McCain was grinning like a madman, the Indian was the same. Lassiter looked at the money bags lying in the middle of the floor. He was still on the floor not far from the money, the Irishman and the Indian had their heads down. A steady fire came through the shattered windows, and there was nothing to fear from ricochet because of the wooden furniture and walls.
Lassiter eased up, the rifle still in his hand. He felt like he should shoot the Irishman for getting them into this. The bullets still came through the glassless windows, aimed and fired over their heads, burying themselves in the painted wood. “Cover the front,” McCain said, rooting in his pockets for fresh cartridges. “They’ll be around there in a minute.”
“Don’t tell me,” Lassiter said. Bullets began to come from that direction before he finished speaking. Three militiamen showed themselves. Three bullets from the Winchester killed two and wounded one. Another man poked a rifle around the line of shipping crates. Lassiter fired and didn’t hit anything. The rifle was pulled back.
“Time to move out,” Lassiter said. The Irishman and Indian were firing from the windows on the other side of the room. McCain ducked down to reload his rifle, the pale eyes crazier than ever. “If they bring up one of the Maxims were finished,” Lassiter added.
McCain looked at the money again. A bullet passed right over the top of his head. It hit a man in a copy of an oil painting squarely in the center of the forehead. The framed picture jerked on the wall but didn’t fall.
McCain said, “All right, we’ll make a run for it. What about the money? With the money we can start again...”
Lassiter answered after he shot a militiaman who tried to line up a shot from behind the line of crates. “To hell with starting again! You do what you want! The hell with you! The hell with the money!”
Lassiter hated to talk about money like that. Even at the rate he used up money it would take a long time to spend a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Even a hundred thousand. Even fifty. The money was in two sacks. That made a three-way split difficult. There wasn’t time to count, to argue. He didn’t know what the Indian wanted to do. He didn’t know if McCain wanted to split.
The militiamen got brave from both sides, the heaviest fire coming from the back of the house. McCain and Colmar handled that side, Lassiter stayed where he was. The first good chance that came along he was going to make a run for it. The ten thousand in his coat pockets would have to do.
“What do you want to do, Colmar?” he yelled over his shoulder. He bent his head to sight at a running militiaman. The Winchester cracked, and the man ran a few more steps, then dropped. It was the last shot in the rifle. Lassiter began to reload, counting the remaining shells with his fingers. He started to ask the Indian again...
Colmar was dead, crouched down below the splintered window, knees bent, face against the wall. The back of his head was gone, and blood and brains leaked from the gaping hole. Lassiter thumbed in a bullet, then another. He turned back to look out the door and a sledgehammer hit him on the side of the head. It wasn’t a sledgehammer. It was a bullet from McCain’s rifle. Through the fog inside his skull he heard McCain’s voice saying, “Sorry, Lassiter, but I need that money. All of it.”
Face down on the floor, Lassiter waited for another bullet. Blood seeped down through his hair, made a warm, sticky puddle under his chin. The muzzle of McCain’s rifle touched the side of his head but didn’t fire. McCain, talking to himself, shouldered the money sacks. “He that fights and runs away…” McCain said. He didn’t finish the quotation. Lassiter heard the Irishman’s wheezing, chesty laugh. He stayed still, trying not to breathe.
McCain, inside the empty doorway, fired as fast as he could work the bolt of the eight-shot Lee Metford rifle. The bolt jerked back, and he pushed in another eight-shot clip. He fired half the clip before he went out the door running, the money sacks thumping against his body. “Die, you bastards,” McCain yelled, firing as he ran.
The Winchester felt as clumsy as a stovepipe in Lassiter’s hands, his fingers useless and dead. Biting back the pain, trying to see, he crawled to the doorway and sighted on the running man. He rubbed his hand across his eyes, feeling the thick smear of blood.
Bullets kicked up the dirt under McCain’s feet and he kept running.
“McCain!” Lassiter yelled. The voice didn’t seem to belong to him. The Irishman heard him through the clatter of the rifles. McCain spun around, started to bring up the rifle. Lassiter shot him in the chest, tried to work the lever for a second shot, didn’t make it. The last thing he saw before his head sagged against the stock of the Winchester was the Irishman standing up straight, the money sacks still on his shoulder, while the militiamen shot him to pieces.
Lassiter lay there telling himself to get up, to move. He tried to tell himself again and found he didn’t care whether he got up or not. His brain was working, but his body refused to move. Maybe he was dead. They said the brain thought on for a while after the rest of the man was dead. He could smell blood and gunpowder. Sounds still came to him. Now the shooting was scattered and thin. The Maxim guns stopped firing and then, except for an occasional shot, the rifles stopped firing too.
He listened. In front of the house the militiamen were yelling about the sacks of money. One man was cursing with excitement. The back door of the house slammed open, and heavy boots came in. Rifle bolts rattled, and Lassiter waited for the bullet to come and finish the job.
They were looking at the dead Indian. “This one’s dead,” a voice decided. The boots walked over to Lassiter and a rifle barrel poked under his chin and lifted it. “So is this one,” another voice said. The same voice asked, “What the hell’s going on out there?”
“They’re yelling something about money,” the first voice said. “Christ, look at all that money!”
There was a rush for the front door. One man stumbled over Lassiter, got up cursing and kicked him in the side. It was good to feel the pain. The pain jolted his numbed brain, made him want to live. He moved his head and the pain flared white behind his eyes. The white fog cleared as the pain in his skull grew worse. His hands tightened around the Winchester, and the effort left him trembling and weak. He lay still, his head resting in the puddle of his own blood. “Move it, you son of a bitch,” he cursed himself in a rasping whisper.
They were still yelling about the money. A man with a loud bull’s voice roared at them to put it back—an officer. A heavy Webley revolver boomed twice. “Put it back,” the loud voice ordered. “The next man gets a bullet.”
Lassiter crawled across the floor toward the open back door. Slowly, he crawled down the steps like a wounded animal. A rain barrel stood under a downpipe at the corner of the house. Holding on to the step-rail, he stood up, began to fall, and caught himself. He cursed himself for not moving faster. He reached the barrel and shoved his wounded head into the cold water. Pain jerked his head back, but his head was clear enough to stand up and finish loading the Winchester.
There was a small vegetable garden behind the house, and the woods began on the other side of the fence. He went through the gate, holding the rifle, ready to die on his feet. Nobody challenged him, and he kept going. There was no use trying to run, not yet anyway. He walked along the side of the fence, into the woods, and kept going. Soon, he knew, they would be sending out patrols to round up what was left of McCain’s rebellion. He touched the side of his head. The scalp was split from temple to the top of his ear. He didn’t know about the skull. It might be cracked—there was no way of knowing. He didn’t think it was.
After he tied a bandanna around his throbbing skull and rested for a while behind a tree, he kept going. The thing to do was to put as much distance as he could between himself and Ringo Junction. Lassiter grinned in spite of the god-awful pain. The ten thousand was still in his pockets, the rifle was loaded and ready—and he wasn’t more than half dead. All things considered, he was in pretty good shape.
The long way round was still the best way home. To
make for the coast and hope to catch a boat going south. A boat with a skipper who liked money and didn’t ask questions. They would try to stop him from doing that. And they might just do that. He didn’t think they would, but they might. That was part of the game.
Lassiter kept going.
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