"I'm sorry, Tiny, but there ain't no other way."
Tiny's twisted face started to spread flat, as though he were going to cry. "Ma-a-a?" he pleaded in a curling whine.
The shotgun roared, blowing the barrel staves asunder, and for a fraction of a second the water retained the barrel's shape with Tiny standing in the middle of it, then pink foam blossomed from Tiny's exploded chest and the water dropped away, leaving him standing alone and naked for an instant, before he crumpled dead to the ground.
Matthew's soft gaze climbed slowly from what was left of Tiny to the façade of the hotel while his hands mechanically broke open the gun, clawed out the shell, wet with molten candle wax, took another from his pocket, and thumbed it in.
He snapped the gun shut and walked toward the hotel, his wrists throbbing from the recoil of the shotgun.
Bobby-My-Boy stumbled out through the bat-winged doors, levering a round into his rifle. "What the shit…?"
"… exploded…" Matthew muttered.
"What exploded?"
"The boiler, I guess. Your pal's a mess. All over the place."
Now, that was something Bobby-My-Boy had to see. He pushed past Matthew on his way to the barbershop.
"Hey?" Matthew said.
Bobby-My-Boy turned back. He never heard the shot that took off his head.
Matthew didn't look at the thing that shuddered convulsively on the ground. Again he had been obliged to shoot from the hip, and he had heard his right wrist pop with the wrench of the recoil. It didn't hurt yet, but it was numb, so he had to cradle the gun over his arm while he snatched the hot shell out and pushed another in.
He snapped the gun shut and mounted the steps to the hotel porch. Pressing his back to the weathered wall beside the door, he wet his lips with his tongue and took two long breaths. Lieder was probably in there, covering the door. But where? In his chair against the back wall? Behind the bar? Kneeling on the kitchen steps, aiming up from the floorboards? The shotgun would blow away a three-foot circle at the distance to the back wall, so he didn't have to hit dead center, but there wouldn't be time to put in another shell if he missed. How would the Ringo Kid-? The kitchen screen door slapped shut on its spring stop! Lieder had gone out the back! But which way? Was he slipping behind the abandoned buildings, up toward the tracks and Reverend Hibbard's depot? Or down the other way, down toward the boardinghouse and the Mercantile?
… Or maybe he was inching around the side of the hotel!
Matthew rushed down the steps and rolled in under the hotel porch, where he could look out between the broken skirting slats and survey the street from one end to the other. He wriggled farther back until his shoulders were against the stone foundation. He faced ahead, but his concentration was on the fuzzy peripheral extremes of his field of vision, hoping to catch any motion.
And what if Lieder had slipped back into the hotel and would soon come out onto the porch overhead? Well… well, then he would do what he did in The Ringo Kid Takes a Chance: he'd shoot up through the floorboards. That hadn't been as "square" as meeting a man face to face in the street, but he'd been lying under that porch badly wounded, and a woman's honor was at risk, so there hadn't been any altern- A blur of movement in the corner of his right eye! Lieder dashed across the street and up the steps to the door of the Mercantile, whose spring bell jangled faintly as he snatched it open and burst in.
Ruth Lillian!
Matthew rolled out from under the porch and stood up in the middle of the street. What should he do? Quick! What should he do? "Here I am!" he shouted. "It's me you want! I shot your men, and I'm going to shoot you!" As he walked toward the Mercantile, he fired the shotgun into the air to draw Lieder's attention away from Ruth Lillian and toward him. "Here I am!" He opened the gun and scrabbled in his jacket pocket for another shell, but the fingers below his sprained wrist had swollen to tight-skinned claws that fumbled and dropped the shell into the mud. He kept walking toward the Mercantile, changing the gun to a left-handed grip and clumsily pushing in a shell with his right thumb. When he reached the store, he stopped and called, "Come out here!"
"I don't want to hurt you, boy!" Lieder shouted from within. "You're my crowned prince! The future of the movement!"
"Come out here, you yellow son of a bitch!"
"Now you listen, boy! If I come out there, there's only one way things can end. And that would be a terrible waste."
"I'm coming in!"
The door of the Mercantile slapped open, and Ruth Lillian appeared on the threshold. Her neck was twisted awkwardly because Lieder had the fingers of his left hand tightly entwined in her hair and was keeping her in front of him. "No point in this little virgin getting shot, boy! We got better things to do with her, you and me! Now, I admit that when that Swede girl told me about Miss Kane here, I was mighty put out. Trying to keep this nice piece of girl-flesh all to yourself! Shame on you! But then I got to thinking things out and here's the way I see it. I killed your nigger friend, and you got revenge by shooting my followers. I'm willing to call that even-steven. And because I've always had a tender spot in my heart for young love, you can have this little girl all to yourself. What do you say?" He pushed Ruth Lillian out onto the porch and followed her, keeping her back tight against his chest.
Matthew's glance flicked from Lieder's face to Ruth Lillian's. Her eyes shone with tears, and they looked almost oriental, drawn back at the corners by the tightness of Lieder's grip on her hair. Her lips were parted and her teeth stubbornly clenched to keep from crying out at the pain. "What did you do to Mr. Kane?" he asked.
"He ain't hurt all that bad. Well, what do you say, boy? I don't want to kill you, and I know you don't want to shoot holes in this virgin girl. That'd be a terrible waste." He grinned. "Now, this may look like your classic Mexican standoff, but it ain't. It ain't, and you know why? Because I hold all the aces. You're standing there in the open, and I'm here behind this girl's fine young flesh." The grin faded from his lips. His pale gray eyes chilled. "And we both know-we both know-that you are not going to shoot this sweet young girl to get at me." He cocked his pistol. "So what you'd best do is this, Matthew. You'd best just lay that gun down on the ground and step back. And you'd best do it now, right now! 'Cause I'm through talking, boy, and the messy business is going to start a lot sooner than you think."
"You better look at my gun, mister," Matthew said in that softly menacing burr Anthony Bradford Chumms had so often described.
Lieder glanced down. The trigger was depressed, and the only thing keeping the shotgun from firing was the crook of Matthew's thumb holding back the hammer.
"You're right when you say that I could never shoot first," he said quietly. "But I don't have to. You shoot me, and this old gun goes off. And you're dead."
"And this girl's dead too."
"She'd rather be dead than have you messing with her."
"You're… you are crazy, boy." He started to ease back toward the door.
"One… more… inch, and I drop the hammer." The calm fatality of his voice gave Lieder pause. "And you better know something, mister. I hurt my wrists pretty bad shooting your animals, so I can't hold this hammer back much longer."