by Short, Luke;
“That’s right!” Letty cried. “That must be it!”
Cole looked around the room. “Celia, you and Letty get out of here! Quick!”
“But what about Ted?” Celia asked.
“I’m goin’ to carry him over to the new yard and fort up in a wagon over there!” He said swiftly to Ted, “You got a gun?”
Ted pulled it out from under the blankets.
Cole said, “Go on, Celia! You and Letty go!” To Ted he said, “I’ll try and make it easy, fella, but it will hurt!”
“Go ahead,” Ted said quietly.
Celia and Letty went into the other room. Cole picked Ted up, blankets and all, slung him over his shoulder, pulled his gun and went out into the corridor.
Celia was standing in the doorway, looking over her shoulder at Cole.
“Get on!” Cole said.
“I’ll get help, Cole,” Celia said.
“You hide!” Cole said miserably. “Don’t show your head. Hide in the office!”
But Celia was gone down the steps.
Cole rounded the table and said to Ted, “I’ll take it easy, boy,” and went out the door.
As soon as he hit the platform a crash of gunfire broke out. The slugs rapped in the wood of the doorframe, and Cole counted four different reports. A window, somewhere in the other rooms, crashed in, and a man yelled, “They’re out in back. Get the steps!”
Swiftly, then, Cole made his decision. To go back would invite death, because Billings’ men had come in on the roof of the adjoining building. Safety lay down there and in the new wagon yard. Celia and Letty were already in the office below.
He palmed up his gun and shot once, and the lantern on the gate went out. Then he lunged down the steps, the sound racketing out into the night.
Five rifles now opened up at him. He could hear the slugs slapping into the wood of the building in front of him and behind him.
He hit the ground below, staggered, fell to his knees, caught himself and came erect.
Ted, slung over his shoulder, opened up now at the two riflemen along the side fence of the compound.
Cole clung to the nearest side fence and ran. A gun went off almost in his face, but he did not change his stride. Ted raised his gun and shot, and a man screamed, and then the other two riflemen, beaten to cover by Ted’s fire, opened up again. And Ted couldn’t shoot, for his gun was empty.
They were nearing the alley now, the shots raking the darkness and slapping into the board fence.
And then they were almost at the gate, when a man loomed up there in the middle of it, his body framed by the dim light in the wagon yard across the way. The man raised a rifle, and Cole frantically whipped up his gun, running still. He shot and the man bent over, and Cole slashed out with his gun as he reached him. The man sprawled backward into the alley, and now it was clear.
As he was crossing the alley someone from far down the alley cut loose with a shot that geysered up the dust ahead of him.
That would be Billings. Cole couldn’t shoot now, for his gun was empty too. He heard Ted say softly, “Run for it, boy.”
There was one big ore wagon back against the corner of the stable and the rear fence, and Cole could barely make it out in the lantern light. But he ran for it, knowing that it would take these men a few seconds to leg up over the compound fence and follow him.
His legs were giving out, for Ted was heavy, and the sweat was pouring off his forehead. His back crawled, and he was waiting for the first shot that would catch him in the back and knock him flat on his face.
And then he heard Ted shoot. Ted, hanging over his back, had fumbled out some shells from Cole’s belt and reloaded, and now he shot at the first man who charged through the gate. The wagon was only yards away now, and Cole drove his buckling knees to make it. He reached the wagon just as two riflemen opened up on them from the compound gate.
Mercifully the tail gate of the wagon was down. Cole rolled Ted off his shoulder into the wagon bed and then dived in alongside him, just as the whole chorus of rifle fire opened in concert and the heavy plank sides of the wagon drummed with the slugs.
“All right?” he asked Ted, panting.
“Not hit,” Ted said through clenched teeth. “Here’s my gun. Gimme yours and I’ll load.”
Cole poked his head out of the rear of the ore wagon and saw a man streaking for a bale of hay that lay on the ground by the trough. He shot and the man dived behind the hay. But while he was trying three more men had sought shelter in the wagon yard, forting up behind the trough, another ore wagon and the corner of the stable.
And then Keen Billings’ voice, hoarse with wrath, yelled, “Rush him, boys!”
Cole emptied his gun in the direction of the voice and he heard Billings laugh. While he traded guns with Ted he saw the men move closer. They were like Indians, drifting from cover to cover until they were close enough to attack.
Ted said grimly, “We’re in a spot, Cole.”
“I can’t see a damn thing!” Cole raged. “I’m goin’ to stand up. But when they shoot that light out they’ll rush. Be ready for it.”
Ted said quietly, “Cole, in case you pull out of this and I don’t you’ll watch out for Celia.”
“If you go I go,” Cole said simply.
“No. I want you to clear out. On her account.”
“Nothin’ doin’,” Cole said. “I’m not clearin’ out.”
“Please, for—”
“No!” Cole said harshly. “I got us into most of this, Ted. I’m sellin’ out the hard way!”
He rose then and saw a man drifting in to the cover of the stable door. He snapped a shot at him, but the man didn’t duck. It was Billings. Very carefully Billings took sight at the lantern hanging on a nail down the stable and shot it out.
There was utter blackness then, and Cole felt cold despair grip him. They were trapped now, trapped for fair. He couldn’t leave Ted, and Keen Billings knew he wouldn’t.
Keen’s voice lifted again in a bawl. “The lantern’s out, boys. Rush him.”
Cole shot blindly at anything that moved, but he could not be certain of any sight in that pitch dark. When a shot bloomed orange he shot at it, but each time the shots were getting closer. And back where it was safe, at the head of the stable, Keen Billings was yelling: “Get ’em, boys. A hundred dollars a scalp!”
Ted shot then and close by the end of the wagon Cole heard a man curse. And then the others opened up. They were a tight little half circle now, only yards away, and they were running.
Cole fanned his gun empty, and as the hammer clicked on the last empty he heard a great bawling voice call:
“Hold ’em, Cole! Here we come!”
It was Juck. He and other men were pouring out of the back door of the office across the alley.
Cole yelled: “Come on, Juck,” and Ted opened up with the last of his load.
Frantically Cole reloaded. For one second there were no shots from Billings’ men. And in that silence, up at the front of the yard, they could hear the heavy steps of a man running toward the gate.
It was Billings. And his men heard it too.
One man called, “He’s runnin’. Let’s light a shuck.”
Cole ran to the front of the wagon, climbed it and leaped to the stable roof. He went over it, dropped on the other side into the new yard and then ran blindly diagonally across it, leaping piles of lumber and dodging what he couldn’t leap. Ted was safe, he knew. And Billings would make the gate long before Juck would get out of the compound. Once he was out of the gate what would Billings do? He’d run down the alley away from town.
And Cole staked everything on that guess.
He approached the alley fence far down toward the side street, and he heard Billings pounding down the alley on the other side. Cole leaped for the fence, hauled himself up, then dropped into the alley.
Billings, his back to him, was almost at the street, his body silhouetted against the faint lights of the town.
; Cole dropped to the ground, rolled to his knees and then called sharply, “Billings!”
Billings hauled up, then turned slowly around.
“Make your play, Keen. This is it!” Cole’s voice was mild, but it had the ring of iron in it.
Keen peered into the dark alley. He could make out Cole’s form as Cole came to his knees. He had an impulse to surrender, and then in one blinding flash he knew that he couldn’t. And he knew that he might be able to catch Cole off balance and winded if he acted now.
His hand slapped down at his gun, wrapped around the butt and hauled it out.
Cole saw it come, just as his cleared leather. Keen shot hurriedly then from the hip. Shot twice. And Cole swung the black shape of Keen in his sights, and when his gun sight blacked out he pulled the trigger. He shot three times, and at the third shot Keen slacked below the sight and fell on his back.
Slowly Cole lowered his gun and walked over to him and stood above him, looking down. His two shots had caught Keen in the face.
Behind him he could hear the ruckus in the alley, the shouting and the talk and excitement. But he only listened to it absently.
Hadn’t Letty said that Craig Armin was waiting at her house? She had. He headed for the street then and Letty’s house, his gun still in his hand, and when Girard caught up with him as he rounded the corner of the alley Cole didn’t look at him.
“Stay out of my way,” Cole warned the man at his side.
21
Craig had heard the prolonged gunfire. To him it meant only one thing: that Cole Armin and Wallace were dead and Monarch was supreme in Piute. He smiled with pleasure at the thought, pleased with his plan and certain of its outcome. Presently someone would be here to tell him about it, and he must have his face composed. He was planning just how to assume the right expression of regret for the sudden death of a bitter and hated rival when he heard the footsteps outside.
He went to the door, thinking maybe it was Keen Billings already, and he opened it.
Cole Armin shoved the door open and stepped into the room. There was a man behind him, but Craig Armin never saw that man.
He backed away from Cole Armin as if he had seen the dead, and before he could get his wits together Cole Armin said slowly, “It didn’t work, Craig. They missed me.”
Craig tried to speak and couldn’t. Girard came over to him, slapped his pockets to see whether he carried a gun or not, then stepped back.
Cole said, “Sit down!”
Girard shoved him backward into the nearest chair. Then Cole stalked over to him and stood above him. “Before I kill you, Armin, just tell me who you are. You’re not Craig Armin.”
Armin couldn’t talk yet. Cole leaned over and cuffed him sharply across the face. Cole’s face was white as chalk, and there was murder in his eyes.
“I—I’m Craig Armin,” Armin said weakly.
Cole reached over, grabbed Armin’s lapels and hauled him. out of his seat. He said wickedly, “You lie! Damn your black soul! You lie! Now talk!” And he threw him back into the chair with such violence that the chair creaked.
When Craig Armin hit the chair seat he sat on something hard as rock, and the pain of it jarred him. And then through his fright he remembered. He had sat on Letty Burns’s gun that Billings had taken away from her.
Slowly he put his hand around behind him, and the gun slipped into his fingers. Neither Cole Armin nor Girard had a gun out.
Craig Armin lunged to his feet, whipping the gun out in front of him and kicking back at the chair at the same time.
There was a smile of cruel elation on his face as he said, “What did you ask me?”
Girard, dismay in his face, shoved his hands to the ceiling. Cole looked at the gun, and he remembered it. He also remembered what was in it. Slowly, then, he put up his hands and stepped back.
“I come damn close,” he said quietly.
“But not close enough,” Craig Armin said. “It won’t be terribly hard to explain to Linton why I had to kill you.”
Cole licked his lips and looked at Girard. Girard was facing it with a stolid look of distaste.
“You’re goin’ to—to shoot us?” Cole asked.
“I have to. You’ve forced me,” Craig answered.
Cole didn’t speak for a moment. This was Craig Armin’s minute of triumph, and he was making the best of it. With cruel and sadistic delight he was enjoying this.
Cole said in a voice without hope, “I’m not beggin’ you for anything, Armin. When a man’s time comes it comes. But I’d like to ask some questions before you let that thing off in my face.”
“If that’s a stall, Armin, it won’t work,” Craig Armin said coldly. “The first person I hear outside I’ll shoot you.”
“Then I can talk?”
“As long as I want you to. Go ahead.”
Cole looked at the gun and then at Craig Armin, “You’re not Craig Armin.”
“No. How did you know?”
“I didn’t until tonight. I never saw my uncle. But tonight I remembered somethin’. Letty and Celia said when you get cornered you pull your ear—your right ear lobe.”
“I may have. I don’t remember.”
“My dad told me that my uncle Craig had the lobe of his right ear shot off in the Mexican War. It took me a hell of a while to remember it.”
“That’s right. The real Craig Armin did have part of his ear missing. I didn’t think you’d notice it since you never saw him.”
“And where is he?”
Craig Armin smiled. “In a jail in Missouri, where I put him. I framed him for murder. And because I looked like him I took his name so I could get his money out of a St. Louis bank.” He smiled wolfishly. “I’ve built it into quite a little stake.”
“Is he alive?”
“He’s alive, and he’ll be on my trail in another three months,” Craig Armin said slowly. “That’s why I got you out here.”
Cole scowled and said, “I don’t get it.”
“I’ll have to talk fast,” Craig Armin said quickly, still smiling. “I knew the real Craig Armin would track me down when he got out of jail. He’d told me about you, so I wrote you to come here. I planned to leave this business to you and go to the Coast. With you here, believing I was your uncle, you’d send me half the money from the Monarch. When the real Craig Armin arrived you’d arrest him as an imposter, and I’d still get my money. But if he convinced you I was a fraud I had time to get away. It was clever, wasn’t it? Only you proved to be a little too chivalrous. You fought with me and made me return the money to the Wallaces. I even counted on you fighting them to a standstill.” He shrugged. “It didn’t work. You’ve put me to considerable trouble. But I’ve won, you see. I always win.”
Cole said, “It’s cagey, all right. Have I got any more time?”
“A little. I don’t hear anyone coming.”
“Who set fire to the Monarch?”
Craig Armin laughed then. “I did.”
Cole stared at him. “Your own outfit?”
“That’s right. You see, I wanted you in jail, out of the way. First, when Billings hired Letty Burns, we counted on her to tell us how to ruin you. The first chance we got was when we put you onto Jim Rough. But Billings is timid. After that beating he didn’t want to touch the wagon. He was afraid of what you’d do. I sawed the brake lever myself. I hoped, if the accident didn’t kill you, you’d kill Billings.” He shook his head. “Billings, you see, had too much on me. I hoped you’d kill him and Linton would jail you. You didn’t kill him. Then I hoped, by setting the fire and putting the blame on you, that Linton would jail you for that. Letty Burns ruined that.”
“So you were tryin’ to put Billings out of the way and me out of the way too?”
“Exactly. Clever, but it didn’t work.” He paused. “Your time is up, I think.”
“One more question,” Cole said calmly. “Who shoved Ted Wallace down the stairs?”
Craig bowed mockingly. “I did. I hoped it w
ould kill you both.”
Girard said hoarsely, “Get it over with!”
“Wait!” Cole said swiftly. “You shoved Ted; you sawed the brake lever and you burned the Monarch. Did you blow up the China Boy?”
This time Craig Armin bowed in Girard’s direction, the gun trained on Cole. “I did. I figured surely that you would kill Billings then for spoiling your contract. And I was just as sure Linton would arrest you and hang you for the killing. That didn’t work either, so I was driven to this.” He glanced at Cole. “Partly by your shot at me last night. It stampeded me to a decision.”
Cole ignored that and said slowly, “And now you’ll do what, Armin?”
“When I get this explained,” Armin said, “I’m putting the Monarch and its freighting contracts up for sale. I should realize a nice tidy sum. Then I’ll be well out of the country before the real Craig Armin gets here.” His face changed, and he stopped talking. There was the faint sound of someone running. “Time’s up,” he said crisply. “I’ll get you out of the way first, Cole. Back up, Girard!”
Girard backed up, his face bathed in sweat.
When Craig Armin looked at Cole, Cole was smiling faintly.
“It’s funny?” he asked icily.
Cole didn’t answer. He said, “I’m comin’ for you, Armin. I’m comin’ slow.”
And he started to walk. Craig Armin’s face set and he pulled the trigger. There was an explosion, but Cole was still walking afterward.
“Thanks for confessin’, and in front of a witness,” Cole murmured.
Craig Armin stepped backward in panic and shot again. And Cole still walked toward him.
Then Craig Armin took a step forward, placed the gun two feet from Cole and emptied it into him.
Cole laughed then. “They’re blanks.”
And he knocked Craig Armin over the table with a smashing blow in the face.
At that moment Celia ran into the open doorway. Cole didn’t see her. Girard reached over, took Celia by the arm, hauled her against the wall and said, “Quiet, girl. Can you watch it?”