Mcallister, as was his habit, woke immediately into clear consciousness, sitting up and reaching for the butt of his gun. The tinkle of glass from the shot still rang in his ears. Some fool had put a shot through the office window.
As he stood up, Sime came groggily to his feet demanding to know what in hell was going on and staggering gun in hand for the door.
“Not that way,” McAllister roared. “Stay right here.”
Turning he opened the door to the sick room and heard Jenny Mann scream. He didn’t waste time on explanations, but legged it across the room, lifted the bar on the rear door and ran around the back of the building. Between the office and the next building was an alleyway about wide enough to admit a horse. The shadow was black here. He ran the width of the building and came onto the street.
Outside the saloon was a bunch of men. They were likkered up and he could see the dull gleam of guns in their hands. A couple of drunken fools were riding their horses up and down the street whooping like Comanches. One was firing his gun in the air.
One of the men on the other side of the street fired again at the office. This raised a roar of laughter.
McAllister thrust his gun into his belt and started across the street. He didn’t make any speed because the mud was so thick. Halfway across he dodged one of the horsemen and roared at the top of his voice: “Put those fool guns away.”
The laughter stopped and one wanted to know: “Who in hell says so? Nobody don’t tell a Texas man to put his gun up.”
McAllister waded on and when he reached the sidewalk, he said: “This is McAllister.”
A man shouted : “Another li’l ole Texas man, pards.”
Another said: “Keep your shirt on, mushel.”
“Put ’em up, boys,” McAllister said. He ran his eyes over the group. Cattle-drivers most of them. High-spirited lads with no real harm in them. A couple of them grinned and put their guns away. One of the horsemen fired at the office again and another window collapsed. McAllister thought that wasn’t bad shooting from the back of a running horse. Yelling delightedly the cowhand heeled his animal towards his friends, McAllister stepped onto the street and caught the animal by its bridle. The boy wanted to know what the goddam idea was and McAllister said: “Cool off, son, and put that gun up.”
In the same second, the horse jumped and nearly took the marshal from his feet and a rifle slammed. The horse screamed like a stricken woman, slipped and fell. The rider was thrown from the saddle and McAllister was stretched out in the mud. Then everything was confusion.
McAllister scrambled messily to his feet and tore his gun free.
“Who fired that shot?” he bellowed. He heaved his way toward the sidewalk and a cowhand told him: “Come from the alley.” The boy on the street was yelling that some bastard had shot his horse.
McAllister started running along the sidewalk to get clear of the crowd. A second shot came and something struck him very hard on one side of his head, knocking him off balance. He hit the rail of the sidewalk, clutched at it blindly for support and rolled over it onto the street. After that he didn’t know much till he got the reek of whiskey in his nostrils and, opening his eyes painfully, he saw the doctor’s face close to his.
In the background a man said: “He’s alive.”
McAllister raised a shaking hand to his face and found that it was covered with sticky blood.
“Lie still,” the doctor snapped.
“Get away,” McAllister snarled. “The whiskey fumes’ll kill me before a rap on the head does.”
Sime’s face came almost into focus and said: “You was creased real good, Rem.”
The marshal did his best to take a look around and found that he was in his office, half on and half off his desk. Jenny Mann hovered near, concern on her face. He liked that. Then he saw the rest of them, crowding in to take a look at the wounded lawman and it looked to him like the whole town was there. He tried to sit up, but he couldn’t make it. So he lay flat on his back and growled hoarsely at Sime: “What in hell goes on here? Clear ’em out.”
Sime got to work and McAllister made another attempt to rise and failed again. Jenny Mann took hold of him and held him down, saying: “You must lie still.”
McAllister said: “Stand back, ma’am,” and pushed her clear, reached over and opened a drawer from which he extracted a bottle of whiskey.
The little doctor chirped up: “I forbid it.”
The marshal grinned groggily. “Join me, doc.” He pulled the cork and took a long pull. Some life flowed into him and he offered the doctor the bottle. The little man took it and matched his swallow. Jenny Mann made scandalized noises. She looked annoyed when McAllister made one more try to get up and actually made it. Propping himself up against the wall, he asked: “Has the bleeding stopped?”
The doctor said: “Yes. But it’ll start again if you move about.”
“Put a bandage on.”
The doctor obeyed. When he finished, Sime had the office cleared. McAllister turned to his deputy and said: “Get along to the livery and pick out the two best horses there. I want one ready and saddled at dawn. I’ll take the other as a spare.”
“What in heck for?”
“To get the man that shot me.”
“Maybe he’s here in town.”
“Not after shooting me, he won’t be. He knows me.”
Jenny Mann was terrified to make her way through the streets in the small hours of the morning, but she forced herself to do it. Paston’s business and schemes were obscure to her, but the fascination the man held for her was not. Her sharp little mind could not fathom the connection between the attempted shooting of McAllister and Paston, but she knew there was some link there. Her instinct told her that Paston had had something to do with the cutting down of Marshal Diblon. She knew the man so well, could read the flitting shadows over his face. And she was frightened. She wanted to go away with Paston away from this shambles of a frontier to civilization. And she knew that the end to which he was working was the accumulation of enough money for them to live in style. Yet she was not of his breed. Normally there was no recklessness in her, her nature was not a gambler’s. Perhaps there lay the secret of the man’s fascination for her.
So when McAllister was brought in wounded and talked of knowing the man who had shot him, she at once saw that Paston was indirectly in danger. If men pitting themselves against the law here were a part of Paston’s organization, “the business” as he smilingly called it, then in McAllister they had met a man who was a danger to their future. Why, she asked herself, could she not have fallen in love with a man like McAllister? Her pulse quickened at the thought of him? She had thrilled when he had carried her across the street? No, fundamentally, she was a loyal woman. She had set herself aside for Paston. It was up to her to save the situation and to get her lover to leave this place.
For one terrible moment, she could see McAllister killing George. She knew too well that he was capable of it.
She tiptoed silently past the sleeping Joe Diblon and let herself out of the rear door.
On the street, she crouched back in the shadows, watching the street and making certain that the two men sleeping in the office had not heard her departure. After several minutes, she went on satisfied. A drunken miner slouched by, stopped to leer at her and stumbled on. She ran. Crossing the street, she lost a shoe in the mud and lost time hunting for it. When she found it and went on to the sidewalk, she ran into two men talking in the moonshadow of the cover. One reached out a hand for her, making a coarse remark. She ducked and ran on, not stopping until she reached the outside staircase of Paston’s place and panted up it. The door was unlocked, she was thankful to find, and she went in.
The corridor was empty and she hurried along it. Light showed faintly under Paston’s door and she opened it quietly.
A lamp on the bureau washed the far side of the room dimly with light. At first she thought the place was empty, but on glancing to her right, she saw a dark figure sitting in an armchair. She thought it was her lover and began to say his name, but the figure rose quickly, shut the door behind her, and, catching her by the arm, dragged her into the light. She was so astonished and outraged that she did not cry out. She froze with horror when she found herself looking into pale and deadly eyes.
Her mouth opened to scream for George.
“Be still,” the man said.
He raised a hand to threaten her and she saw that the thumb was almost totally missing. At once she realized that this was the man for whom McAllister was looking. Suddenly she was very afraid.
“Who are you?” the man demanded.
She thought she would faint. The man’s cynical eyes showed his interpretation of her presence here at this hour. Shame and fear paralysed her.
The man shook her slightly and said: “You Paston’s piece?”
The door opened abruptly. She jerked her head around to see George standing in the doorway.
“George …”
“Dix!” Paston roared.
“Who is she?” Dix demanded.
“Take your hands off her.” The man spun her away from him.
“Who is she?” he asked again. “What’s she doing here?”
Paston rid himself of some of his rage and visibly got some control of himself. “As this is my room, I assume she had come to see me.”
Paston walked across the room to the tall dark man and spoke up into his face, thrusting his head forward like a bulldog. “If you had done like I said, none of this would have happened.”
“I did what had to be done. A couple of days an’ you’d of been run outa town if I didn’t.”
Jenny Mann said in her coldest voice: “And what did you have to do? Kill McAllister?”
The man swung on her, but Paston barred his way.
“How’d she know that?” he demanded.
Paston said: “You get out of town fast.”
“I don’t have nothin’ to run for now.”
“Your mistake,” Jenny Mann said.
Now she had Paston’s attention as well. Both men looked their alarm as they stared at her. George said in a dead voice: “What does that mean?”
“I suppose this brute imagines that he has killed McAllister,” Jenny said, amazed at her own sudden calm.
Paston turned to look at Dix, saying: “Well?”
“I saw him go down.”
“As the deputy-marshal said, you creased him.”
“She’s lyin’.”
“What has she got to gain by lying? I told you not to come back into town. By God …” Paston’s rage blew up like a storm. “Get out. Now. And stay out. One more fool move like this and you’ll be looked after.” Jenny stared at Paston in horror. Realizing that her worst fears about him were true. “Move.”
Dix took a pace back, his hand dropping automatically to his gun butt. His left hand.
“Nobody don’t threaten me,” he said softly.
Paston laughed and the sound showed Jenny how little she knew about the man.
“Stick to your own level, punk,” he said. “Pull your iron.”
Something like puzzlement dimly lit those dead eyes. He had never braced Paston before. He had heard talk of his ability with a gun, but he had never considered him in the same class as a professional like himself. He licked his lips.
“I don’t have to take this kind of talk,” he said.
Paston thrust his words at him. “You have to take it,” he said. “You kill for pennies. You do as you’re told. That was what you were born for.”
The door opened.
The three of them turned.
McAllister leaned against the door-jamb, smiling at them.