by Matt Rand
“That so?” Spencer drawled. “Where is he?”
“Went over to Dugas,” Fowler answered. “He likes his beer, Moore does. Seems somebody told him the place to get just about the best beer out this way is at Willie Hunt’s, so that’s where he went. An’ since he ain’t the kind that likes to be rushed, chances are he won’t be back till t’night.”
“Then I’ll hafta come back f’r him.”
“Afraid so, Al.”
“Awright, Ed. Let’s go,” the sheriff said. “Only be smart, an’ don’t try anything.”
When the sheriff gestured, Fowler moved past him. Spencer wheeled behind his prisoner with his hand on his gun butt. They had just started away from the house when a gun suddenly thundered behind the sheriff. Gunsmoke drifted out from the doorway, and Dave, wide-eyed, saw a dark figure standing there. He looked quickly at Spencer; the sheriff was on his hands and knees. He forced himself up and swayed a bit, despite his efforts to steady himself, when the gun thundered again. The sheriff staggered and fell heavily. Fowler, a gun in his hand, stood over him. When Spencer struggled to get up again, Fowler’s gun roared. The lead slug tore into the sheriff’s body and made him thresh about for a moment. Fowler laughed and moved away from him, but he held his gun upraised in case another shot was needed. When Spencer’s body seemed to relax, Fowler holstered his gun and strode briskly into the house. The door slammed behind him.
Dave was up on his feet now, and his gun was in his hand. “Dirty, murderin’ dogs!” he said through his teeth.
More determined than ever now, Dave spun through the brush and sprinted across the intervening space to the house and dropped down against it. He shot a look in Spencer’s direction, but there was no movement of the sheriff’s sprawled out body. Raising up and hugging the wall of the house, Dave made his way around it to the rear. He stopped when he saw two saddled horses idling a couple of feet from the back door. He stepped up to them, grabbed their bridles and led them away. Then releasing the reins, he whacked the horse nearest him on the rump. The animal snorted angrily, but instead of bolting away, he shied, reared up and lashed out at Dave with his forehoofs. Dave cursed, scooped up a handful of dirt and pebbles and threw them at the horse. The animal whirled and pounded away. The second horse had not moved; he seemed to be looking on curiously and interestedly, as though he were not included in what was taking place. Dave jumped for him, and the horse backed instantly. When Dave swung at him, he wheeled and darted away after the first horse.
Dave came racing back to the house, crowding against it for protection, when he heard a bolt scrape back. The door opened, and someone came into the doorway. Dave held his breath. The muzzle of his borrowed gun came up. The man stepped out of the house. It was Ed Fowler.
Fowler turned his head slowly. It was as though he could feel Dave’s eyes on him, drawing his head in Dave’s direction. When his gaze held on Dave, standing less than a dozen feet away, his face underwent no change of expression. His eyes gleamed a bit, but that was all.
While the two men were facing each other, Fowler’s mind was working swiftly. He was estimating the distance to the door behind him. He had not heard the lock click, so he felt certain that the door had not closed. It was either wide open or it was ajar, and a quick twist and a hurtling lunge would carry him back to the safety of the house. He planned his strategy around the door.
Fowler kept his eyes on Dave’s tensed face as though he were trying to occupy Dave’s eyes, and through them, his thoughts. His right hand moved stealthily toward the butt of his gun. The muzzle of Dave’s gun gaped at him, but Fowler ignored it. His big hand found his gun butt and tightened around it. A tiny, scornful smile flickered over his mouth, and his eyes gleamed even brighter than before. His right arm jerked suddenly, and he whirled backward as his gun cleared the lip of his holster. Dave’s gun thundered almost in his face, and Fowler’s shot followed Dave’s so closely that the two shots sounded like one.
Fowler, fortunately for Dave, had been misled. The well-oiled lock had latched noiselessly, and the door had closed, so that Fowler’s lunge did not carry him through space and into the house. He struck the closed door full tilt and caromed off it. Before he could turn and snap another shot, Dave was leaping into position squarely in front of him and blasting him to death, impaling him on the sturdy door of his own house.
It was only when Dave suddenly realized that he was offering a perfect target to the second man in the house that he took immediate steps to remedy the situation. He fairly hurled himself through space. He crashed against the house and went down on his hands and knees. Instinctively, though, he hastily reloaded his gun. He stole a look at Fowler. The big, dark-faced cattleman lay crumpled up in front of the door. His gun lay just beyond his dead hand. Blood was seeping out from under his bulky body, and it was running off in thread-like streams in a dozen different directions.
The echo of the gunfire had already begun to fade out. Only the barest throb remained. But presently, it, too, was gone, and an oppressive silence settled over the scene. Huddling against the house, Dave debated what he should do next. The man inside was his next objective. He would have to get inside and drive him out, or he would have to trick him into coming out. The latter would be more desirable, Dave agreed, since there would be less hazard attached to it.
The kitchen window was just beyond Dave, with its shade drawn down to its fullest His eyes raced about till he spied a rock. He caught it up, turned and hurled it at the window. Instantly there was a loud, shattering crash as the pane fell in, and he leaped against the wall as a gun blazed a couple of wildly fired shots. He wheeled, made his way around the house and stopped when he came abreast of another window. He scouted around till he found another rock, heaved it at the window and promptly dropped down when it plummeted through the pane, shattering it to bits. He was keeping the man inside the house on the anxious side, but he realized that smashing the windows alone would not drive him out. He would have to hit on something far more effective.
There were twigs strewn about here and there, and Dave eyed them for a moment. Then, with a thin smile toying at the corners of his mouth, he set to work. He dug in his pockets for some matches. He found a dozen of them, and he put them back while he set about gathering together all the twigs he could reach without stepping out of the safety range the house provided. He scooped together quite a batch, and he crawled with it to the very end of the wall. He glanced at the front door, crept up to it and dropped the twigs there. Quickly he retreated, digging the while in his pocket for one of the matches. He had dropped a couple of twigs, and now he picked them up. He held a lighted match to them, and when they began to burn, he tossed them on top of the other twigs he had heaped at the foot of the front door.
In a minute the flames began to lick at the pile. He flitted about breathlessly, catching up handfuls of twigs and racing back with them to toss them into the burning mass. It was an impressive looking mass, too, and he was delighted with himself. He even grinned when he saw a thin finger of flame begin to creep up the door and the door frame.
Dave decided he had better have a look at the situation at the back of the house, and he wheeled and crawled in that direction. Ed Fowler lay exactly where he had fallen. If he had been moved, even the barest bit, then Dave would have had cause for worry. It would have meant that the man in the house had opened the door, and that he had moved the dead man so that he might have a clear path when he was ready to break out.
There were twigs within reach here, too, and Dave scooped them up, held a flaming match to them, and when they were burning, he tossed them into the house through the shattered kitchen window. Instantly the shade caught fire. Dave whipped away, caught up another handful of twigs and touched a lighted match to them. He wheeled around the house to the side window he had smashed and hurled the burning twigs through the paneless frame. He made his way forward for a look at the front door. It was burning, and so was the front of the house.
Dave scurried
from the front of the house to the rear, from one side to the other, tossing burning twigs into the house. Then to make certain that he was not giving his quarry any rest, he hurled rocks through the other windows and followed them with flaming faggots. Back and forth he raced until his legs were aching, and he was wheezing for breath. When at last he was forced to stop, there were a dozen brisk fires burning in the Fowler house.
After a couple of minutes of rest, Dave heaped more and more twigs against the front door, and hungry flames promptly set them afire. When he was fully satisfied that his man would not be able to get out except through the back door, he dashed back there and crouched down at the very end of the wall with his gun leveled and trained on the door.
Dave was prepared for what followed, yet when it happened, he was somewhat taken by surprise. He did not hear the door open. He was startled when he suddenly realized that a man was standing astride the threshold, a dark, wiry man with a thin face and cruel little eyes framed in it. He was a man who was holding a gun in his hand, a man whom Dave recognized. Dave raised up a bit. It was then that the man saw him and looked hard at him.
“Moore,” the evil looking fellow said, and there was no mistaking the surprise in his voice. “What the hell are you doin’ here?”
Dave did not answer. He was watching the man’s face, rather than his gun. When he saw a sudden gleam come into his eyes, Dave knew that that was the moment, and he fired. But the other man fired, too, and almost at the same time. There was an overwhelming and deafening roar, a clap of thunder and a flash of lightning.
Something struck Dave and drove the breath out of his body. It left him limp and gasping. There was a moment’s pain, an intense pain, deep down inside of him. But then it was gone. Now there was no pain, no feeling, nothing but a strange numbness. He felt himself falling. He reached out frantically for something to cling to, to stop his fall. His finger scraped something and missed. There was a sudden rush of air and wind as he plummeted downward into dark depth. The darkness closed over him. That was all he remembered.
* * * *
Dave could not recall the last time he had been so luxuriously comfortable and so completely relaxed. He wiggled his toes, and he enjoyed the sensation fully. His head felt strangely light. He could not understand it. Then there was something else he could not understand: why was it so dark? Just a little while before the sun had broken through the dawn haze. What had happened to it? Somewhere, in the darkness beyond him, he thought he heard a voice calling. It was so faint, he could not make it out. Then he heard it again, and it was a little stronger, and straining to catch it, he heard: “Dave—”
The voice sounded as though it had had to travel a long way to reach him. It had a curious quality to it, an almost hollow sound, and it echoed in his head.
“Dave—”
There it was again, but this time it was much stronger. Now it seemed closer at hand. There was something familiar about it, too, only vaguely familiar, of course, but he knew he had heard the voice before. Dave’s mouth opened, and his tongue rolled over his parched lips. It did not seem to help them any because his tongue was dry and thick and almost too big for his mouth. He tried it a second time, but the result was the same, no relief for his parched lips. Then he felt a delightfully cooling sensation in his mouth, and his lips were not parched any longer.
“Dave,” the voice said a third time.
This time Dave heard it clearly. He was surprised when it did not resound in his head as it had done before, like an echo caroming off the walls of a cavern. He could not remember opening his eyes, but he must have done it because he was suddenly aware of something bending over him, something that was shapeless and blurry. Then it took shape, and it was not blurry any longer. The film was whisked away from his eyes. The thing was a face, a pretty face, too, Millie’s face, and he was staring up into it. He saw a tear come out of her eye, and he followed it with his own eyes, watched it slip gently down her cheek and felt it drop on his hand.
“Millie!” Dave whispered in a voice that he did not recognize.
“Oh, Dave!” he heard the girl sob.
Then Dave felt tired, terribly tired. He sighed deeply, and his eyes closed again.
* * * *
It was some days later, three, four or perhaps it was five, or maybe it was a lifetime after, when Dave awoke to find Millie sitting on the edge of his bed. There were some others in the room, too, white-haired John McKeon, who looked unusually haggard, and Dobie Cantwell, who looked as he had always looked. Dave’s head did not feel fight now; it felt just as it should have felt.
“Caprille?” Dave asked.
“Huh?” McKeon said. “What was that, boy?”
“Caprille, the Fowler gunman. Did he—get away?”
“Heck, no!” McKeon answered. “You got him plumb center.”
“The piece o’ cloth in my pocket. Did you find it?”
“Yep. Where’d you get it?”
“It was caught on a nail in one of the crossbeams in the saloon.”
“We figgered it had somethin’ to do with what happened.”
“Yeah, but that’s as far as we got with it, though,” Dobie said, and McKeon turned his head and gave him a hard look. “You c’n thank Millie for tyin’ it all up together. She was the one who got the bright idea o’ matchin’ that hunk o’ cloth with the pants that gunman was wearing. It’d been ripped out o’ the seat.”
“Then he was the one who killed Bill,” Dave said. “I wasn’t sure who it was at first. I even had an idea it might’ve been the sheriff because his pants were something like the piece I found.”
“So were Ed Fowler’s,” Dobie said. “Close, but not quite the same.”
“They killed the sheriff,” Dave related. “Caprille an’ Fowler. I saw th’m. Caprille got him first, in the back. He got Spencer a second time, too, when he tried to get up. Then, while he was a’threshin’ around on the ground, Fowler finished him off.”
“Fowler’ll never finish off anybody else,” Dobie said. “Fact is, there ain’t any more Fowler outfit. It’s done, finished, wiped out. In case you’re wonderin’ about that gun Pete Scott took offa you son, I found it stuck in Pete’s belt an’ I brought it home with me.”
“Oh, that’s good,” Dave said.
“How’d you come to know that—that Caprille feller?” McKeon asked.
“I used to see him in town every once in a while. Back home, I mean. Nobody could ever figure out what he did for a living, but he always seemed to have plenty o’ money. He’d kinda disappear for a while, an’ nobody would see him. Then he’d come back. But he never told anybody where he’d been, or what he’d been doin’, and nobody ever asked him because he wasn’t the kind who liked bein’ asked anything. Now I know how he got his money. He was a hired killer. I’m glad I got him.”
“You did quite a job on both him an’ Fowler,” McKeon said. “Good thing f’r you that you got Ed, too. He’da sued you, y’know. You burned his doggoned house clear to the ground!”
“Well,” Dobie said, “guess I’ll go along and see what’s cookin’ downstairs. Whatever it is Sing’s puttin’ together smells awf’lly good to me. See you later, Moore.”
Dobie went out of the room.
Millie put her hand to Dave’s cheek.
“Hot?” McKeon asked. “Think he’s still runnin’ that fever? Think we oughta send one o’ the boys hustlin’ off to town for the doctor?”
Millie smiled and shook her head. “No,” she said. “Dave’s going to be all right now.”
The door opened, and Janey poked her head in. She raised up so that Dave could see her, and she gave him a smile. “Dad.”
John McKeon frowned. “Yeah?” he asked grumpily without looking at Janey.
“May I see you a minute, please?”
McKeon’s frown deepened. “Always bein’ chased,” he muttered as he got up on his feet. “You’d think I didn’t know these two kids wouldn’t mind bein’ alone f’r a spell. Awright,
Janey. The ol’ man’s coming.” He tramped out, and the door closed quietly behind him.
“You owe him a lot, Dave,” Millie said. “If it hadn’t been for him, well, I’m not so sure you’d be here now. He found you, and he brought you back here in his arms. He wouldn’t let anyone touch you except Dr. Lana. And that first night when it was touch and go for you, we stayed with you right through the night, and even then he wouldn’t budge out of here till the doctor assured him you’d be all right. He’s an old bear, and he likes to growl and grumble, but it doesn’t mean anything because ’way down deep inside of him he has a heart as big as he is.”
“Yeah, he’s swell, all right. Fact is, everybody around here is swell.”
Millie smoothed the sheet that covered Dave and folded the top of it over the blanket. “Everybody?” she repeated.
“Yep, everybody,” Dave said again. “An’ you most of all Millie. That is, if you give me that doggoned job.”
“Dobie sent a crew of men up to our place to get things in shape and see that the stock is all right.”
“That was nice of him, but I’m still askin’, what about that job? Do I get it, or don’t I? I wanna know.”
Millie smiled as she settled herself again on the edge of the bed.
“Well?” Dave demanded.
“You’ve been on the payroll since the very moment that you asked for the job,” Millie told Dave. “You’d better hurry up and get well so you can start earning your wages. We can’t afford to carry any deadheads on our payroll. Now how about something to eat?”