smashed head of a stranger who he knew to be a Tolliver. Reluctantly he turned around and crawled back to his rifle, grabbed it in a hard fist, and began a swift descent of the brushy slope.
Jack was in a position where he could see the three saddled horses tied to the old log corral. It made him feel more confident, even though the shadows were lengthening at an alarming rate. He scooped up a rock and flung it overhand toward the house. The ruse didn’t work. He skirted through the brush as far as he dared and gained a slight sideways view of the porch; ejected brass cartridge cases caught and reflected the dying rays of the sun like scattered nuggets of gold. There wasn’t much time left, and the sheriff had a reputation at stake. He arose to a crouch, dropped the carbine, and drew his six-gun. For a long second he hesitated, then he began a wary, inanely reckless charge across the clearing toward the edge of the house.
Wes Flourney was unaware of the sheriff’s charge toward the adobe until he heard the close crash of two guns nearby. One was a rifle and the other a deeper, less piercing belch of a short-barreled six-gun. He wanted to risk a peek but dropped flat instead. None of the slugs bludgeoned into the brush within hearing distance and the deputy correctly assumed that they were aimed at the sheriff, not him. He came up to one knee, held his six-gun ready, and risked a quick peek.
Jack had swapped point-blank fire with Link Tolliver. He had recognized the big paunchy figure before one of the renegade’s bullets crumpled his right leg to support him as he limped forward, three slugs still left in his hot gun.
Suddenly Link Tolliver appeared on the porch; he had two heavy saddlebags thrown over his massive shoulder and a defiant, crazy look on his face. He had made a decision. Either he shot his way clear or he went to hell with the Mendocino loot still in his possession. Jack Masters leveled and fired once. Tolliver sagged, forced himself upright, and began an inexorable walk toward the sheriff. There was a ghastly smile on his sweat-streaked face, a wild, animal snarl. His gun belched twice in quick succession. Jack felt the burn of the slug over his hip. He was dimly conscious of the sticky warmth that was running down the inside leg of his pants to pour into his boot.
He raised his gun barrel a little and squeezed the trigger. The heavy walnut butt slammed into his palm. Link Tolliver stopped in mid-stride. The snarl of hate and challenge changed to a lopsided, crazy glare. He knew he was finished now. The second shot made a gorge of thick, salty blood rise in his throat. Still, there was no pain. He realized he’d never live to spend the heavy weight of the gold and silver that gouged into his fleshy shoulder, and he didn’t care. Link Tolliver wanted just one thing on earth. That was to kill the representative of the law—of everything he loathed and despised—that was standing up, spraddle-legged, shooting it out with him.
He brought up his gun in a white, weakening fist; there was a red rim border to his eyesight that he tried to ignore. A mushroom of incredible brilliance exploded in his face; the salty taste in his throat was a torrent now. Sheriff Jack Masters had methodically shot his last shell. Link’s gun wavered. The barrel drooped, the great body sobbed once, and a rush of blood broke past the slackening lips and cascaded down the grimy shirt. The big renegade went down slowly, gracefully; he fought off going with every bit of his remaining strength. When the body hit the warped old planking, Jack could feel the reverberation all the way over to where he stood on one good leg.
With the grim singleness of purpose that made the old-time sheriffs great and respected, Jack Masters went slowly forward until he was over the fallen Tolliver. He stooped and painfully picked up the dead man’s gun, saw that two bullets remained in the cylinder, and dragged his lacerated leg after him toward the open door of the house. He stopped just outside the opening and there were little beads of painful sweat popping out on his forehead.
“Come out,
There was no answer, and Jack made a crazy lurch that brought his gory, ragged form into the doorway. He was crouched and holding back the trigger of Tolliver’s warm gun. His thumb was already sliding off the hammer when a muscular convulsion stayed the deadly digit. There was a foolish look on his face. His voice came out cracked and rasping: “Who are you?”
“Jessica Tolliver, Link’s sister. I came here to try an’ talk them out of it. It’s always been the same. Trouble an’ bloodshed.” The voice was rich, even in its agony and pathos. “They wouldn’t listen.” A pert, oval of a face with monumental suffering writhing in the dark depths of the cobalt eyes swung up to Jack. “Go ahead, Sheriff. I have a gun. Shoot me.”
“Jessica.” The voice was husky. Something jolting had struck Jack under the heart somewhere. He had never had it happen before. It was crazy that it should hit him there and then, while the still warm blood of her dead brother and kinsmen was even then congealing only a few feet away.
“Jessica, drop the gun. Stand trial, Jessica.”
The girl shook her head and a wealth of taffy hair glinted under the dove-gray Stetson as her full bosom rose and fell irregularly under the sudden impact of a weak, delicious agony that ran wildly within her as their eyes locked. “What’s your name, Sheriff?”
“Jack. Jack Masters.”
“No, Jack. It’s too late for the trial.” There was an almost desperate wistfulness in her voice and eyes as she walked over close and looked up into the sheriff’s face, drawn and white with weakness and pain.
“Oh, Jack, I’ve had one awfully brief glance of what might have been tonight. I didn’t think it would ever happen, and now”—her round arm waved in a hard, frustrated little circle that covered the embattled ground of Cobb’s Ferry—“it not only did happen, but here, where there’s death.”
A slight sob echoed in her throat. She raised quickly on the toes of her boots, brushed a quick, soft little kiss over Jack’s mouth, and went out the door, off the porch, and down toward the horse corral. Jack, remembering suddenly, frantically, that Wes Flourney was out there somewhere, dropped his gun and lurched outside to yell a warning. His mouth was still open and wordless when the snarling blast of a single shot rang out. Jessica Tolliver took two faltering little steps, and fell.
Jack Masters ran drunkenly over the ragged earth where the long evening shadows were blotting out the devastation of the spent, blood-drenched day. He went down beside her and lifted her head. There was a raw bruise on her forehead and a welter of rich, vital blood was trickling from the valley between her breasts, high up near the top button of her shirt. “Jessica…”
“You, Jack?” There wasn’t a shred of reproach in the words. Wonder, maybe, but no accusation. He shook his head.
“No, Jessie. My deputy. He couldn’t tell in the dusk. He didn’t know, Jessie.”
“Is it bad, Jack?”
He bit back the acid that erupted in his throat and nodded his head gently. She smiled up at him. There was a peaceful finality on her face and she reached up shakily and dropped one small, dimpled hand over his filthy knuckles. “Jack, if I save a place beside me, up there, will you look for it when you ride over?”
Again he nodded. “Yes, Jessie. Save a place for me. I’ll be along. Wait for me, Jessie, promise?” She sighed a little and nodded, her moist, large eyes on his with a deep abiding faithfulness. They were dimming now and Jack’s soul was wrenched hard when the honey-colored hair fell loosely over his arm with a solemn, final grace.
The ride back to Mendocino was like the return of two wraiths. The darkness hid most of the brush scratches, the ragged, torn clothing, and the sunkeneyed, bone weariness. It hid the little string of rack horses that plodded patiently along behind Jack’s and his deputy’s horses. But all the darkness in the world couldn’t hide the soggy, plumping sounds as the corpses, lashed sideways over the saddles, bumped and lurched against the ropes that held them, taking their last ride on a horse.
The light of a new day made a difference. Yates had his bloodstained money from Link’s saddlebags and Bud Prouty was mending as well as could be expected. Mendocino’s boothill boasted of several new graves, but one grave, at the thin-lipped stubborn insistence of the sheriff, had been put apart. It was a better grave, too. There were flowers and a prayer and a silent renewal of a promise lying over it like an aura.
Mendocino was proud of her sheriff. There were triumphant celebrations and fireworks, and Jack Masters smiled his way through it all, the same old Jack, just a little quieter, perhaps, a little grayer in the face, and a little less willing to laugh, but to the cowmen and the townsmen these things went unnoticed and ignored. To them he was their conquering hero.
