'Well, that's something anyhow,' the bartender smiled at him. 'It shows you've got some sense. Most of the men who come down from up there order a double whiskey and then a few more. Not being used to it, they end up on the floor almost before the marshal can—' He broke off, his face coloring.
'I won't,' Kerrigan said easily.
'You're damned well right you won't, Kerrigan,' Jeb Donnelly spoke up. 'Not if you know what's good for you. Wood Smith ain't the only one who knows how to handle you cell birds.'
He was eyeing Kerrigan's worn .44; looking at the queer way Kerrigan's right arm hung so stiff and awkward at his side. Wood Smith had said last night he'd do it up right on the arm, and Wood had kept his word. Kerrigan was badly hurt, and the damned fool still wore his gun in its accustomed place in the sheath, instead of his belt, where he'd at least have a chance to get at it with his left hand.
'So I seem to remember, Jeb,' Kerrigan said thinly. 'Under the expert tutelage of Wood Smith you got to be pretty good at handling unarmed men who couldn't help themselves. Almost as expert with a billy club as Wood Smith.'
The bartender was pouring the brandy into a small glass with studied carefulness, something in his manner indicating that he had seen this kind of thing happen before to men fresh from behind the walls on the hill. Kerrigan sensed what was coming, wondering if Donnelly was going to make a stab for it or merely soften him up still more until Ace Saunders could move in and finish the job later that morning. The thought seemed to accentuate the pain in his swelling arm and stiff elbow.
But he picked up the glass with his right hand. The sip he took was vile tasting and smoking hot to his mouth and throat. The man back of the bar slid across change for a silver dollar and grinned sympathetically.
'It'll taste better on the second round,' he said.
'Not in here it won't,' the marshal grunted.
Another man entered the place and stepped to the bar not far from where Kerrigan stood waiting for Jeb Donnelly to make his move. The newcomer's light summer suit was cloud-grey, calfskin boots red, but on his head he wore an expensive low-crowned beaver hat of a bygone era in the West. Kerrigan classified him as a gambler in town for a quick cleanup. And yet the man was tall and well built, with a definite military set to his shoulders.
Kerrigan had seen many men like him riding Grimley saddles captured from Union forces during his own four years as a Confederate officer with Terry's famed Texans.
The man spoke politely to the bartender. 'An after-breakfast constitutional, if you please, sir.'
'Anything you wish, Mr. LeRoy. Any luck yet buying some good Arizona horses?'
LeRoy. The man Bud Casey had mentioned. Kerrigan had come into the Escondido seeking information as to where he could find LeRoy. He'd found him.
He flicked a glance at both the front and rear doors of the deep, narrow saloon. Ace Saunders would have new orders from Tom Harrow by now…
'A bourbon straight with a touch of sweetened water, if you please. And drinks for the other two gentlemen with my compliments. Gentlemen?'
'Thanks, friend,' Kerrigan smiled in return, his eyes still watching both doors. 'This one will do me for the present.'
Jeb Donnelly spoke again; 'You damn' right it will. You got a half-hour to git outa Yuma, Kerrigan. Drink up an' git goin'!'
Kerrigan guessed shrewdly that inasmuch as there had been no shooting in front of the Big Adobe, the marshal figured Kerrigan had bowed to some kind of an agreement with Harrow. Donnelly's job, it now appeared, was to harry Kerrigan on out of town and head him north to Pirtman. And Donnelly was doing his part of the job in his own way.
The pupils in Kerrigan's eyes began to pin point as they had when he left Harrow. His piercing gaze locked with the marshal's belligerent, red-shot eyes.
Kerrigan said almost softly, 'Wood did a pretty good job with the club this morning, Jeb. But when you see him tell him it wasn't quite good enough.'
He moved in closer to the heavy, scowling face; in toward the man who was a brutish bruiser lacking the cool courage of the slim, ever-smiling Ace Saunders.
Whatever had been in Donnelly's mind when he entered the Escondido, his courage was now whiskied to the apex and a big hand with blunt end fingers crept downward to the butt of his pistol; and yet the flame of a new fear lay burning amid the alcohol inflaming his brain. Something had gone amiss in the handling of this tall man towering above him; the man who had just come out of prison for killing another town marshal.
Donnelly didn't carry a club. He'd have to make his pistol barrel do now.
A wave of fear began to wash through Jeb Donnelly's brain. He'd overplayed his hand and pushed the wrong man too far. He weighed his chances against a club-beaten arm a second time.
Then, on a frantic impulse, he drew swiftly.
The big pistol slid smoothly from its sheath but another gun flashed into sight in Lew Kerrigan's left hand— the gun he had taken from Tom Harrow. The thin barrel and cylinder of the pistol slashed out at the side of the big man's heavy jaw, thudding against the fat face with a crunch as teeth were torn loose and a jawbone caved in.
Donnelly's big body collapsed to the floor and a flabby-lipped groan gushed out of his mouth, the thick mouth beginning to bleed. He made a feeble attempt to sit up and did raise himself a few inches. But Kerrigan's memory of the ex-guard was long and he drew back his right boot a distance of fifteen inches. The toe lashed into that ugly red face and he watched the marshal relax on his massive back in some of the fresh mud his big shoes had tracked in from the street.
'It's not a habit of mine to kick a man when he's down,' Kerrigan said pointedly. 'I was merely paying back a clubbing Jeb once gave me when I was down.'
He stepped back and the thin-barreled pistol slid from sight. The bartender said, 'That's all right, friend. I've seen Jeb work on drunks in here. He's had that coming for a long time.'
Kerrigan, turning to ask the man LeRoy about buying a good horse in a hurry, heard a soft chuckle, saw the extended hand.
'My implicit admiration, sir. About the most workmanlike job I've ever had the pleasure of witnessing. My name, by the way, is Hannifer LeRoy. I'm a California trader over here in Arizona on a horse-buying trip.'
'I was looking for you because I happen to need a good horse in a hurry, LeRoy,' Lew Kerrigan answered with pleasure. 'I'm out of prison less than an hour, and from the looks of things I'm outside the law once more. I didn't want to kill Donnelly, much as he deserves it at the hands of some decent man. But laying a six-shooter against his jaw makes it necessary more than ever that I find a good horse.'
'That I can understand, Mr. Kerrigan,' agreed the horse dealer, chuckling. 'I have forty-six head of picked stuff on pasture along the river a half mile below town, night-herded by Old Cap, one of my drovers. Suppose we —'
'Donnelly won't keep that long,' Kerrigan interrupted sharply. 'He might cut me off south and drive me into Mexico. I happen to be going the other direction.' He turned to the silent bartender, who had made no effort to assist the fallen marshal. 'When you help Jeb to his feet, tell him we're square. But I've been pushed once too often since daybreak this morning.'
He picked up his glass and downed the few drops of brandy remaining, and again the horse buyer laughed softly. 'I've no wish for trouble with Arizona law, Mr. Kerrigan, so if the bartender will forget about it when the estimable marshal regains his feet and spits out a few teeth, I'll sell you the pick of those forty-six head which I'm riding as a personal saddle horse. He's over in a stall back of the hotel. He'll cost you two hundred cash, no notes or credit.'
'If he's the kind of a horse I need right now, hell be worth two hundred,' Lew said. 'Let's go take a look. Jeb's coming out of it.'
Donnelly had let out a slobbering groan. With eyes still closed, he ran a sleeve across his mouth and left a streak of red along the damp blue cloth. Kerrigan moved toward the doorway with LeRoy beside him, and now a strange fear began to bite its way through his mind. Word would spread like lightning around town and there would be no doubt of what would happen if he met Ace Saunders. Saunders also knew the condition of Kerrigan's nearly broken arm and elbow, and Saunders would have more orders from Tom Harrow by now.
The .44 slid out of its sheath and went back into the front of Lew Kerrigan's waistband, butt left. They
