Seconds ticked away, and a strange silence fell upon the whole group as they waited. Eyes were on Burle, but a few were watching Sloan. He knew that if Burle took up the challenge, his own men would back him. He saw Burle swing his head and stare at them one by one, and saw the unspoken message that passed back and forth. When Burle turned again, it was with more confidence than before. He grinned tightly at Sloan and moved to dismount.
Sloan’s muscles tightened. He shifted his weight off the bad leg, using that leg now for balance and nothing more. His eyes narrowed and took on a strangely savage gleam. The time was here. He would have his revenge at last—for Sid, for Rose, for Sylvia, too. Die he might, but not until he had killed Jeff Burle. Now Sloan was hoping there would be time enough before the blasts went off to do this one last thing.
Never in his life had Burle met a challenge head on if it could be avoided, and he did not do so now. Swinging off his horse, shielded momentarily by the animal’s body, he drew his gun, dived beneath the horse’s neck, and fired as he hit the ground. He missed, but the shot triggered the actions of Burle’s three men. Instantly they snatched guns from their holsters.
Sloan stood like a rock. Burle would be no menace until he stopped rolling, so he took the man on Burle’s right first. His bullet caught the man in the throat, and blood instantly soaked the front of his shirt. He stayed upright in the saddle briefly, began to choke, and put both hands to his throat, releasing the gun as though it were hot. Then, still choking, he toppled sideways.
Sloan didn’t see him because his eyes were on the second man, who had been immediately behind Burle’s horse. This one had his gun up, and it fired as Sloan’s did. The bullet seared the side of Sloan’s neck but his own struck the horseman squarely in the chest.
Maverick Towner took the third, bringing his horse crowding sideways to jostle the other and upset his aim. And Sloan switched his attention back to Burle. The man was steady now, flat on his belly on the ground. His weight was on both elbows, and he held his gun with both hands, sighting it, steadying it.
Sloan stared into the gaping bore, waiting for it to burst with flame and smoke, but swinging his own cocked gun as he did. Burle’s nerve broke. Sloan could see that in his eyes. It broke, even though Burle had his bead on Sloan and was ready to squeeze the trigger. But it broke too late, for Sloan could not stop the movement of his trigger finger in the small part of a second his mind willed it to stop. And perhaps he would not have stopped it even if he could. This was a thing he would never know. His gun bucked solidly against his palm. The bullet entered Burle’s neck and coursed downward through his body. He glowered unbelievingly at Sloan for an instant before his eyes began to glaze.
No time to savor victory or revenge. No time. The powder on the left side of the road blew, followed closely by the blast on the right. Dirt and rock showered Sloan and the hundred horsemen, as well as Burle and his two men on the ground. It obscured them from Sloan’s eyes, and then he was flung back as though by a giant hand. He landed on his back with an impact that drove the breath from him. His mind screamed at him to get up, that there wasn’t time for being stunned. He and those with him who had been hiding in the wash must have the group under their guns before they recovered enough to realize what was going on.
Rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of one hand, Sloan got to his feet. He felt, rather than saw, the six townsmen leaping up out of the wash. But he heard the plainly audible, metallic sounds that were the cocking of their guns. And he heard the shrill screaming of the drovers’ terrified horses, heard their plunging hoofs, the squeak of straining girth and stirrup leathers, the muffled thud of bodies striking the ground, the surprised, startled, angry cursing of the men.
Standing at last, he bawled, “Hold it! Don’t a damned one of you draw a gun!”
Some of their horses bolted across the plain. Some bucked a circle around the group. Others were fought to a halt. Towner, his face gray with the pain of the horse’s jolting his broken arm, screamed hysterically, “Yankee yellowbelly! You ain’t got the guts to fight in the open like a man. You got to use a dirty Yankee trick!”
Sloan’s voice was coldly vicious. “A hundred to one! Are those the odds a Southern gentleman has to have?”
The gray disappeared from Towner’s face. It turned a shade that could only have been called purple. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Yet in spite of his monumental fury, there was something like guilt in his eyes, something that said he knew Sloan’s accusation was true. Because it was true, his fury was greater. He found his voice at last and cursed Sloan bitterly, steadily. “You dirty Yankee coward, I’ll show you what odds we need!” He flung himself from his horse, stumbled and nearly fell as he hit the ground. He rushed to Sloan and struck him solidly, with the flat of his hand, on the cheek. There was force in the blow, force enough to snap Sloan’s head sideways with a crack that threatened to break his neck.
Towner roared, “There, suh! The choice of weapons is yours! I’ll show you the kind of odds we need!”
Rage leaped momentarily in Sloan, rage that he almost instantly controlled. Because he knew that he had succeeded, thus far at least. He had reduced this quarrel to its simplest form—that of man against man—instead of the way it had been, drovers against the town. On the point of speaking, he hesitated. Towner’s arm was broken; he was in pain; he was twenty or thirty years older than Sloan. If Sloan fought with him and killed him, the Texas crowd was going to be hard to restrain. There had to be another way …
He stared beyond Towner now at the others, still fighting their nervous mounts. He yelled, “I’ll take that on! But I won’t fight Towner!”
Towner bawled, “Look at me, suh, not at them!”
Sloan did, steadily and long. He said coldly, “I’ve not got much patience with your Southern code. If I fight a man, it’s not for fun, it’s for keeps and for a reason. Killing you won’t solve a damned thing because your whole crowd knows as well as I do that it isn’t fair. Your arm is broken, and you’re at a disadvantage. If I killed you then, I’d still have to take on the whole damned bunch of them.”
Dryden broke in, a grim-faced Dryden behind a shotgun that was none too steady. “What do you want, Hewitt? What are you getting at?”
Sloan didn’t look at him, but he answered him. He said, looking straight at the dusty-faced crowd of trail hands, “Pick your best man and send him out. Let him proxy for Towner.”
An instant of silence. Then clamor broke out in the cowmen’s ranks—the clamor of men eager to pick up the challenge. Sloan roared, “Shut up! It’s Towner’s choice. Let him pick the man!”
That quieted them a little, but there were still those who shouted, “Me, Maverick. Pick me. I’ll take that Yankee yellowbelly!”
Towner scowled. He plainly didn’t like anyone doing his fighting for him, but he also plainly knew that Sloan would kill him if he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t afraid to die, thought Sloan, but he wasn’t exactly eager for it, either.
Towner said, “Denehy.”
There was an instant’s immobility, then the ranks of disappointed horsemen parted to let one of their number through. He was a small, scrawny man who, when he dismounted, displayed legs that were noticeably bowed. He had eyes as emotionless as those of a snake, and a thin, cruel mouth. His hair was uncut and long like most of the others, but there was an unkempt quality about him that the others did not possess, and his hair was the color of a mouse’s fur.
“Bin wantin’ to try you, Yankee yellowbelly,” he said. “An’ I bin hopin’ you’d last that long.”
Sloan said, “You’re lucky then, aren’t you?” in an even, steady voice. This one would be fast, he thought, perhaps faster than he. This one was professional. He could tell that by the gun rig he wore, by the easiness with which he waited now. Sloan stared at Towner. “I told you I only fight for a reason, and I want something understood.” Towner frowned. “If I kill your man, that’s an end to it. You shuck your guns right here and let Dryden haul them into town. Pick ’em up when you leave.”
“What if he kills you?”
Sloan grinned wryly. “That won’t concern me, will it? I won’t be here to care.”
Towner hesitated. Then he nodded a bit reluctantly. “You win, no matter whether you live or die. If you’re dead, there ain’t much point in treeing the town. We’ll have it the way we want it anyhow.”
Sloan grinned faintly. He looked at Denehy. “I’m ready.”
Denehy side-stepped guardedly. His eyes were unblinking, steady on Sloan’s face. Denehy was one who watched the eyes for a sign the man he faced was beginning to draw. That way, he got the signal a split second before his adversary’s hand could move. It gave him an edge, one that had probably kept him alive through a dozen gunfights he might otherwise have lost. A cocky, prideful gunman who would not draw first. He didn’t speak. Once he’d gotten himself set, he didn’t move. He scarcely seemed to breathe.
Sloan waited, too, knowing the wait would be harder on Denehy than it was on him. He was thinking of Sid, of Rose, of Sylvia, who were now avenged. He was thinking of Merline. He had won every battle but the last. Something told him this one was a battle he couldn’t win. He had a natural dexterity with his gun, but he hadn’t the skill that Denehy had. He didn’t spend hours practicing that lightning draw. He took a backward step—another. He narrowed his eyes until they were the mere slits. He’d draw in an instant now and he wondered how he would signal Denehy when he did—by a widening of his eyes? By a tightening of the muscles at the corners of his mouth? Suddenly his patience was gone. He couldn’t beat Denehy to the draw, so there was only one other thing to do.
His hand moved, but Denehy moved faster. An instant after Sloan began to draw he abandoned it and flung his body forward and to one side. Denehy’s gun blasted before he struck, but Sloan felt no bullet’s shock. He was tumbling in the dust, hearing the repeated roar of Denehy’s gun as he tried to follow Sloan’s erratic course. Rolling, Sloan drew his gun and, when he faced Denehy, steadied himself with one outflung hand and squeezed off a shot with the other. It took Denehy in the left shoulder, spoiling his aim at Sloan’s momentarily motionless form. Sloan snapped another shot just as he lost his balance, and this one missed. Denehy fought his way around again, but this time Sloan was ready for him. Crouched and steady, he squeezed off his shot and knew even before the roar of it reached his ears that it had gone where he willed it to go.
Denehy stumbled backward and sat down. His gun fell from his inert fingers.
Sloan got slowly, watchfully to his feet. He walked over and kicked Denehy’s gun out of reach. He turned to face the shocked group of horsemen, who had been so sure he would die that they could not believe that he was still alive.
Sloan said, “Step down, gentlemen, and shuck your guns. Then you can ride on into town.”
Towner stared at Denehy, and then at Sloan. “He was faster … ”
“Maybe. But he’s dead. Tell your men to shuck their guns, and bring that man of Burle’s with you when you come into town. He’s going to stand trial.”
He looked at the still forms on the ground—at Burle and his two men, at Denehy, who looked small and helpless, lying there. Then he turned his back deliberately and mounted his horse. He sat astride, looking down, while the trail hands rode past the growing pile of armaments on the ground, dropping their guns upon it. Before they had finished, he turned and rode toward town, slowly at first but with increasing speed. Today it looked like a different town than it had before. Today it looked like home, and was home, because a girl was waiting for him in the dusty road just this side of the railroad tracks. There was nothing of self-possession or calmness about her now. She was crying hysterically and unashamedly, and when she saw him coming she began to run, holding up her skirts so that she would not fall.
And, when she could talk, through her tears and the rough material of his shirt, all she could say was, “Damn you. Damn you. If you ever put me through that again …”
Her hair was smooth under his callused hand, and her body warm against his own. He’d put her through the same torment again because he was a lawman now and couldn’t help himself. But perhaps between times he could make it up to her. His arms tightened, and he held her very close.
the end