Crawford wilted. «No, Danny, don’t do that! It’s here. Right in my desk!»
He moved toward the desk, but Morgan stopped him.
«Stay where you are,» he ordered. «Tell me which drawer.»
«The upper left hand,» said Crawford, breathlessly.
Keeping his eyes on the rancher, Morgan moved behind the desk, pulled open the drawer and flung a sheaf of papers on the desk.
«Pick it out,» he snapped.
Crawford moved forward slowly, then dropped out of sight behind the desk. With one motion, Morgan scooped the papers from the desk top, gave the heavy piece of furniture a shove.
A gun roared from the floor and fire burned its way along Morgan’s left arm. Crawford screamed as the desk toppled over on him and in that moment Morgan spun about, lowered his head and leaped straight for the window.
Glass exploded in a shattering spray and he was through, stumbling along the ground, trying to keep his feet. Stuffing the papers into his pocket, he raced toward the front of the house, leaped for the saddle.
The horse wheeled on a dime and streaked off. From the house behind him a gun coughed hoarsely.
Faint yells came from the ranch house.
Morgan, riding westward into the night, felt gingerly of his left arm. The bullet had barely creased the flesh. The arm, he knew, would be stiff tomorrow, but otherwise was unharmed.
«One thing,» he told himself and the night wind, «I sure am going to make Crawford know he’s been in a fight.»
Badlands Bill had been correct. There was oil on his spread, which explained a lot of things. Explained why he had been framed for the Harris killing, why Crawford had been so anxious to help him out the night he was in jail.
Crawford knew and the sheriff knew they didn’t have a case they could make stick, knew that if he ever was brought to trial the charge would be thrown out for lack of evidence.
Sitting there, beside the coals of his campfire, Morgan felt a surge of anger sweep over him. Crawford had never intended to let him escape when his men had stormed the jail. The rancher, Morgan was sure now, had set out to kill him as deliberately as he had killed Jack Harris, or hired him to be killed. Perhaps, after all, it hadn’t been Crawford who had squatted among the rocks, smoking cigarettes, waiting until there was no chance of missing.
He reached up and took the survey report from his pocket. It was lucky, he told himself, that the report actually had been among the papers he had taken from the drawer. Crawford might have tried to fool him, told him the wrong drawer. That he had indicated the right drawer meant only one thing.
The rancher had acted on impulse when he had dropped on the floor and gone after the guns that lay there.
Morgan smoothed the paper out across his knee and read it slowly again, squinting his eyes against the glare of sun.
Something jerked viciously at the paper in Morgan’s hand, jerked and tore it from his grip and even as it jerked the silence was cracked wide open by the sharp, wicked chortle of a high caliber rifle.
Morgan hurled himself behind the nearest boulder. And as he landed, crouching, both six guns were in his fists.
Slowly, alert for any movement, any hint of the man who had fired the rifle, Morgan examined each coulee mouth, each perching boulder, each thicket wilting in the sun.
Slow minutes ticked away and the land drowsed on into a sleepy afternoon.
Then something moved, just a flicker of movement, in a thicket below the pink and yellow butte. Eyes glued to the spot, Morgan held his crouch and waited. The movement came again, as if a man were shifting his position, tired from being too long in one pose.
There was something there that looked like a grey sombrero, something white below it that might have been the smudge of the gunman’s face.
Carefully, Morgan brought up one of his guns, steadying it against the boulder. The sights lined on what might have been a hat and his finger started to squeeze the trigger.
Something struck the boulder just above his head and howled off into space, a ricocheting bullet tumbling end over end, drowning out the ugly cough of the hidden rifle. Tiny splinters of rock showered on Morgan’s hat and instinctively he ducked. Another bullet slammed into the rock, six inches below where the first had hit and went screaming off with an angry hum.
Swiftly, Morgan scrambled around the rock, breath rasping in his throat.
The thing that had moved in the thicket hadn’t been the rifleman at all.
Probably a rabbit or maybe a bear. Or … and his heart stood chilled for an instant as he thought of it … there might be two gun slingers on his trail.
Maybe more.
Faint traces of smoke floated from a rocky point cropping out of a hogback just across the creek.
Morgan nodded in grim satisfaction. At least, he had spotted the position.
He crouched and waited, guns ready.
The sun glinted on a metallic object and Morgan saw a rifle barrel slowly sliding forward around a rock. Hunched, with the feel of death cold between his shoulder blades, Morgan did not stir. Every instinct in him screamed for him to leap out of danger’s way, to throw himself behind the rock, to put something between himself and that rifle barrel. But he stuck it out.
A brown splotch appeared beside the boulder on the slope above. A splotch that grew larger and larger. Morgan gulped and held his breath. That splotch was someone’s elbow, the bent elbow of the man who held the gun.
The rifle still had to move a ways yet to be trained correctly, and Morgan waited … waited for a bigger target.
Then suddenly he went into action. His right hand snapped up and for an instant the six gun froze rigid in his fist before it blazed and blazed again.
A shrill scream knifed the air and the rifle plunged forward to land on the slope below, sliding slowly, plowing a furrow with its muzzle through the powdery talus.
Morgan charged from behind his boulder, clawing his way up the treacherous incline.
From the valley below a rifle spanged and dirt spurted at his feet. The rifle roared again and a bullet hit the rocks ahead and plunged off into space with a doleful screech.
Spinning on his heel, Morgan saw the second man standing upright in a patch of bushes, rifle at his shoulder, and snapped a shot at him. The man flung himself to one side as both of Morgan’s guns talked, heaving a hail of lead.
Then, guns still smoking, Morgan hurled himself at the boulders above him, circling around their upper end.
A six gun roared and the bullet thudded into the slope. Springing toward the sound of the shot, Morgan saw a man crouched with his back against the rocks, left arm smashed and bleeding, but with a six gun in his other fist and a snarl of hated on his face.
The man was Fridley, Crawford’s foreman.
Fridley’s gun swung upward, but even as it did, Morgan’s hogleg hammered and the foreman howled with pain. Slowly the gun in his hand tilted its muzzle toward the ground, then dropped from a hand smashed by a bullet.
Slowly Morgan walked forward, until he stood six feet from the wounded man. A smile twitched his lip as he looked at Fridley.
«Hank, you sure are stoved up,» he said.
The foreman snarled at him, waving a bloody hand. «They’ll get you yet,» he screamed. «You’ll swing. Sure as hell, you’ll swing.»
«Not unless they send better men than you after me,» said Morgan.
A still smoking cigarette butt lay at Fridley’s feet. Morgan glanced around. Another butt lay a short distance away. And on the ground something else, a tobacco sack.
Slowly Morgan stooped and picked it up. The sack was turned inside out!
Staring at it, his eyes narrowed.
«You do a lot of smoking on your killing jobs,» he told Fridley, quietly.
Fridley said nothing, glaring at him.