blood-caked shirt of a dead man. Emitting ages-old animal cries that froze the blood of their victims.
One moment you only heard them coming hard for the kill. The next moment they were there and at their deadly work. Before Joe Stovers and the others could get their guns into operation a swift shadow flashed in and sank a lance deep into the soft belly of one of the rearing, frightened stage horses.
Stovers fired slowly and carefully at the dark figures now swirling in the narrow, moonlit street; at the same instant the new .45 in Ace Saunders' right hand almost split his eardrums with its concussion. The Apache who'd lanced the now-screaming horse toppled out of the rawhide saddle and Saunders' voice said beside the former sheriff and marshal, 'Funny. Tom had this gun made special for me at the factory when he went back East and they sent it by mail. A little present, he said. First time I've used it on a man.'
He fired again and said, 'Damn, I missed that one. A little shaky, I guess.'
Amid the crash of pistols and answering wild shots from .44-40 repeaters in the hands of Loco's broncos came Sam Blaze Face's bellow, muffled by the walls of his dive.
'Hurrah for the Cherokees! Who says they cain't lick them 'Paches?'
The fight was over in less than two minutes. A scream that probably was a war command from Loco broke out and the Apaches reacted instinctively. They broke away and spurred on up the gulch, gone as fast and as suddenly as they had appeared.
Somebody let out a gasp as though he'd been holding his breath and there came a scrape of feet in the darkness as the men rose. Out in the street a dark, almost naked figure was crawling around on its hands and knees. A spurt of fire leaped from the doorway of the saloon and the Indian fell flat and lay shuddering.
'You women all right?' Joe Stovers called in the darkness.
'We're all right, Joe,' came Clara's voice in answer from the floor. 'Anybody hurt?'
'I don't think so.' Stovers was using the plunger to clear empty shells and reload.
Judge Eaton said, 'I give fervent thanks to the Creator they are gone.'
'They're not gone,' Stovers said grimly, punching in fresh cartridges. 'They were just paying their first installment on a debt to Tom Harrow for the guns he sold them. They ain't through.'
He jerked loose the bar and opened the door and ran outside. The lanced horse was down in harness, kicking, and the others were plunging frantically. Stovers ran in, leveled the pistol, and shot the wounded horse through the head. He ran for the leaders and had them by the bit when a big red horse came along the street at a thundering run, a tall man high in the stirrups. Kerrigan hauled up and jumped down, looking about him.
'Joe, everybody all right?'
'Far as I know. Where'd you come from, Lew?'
Tersely Kerrigan told him. 'I ducked out of sight when they ran by. Couldn't do anything else. Hated to leave Pirtman without talking with you, Joe.'
'I'm damned glad you did. I think Eaton lost his mind today. Can't figure it any other way. He stripped me of all authority, Lew. I'm out. Jeb and Ace Saunders are inside with new badges on…'
His booted feet swept from the ground and his stocky figure hung high for a moment as he fought the plunging horses, and then Lew Kerrigan had hold of them too.
They fought them down and together held them, and then the figure of Ace Saunders loomed up with Jeb Donnelly beside him.
'Free drinks on the house!' bellowed the voice of the Cherokee from across the street. 'But there ain't much left and then I'm outa business. Come one, come all. Ladies welcome!'
Kerrigan had released his grip on the reins and bits while Stovers fumbled at tie ropes on the lead horses' hames. The horses were trying to twist sideways to get away from the dead animal, down on its side in the midst of them.
'Hold it, Saunders,' Kerrigan said coldly, hand over his gun butt. 'This is not the time or place. Anything you want settled can be taken care of later. We've got trouble enough.'
'Donnelly, you and Saunders arrest that man,' Judge Eaton shouted angrily. 'Put him in handcuffs!'
'Jeb will get himself killed if he tries it,' the gunman informed the livid-faced judge coolly. 'He tried to draw on Kerrigan once before and got his jaw caved in. If he tries it now, I'll kill him, and that goes for you too, Tom. I settle my own scores in my own way and this ain't the time.'
Kerrigan left them and the three guards breaking the dead animal out of harness and walked to the dark opening of the courtroom door. He saw three dim shadows and looked at them in surprise.
He said, 'This is no place for you to be,' and then wished he hadn't. Two, or all three, had come on his account.
'I think we can risk a light now, if there's one back there.'
'What about those Indians, Lew?' Clara asked. 'Won't they be back?'
'I doubt it at the moment. Their horses were still running hard up the gulch and out of rifle range. They don't like to fight in darkness and there'll be no need to.'
'Why do you say that?' Tom Harrow snapped bluntly. 'Or did they tell you all about it before you followed them in?'
Kerrigan took two steps forward and got him by the coat. He drew back his fist and smashed it hard into the hated features of the man who had sent him to prison. Harrow fell limply and Kerrigan said, 'I can see enough in the dark, Tom, that you'd better not try to slide out that gun I took away from you in Yuma. Loco doesn't happen to be in position to
They looked. It was a rolling ball of fire. The night breeze, blowing in from the southeast as always, had caught it and moved it along. But it was the terrible heat of expanding air, growing to explosive intensity as it became hotter, that was mushrooming the roaring inferno faster and faster as it grew in volume.
Joe Stovers ran up, wiping at his face and panting. 'They're going to try getting that red horse of yourn into harness, Lew. Don't know whether he's broke to pull or not but he ain't got much choice, and neither have we. We got to get out of here!'
'There's only one way to go, Joe, and Loco knows that,' Lew Kerrigan answered tiredly.
'He knew it from the beginning. North ahead of the fire. He sent several of his bucks to fire Harrow's mansion and then to hold the road up the side of the gulch. We've got no place to go that I can think of at the moment.'
Carlotta had disappeared inside and now he saw the dim glow of a light behind a curtained doorway in the back of the courtroom. Something impelled him to follow her. He found her there alone, poking idly through a lid opening in the small cookstove, as though she had to find something to do with her hands.
'Would there be time enough for coffee, Lew?' she asked.
'No,' he said. 'We're in a bad spot. The broncos are waiting for the fire to drive us up the gulch and into their rifles. And there's nowhere else to go.'
'That would mean that we won't get out alive, at least some of us?'
'That's right, Carlotta. There's a pretty good chance that at least some of us haven't much time left.'
She looked up at him and actually smiled, lifting the lid into place over the fire and laying aside the hook. 'Then I'd like to ask a question, if you don't mind, Lew. Why was it that you and Clara—that the two of you—'
'Never got married?' he interrupted soberly. 'Well, I suppose it shapes up about like this: Clara walked out beneath an arch of sabers to be married to a childhood sweetheart the day he graduated from West Point. To her he became a living symbol of something fine and great in a young country flexing its muscles. It wasn't a question of her remaining in Pirtman to be near him, and me letting that stand in my way. It was the fact that I couldn't go to a woman who'd lived her kind of life and offer her an assumed name with a background of five dead men behind and the law hunting me for it. She was strong and self-supporting and with a will and intelligence to work out her own future in her own way. Kitty was merely a lonely, helpless youngster, hunting someone and needing someone. Does that answer your question, Carlotta?'
'Yes,' she said in a low voice, 'that answers my question.'
Warmness of a kind he'd never known before stirred through him and with it the strong desire to reach out and sweep her to him. In the back of his mind had been the vague hope that when he slipped into Pirtman some night in the future to get his money from Joe Stovers she'd still be there. She must have read what was in his thoughts, for she suddenly slid inside his arms and buried her face against his chest.
'Lew,' she said and looked up at him and smiled, 'I've carried a picture inside me of how you looked that first
