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.