the door! The desk sergeant and a couple of men gaped blankly down the muzzle of Hammer’s gun, their minds refusing to comprehend, their hands rising by stunned automatism. Others of the gang poured down the short halls, into every room. There came yells, the clatter of feet, the brief sharp bark of a gun and the racket of combat.
Hoofs pounded outside. A gun cracked, and one of Hammer’s men standing guard at the door, fell. Hammer himself jumped to the window, smashed the glass of it with his rifle butt, and shot at the half-dozen or so mounted police outside—returning from their beats, no doubt, and alarmed at what they saw.
He had little opportunity to practice. Shells were too scarce. His first shot went wild, the second hit a horse, the third was as ineffectual as the first. But the police did retreat. They weren’t such good shots either, though a couple of slugs whined viciously close, through the window and thudding into the wall beyond.
«Here, Dick!» His men were returning from the interior of the building, and they bore firearms, bore them as they would something holy and infinitely beautiful, for these were the way to a life worth living. «Here—shootin’ weapons!»
Hammer grabbed a submachine gun and cut loose. The troopers scattered, leaving their dead, and fled down the streets. And there were those other two bands entering—Hammer laughed for sheer joy.
«We got the whole station,» reported one of his men. «Bob got it in the leg, an’ I see they plugged Little Jack an’ Tony. But the place is ours!»
«Yeah. Lock up these cops, take what weapons an’ horses you need, an’ ride aroun’ town. Herd ever’body down into the main square in the center o’ town. Be careful, there’ll be some trouble an’ killin’, but we don’t have to be on the receivin’ end o’ any o’ it. Mart, Rog, an’ One-Ear, hold the station here an’ look after our wounded, Sambo an’ Putzy, follow me. I’m goin’ t’ the square now to—take possession!»
There was noise in the street, running and stamping feet, shouts and oaths and screams. Now and then laughter or gunfire. Roderick Wayne gasped out of sleep, sweating. What a dream! Nightmare recollection of the black years—
No dream!
There was a tremendous kicking and beating on the door, and a voice bawling in some uncouth accent: «Open up in there! Open up in the name o’ the law!»
More laughter, like wolves baying. Someone yelling. A cry that choked off into silence. Wayne jumped out of bed. Even then he was dimly surprised to find he wasn’t shaking and gibbering in blind panic. «Get Al, Karen,» he said. «Stay inside, in a back room. I’ve got to look into this.»
He stopped in the living room to get his rifle. It was only a souvenir now, few cartridges left, but he had killed men with it in the black years. And must I go through that again? No—please not!
Wood split and crashed, and a man leaped into the house over the fallen door. Wayne saw the pistol and dropped his own unloaded rifle. He remembered such ragged figures, the shaggy wolf-eyed men whose weapons were all too ready. The outlaws had returned.
«Smart,» nodded the gangman. «’Nother see ’n’ I’d’a scragged you. Outside.»
«What… is… this?» Wayne’s lips were stiff.
«Get out!»
Wayne went obliquely, praying he could draw the bandit out of the house. «If it’s loot you want,» he said, fighting to keep his voice level, «I’ll show you where the silver is.»