She looked as though she'd like to bite him, but she stayed. I went to the front room with the rugs and the heads of animals. Two men were kneeling under windows with the glass shot out. One of them was the bartender. Another man was lying on the floor by the fireplace. I walked over to him. He'd been shot through the shoulder. His coat was off and somebody had tied a towel over the wound.
One of the men by the window said: “You'd better duck, mister.”
I bent down. “Where are they?”
“Back of the cars, I guess,” the bartender said. “I can't see 'em.”
“How many?”
“About ten.”
The other man took a snap shot at something. I fell flat on the floor. There was a jerky series of shots outside and the rest of the glass went out of the windows.
“Holy Christ!” the bartender said.
They gave us a burst with a machine-gun. Then a voice called: “Gus. Gus Papas.”
Papas crawled into the room. He crawled with a pistol in his hand, banging it on the floor each time he put the hand down. I moved so I would be behind him if it went off. “Gus Papas,” the voice outside called.
“What you want?”
“Either we come in, or we blast you.”
“Go ahead,” Gus said. “Blow 'im up.”
“Look, Gus,” said another voice. “We just want to take a look around. We won't hurt you. Or your joint.”
“Why you shoot my windows out?”
“Because you shot at us.”
“Sure I shoot. Why you try to break my door down?”
“Let's let 'em have it,” said another voice. “You can't reason with a Greek.”
“Come on, Gus. Use your head.”
“You go “way,” Gus said.
There was a shot out in back. The machine-gun let go in front, bringing down an elk's head over the fireplace. It damned near scared me to death. I had my revolver out before I realized what had happened. There was a lot of shooting out in back. The parley had just been a fake to give Pug's men time to close in on the place. There was another burst in front. The man with the bartender by the windows yelped with pain and dropped his rifle. A splinter of wood had torn a gash in his cheek. He started to run across the, room towards Papas's office, but a bullet brought him down. He thrashed around on the floor, bleeding from his cheek. I started to crawl across the room. I wanted to get to the office. I saw Ginger and Waterman standing by the door, and the other behind them.
“Go back,” I shouted.
Waterman pushed Ginger back and started for the windows on hands and knees. He went past me. “This isn't your fight,” I said.
There was shooting on all sides of the house. The bartender was firing out his window. I could hear another tommy-gun in back. Gunpowder smoke began to fill the room. Waterman kept on crawling. “Don't be a damn fool,” I called after him.
Papas had gone I don't know where. Ginger and the others were standing well back in his office. Waterman reached the windows and picked up the rifle the wounded man had dropped. He stood up and began to fire at the parked cars. A man came up right in front of him. He had been hiding under the window. He poked a pistol at Waterman and let him have the load. It was as though somebody had opened up Waterman's stomach with an axe. He bent over and hit his head on the floor. Winnie screamed. I braced myself against the floor with my left elbow and brought the revolver to bear on the man and squeezed the trigger. There was the explosion and the whunk of lead hitting bone. Part of the man's face tore away and he slid out of sight. Waterman lay on the floor, bent like a pretzel. There was heavy shooting out in back. I crawled to the door of Papas's office. The two men were trying to quiet Winnie.
“Don't, Winnie; don't,” Jonesy was saying.
Ginger stared at me, her face excited. “Scared?” I asked her.
“Get me a gun.”
I peered into the trophy room. The bartender was still shooting out his window. I could just see him through the smoke. I saw Waterman and the two wounded men on the floor. The tommy-gun began to work again; the bullets knocking pieces off the fireplace.
“If you think I'm going to let you go out there, you're nuts,” I told Ginger.
Winnie had calmed down a little. “Is he dead?” she asked between sobs.
“He's fine,” I said.
There was a shout outside and the shooting stopped. The silence seemed strange. I put my revolver away and found a pack of cigarettes. I lit one for Ginger, and then one for myself. The smoke burned my mouth. “I guess we beat 'em off,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVEN
LIKE HELL we had beat them off. We found that out when Davison went into the trophy room to look at Caryle Waterman. The bartender by the window motioned him to bend down, but he didn't pay any attention. He walked over to the body and just as he looked down at it somebody outside let go at him. I saw the flash and heard the crack of the bullet, and when Davison went down I thought he'd been shot, too. But he crawled back to the
