Then Brunk’s voice rose. “But even your respectable friends threw you down when you and your high-roller partner went to robbing stages!”
“Holy Christ, Frank!” Bald-head whispered.
Brunk sucked his breath in, and then cried explosively, “And when you and him went to killing cowboys to make like it was them had done it! And Morgan kicks out a broken-arm fellow’s teeth for saying it! Well, I say if your high-toned Citizens’ Committee don’t want you any more, then the damned miners don’t either!”
Morgan slowly turned toward Clay. Nothing showed in Clay’s face. He reached for his hat, and Brunk drew back at the movement. Brunk shifted his feet to keep facing Clay as Clay slowly came out around the desk. Bald-head and Waxed-mustache backed out of his way. Clay put on his hat, and, without a word, went out the alley door and pulled it closed behind him.
In the silence the noise of the crowd of miners in the Glass Slipper was very loud. Murch started to slide the bar back and open the door.
“Keep it shut,” Morgan said, in a voice he could hardly recognize as his own.
“Here, now!” Bald-head said fearfully.
Morgan stripped off his coat, unbuckled his shoulder holster, and dropped Colt and harness on the desk with a thump. He opened the drawer and brought his knife out. Brunk’s scarlet face swam in his eyes. “Do you know how to use that sticker of yours, mucker?” he said.
“Now hold on, now!” Waxed-mustache said. “Now, listen, Morgan; Frank here said things he had no cause to say and didn’t mean. Now let’s not—”
“Get it out, if you know how to use it,” he said to Brunk. He pricked the palm of his hand with the knife’s point. “You had better know,” he said. He came out from behind his desk, and the others moved away from Brunk.
“He is big, Tom,” Murch said. “You had better leave me—”
“This is mine. Get it out!” he said. Brunk was hesitating with his hand on the haft of his bowie. “Why, I am giving you a fair shake, aren’t I?” Morgan said, grinning. “Prove you are right by sticking me. Or I’ll prove you are an over-grown, yellow-livered lying hog that’s not fit to lick his boots you just pissed all over. Get it out and talk like that to me!”
Brunk pulled his bowie loose. He held it waist-high, his left hand out and spread-fingered, his thick forearm blocking.
“Fair fight now, boys!” Goat-beard shrilled. “We are here to see it is fair, Frank!”
“Come on, then, Mister high-roller,” Brunk said hoarsely, moving sideways to get his back away from Murch and toward his partners. He swung the bowie blade in a circle before him.
Morgan did not move now, watching Brunk’s guard and holding his own knife low in his right hand, with his left close to it. He met Brunk’s eyes, and saw, in their black pupils, his own image. He heard the quickened breathing of the men watching as he thrust his right hand up, the knife cutting out. Brunk leaped back, and then immediately pressed forward, feinting with the bowie. Morgan exposed his neck, hoping that Brunk would make a high stroke.
The bowie swept toward his throat, and he dodged to the left and shifted his knife to his left hand. He thrust it up and felt it catch home, and tear away; Brunk’s arm was too long.
He heard the gasp, not from Brunk but from the others. He had drawn blood that darkened the breast of Brunk’s dirty blue shirt, but he had wasted his best stroke. For the first time it occurred to him that he might die.
The knife in his right hand again, he raised the blade to touch his forehead, dropped it low once more, feinted left, feinted right. The blood spread on Brunk’s chest. Brunk lunged toward him.
Brunk’s wrist crashed against his, the bowie blade passing over it. His own knife snubbed into the bone of Brunk’s forearm, and immediately Brunk’s big hand caught his wrist. With a wrench he freed it and dodged aside, but he had felt the power in those hands and arms, and their quickness. Brunk’s arm was bleeding now too, but he saw a light of confidence in the miner’s eyes.
Morgan swung in to the right to get under Brunk’s guard, and the elbow crashed down against his hand. He feinted right again and drove straight in, but had to leap back again as the long arm swept around. He felt the slight tug at his shoulder, and heard the gasp again. He didn’t look.
His breath began to tear at his lungs. There had been too many cigars, too many women, too much whisky; he laughed out loud and saw Brunk disconcerted by it. He drove in once more and this time slashed Brunk’s upper arm; he jumped back as the bowie flashed past, and immediately thrust up and in and this time his knife ripped into flesh and caught, and Brunk gasped a harsh cough. But his knife did not pull free as he retreated, and Brunk’s left hand clutched down on his. In turn he caught Brunk’s wrist as the bowie swung down. Brunk’s weight forced him back, and Brunk’s height bore him over. He tried to wrench back away, and tripped; he fell and Brunk fell with him. Brunk’s grip loosened on his knife hand and he rammed the knife farther into Brunk’s belly as he crashed to the floor with Brunk sprawled on top of him. Brunk cried out once.
Brunk’s hand caught his wrist again between their bodies, but still he could move his hand a little, to twist and turn the knife blade in Brunk’s flesh. He felt the warm wet flow of blood on his own belly, as, grunting and straining, his elbow set and bruised against the floor, he fought to keep Brunk’s bowie from his throat.
Brunk’s hand bore down impossibly hard. What was the use? he thought suddenly; he did not love life enough to bother to fight this to its end. What was the use? He grinned into Brunk’s crazed face and replied to himself: because he would not let a clumsy, stupid mucker beat him; or any man. He twisted the knife in Brunk’s body, to kill Brunk before the bowie pierced him, and knew he could not as the huge weight of Brunk’s arm came down against his own. Brunk’s sweat fell into his face and the muscles in Brunk’s neck were spread out like batwings; there was no sound in the world but Brunk’s grunting and his own.
He strained his own blade from side to side and Brunk gasped. But he felt his wrist begin to tilt. He had to bend his arm to retain his grip, and so the post he had made of his forearm was gone and there remained only the inadequate strap of his muscles, and his will — not to be beaten. He could feel his arm bending as the blood flowed from Brunk’s belly.
He laughed and panted up into Brunk’s contorted face, and smelled the stink of him, and watched the bowie that was not a foot from his throat. He worked his own blade up toward Brunk’s vitals, up toward Brunk’s heart; for Brunk must die too. Why? he thought. What did it matter? There seemed no reason, but his hand needed none. He grinned up at the bowie’s point, not six inches from his throat now. Now three, as his arm gave like a rusty ratchet, pure pain now, and caught somehow again; now two inches, as it gave again.
Then out of the corners of his eyes he saw Murch move suddenly, and saw the little double-barreled derringer in Murch’s hand. “No, Al!” he grunted, and his words were lost in the crash. Brunk’s head fell on him, and Brunk did not move again. “No!” he panted.
Weakly he struggled to slide the heavy body off himself, and to his feet. His vest was soaked with blood. He stood there swaying. Murch had the derringer trained on the three miners. Someone was hammering on the door and shouting, “Frank! Hey, Frenchy!”