Bede nodded grimly. Durant eased Cherry to his right and positioned himself directly between the batwings. “Open it, Bo,” he said.
The gunfire outside had died down. Then, before Durant could move or Bo Strawbridge could open the big doors, Traversi’s voice boomed through the silence:
“Durant, I’ll make a deal. I just checked my safe. You stole near five thousand dollars from me and the judge. So you throw the money out and we’ll give you back your horses. If you don’t, that big black is going to get a bullet from me, right between the eyes.”
Bo Strawbridge saw anger work in Durant’s face. But Durant was in full control of himself. He said, “Open them, Bo. I’ll go first. Traversi is directly opposite. He’s mine.”
Bo lifted a hand and began to pull the doors open. Blake Durant braced himself, then broke into a run. Bo Strawbridge pulled the doors wide open and Durant burst through. He surprised two men crouched behind the saloon trough. When they rose, guns lifting, Durant sent two fast shots at them. One spun around and fell and the other ran from the trough into the darkness across the street. Wild gunfire erupted.
Then Dane Cherry was coming through the batwings and pounding down the boardwalk. The Strawbridge brothers came out together and broke into wild flight towards the jailhouse end of the town. As they went, hellions converged on them from the opposite boardwalk. Bo cursed and let Bede run on as he saw that Durant was held down by heavy gunfire coming from all sides. Labeling himself a fool, Bo doubled back to help Durant and saw Dane Cherry running for the deep darkness at the far end of the street.
Bo called, “Damn you, Cherry, you blasted coward!”
Bo drew up beside Durant and snapped, “Let’s get to hell outa here. We ain’t got no chance in the open.”
Blake gave him a grateful look and pointed down the opposite boardwalk with his gun.
“Traversi’s there,” he said. “Cover me.”
Blake Durant went forward, firing at both sides of the store before him. A bullet tugged at his coat and another burned a line down his neck. He felt blood soaking into his shirt where his previous wound had opened. To hell with it. Then he saw Red Traversi, the tin star on his shirt betraying his presence in a store doorway. Bo Strawbridge’s gunfire had sent three other hellions backing off and when Bede joined his brother, cursing him for a fool, Blake Durant knew that his initial opinion of these wild living jaspers had been right on line.
But Dane Cherry had run. And Cherry had the Adamson money. Blake Durant was sour about that but for the moment his war was with Red Traversi. He put two more gun hands to flight and dropped to the dust just short of the storefront boardwalk. Traversi had held his fire until this moment; now, realizing that Durant had caught him out, he showed himself and his big gun was barking. He came two strides out of the doorway, face distorted with hate.
“Damn you, Durant, damn you to hell!”
Blake Durant’s first bullet knocked Traversi back a pace, and his second tore his chest open. Traversi went staggering to the wall, then pushed himself off. His gun belched flame and Durant felt the burn of a bullet along his right side. Traversi had guts, more than Durant had given him credit for.
“Drop your gun and it’s over,” Blake called out to him.
Traversi grunted an oath at him and shot again. Behind Durant, Bo Strawbridge said, “Don’t give him no quarter. He ain’t like other folks. He’s lived a lie too damned long.”
Blake saw Traversi’s lips peel back in a snarl of rage. His face went dark, his eyes disappearing in his dark eye sockets. Then he took a hesitant step forward, reached for the wall to support himself but didn’t make contact with it. He fell onto his side. But he wasn’t dead. He lifted his gun and Durant put another bullet into his chest. Traversi dropped the gun and slumped back against the wall, blood pouring from his wounds. He opened his mouth to speak but only a spurt of blood came from his lips. Then he pitched forward, onto his face.
Bo Strawbridge and his brother Bede joined Durant. They stood covering each other as the hellions backed off. But, before they could begin to congratulate themselves, Blake Durant sighted Dane Cherry at the street’s end. A barn stood there, tall in the gloom of the street. Near the doorway were three men and two tethered horses; one horse was Sundown.
Durant said, “Bo, Bede, you’ve done enough. Head out while the going’s good.”
Durant went on then, disregarding the gun hands still backing away. He was within a hundred yards of Dane Cherry when he saw spurts of gunfire come from the barn doorway. Sundown reared high, lashing out with his hoofs.
Then Judge Joe Eggert, bleeding from a gash in his right cheek and walking with a limp, came down the far boardwalk. Cherry and Eggert clearly saw each other at the same time.
For a brief moment there was indecision between them, then Joe Eggert proved what Blake Durant already knew. Although weakened by gun wounds and slowed by his limp, he came off the boardwalk with his big gun bucking in his hand. He showed contempt for Cherry’s efforts to cut him down. Then, although he staggered from the impact of another bullet, Joe Eggert, gunfighter and self-appointed judge, triggered four bullets that tore Cherry’s body apart. As Dane Cherry fell limply to the dust, his shirt came open and five thousand dollars spilled out.
Blake Durant halted in mid-street. Bo and Bede Strawbridge, both slightly wounded, came up from behind and stood on either side of Durant.
Durant called, “Eggert, drop it!”
Joe Alroe Eggert wheeled about, his gun still smoking from the shots he had put into Dane Cherry. His face was clouded with hate for Blake Durant.
Durant said, “It’s all over. You’ll collect rope, Eggert, for the murder of innocent men.”
Eggert sneered at him, then his gun swung up. Bo Strawbridge, thinking Durant a fool to have waited this long, threw himself to the side and Bede went the other way. But Blake Durant stood his ground, his gun held steady.
Joe Alroe Eggert faced Durant on wide-planted feet. His shirt was open down the front showing thick gray hair matted with blood. Loathing for Durant twisted his features. Across the street townsmen were forming in silent groups and not a man showed any intention of coming closer. Eggert shifted back into the barn shadows and his gun barked.
Blake Durant still held his fire, aware that Sundown was rearing behind Eggert. The horse kicked up a tremendous amount of dust which began to make a screen of cover for Eggert.
Then Bo Strawbridge called out, “Hell, Durant, watch it! Get him now!”
Eggert’s gun still blasted away, but this time his shots were directed in Bo’s direction. Yelping from the burn of a bullet Bo rolled over and kicked himself furiously into the cover of Dane Cherry’s body. Another bullet slammed into Cherry with a sickening thud. Bede, who had run doubled-over for the barn wall, skidded to a halt when he heard his brother call out. Wheeling he saw Eggert dodge Sundown’s thrashing legs. Bede’s gun lifted.
Durant called, “Hold it, Bede.”
Bede Strawbridge scowled back at him, but held his fire until he saw three figures break away from the barn’s wall. Dropping into a crouch he hammered off shots.
“Damn you, Bede,” Durant yelled angrily at him and hurried forward. But he had gone only three paces when he saw a man lurch drunkenly into the open clutching at his throat. He was followed by a second, who went down under the hail of bullets from Bo Strawbridge’s gun.
Sundown was rearing again, straining back against the tautness of a tie rope attached to the barn’s tin wall. A section of the tin buckled and finally tore loose. Sundown lashed out in terror and snorted in fright and Eggert lunged past the big stallion and threw himself into the barn doorway.
As the darkness swallowed the Judge, Bo Strawbridge threw himself out of the way of Sundown as the big horse, dragging the sheet of tin, tore past Cherry’s unmoving body. Still rolling, Bo sighted the last of the three gun hands running and shooting back across his shoulder at Bede. Bo’s gun bucked and the gun hand went down on his chest, sk
idded a yard and came to rest in a pool of light thrown onto the dust from the opposite boardwalk.
Blake Durant halted just short of the barn doorway. He had seen Eggert go in, but could hear no sound from inside. He checked on Sundown’s wild progress down the town and seeing the horse wheel around the corner of the street, he brought his gaze back to the dark hole before him. Bo Strawbridge, nursing his right elbow, drew alongside him and flattened himself against the wall. Bede joined him, saying,
“Where’d he go, Durant?”
“He’s inside.”
Bede looked frowningly at him and threw out his hand to halt Bo, as Bo, his taste for fight in no way satisfied, started for the doorway.
Durant put himself in front of both of them and said, “Watch the back. This way’s mine.”
Not waiting for argument, Blake Durant braced himself and lunged into the doorway. The snarl of a bullet sent him dodging to the side.
Durant called, “You’ve got no chance, Eggert. Throw down your gun.”
His answer come in a blast of wild gunfire from behind the last stall. Durant moved with the ringing echo of the shots deafening him. He went straight at Eggert, his own gun blasting away. The bullets rammed into the far wall and tore through. Eggert had stopped firing. Blake went down on his stomach in the dark and filled his gun. He was still lying flat when Eggert’s gunfire started again, first a single shot, placed to Blake’s right, then a string of shots to the left. Blake did not move. He lifted his gun and aimed below the last stall. Then he waited. Time stood still and there was no noise at all.
“Durant?”
The call came from the back of the barn up which a cool blast of night wind suddenly came. Blake Durant did not answer.
There was a sudden clamor of movement followed by the thud of bodies on the straw-strewn floor.
“Durant, you all right?”
It was Bo Strawbridge’s voice, ringed with concern. Blake wanted to call to him to stay back because he felt he had Eggert’s full measure here. But to make a sound at all would betray his position to Eggert. And Blake Durant, conditioned by many similar situations, had the patience to bide his time, until morning if Eggert insisted.
So he lay there, unmoving, listening while scratching sounds told him that Bo and Bede were crawling towards him. How long Eggert would hold his fire he had no idea but he knew that Eggert’s hate for any man who bucked him would not permit him to pass up an opportunity to kill one or both of these reckless cowhands.
It was only a minute later that a tongue of flame burst upwards from darkness below the row of stalls. Within seconds that flame was a fire leaping brightly from out of a hay heap. Furtive shadows fell back from the side of the heap and then Joe Eggert made his last desperate move.
A vicious curse was drowned under the blast of gunfire and then Eggert came limping out of his cover. The fire caught the wild, mad gleam in his eyes as he went past the flaming hay heap towards the section Blake Durant had seen the Strawbridge brothers retreat to. Eggert’s gun kept punching out shots as he pounded his way up towards Durant.
Slowly Blake Durant came to his feet. Eggert looked his way but his scowling face was filled with uncertainty. And fear. He quickly prodded bullets into his gun and drawing in a deep breath, broke into a run. Blake Durant moved to block his way and Eggert, finally sighting him, let out a gasp.
Then all the hate that had twisted Eggert’s mind into that of a loco killer, tore out of him. The fear left him. The uncertainty fled his features. He came to a halt within a few paces of the barn doorway and the freedom beyond it. A few paces too many, and his face reflected his knowledge of that.
“But for you, Durant,” he snarled. “But for you, damn you!”
Eggert’s gun exploded but the noise was lost in the thunder of Durant’s Colt. Eggert rocked back and his knees gave way. He fell on his face and lay still.
Bo and Bede Strawbridge came slowly out of the smoke-filled barn and stopped close to Eggert’s bullet-torn, bloodied body. Neither of them spoke. Their gazes lifted to take in Blake Durant and he said simply, “Time to cut out,” and walked towards the barn doorway. He spared a glance for the dead gun hands before he went on. Bo and Bede watched him for some time before Bede nudged his brother and led the way to where the horses were tethered.
Blake Durant walked the middle of the street to where an old-timer stood holding Sundown on a short tie-line. The big horse pulled towards him and Durant put out his hand. The old-timer looped the line over Durant’s grimy palm and said, “He sure made some racket goin’ uptown, Durant. So did you, eh?”
Blake said nothing. He swung onto Sundown and turned him back towards Bo and Bede Strawbridge. Drawing rein, Blake Durant watched the fire take stronger hold on the barn. Inside lay a dead Joe Alroe Eggert. Within the hour Eggert’s body would be nothing but cinders. He turned Sundown past Bo Strawbridge, meaning to go on, but Bo said,
“What about Traversi’s hoard?”
“Leave it for the town.”
“For these cowardly fools?”
“It was their money.”
Bo shook his head. “They lost it once. Hell, they’re born losers.”
“The odds against them were too great and they didn’t know how to fight before. Maybe they’ve learned something. Anyway, what you’ve done tonight proves you’re not thieves, Bo. Leave it at that.”
Bo wiped a line of sweat from his face and looked at his brother. Bede’s right eye had closed where Bo had struck him in their last fight. Suddenly he was sorry that he had hurt his brother.
Then Durant rode to where Dane Cherry lay. The sound of hoof beats came from the far end of town. Looking that way, Durant saw seven riders hit the trail north. He knew that this was the last of the Traversi-Eggert bunch, hired guns who’d seen the end of an era in Outcast County and wanted no part of what would follow.
Durant came out of the saddle, collected the banknotes and stuffed them into his saddlebag. As he swung back into the saddle and made his way down the street, Bo and Bede Strawbridge went to their horses.
Townsmen began to show themselves along both sides of the street. They looked at this loner, Blake Durant, and wondered what manner of man he was. On their faces was a gratitude but Blake Durant wanted no part of it. No one bothered to approach him. They merely watched him ride past.
Bo Strawbridge sat in the cookhouse and eyed his thick steak eagerly. It had been a long ride back to Adamson’s ranch. Durant had handed across the money taken from Traversi’s safe and spent a long time with Ben Adamson on the porch of the big house. That had been last night and Bede and Bo, on rising, had discussed with Adamson the likelihood of their staying and helping out until they got on their feet again. Ben Adamson had only been too keen to keep them on.
When Durant walked into the cookhouse, Bo grinned up at him. “Guess you’ll be staying too, eh, Durant?”
“Why do you figure that, Bo?”
Bo looked surprised at the question. “Hell, the girl. You ain’t gonna cut out on her, are you? You ain’t that kind of a fool.”
Bede entered the cookhouse behind Durant and eyed Bo’s steak hungrily. Bo glared warningly at him and pulled his plate a little closer. The smell of the steak made Bo’s nostrils twitch.
“I’ll be moving on, Bo,” Durant said.
Bo gaped and Bede moved behind him, plucking a fork from the stove side bench. He licked his lips and looked across Bo’s shoulder at the steak.
“You mean you’d leave a little lady like that out here on her own and ride away? Hell, are you already married or somethin’, Durant?”
“No.”
“Why then? She’s set her hat at you, no mistake. Hell, all you got to do is ...”
“Best of luck in the future, Bo. You too, Bede. Been fine knowing you. Maybe one day we’ll meet again.”
Bo stood up, put out his hand and grinned. “Durant, meetin’ you’s been fine, real fine.”
While Blake Durant took the big man’s hand, Bede
slipped in beside him and forked the steak out of the plate. He winked at Durant with his unclosed eye and bit a huge chunk out of the steak.
“Bede,” said Bo, turning to check his brother. “Say goodbye to ...”
Bo’s talk stopped there. He saw the steak, saw his brother chewing and his fists lifted. “By hell, Bede, of all the sneakin’, thievin’, low-bellied jaspers I ever met in my life, you’d be the best.”
Bede waved him away. “Bo, we said we wasn’t gonna fight each other no more. We said ...”
“To hell with what we said,” barked Bo, and his big fist caught Bede on the other eye. Bede staggered back under the power of the blow, hit the wall and bounced off it. He glared at his brother, then took another bite of the steak and pitched it back onto the stove.
Bo hurled himself across the table and Bede grabbed him by the back of the shirt and flung him at the wall. Blake Durant moved into the cookhouse doorway and leant against the doorjamb.
Bo came off the wall holding his head in his hand. Blood ran from between his clenched teeth. His eyes were wild with bitterness.
“Why you polecat-bred, stinkin’ damn ...”
Bede’s fist slammed the words back into Bo’s mouth and Bede gave a grunt of satisfaction.
“Never learn, Bo, never should you live to be a hundred. All the time you start somethin’ you ain’t got no chance of finishin’. This time, this last time, you can bet, I’m gonna teach you proper and that’ll be the end of it.”
Blake Durant turned his back on them and while the two brothers punched themselves stupid for the ownership of a piece of meat, he walked out, smiling.
Blake went to the barn, saddled up Sundown and rode him down the clearing. He stopped short of the big house porch and waited for Ben Adamson to come out. They had spent a lot of time talking the previous night and understood each other perfectly. Blake hoped Adamson had explained things to Joyce afterwards. One day he might come back. He might. He didn’t know. A memory still tugged at him, keeping him confused. Until that memory released him, he couldn’t find happiness with a fine young woman like Joyce Adamson.
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