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.