“WHY?” IKE CREEVEY asked as he pushed a plate of bacon and eggs in front of Buck Halliday to join the bottle of whiskey and glass.
Halliday shrugged idly.
“It ain’t your town. You said that often enough.”
“Nor do I want it to be.”
“It ain’t the Rushton woman, either. I seen that, too.”
Halliday forked bacon into his mouth and chewed silently.
“Damn you, you don’t give a spit about any of us, and you owe Lem Pritchard nothing.”
“You’ve got that right,” Halliday admitted.
Creevey stepped back, hesitated, then came forward again. “Dammit, I got to know, Halliday. You’ve sat here all night, just staring at the walls. It ain’t a woman and it ain’t money and it ain’t for the love of this town. Have you just got a permanent itch to go on killing?”
Halliday continued to eat, ignoring Creevey until the barkeep finally gave up and started to swamp the floor.
A half-hour later, Sharon Creevey came down the stairs, looking as if she hadn’t slept a wink all night. Yet as Halliday looked at her, she seemed to come alive. She took the plate from near his elbow and said;
“Larraine wants to see you, Mr. Halliday.”
Halliday sat back and shook his head.
“I think you should talk to her. She’s upset. I heard her crying all night.”
“Tears don’t achieve anything,” Halliday admitted.
“She’s a very gentle person,” Sharon said in her defense. “She just doesn’t understand the ways of the West, how brutal and savage it can seem to someone like her.”
Halliday rose to work the cramp out of his shoulders. Outside, the first of the day’s sunlight was creeping along the alley from the back yard. He didn’t think Jay Denton would be long arriving.
“Go upstairs and tell her to sell up and head back East. She’ll find the man of her dreams back there.”
“You’re not what she’s looking for?”
“I think we both know that,” Halliday told her, and moved toward the batwings.
Ike Creevey had already opened the swing doors and Halliday could see up the long and dusty street to the open prairie outside town. Nothing moved out there, but he knew that sooner or later, there’d be an outburst of violence which would drag him right into its heart and not release him until all Denton’s men were dead.
He shouldered the batwings wide and stepped out onto the boardwalk. He heard Sharon come up behind him, but he ignored her. His only interest was in the lone figure coming slowly from the doctor’s cottage. It was Lem Pritchard and the doctor was following hard on his heels, protesting that the lawman shouldn’t be out of bed.
As Pritchard reached the gate, Sharon cried out;
“Oh, no! He can’t. Stop him, Mr. Halliday.”
Halliday held her back as she made to push past him, and when she finally quietened, he said, “What he does today could make or break him.”
“But he’s sick. He’ll be killed.”
“You want him to live and not be able to look people in the eye?”
Sharon rubbed her arms where his strong fingers had bruised her flesh. “There has to be another way,” she argued.
The sound of hoofbeats came to them from the prairie and Halliday turned to see a bunch of riders, at least a dozen strong, pounding toward the town.
“For him, this is the only way,” Halliday said. “So get back inside and stay there.”
He pushed her back inside and closed the big double doors behind her. Pritchard was now on his own as he crossed to the boardwalk. He was using his rifle as a prop and his six-gun was holstered on his left side. He crossed the street as the noise from the pounding hoofs grew louder.
Pritchard studied Halliday grimly, without making any attempt to greet him.
“Are any of the other people in this town going to help you, Sheriff?” Halliday asked.
Pritchard looked uneasily about him, seeing that the street was deserted.
“It’s the sort of thing they’ve been paying me to handle,” he told Halliday.
“It’s also their town,” Halliday countered.
“And I took a vow to defend it for them. Listen, Halliday, I realize this is not your fight. Maybe if it wasn’t for you, this whole thing mightn’t have come to a head.”
Halliday drew his gun and checked the loads.
“You know better than that, Sheriff. What side of the street do you want?”
“One side’s as good as the other,” Pritchard said sourly.
Halliday left him, crossed the street and waited.
At the head of his hired crew, Jay Denton came to a halt near the corrals where Nathan Birch had been tied when Halliday first entered town. Halliday saw the wounded Bede Wheeler on his left. The others seemed to be a nondescript bunch that a rancher could gather from any saloon on the frontier. There was no sign of Tom Barry, so Halliday figured that Denton had hired at least one smart cowhand.
He moved along the boardwalk and away from the saloon, watching the dust swirl, knowing that close by, Sharon Creevey would be watching, praying for the safety of her man. Perhaps Larraine Rushton would be watching, too, sick inside at the thought of more violence.
So far, Denton had stayed out of the firing line. But seeing him ride in now, face lined with hate, eyes ablaze, Halliday knew he had decided that this had to be his day. If he ever hoped to win this town and the land around it, he had to get rid of the one man who stood in his way.
He came riding straight at Halliday while Wheeler headed for Lem Pritchard. There was still no sign that any other man in town was willing to assist.
Halliday took cover behind an overhang and held his fire. A few gunshots sounded above the pounding of hoofbeats, but these were fired by nervous men and only for effect. Halliday smiled thinly. On the opposite boardwalk, Pritchard had taken cover behind a water trough.
Only when Pritchard fired and Wheeler dropped from his saddle did Halliday step from cover. At the same time, a barrage of gunshots came from behind and above him. He looked up and saw Ike Creevey’s heavily-lined face behind a screen of gun smoke. Creevey caught his gaze, swore and refilled his rifle.
Halliday turned his attention back to Denton, who was now riding out front of his men, but was slowing now as his men were being blasted from their saddles.
Then Pritchard managed to get to his feet and come out from behind the water trough. Sunlight caught the gleam of the badge pinned to his shirt front and highlighted the new determination plastered across his face. From above Halliday came a shrill cry;
“No, Lem. Stay down!”
But this was Lem Pritchard’s play. He came out into the street and straight into the wild gunfire of Jay Denton. Pritchard’s hat was blasted from his head and a trickle of blood ran down his forehead.
Halliday decided it was time he showed himself. He strode out into the center of the street and when Denton saw him, all the rage that he felt for Lem Pritchard was turned on Buck Halliday.
“You’re nothin’ but an interferin’ swine!” Denton yelled, his gun blasting furiously.
Halliday stood his ground, feeling the bullets burning past his ears. Then, coolly, he put two bullets into Denton’s middle.
Denton toppled over his horse’s rump and crashed to the ground. Seeing their boss go down, the remainder of the bunch exchanged worried glances, then wheeled and rode. Some of them made it, despite the barrage of gunshots from hidden townsmen who had taken up positions in doorways and on rooftops.
Halliday moved toward Denton as the man scrambled to his knees. His gun lay in the dust before him and he reached a hand out for it.
“I wouldn’t do that, mister,” Halliday advised.
“To hell with you, Halliday,” was Denton’s last outburst as his hand wrapped around the butt and he raised the gun as Pritchard’s final shot blasted his face into a bloody pulp.
Denton went down without a sound.
Halliday watched the gun smoke settle before he moved down the alley to collect his sorrel. He was in the saddle when Sharon Creevey came running down the back stairs of the saloon. She drew up in his shadow, her face flushed with relief.
“You knew they’d help, didn’t you? My uncle, too?”
“I knew they’d have to if they ever wanted to call this town home.”
“It’ll be a good town, too,” Sharon said. “And it could be your town.”
Halliday looked out across open country that stretched way into the distance. The dust still swirled and he knew the heat of the plains would be oppressive. Yet he felt relieved to know that soon he would be leaving. There’d been too many complications, too much trouble dogging his every stride. But hadn’t all towns been like that, and wouldn’t others be the same?
“Your man passed a test today,” he said, looking down at her. “There’ll be others. With your help, he’ll conquer them, too.” Color flooded the girl’s cheeks.
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
Sharon touched his leg as tears appeared at the edges of her beautiful eyes.
“I tried to hate you, Buck. I tried with everything I had.”
“And?”
“Somehow I couldn’t. Won’t you stay?”
Halliday looked out into the heat-soaked distance once more, and smiled wryly. “I’ve been drifting so long, I know when the time’s right for me to move. Lem’s a good man, Sharon, and he’ll need you by his side ... always.”
“And I’ll be there for him.”
“That’s the way it has to be,” he told her, gave her a wave and heeled his sorrel into a run.
He turned at the end of the alley and looked back. Larraine was standing on the veranda, her face shaded by a fan. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his horse, riding from Random Creek as he had ridden from so many other towns, leaving behind a crowd of spectators, a few more tenants in the lonely Boothill atop the hill ... and no regrets.