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.