It seemed that the three men and the woman stood there motionless waiting for a full minute.
McAllister broke the silence.
“It took me a full year, Dix.”
The gunman turned slowly so that he faced the man in the doorway. Paston pushed Jenny Mann to one side so that she would be out of the line of fire. In a calm, conversational tone, Paston asked: “What took you a year, McAllister?”
“To catch up with the man who murdered my wife.”
The terrible words filled the room. The woman’s face showed her horror. Paston could not conceal the fact that he was shaken. Dix revealed no emotion at all. He was as still as a striking rattler.
McAllister said: “I’ll give you a choice. You can pull your gun and die here or you can unbuckle your gunbelt and stand trial. Make up your mind quick.”
Paston thought: If he surrenders and talks, I‘m finished.
A clock ticked somewhere in the silence of the room. Paston knew that he had to make a move, but he knew that whatever he did, it would endanger the woman. But his ambition had ridden him too long for it to be sacrificed even for this one. With a feeling of doom, he made up his mind.
McAllister had not made a move. His right hand hung limply at his side. His gun was strapped to his waist, high to the left side, butt forward. It looked impossible to make a fast draw from there, but Paston guessed rightly that McAllister could pull a gun from anywhere fast as any man living.
Paston moved.
With a sweep of his left hand, he hurled the lamp from the bureau top. It struck the top of the table and bounced in McAllister’s direction.
Miraculously, the glass smashed and it went out. This left the marshal silhouetted against the light in the corridor. Or it would have done if he had still been there. One moment Paston was hurling the lamp toward him, the next he was out of sight and the whole building seemed to shudder to the deafening roar of guns in a confined space.
Paston, as soon as he had started the lamp on its way, threw himself sideways, grappled with Jenny and flung her to the floor. This startling action and the shock of hitting the floor brought the start of a scream from her lips. As the guns thundered she held the scream unbroken.
As Paston went away to his left, Dix took one long pace to the right in the direction of the open door of the inner room. Before his pacing foot touched ground, his gun was out and firing. Only after he had got off his second shot did he realize that he had wasted both on empty space. There was no time for thought. He knew he had three shots left and that he mustn’t waste one of them. McAllister had fired one and missed with it. From the sound of the explosion and the impact of the ball in the wall behind him, Dix knew that the marshal did not have that dreaded weapon with two barrels in action. They’d had a dose of that at the stage hold-up. He squinted at the dim light of the corridor, unable to see the hump of a man’s body on the floor of the room. The hair stood on the nape of his neck as fear ran through him. McAllister was in the room, maybe close to him.
Silence fell, but his ears rang, deafened by the shooting. He held his breath so that he should not cough on the pungent black-powder fumes.
Cautiously, he lifted one foot and backed toward the open door, his mind hurrying to guess where McAllister could be. He wasn’t between himself and the corridor. Therefore he must be to the right of the door. The obvious place was near the table which would offer him some cover. Dix dropped to one knee, held his gun low and fired. Terror touched him at once and he hurled himself backward into the inner room. The answering bullet proved his terror well founded. It tore his hat from his head and smashed into a piece of china in the room beyond.
Two shots left, his mind told him.
He started crawling backward as Paston’s voice, shaking with tension, came. “Hold your fire. There’s a woman here.”
McAllister’s voice said: “Let me hear your gun fall, Paston, or I fire, woman or no woman.”
Paston groaned: “God damn you.”
Dix reckoned he was too far into the room to get McAllister with a shot. He heard a thud and reckoned that was Paston’s gun landing. The yellow dog had counted out. The two of them could have finished McAllister easily in their cross-fire.
Glancing hastily over his shoulder, he saw the large window, gleaming faintly in the moonlight. His only way out of this. If only he could kill McAllister, then the fear of the last year would be over and done with. But the present terror was too great. He wanted out. Right now.
A boot scraped the floor in the room he had just left. He pictured McAllister crawling remorselessly toward him. He wondered if there was time to thumb fresh loads into his gun and wondering that he let the seconds tick by until he knew it was too late.
Then something dawned on him.
If McAllister came to the door he would be between him, Dix, and Paston. Then they’d have him.
He swallowed hard and forced himself to call out: “Paston, get him when he gets to the door.”
Very near, McAllister said calmly: “Stay still, Paston.” Dix knew that he was under cover of the wall but he could not prevent himself from firing on the chance that he was in the doorway. The woman shrieked in terror as the bullet came near and smashed into the wall and Paston screamed: “Stop it, stop it.”
One round left, Dix told himself in almost tearful bitterness.
Then he brightened suddenly.
His eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom and a faint light was coming from the moon through the window behind him. Dimly he could make out the frame of the door and, as he strained his eyes, he saw something white in the room beyond. If McAllister were to come though the doorway that white patch would disappear. He laid his thumb on the hammer and braced his legs under him.
His heart nearly stopped beating when a gun roared and something struck him hard in the left shoulder and knocked him onto his back. Terror and pain drove him to his feet instantly and he jumped for the window, folding his arms around his head and diving headlong at the glass. Wood and glass shattered under the driving impact of his heavy body. His body hit the shingles broadside on and he rolled rapidly. For one terrifying instant he thought he would pitch onto the street, but before he had gone far his body was brought up hard by something that cracked and groaned under his weight. The false front of the saloon had saved his life.
Fear still drove him. He scrambled to hands and knees, found that he still clutched his pistol in his left hand and thrust it away into leather. He crawled along behind the false front and reached the end of the roof and nearly fell into the alleyway. Behind him he heard a gun go off, but the sound was distant and he knew that the bullet was not meant for him. He turned himself around, backed over the edge of the roof, hung for a second by his hands and dropped.
Above him, the scene played itself out. McAllister, knowing that his quarry was escaping through the window, forgot all danger in the urgency of the moment and charged like a crazy man from Paston’s parlour office into the bedroom beyond.
At the same moment Paston, who lay on one side, at the further end of the room with his arm around the girl, snapped his hand down onto the butt of the gun which he had dropped purposely near. His movement was clumsy in the dark and he thought at first as he swept the weapon up that McAllister was moving too fast to be hit. He fired instinctively as the girl threw herself on him screaming: “No – no”
He cursed her obscenely as he saw McAllister’s faint silhouette pitch forward under the drive of the heavy bullet. He struggled to get to his feet, but Jenny clung to him, screaming, and prevented him. He heard the crash of McAllister’s fall and his heart leapt triumphantly. Already, as he smashed the girl from him, his mind was working fast. If McAllister wasn’t dead, finish him. Get rid of the body in some back-alley far from here. Say the sound of shooting was him fighting it out with Dix.
Running forward, cocking the gun as^ he went, he collided with the table, clutched blindly and went down, turning the table over with a crash. He heard feet pounding on the stairs. Rearing to his feet and knowing that he had hurt his right leg badly, he charged toward the bedroom door.
As the flash of a gun blinded him, he knew that he had made his big mistake. He did not know if he was hit or not. But he was staggering backward, firing, tripping on something on the floor and going down.
As the shot from Paston tore into his left shoulder, McAllister was thrown over and around onto the bed. He rolled and landed untidily and hard on the floor. He was bemused and shocked, but still the only object in his mind was to get to the man he had hunted for so long. He heard Paston’s noisy charge across the larger room, heard him go down and come on again and fired as soon as his bootheels sounded in the doorway. Without waiting to see the result of his shot, he went to the window, cleared it of glass with his gun-barrel and threw a leg over the sill. He was dimly aware that the woman was still screaming.
As soon as he was out of the window, he saw Dix go over the edge of the roof and heard the thud of his landing below. At the same moment, he lost his footing and slid till he was caught by the false front.
He gave himself a second to think.
If Dix had been visiting Paston and was prepared for an unseen getaway, his horse would be at the rear end of the alley. He thrust his gun away, reached up for the window and hauled himself back in again. Leaping across the bedroom, he ran into the office and collided with a man in the dark. They grappled and the man slugged him once in the belly and tried to knee him in the crotch. McAllister stepped clear of him and hit him with his right first in the belly, then swung for the spot where he guessed the sagging head would be. Luck was with him and he reckoned he landed on the temple. As he jumped for the corridor, he heard the fellow fall and bring wood and china down with him.
The door was blocked by figures.
He didn’t break pace, but charged full into them. There was no time for them to evade him and he hit them with his full weight, cleaving through them, trampling one under foot as he went. As he swung right, he faced another man, and his eye caught the gleam of metal. He swept his gun from leather and drove it into the man’s face. The man clutched at him. He batted the arms aside, caught hold of the man’s clothing with his left hand and swung him for the head of the stairs. He hit the bannisters and went through them as though they were made of matchwood. McAllister never heard him land because he was on his way to the side door, fumbling shells from his belt.
The side door was unlocked. He managed to get one shell home and reached the top of the outside stairs.
Footsteps pounded toward the end of the alley. Dimly he made out a man, raised his gun and fired. The man ran on. He put his gun away, swung by his hands from the platform and dropped to the ground. He was vaguely aware that his left shoulder was not working properly, but the heat of the moment was too great for him to notice it much. He started running, drawing his gun again and fingering shells into the chambers.
When he reached the end of the alley, the gun was loaded in six chambers, but there was nobody to shoot at.
He glared around despairingly. To come so near. He could have wept in frustration and rage.
He stayed very still, praying, gun held ready.
Somewhere, not far off, a horse blew and he heard the rattle of bridle-chains. Leather creaked as a man forked a horse. Hoofs pounded softly as a horse fidgeted and a man cursed softly. McAllister started to run in the direction of the sounds, cocking his gun and suddenly he saw the silhouette of a hatless man against the moonlit sky.
He fired on the run and instantly the man dropped out of sight, shouting at his horse. A quirt lashed hide and the animal sprang away, crashing its way through the trash of the vacant lot. McAllister fired again, shooting blind, praying that luck was with him, but the horse went on and he knew that he’d lost.
But his indomitable spirit would not accept defeat when victory had been so close. Turning, he ran back to the alley, stumbling in the dim light, heading for the street. As he ran around the corner, he saw the crowd gathering, brought by the shooting. A horse stood near, tied to a rail. He went toward it and found to his astonishment that he was walking very slowly like a man in a dream. As soon as he put a hand on the horse’s tied line, a man appeared in front of him, saying: “Take your hands off’n that hoss.” Then the fellow saw the drawn gun and his eyes widened. Looking up at McAllister’s face, took him back a pace.
“I’m borrowin’ it,” the marshal told him.
It took him a long time to get his foot into the stirrup-iron and longer still to heave himself into the saddle. Men were gathering around, watching him. As soon as he hit leather, he raked home the spurs and the animal jumped, scattering them every which way and he was fighting to stay in the saddle, battling with a terrible weariness that came swooping over him. As he swerved into the alleyway, he nearly fell out of the saddle. He clutched the saddlehorn tightly and thought: I have to stay aboard. Fumbling his gun away, he clung to the coarse hair of the animal’s mane and heard himself yelling hoarsely to get some more speed. Somewhere out there in the darkness was the man he wanted and he intended to come up with him.
Dimly, he was aware of rocketing out of the narrow way and plunging toward the thin timber line beyond, then riding clear out onto the plain, bathed in the cold light of the moon and his befuddled mind asked him: And where are you going?
All he knew was that he had to keep on riding till he came up with Dix.
He never knew how long he managed to stay in the saddle, but after a long time, he was aware that the horse had stopped and that it was raining. The next thing of which he was aware was that he was long on his back and that it was daylight. The rain had stopped and weak sunlight hurt his eyes. The horse stood near him, cropping the grass. All McAllister wanted to do was sleep.