Vince Perrine had ambled in the general direction of the card table, studying the players while his glance evasively bobbed around. He considered them and discarded them, one by one. Craycroft was too likely to make a fool of himself, as he had that time the Madden gang had held up the bank—all the other citizens had been smart enough to take cover, but Craycroft had burst out into the street firing a revolver at the bandits, and had taken a bullet in the shoulder as a reward. No, Craycroft would not do. Perrine looked at the others.
Keene and the other two ranchers were all cut from the same cloth. They wore the independent, maverick brand of professional cattlemen—tough, quick to act, shrewd, and hard as nails when they had to be. None of them would do, either.
That left the stagecoach division manager. Perrine’s covert glance examined him. The division manager was tough enough—any man who had survived and advanced himself in a roughshod frontier business like stagecoaching had to be made of sturdy material. But the division manager, if his way of playing poker was any indication, was a man who was always carefully attentive to the odds. He did not plunge or take chances the way the others did. He would not risk his neck on a long chance, especially when the stakes were vital.
Maneuvering around quietly, acting as though he were merely pacing off restlessness, Vince Perrine worked himself into a position not far behind the stagecoach division manager’s chair. The back of the man’s head was a thick tuft of iron-gray hair; he had a neck like a Prussian Junker. Perrine did not know his name, but he knew the man well enough; he grinned slightly, remembering that on occasion he had held up the man’s stagecoaches on the Sonoita road.
Perrine stood behind the division manager and frowned apprehensively at the clock. It was getting late and at any moment Marshal Six might return from his nightly rounds of the town. It was a big town, as Arizona communities went, and to cover all its possible trouble-spots took time; but that time, now, was just about running out. Perrine anxiously wondered if the three outlaws imprisoned in the storage room had seen his note slip under the door. He knew there wasn’t much light in that room, but there should be enough light coming in through the crack under the door for a man to be able to make out the brief note.
Yet it had been quite awhile, and they had not signaled that they would agree to his plan. What the devil were they doing? Discussing it? How long could it take to decide between freedom and the terrors of the infamous penitentiary at Yuma? Perrine chafed and when Keene looked around at him with half curiosity and half suspicion, Perrine quickly busied himself by fumbling around and bringing out his rice papers and tobacco. He held the paper in the shape of a sluice, poured a line of fine-ground tobacco into it, closed the tobacco sack’s drawstring with his teeth, and shaped the tube of paper around the tobacco. He licked the length of the seam, pressed it firm, and curled both ends. Then he had to hunt for a match.
Keene was still looking at him, perplexion turning into definite suspicion, when a sudden racket started up back in the storage room. Someone was pounding on the door and Jack Lime’s voice started to bawl curses.
The noise averted everybody’s attention. And it was in that moment that Vince Perrine acted. He dropped his cigarette to the floor and in one sweeping motion he took two long paces forward and lifted his revolver to shove it hard against the back of the stagecoach division manager’s neck.
“Everybody freeze,” Perrine said, and cocked his gun loudly for emphasis.
The division manager had gone stiff as stone. His neck blanched as blood rushed from it. His hands, on the table, clenched into fists and lay there trembling.
“Don’t move,” Perrine said again. The others looked at him with baffled eyes. Perrine said, “Anybody makes a sudden move, the stagecoach man here gets a slug through him. Sit still and do what I tell you.”
Keene’s lips peeled back. “By God, Perrine, you can’t—”
Craycroft cut him off: “He’s got the gun, Larry. He can do whatever he wants to do.” To Perrine, Craycroft said flatly, “I don’t know where you think this is going to get you, feller, but the only place you can go from here is jail.”
“Maybe,” Perrine said. “Now shut up and listen to me. Craycroft, you got the key to that back room. I want you to stand up and put your gun on the table and walk over there and unlock that door. Swing it open and stand aside. The rest of you put your guns on the table with Craycroft’s. One at a time and slow. Anybody makes a mistake and the stagecoach man gets his. You people understand me all right?”
No one answered him. But Craycroft very slowly lifted his belt-gun with thumb and forefinger and placed it on the table. He was about to push his chair back when Keene, his hot eyes pushing against Perrine, said: “Hold it, Hal. Just sit still.”
“Get over there and open that Goddamn door,” Perrine said harshly.
Keene said, “Don’t move a muscle, anybody. Jeremy Six will be walking in that door any second now, Perrine.”
Perrine clamped his teeth together and said, “Craycroft, either you get up right now and head for that storage room or I’ll put a bullet through the stagecoach man, here.”
The division manager swallowed and said bravely, “Go ahead. What do you think will happen to you then, Perrine?”
“I’ll shoot Keene next, and as many more as I can take with me. Who wants to be the next to go?” Perrine grabbed the back of the division manager’s collar and yanked the man toward him, keeping the gun muzzle pressed painfully against his neck. “Move, Craycroft!”
Grudgingly, Craycroft got up and went over to the door, getting the key out of his pocket. Keene glared wrathfully at Perrine, but did not move. Craycroft hesitated by the door, looking back at the table.
Perrine said, “Open it!” He gestured to the others and watched while, one at a time, they laid their guns on the table. Craycroft fumbled with the lock, glancing once at the front door of the saloon. But there was neither sound nor sign of Jeremy Six. Finally, unable to stall any longer, Craycroft pulled the door open and stood aside.
Blinking against the unfamiliar light, Jack Lime and his two men broke out of the storage room and rushed forward. Perrine held the stagecoach division manager tight against his gun while the Lime crew gathered up all the guns on the table. Jack Lime’s yellow-topped handsome face lifted to face Perrine and Lime grinned at him. “You’re a better man than I figured you for.”
“I ain’t doing favors,” Perrine said. “I need your help on a little job.”
“Name it.”
Keene shoved his chair back and shot to his feet. “By God, you won’t get away with—”
Quirt Ross slugged Keene from behind in the kidney and chopped a rabbit-punch into the angle of Keene’s neck. “Shut up.”
Perrine said, “We got to be in a hurry now. Six is on his way back here. We’ll head across the street and pick us up a few thousand dollars worth of Utah bounty money and be on our way.”
Lime grinned. “You got yourself three partners, amigo.”
Quirt Ross was already on his way across the room. He went behind the bar and brought out the cash drawer, upended it on the bar and stuffed his pockets with the coins and banknotes. Craycroft stared bitterly at him.
Lime took control quickly. “All right. One man stays here to keep these gents honest and peg Six down when he comes in. Quirt, I’ll leave that to you. Peso, Perrine—let’s go.”
Quirt Ross finished stuffing his pockets. “You leaving me to handle Jeremy Six all alone?”
“Peso will be outside. You’ll catch him in a crossfire.”
Quirt Ross said dangerously, “By God, Peso, you better be there.”
Peso grinned and spoke in his soft liquid accents: “It will be one very great pleasure, my friend.”
Quirt Ross had a pair of commandeered guns in his fists. He edged over to a position beside the front door and flattened his back against the wall. “Any one of you upstandin’ citizens lets out a peep, I’ll mow down the lot of you. You got that?”
Lime looked at Keene and the others and said in a monotone, “Just to set your minds at ease, I can assure you Quirt will do exactly what he promised unless you behave yourselves.”
Perrine said, “Craycroft keeps a scattergun behind the front end of the bar, there.”
Lime went around and got it, checked its load and snapped it shut. His grin turned evil. “This should make a nice mess out of Mr. Will January.”
Perrine said, “I got five horses saddled out back of the hotel. We cut down January and run for the horses. Quirt, soon as you hear the shooting you bust out of here and run like hell around behind the hotel. We’ll wait for you.”
Lime was nodding. “Perrine, you’ve got a lot more brains than I gave you credit for. Peso, you’ll wait on the hotel porch. If Six comes along before we brace January, Six is all yours. But when you see Quirt come out of here, you come with him. I ain’t waiting for you if you don’t catch up.”
“It’s all right,” Peso said, smiling.
The outlaws shouldered quickly into their coats. The armpit of Quirt Ross’ jacket was stained with dried blood from the flesh wound Jeremy Six had inflicted on him. Quirt kept his position by the door, both guns leveled on Keene and Craycroft and the others. Lime went out first, followed quickly by Peso and Vince Perrine. When they were gone, Quirt Ross spoke flatly. “Go ahead—somebody make a move. I’m just itching to pay you gents back for that bastard stunt Six pulled on me.”
The snowfall had decreased to a light, feathery drift of flakes across the air. The temperature was still low but, with the absence of wind, it was not unbearable. On the four corners of Spanish Flat’s main intersection stood the hotel, the Drover’s Rest, the new brick bank building, and the courthouse. Little more than a block away from that intersection, Jeremy Six walked with unhurried tiredness. It had been a long day and night. It was about time to take the three prisoners out of Craycroft’s storage room and escort them down to the jail. With that chore done, he felt he could wrap up the town for the night.
But one nagging worry troubled him. It was the incongruous movements of Vince Perrine. Perrine wasn’t the type to find his way into the Drover’s Rest. The Drover’s Rest was the biggest and most respectable bar and gambling room in Spanish Flat. It was the exclusive headquarters of the big cattlemen, the important mine owners, and other citizens of influence and wealth. The society of a town like Spanish Flat was pretty rigidly stratified, and it would no more have occurred to a man like Perrine in the ordinary course of events to go to the Drover’s Rest than it would have occurred to a wealthy rancher to go to a dive like the Tres Candelas. It was out of place, Perrine’s visit to the Drover’s Rest; and Jeremy Six had only stayed alive as a peace officer by being sensitive to little out-of-the-ordinary signs like this.
It was dark; the hour was late; there were very few lamps alight in this part of town. Six could not be sure at all, but he thought he saw two or three figures running lightly across the street from the Drover’s Rest to the hotel. It might have been just a trick of vision. But the night had been enough to set any man on edge, and Six stopped in the street to remove his glove and get the revolver out from under his coat. He had long ago gotten over feeling foolish walking around with a gun in his hand. It was better to look foolish than to die. He went on toward the intersection with the gun warming against his palm, his eyes keening the night for any subtle signal.
Seventy-four hundred dollars in banknotes, and a like amount in Sammy Preston’s IOU’s, lay on the little table in the hotel lobby. Behind Will January, Amy Preston stood with her hands on the gambler’s shoulders. January could feel the warmth of her body close behind him. Sammy began to deal the cards, slowly. He let them fall one by one, face up. Over by the stove, Fat Annie drained her cup of coffee and walked back to watch the cards fall. January lifted his left hand to cover Amy’s. His right hand was against his holster. When January’s fourth card fell, he had a partial hand consisting of an ace, a ten, an eight, and a five. Their suits did not match: two were clubs, one a spade and the other a diamond. January had time for one fleeting ironic thought: No hearts. He watched Sammy Preston deal himself an ace to add to his earlier three cards: a seven, a five, and a ten. Sammy spoke with uneven tension:
“All even, so far. This last card will tell the story.”
Sammy was peeling a card off the deck when the door slammed open and two men smashed into the room, crouched and weaving, guns up.
In the Drover’s Rest, Larry Keene spoke brusquely: “We’ve got to warn Jeremy. He’s coming up that street into a trap.”
“Warn him?” said the division manager. “How?”
Keene turned toward Quirt Ross. “Go ahead. Start shooting at me,” he said, and began to walk toward Ross. “The minute you fire one shot, it will warn the marshal.”
Ross grinned. “All the same to me, cowboy. He hears shooting from here, he’ll come this way on the run. That’ll give Peso a real good shot at Six’s back when Six stands up in that door against the light.”
Craycroft said quickly, “He’s right, Larry. God knows it’s a small chance, but we’ll just have to hope Jeremy smells it out in time.”
Keene stopped, defeated. “God damn you,” he said fiercely to Quirt Ross.
The division manager said hotly, “All four of you will be run down like dogs for this. There won’t be a square inch of ground anywhere in the West that’ll be safe for you, except a plot on Boot Hill.”
“Just stand easy,” Quirt Ross murmured. “Fireworks ought to start going off any second now.”
The shotgun fisted and cocked, Jack Lime straightened up, grinning like the Devil himself. Perrine spread out to the left, guns in both fists.
The slam of the door had brought Will January out of his seat, wheeling in a crouch, hands spilling to his guns; but then January’s lightning-fast glance traveled from the two outlaws to Amy Preston. Making his choice in a flash of thought too swift to be anything more than reaction, January threw himself to the side and slammed his shoulder into the girl. His hard-muscled dive knocked the girl flat by the table, but it threw January off balance and his first shots, rocking the room with sound, flew wide.
It was all the break Jack Lime needed: his shotgun roared and before the echo died, Lime had dropped the shotgun and clawed for his revolver.
The shotgun charge took January high in the chest: it lifted him off his feet and slammed him down on his back. He never made a sound. The guns clattered out of his fists.
Paralyzed at first, Sammy Preston made a dive when the shotgun went off. He was under the table when one of January’s guns wheeled into reach and, hardly thinking about, it, he snatched up the wicked black revolver and yanked back the hammer.
Jack Lime was laughing cruelly, staring at the body of Will January. With a cry Amy Preston threw herself across January’s motionless body as if to protect it. Fat Annie was on her feet, staring at Perrine and Lime, her mouth open but no sounds coming forth.
Perrine said, “Holy Judas, look at all that money on the table.” He started forward, his guns drooping.
That was when Sammy Preston fired from under the table. January’s gun bucked in his fist with an inordinate kick: he had time for the stray thought that January must have specially loaded his forty-five cartridges with a heavier than normal powder charge. The overpowering massive slug smashed Perrine’s face in. It rocked the man’s head back and sent him walking around the room in loose jerky movements like a decapitated bird until, abruptly, the joints of Perrine’s body all gave way at once and he collapsed.
While Perrine was falling, Jack Lime poured his fire downward toward Sammy. Sammy had time to trigger one shot before the bullets flattened him and drove consciousness from him.
Sammy’s bullet nicked Lime’s ribs and Lime cursed violently. He saw Amy reaching for a gun on the floor and he shot quickly. The bullet plowed up splinters in the floor and Amy recoiled, staring at him with livid hatred. Fat Annie’s head was slowly shaking back and forth. An involuntary tremor seized Fat Annie and she stood as though she were about to faint, weaving on her feet and shaking tremendously. Amy began to scream at Lime, words he could not make out; her voice screeched terribly against his ears and he swatted her cheek with the barrel of his gun. She fell over and lay mute, her eyes fixed on him almost as if she were hypnotized. Lime holstered one gun and began to sweep the money off the table into his coat pocket.
The booming racket of gunshots from the hotel flattened Six back against the side of the bank. His gun lifted and he stared through the darkness. The hotel door stood open on the corner and the splash of lamplight coming through it gave him a distorted picture of shadows weaving back and forth. He pushed himself out into the intersection, breaking into a run, but then he stopped short, seeing a man break out of the Drover’s Rest and run full-tilt toward the hotel. Six had no time to stop and figure out what was going on. He recognized the running figure as Quirt Ross, and knew the three outlaws must have broken loose. It was all he had to know. He raised his revolver and yelled at the running man to stop.
Quirt Ross flung a look over his shoulder and kept running, snapping two shots at Six. Both went far wide. Six steadied his gun coolly and fired once. The bullet knocked Ross down but Ross’ guns kept flaming and Six had to deliberately shoot him twice more before the guns were stilled. Six turned toward the hotel and then heard a voice shouting to him from the door of the Drover’s Rest.
It was Keene’s voice: “Look out, Jeremy! Peso’s on the hotel porch, waiting to back shoot you.”
Six made a flat dive to the side. It was just in time: he heard Peso’s angry sibilant curses and saw the stabs of orange muzzle-flame from dark shadows on the hotel porch. Six answered the fire and rolled behind the scant protection of a three-step staircase before the bank. One of Peso’s bullets whined off the wood. Six fumbled fresh cartridges into his gun. Peso had quit firing and there was no sound at all, now, from the hotel, until Jack Lime’s voice shot forward petulantly: “Peso, for Christ’s sake come on. Where’s Quirt?”
“Quirt’s dead,” Peso said. “I got me a marshal pinned down.” Peso’s laugh was a high insane cackle.
Six sighted on the sound of Peso’s voice and fired three quick shots. Peso laughed again. “Missed me clean, Marshal. I think maybe you better come closer.”
Lime shouted hoarsely, “Damn it, Peso, we got to get out of here. The whole damn town’ll be on our necks in a minute!”
“First I got to kill me this marshal, amigo.”
Lime’s voice hurtled out from inside the hotel: “To hell with you, Peso. I’m clearing out.”
Peso made no answer. A sudden stillness settled. Through the soft fall of snowflakes Six watched the hotel. He was able to hear distinctly the tramp of boot heels inside the hotel. That would be Lime, making for the back door. Six cursed. He had his choice, now, between Peso and Lime. Considering it coolly, he knew that Lime would be the easier of the two men to catch if it came to a long trail-hunt. Peso knew every trick there was when it came to covering his tracks. He was half Indian. And because Peso lacked the fear that ordinary men like Lime possessed, Peso was far the more dangerous of the two. Six decided to let Lime go for the moment, and concentrate on Peso.
The space between him and the hotel was all open ground, across the flat, snow-covered mud of the intersection. There was no quick way to creep up on Peso, unless he went all the way around the block. He was making up his mind to do just that when a single gunshot boomed within the hotel. It was followed by the sound of a body falling heavily to the floor.
He didn’t know just what to make of that, but he had no time to think about it. Keene’s voice pushed at him from the Drover’s Rest, catty-corner across the intersection: “Keep Peso pinned down there, Jeremy. We’re going to get some guns up the street. Just keep him on that porch a few minutes and we’ll come back and blow him to pieces.”
A high-pitched Spanish curse flew from Peso’s tongue. His six-guns opened up, blasting toward the Drover’s Rest. Jeremy Six methodically took aim on those bright flaming muzzle flashes and emptied his gun at them.
He was reloading when he saw the bantam shape stumble out of the shadows on the hotel porch and fall off the edge into the street.
Six finished loading before he got up and walked cautiously forward. But it was all over: Peso was dead.
Six turned away from Peso and walked up the steps onto the hotel porch. When he turned inside, a ghastly sight met his eyes. The floor ran with blood. Sammy, under the table, was alive but his body was draining its fluids out across the boards. January lay on his side with his chest crushed by a shotgun charge, plainly dead. Fat Annie was standing with both hands gripped on the edge of the card table to keep herself upright; her eyes were closed and her face was deathly pale. Perrine lay dead, near the table, and far back across the room another shape lay sprawled with a dark stain spreading across the back of the coat: Jack Lime. Amy Preston stood with an utterly blank expression, staring fixedly at Lime’s body. One of Will January’s guns hung from her hand.
Keene and Craycroft burst into the room. Involuntarily, Craycroft gasped. Keene whispered, “Oh, my God!”
Six holstered his gun and knelt down by Sammy. He spoke over his shoulder. “Hal, get the doctor, and be damn quick about it.”
Craycroft was on his way out, on the run, before Six finished the sentence.
Keene nudged Perrine with his boot toe and then turned. He walked wordlessly across the room to Amy Preston, gently disengaged the gun from her small fist, and took her in his arms. Her body began to shake with sobs. But after a moment she pulled away from the rancher and came across the room. She knelt slowly before Will January and touched his face with a gentle hand. She looked up at Six and he saw an outcry, an appeal, in her eyes. “He could have killed both of them,” she whispered. “He chose to save my life instead of taking theirs.”
Six had no answer to that. Keene came forward to kneel by the girl and hold her shoulders.
Fat Annie opened her eyes and spoke hoarse curses of awe. Finally she turned to the card table and spread out the two open hands of five cards each.
She said numbly, “I never saw anything like this, Jeremy.”
They both had identical hands: ace, ten, eight, seven, five. Fat Annie said, “Each of them had an ace and an eight. Between them they held a dead man’s hand.” She stared at the cards in disbelief.
The ranchers and the stagecoach division manager came in and in a short time the lobby began to fill with open-mouthed faces. Men crowded in with nightshirts under their hastily buckled greatcoats. Bill Dealing, the night marshal, came in with deputy Dominguez, and Six spoke to them roughly. “Get these people out of here and send them back to bed. Where in hell is that doctor?”
“Never mind,” Annie said in a low tone. “Sammy’s dead, Jeremy.” She looked up at him. “He was a man, though. At the end he was a man.”
Amy Preston was on the floor silently weeping. She sat between the bodies of January and her brother Sammy. Six said roughly to Keene, “Damn it, Larry, get her out of here. Can’t you see what it’s doing to her?”
Keene picked the girl up to her feet and steered her toward the door. The crowd opened a path to let her through. She went without resistance. Fat Annie said to Six, “She was January’s woman, for a few minutes at least. I guess that’s what she was thinking when she took his gun and shot Lime in the back.” Fat Annie shook her head sadly. “It will take her a long time to work it out, Jeremy.”
Dominguez and Dealing cleared the crowd out of the room. A group of men began to remove the bodies. Six walked outside into the falling snowflakes and stood with his head bent down, trying to make sense out of it. Fat Annie came out of the hotel and stood by his shoulder, mute. A figure came hurrying around the corner—Clarissa. She neither looked into the hotel nor asked any questions. She only came to Six and held his arm. Fat Annie nodded silently to her and began to walk away. Six finally raised his head and patted Clarissa’s hand on his arm. They stood there, not saying anything, watching the fat lonely figure walk down the street toward Cat Town.