Packard looked at Hurley and the man’s eyes moved away, unwilling to meet the stare. Sylvester still squatted on his heels, scratching at the ground with a stick he had picked up, his broad-brimmed hat shading his face.
“If you got anything to say,” said Pinky, “go ahead and spit it out. We ain’t ones to deny a man a last word. Last smoke, too, if you want it. Hurley will roll you a smoke.”
“The hell with it,” snapped Hurley. His hand plunged for his gun-butt and the gun was coming out, a glare of steel in the brilliant sunlight. Packard, startled, crouched back against the tree, his stomach muscles tightening as if by contracting them they might be armor against the coming bullet.
Sylvester went into action from the ground. Like a compressed spring, he rose and hurled himself at Hurley’s arm. The gun coughed sharply and a bullet chunked with a vicious clap into the tree trunk inches from Packard’s head.
The gun flew from Hurley’s hand and Hurley dropped back a pace, caressing his twisted wrist.
“Damn you,” he snarled. “I’ll—”
“Come ahead,” Sylvester invited him. “Come ahead and do it.” His hand hovered like a waiting hawk above his six-gun butt.
Hurley did not move. “Go ahead and haul him up,” he yelled. “What are you waiting for? What—”
“You seem too anxious to have him hauled up,” Marks said. “Maybe there’s a reason for it. Come to think of it, you’re the one he told to climb up and throw down the gold. Seems like maybe he was pretty sure that you would do it without making any trouble. Seems like maybe we ought to have a talk—”
“Talk!” yelled Hurley. “That’s all you hombres do. You sit around and shoot off your yaps and never get nothing done.”
“Shut up!” snapped Pinky.
Hurley glared at him.
Crouched against the tree, Packard closed his eyes, felt the throb of his wounded shoulder shaking his whole body. He had held hopes that Hurley might step in and help. But that was out now. Hurley had dropped him like a hot potato at the moment when his string had been played out. Hurley was not a man who would back lost causes.
“What Marks says is right,” declared Pinky. “What do you know about Packard, Hurley?”
“Not a thing,” said Hurley. “He’s just a new man, that’s all.”
“I can tell you something about him,” said a new voice.
Packard opened his eyes. “You keep out of this,” he warned.
But Alice Page paid him no attention. She was looking at Pinky and there was a challenging defiance burning in her eyes.
“Mr. Packard,” she said, “is a United States marshal.”
A bombshell of quietness broke upon the group, a bombshell of chill and quietness.
Alice Page’s words dripped through the quietness. “If you kill him,” she said, “you’ll be hunted down like mad dogs. The government never forgets a thing like that. It isn’t just like killing anyone, you see.”
Pinky moved slowly toward the girl.
“You lie,” he snarled. “You know damn well that he’s no marshal. He didn’t act like no marshal back there at the stage. He told Hurley to climb up and throw down the bags of dust and no marshal would do that. And he didn’t say a thing about arresting us. A marshal always shoots off his face about arresting someone.”
He halted and stood squarely in front of the girl, but Alice Page stood unmoved, her chin up.
“Go ahead, then,” she challenged. “Go ahead and hang him and see what happens to you. That’s the surest thing that you can do to break up your rotten gang.”
Pinky hauled back his arm. “I have a notion to slap you down,” he snarled. “You dirty little—”
“Pinky!” yelled Packard.
Pinky whirled around.
“Leave the girl alone,” warned Packard. “She’s not mixed up in this. She’s only doing what she can to help me.”
Pinky sneered. “Sweet on you, eh?”
“Damn you, Pinky,” roared Packard. He dug in his heel and thrust himself out from the tree, but Marks hauled smartly on the rope and he was jerked back, heels dragging, noose tighter around his throat. With his one good hand, he clawed erect against the tree, stood gasping.
Across the space that separated them, he looked at Alice Page.
“It was a good try, miss,” he whispered, “and thanks a lot, but it just won’t hold water.”
Deliberately, Pinky whirled around, arm swinging with him. His palm smacked open-handed across Alice Page’s mouth and drove her back, staggering against the tree. Her body slammed hard into the tree, knees buckling beneath her. She fell forward and the rope jerked up her hands and held her in a kneeling position.
From where he stood Packard could see the white imprint of Pinky’s hand across her face and he moved one foot forward, then brought it back. By sheer power of will, he held himself against the tree, willed his body rigid while the flame of hatred and rage ate through him like a fire.
It wouldn’t do him any good, he knew, to try another lunge. Marks was waiting, watching him, with a grin behind his beard. Marks would like to have him try to reach Pinky or the girl.
“Next time,” said Pinky, savagely, “I’ll break your neck.”
He swung on his heel and looked at Hurley, a scowl twisting at his face.
“Hurley,” Pinky said, “you better talk. And make it fast and straight.”
Hurley didn’t talk. He moved. One second he was facing Pinky, hands dangling at his side and the next he was plunging for the gun that Sylvester had twisted from his grasp. In a single leap he was beside it, stooping over, scooping it up in a lightning motion.
Pinky’s arms pistoned and his guns struck fire in the noonday sun as they came whispering from leather.
At point blank range the guns roared fire and smoke, the three reports blending into one. The handkerchief around Pinky’s throat whipped suddenly as if struck by a tiny gale and out in the sunlight Hurley was tipping over, twisting awkwardly to keep his feet.
His gun slipped from his fingers and feebly he clawed at it, trying to pick it off the ground while his hand was far above it. Then, gently, almost as if he meant to do it, he toppled over and lay huddled on the grass.
Pinky stood on spraddled legs, watching Hurley fall, then calmly tucked the smoking guns back into his belt and turned his back on Hurley’s body.
His face was almost pleasant as he spoke to Packard. “I guess,” he said, “you won’t have time for that smoke, after all.”
He nodded to Marks. “Haul away.”
“Cripes,” protested Marks, “you don’t expect me to do it all alone. Packard there weighs close to a couple of hundred!”
“Pop,” ordered Pinky, “go lend Marks a hand.”
Pop rose slowly to his feet, ambled forward.
Packard straightened, tense against the tree, thoughts racing in his brain. He was going to be hanged. Run up by a brawny bearded man and a shriveled oldster while a man called Pinky stood to one side and watched.
And there wasn’t a thing he could do about it … not a thing.
Pop was grumbling. “Hell, why don’t you shoot him, Pinky. This here is too much work.”
“Just a minute,” said a voice and Packard twisted his neck, saw Sylvester standing almost at his elbow. Sylvester had pushed his hat on the back of his head and both his guns were out.
Pinky stared. “Now what?” he demanded. “Can’t a fellow hang a man without all the hoorah that’s been going on here?”
“Possibly,” said Sylvester, conversationally. “But you aren’t going to do it, Pinky. Right now, you aren’t hanging anyone at all.”