Dusty and his deputies raced along the street after leaving Big Sarah. In passing the bank they wasted no time stopping to peer through the windows. The safe had been built, literally, into the rear office where Courtland sat in his glory during business hours, and could not be seen from Main Street. On taking over his duties as marshal, Dusty had commented on the inadvisability of such an arrangement However, Courtland claimed his safe could stand up to the attentions of any thief and that it would take a fair charge of explosive to force its doors—and a fair charge of explosive made enough noise to attract attention, especially at night when the only chance of forcing the door would be presented. Anyway, removing the safe and placing it in the front office could only be done by almost destroying and then rebuilding the bank, so Courtland felt reluctant to make the effort and Dusty, thinking on the same lines as the banker where the noise of safe-blowing was concerned, did not press the demand. Now it seemed that somebody had taken advantage of the weakness in the bank’s defenses and picked a real good night to make the effort. If the two girls had not collapsed at that time, most likely the crowd would have been making so much noise that the muffled boom of the explosion could not be heard by anybody in the saloon.
Fanning out and drawing their guns, Dusty’s party split into two groups, Mark, Derringer and Waco going down the right of the bank while Dusty and the Kid went along the left, making for the rear of the building.
‘It’s the law!’ a voice yelled and a tall, dark shape loomed up in the darkness at the rear of the building.
Flame spurted from the dark shape and Frank Derringer gave a pain-filled curse as lead sliced along his neck, giving him a nasty graze and the best piece of good luck a professional gambling man could have asked for. An inch to the left and Derringer would have been lying on the ground, blood pumping from a hole in the tender part of his favorite throat.
Mark and Waco fired on the run, their two guns roaring out at almost the same instant. Caught by the two .44 caliber bullets, the shape went backwards, its gun sending a shot into the ground as it fell from a lifeless hand. Three of them in the alley made too large a target for either Mark or Waco to take a chance on anything other than shooting to kill.
‘You all right, Frank?’ Waco asked. ‘I’m not worried, only there’s some things you haven’t taught me yet.’
‘Thanks for the concern, boy,’ Derringer answered, touching his neck with a delicate finger tip. ‘It’s only a nick.’
Feet thudded and voices spat out curses behind the building. Always eager to get into action, and not yet having learned wisdom and caution, Waco sprang forward. Before he reached the comer, a big hand clamped on his shoulder and jerked him back. Mark accomplished the feat without releasing his Colt, for his left arm was still in the sling although fast recovering from its wound.
‘Try thinking, boy,’ he growled in the youngster’s ear. ‘They know we’re at this end and are watching for us.’
Subsequent events proved that Mark called the situation one hundred percent correctly. Three men who had burst out of the bank, all holding short-barreled guns of cheap and fairly reliable manufacture and known as Suicide Specials, gave their full attention to the left side of the building and ignored the right. Which showed a lamentable lack of foresight on their part, but they were city men and regarded all westerners as dumb, half-witted yokel hicks.
‘Law here!’ Dusty snapped as he and the Kid came into sight at the other end of the building. ‘Drop the guns.’
Having heard the shooting at the other end, Dusty and the Kid figured that the men from the building might be concentrating in that direction. Their figuring proved correct, but the three men whirled around fast at Dusty’s challenge and when they turned, they—in the western phrase—turned shooting. In that they made a damned bad mistake for they were city men more used to knuckle-duster or knife than to handling firearms; and city father never sired a criminal son who could match a Texas cowhand in the skilled and fast handling of a gun.
Dusty’s Colts bellowed and once again his ambidextrous skill showed to its best advantage as the right hand revolver tumbled one of the trio over backwards while the left side gun planted lead into the second man’s shoulder. With lead singing around his ears from fast-triggered but poorly-aimed shots fired by the trio, the Kid fired hip-high and by instinctive alignment. Instinctive or taken from a bench rest the Kid reckoned to be able to call his shots with better than fair accuracy at such a moment. He showed his skill by sending a flat-nosed .44 Henry bullet into the remaining member of the trio’s chest and spinning the man over like he had been struck by a charging buffalo.
Silence dropped after the flurry of shots, only the noise of the saloon brawl in the background breaking it. Mark called for permission to come out of the alley, taking an elementary precaution. Way he saw it, the less chances a lawman took at such a moment, the better his expectancy of living long enough to retire and spend his old age ‘hard-wintering’ v around the general store’s stove.
‘D—don’t shoot!’ croaked one of the wounded men. ‘I’m d—’
‘Shut it!’ growled the Kid, his voice Comanche-mean.
Even more than Derringer, the three Texans noticed how the Kid stood. He looked like a blue-tick hound hitting hot cougar scent, or trying to catch some faint sound of a long-travelling pack baying.
‘What’s up, Lon?’ asked Waco.
‘There’s another one out that ways,’ the Kid replied, pointing unerringly off into the darkness.
‘Go get him!’ Dusty ordered.
‘Su—Damn it, he’s took to a hoss.’
Luck favored the Texas lawmen that night; or maybe it was old Ka-dih, the Great Spirit of the Comanche favoring his quarter-blood follower. Whatever the reason, the Kid had left his big white stallion in the livery barn’s open corral that night instead of using a stall indoors.
Twice the Kid’s piercing whistle rang through the night. In the corral, the seventeen hand horse threw back its head, snorted and started running for the fence. It took off and sailed over that six foot high man-made barrier like a frog hopping over a hickory twig, lighting down and racing through the night to answer its master’s summons.
Bounding afork the big white, the Kid headed it across the range, making after the escaping member of the gang. Dusty watched his Indian-dark young friend go, then gave his orders.
‘Mark, Frank, stay here. Waco, let’s go get the horses.’
It was an ideal arrangement. With his arm in a sling, Mark could not handle a hard-riding chase through the night and Derringer did not own a personal mount. So they stayed guarding the prisoner while Dusty and the youngster headed for the livery barn.
‘It sounds like they’re still having fun at the Buffalo, Mark,’ Derringer said as he collected the gang’s weapons.
‘Sounds that way,’ Mark agreed. ‘Watch ’em while I go in and light a lamp. We’ll corral ’em in the office while you go fetch the doctor.’
On lighting the lamp, Mark discovered that Courtland’s faith in the safe had not been misplaced, for the explosion did not appear to have opened the door. He wasted no time in idle thoughts, but ordered the wounded men who could to come inside while Derringer brought the other in. Then Derringer left to collect the doctor and hoped that his trip would not be wasted due to the doctor being at the Buffalo Saloon. Derringer kept to the rear of Main Street and so did not see the effective way Big Sarah quelled the riot. Finding the doctor at home, Derringer asked for help and the two men returned to the bank.
The Kid allowed his big white stallion to follow the sound of the departing rider. For two miles the stallion covered ground at a fast lope, closing the distance with the other man’s mount for there were few horses in the West to equal the Kid’s in a chase.
Out on the range, the moon’s light gave better visibility than in town and the Kid saw the other rider ahead of him, going down a slope towards the open floor of a valley bottom. The rider was a tall man wearing range clothes and sitting his horse with more skill than a town-bred criminal would be likely to learn.
For a moment the Kid figured maybe his senses, or the white’s ability to trail by sound, had gone back on him. That feller down there did not belong to a gang of city owlhoots. Of course he might be a chance traveler who heard the shooting back by town and figured to stay clear of flying lead.
Then the man answered the Kid’s doubts in an unmistakable manner. Just as he reached the foot of the slope, the man chanced to look back and saw the tall, black-dressed shape following him. Instantly the man bent forward, jerked out his rifle, twisted in the saddle as he raised it, and fired two shots upwards. Turning forward again, the man urged his horse at a better speed across the quarter of a mile wide bottom of the valley. Out in the center of the valley rose a large rocky outcrop and the man had passed it when he turned and saw the Kid ignoring his warning. Once more the rifle began to spit flame.
Three shots whined by the Kid’s head and when the fourth sent his Stetson flying, he decided the time had come to show his disapproval. At a heel-touch the white stallion made better speed and the ‘yellow boy’ flowed to the Kid’s shoulder. Twice the Kid’s rifle cracked, but firing from the back of a running horse—especially when riding without a saddle or even blanket—had never been conducive to extreme accuracy. Instead of tumbling the man from his saddle, one bullet missed and the other ripped into his horse’s rump and brought the animal down.
‘Now I’ve got him!’ thought the Kid.
Only it seemed that old Ka-Dih reckoned he had done enough for Long Walker’s grandson that night. The rider had passed the outcrop where he might have taken cover and was within thirty yards of the valley’s other slope when his horse went down. To make things worse, some damned fool had built a dug-out home on the slope ahead of the man: a dugout being a temporary dwelling built by digging a rectangular pit into a convenient slope, erecting a wooden and sod framework and packing the excavated dirt around and on the roof of the frame, putting a door in the front wall but managing without the luxury of windows.
Before the Kid could zero in his rifle on him, the running man plunged through the open door and out of sight. Instantly the Kid forgot about shooting and headed his stallion for the cover of the outcrop. He was barely in time, for a bullet stirred his hair in passing as he reined his horse behind the outcrop. Dropping from the white’s back, the Kid moved to where he could see and shoot at the door of the dug-out, throwing a couple of shots across the two hundred odd yards. He had little hope of making a hit but reckoned he could show the man inside that he was still around.
‘Well,’ thought the Kid, looking at the dug-out, ‘you can’t get out of there, hombre—but we’ll have a helluva time getting in.’
With which view Dusty Fog agreed on his arrival. He and Waco halted their paint stallions on top of the slope and waited until the Kid gave them covering fire before riding down to join him. Studying the situation, Dusty noted the thickness of the roof of the dug-out and the lack of cover between its door and the outcrop. To try rushing the building would be certain death if the man inside proved to be resolute and anything like a rifle shot.
‘All right, hombre!’ Dusty called. ‘This’s the marshal of Mulrooney. Come on out with your hands raised.’
‘You got no jurisdiction out here!’ the man replied and Dusty had a feeling he should recognize the voice.
‘I’m a deputy sheriff, too,’ Dusty answered. ‘This’s still in the county. Come on and you’ll not get hurt.’
‘Try coming to get me and you will!’ the man yelled defiantly.
‘Man’d say he’s got a right good point there, Dusty,’ drawled the Kid.
‘Could maybe sneak around, get on top of the dug-out and shoot down,’ Waco suggested.
‘Sure, if you knew for sure where the feller was, and he didn’t hear you on top. Because, boy, if you missed or he heard you, he’d start pumping lead right up through the roof.’
‘Which wouldn’t suit Babsy one lil mite, boy,’ the Kid continued from where Dusty left off. ‘If he shot you there how could you—’
Waco’s interruption was blistering, coarse and profane. ‘Anybody’d think there was something ’tween Babsy and me,’ he finished.
‘Now what gave you that idea, boy?’ grinned the Kid.
While this went on, Dusty had been surveying the surrounding area in the hope of finding something to break the deadlock. At last he made his decision. The man wanted to play mean, so all right, Dusty aimed to play the game the way that jasper called it.
‘Go back to town, Lon,’ he ordered. ‘Take our hosses back over the slope—no, best leave them here, they’re safe. Head back and bring the Sharps.’
‘Like that, huh?’ asked the Kid.
‘Just like that,’ Dusty agreed, his voice as cold and emotionless as a judge pronouncing the death sentence.
After the Kid rode off, Waco sat with his back to a rock and his fingers drumming on the butt of his rifle as he sank deep into thought. Dusty watched the dug-out’s door and let the youngster continue thinking, guessing the lines Waco’s thought-train followed.
‘Those fellers’d’ve been loco to try blowing out the safe happen near on every man in town hadn’t been at the Buffalo and making a helluva noise,’ Waco finally stated.
‘You figured that too, boy?’
‘Sounds like sense. Happen things hadn’t quietened down when they did, we might never have heard her blow.’
‘Right as the off-side of a horse,’ Dusty admitted. ‘If the girls hadn’t wound up sleeping—sleeping! How the hell did that happen? They hadn’t knocked each other cold.’
‘Dunno,’ Waco answered. ‘I figured they’d go at least half an hour.’
‘So did I. Freddie’s fit and tough and so’s Kate or I miss my guess. And the crowd would have been making plenty of noise all the time. Wouldn’t be many of them leaving the saloon right after the fight either, especially when the bar opened. It can’t be a coincidence that the gang just happened to hit tonight.’
‘You reckon the fight was rigged so they—Hell, Dusty, Miss Freddie nor Buffalo Kate wouldn’t do nothing like that.’
‘Which same brings up another point,’ Dusty said, ‘Who tossed out the challenge and got them together? I got the feeling that neither of the girls had thrown it Freddie wouldn’t and Kate’d prefer to chance her luck in a barroom brawl not a boxing ring—hey though, that cowhand Lon and I saw last night. Maybe he wasn’t fooling with the posters Dongelon put up, but was hanging the challenge signs up for folks to read in the morning.’
‘In cahoots with the owlhoots?’
‘Or hired without knowing a thing. Those fellers knew their work, boy, they weren’t yearling beef. Either them, or somebody local, saw a chance in the feud, knew neither Freddie nor Kate could, or would, back down and fixed the challenge to get the men folks off the streets and cover the noise of blowing the safe.’
‘You mean somebody in town set it up?’ Waco growled. ‘Boy, a good rule for a lawman to follow is never name names until he’s got enough evidence to take before a judge. I’ve my suspicions, but they’re staying mine until I’m sure of them. Now settle down, we’ve a long wait until dawn.’
The night dragged by. An hour passed before the Kid returned, coming in on foot to bring word of how Big Sarah quelled the saloon riot Then he glided back up the slope once more and it is doubtful if the man in the dug-out ever knew of the visit.
At dawn, Dusty and Waco prepared their horses for riding and by the time they finished the sun had lit the whole floor of the valley, showing the door of the dug-out clearly.
‘You in there!’ Dusty called, thrusting his carbine into its saddleboot. ‘Come out with your hands raised!’
‘Go to hell!’
‘This’s your last chance. Come out or we’ll fetch you out!’
‘So come and try it!’ screeched the man and fired two shots at the rocks.
To do so he had to expose the barrel of his rifle and part of his body around the side of the door. Which was what Dusty had been waiting for. The small Texan raised his hand and waved it towards the dug-out.
A quarter of a mile away the Ysabel Kid sat on the opposite slope to the dug-out. He held a Sharps Old Reliable rifle cradled at his shoulder, its barrel further supported by a Y-shaped stick which had been thrust into the ground. For days the Kid had been burning the Mulrooney taxpayers’ good powder and shot learning how the big rifle held at various long ranges, so as to be ready to handle such a situation. This was the kind of conditions Dusty envisaged when suggesting the purchase of the rifle as part of the office armament. The wisdom of buying a Sharps proved itself at that moment.
Eagle-keen eyes located the hidden man and sighted the rifle. The Kid heard Dusty’s warnings, the replies and the two shots. Then he squeezed the Sharp’s trigger. All was ready as he did so; the sights erected and laid with care, a cigar-long cartridge in the chamber, one hundred and twenty grains of prime du Pont powder set to expel a .45 calibre, five hundred and fifty grain bullet through the barrel. The gun’s hammer fell and it roared loud in the still of the morning. With the instinct of a good shot, the Kid knew he held true and a scream of pain confirmed his knowledge.
The instant the shot roared out Dusty and Waco sprang into action. They hit their saddles and shot one from either side of the outcrop, heading for the dug-out and hanging over the outer flank of their horses like a brace of Comanche bucks. Converging on the dug-out, they dropped from their horses, drawing their guns as they landed and dived through the door. The guns were not needed. Hit in the shoulder, moaning in agony and helpless through shock, Vince Crocker, the Brownton deputy marshal was in no shape to make further trouble.