a revolver in his hand about waist-high, the barrel pointed floorward. The eyes in his hard-set lean face did not lift from the shallow glittering ones of the boy killer.
The outlaws were caught at momentary disadvantage. They both carried rifles, and at short range that weapon is unwieldy and slow to handle. With so much at stake, they had not dared to leave the rifles in the hall.
Frawley's huge rounded shoulders filled the doorway. 'Don't start anything,' he cried to Stevens. 'All we want is a key to a car.'
Without lifting his gaze from Hal, Fenwick snapped an order from the side of his mouth to the other ruffian. 'Keep yore trap shut. I'm runnin' this.'
Hal said, his voice quiet and even, 'There will be no shooting here unless you start it.'
Even then, in the dreadful stress of that moment, Dale was proud of her man. He carried his lean, flat- muscled body as one does who is physically fit and very sure of himself. The poised alertness of him told how well- balanced his reflexes were.
'I've a mind to blast you right now,' Fenwick croaked. 'You're living on borrowed time, damn you.'
A tight hard ball knotted below Dale's heart. She reached a hand to the top of the bookcase to steady herself. The weight of it shook for an instant a small statuette standing there, the head of the Praxiteles Hermes.
'I —you can have my coupe,' she said unsteadily. 'I'll get the key.'
'Where is the coupe?' Fenwick asked.
'At the end of the house.'
'Get the key.'
Dale went to her desk, chose a bunch of three keys, took them to the outlaw, and walked back to the bookcase.
Still watching Stevens, the young scoundrel said to Dale, 'You're going with us, girl.'
Hal cut in curtly. 'No.'
The cold eyes of the bandit filled with rage. 'I say yes.'
'Don't be a fool, Fenwick,' Hal answered. 'Try anything like that, and this whole country would run you down.'
'Time we got going, Brick,' Frawley interrupted uneasily.
'Come here, girl,' ordered Brick, an ugly rasp to his voice. His rifle, still at the hip, pointed directly at his enemy.
Hal's eyes, very searching and steady, held fast to the young bandit. 'It won't be that way,' he warned, his voice dangerously gentle.
Frawley's huge frame no longer blocked the doorway. He had sidestepped, to be out of direct range. Stevens did not look at him, but his eyes registered the maneuver.
'Stay where you are, Frawley,' the cattleman enjoined.
The big man stopped. 'Now, boys,' he wheedled. 'No need of trouble. All we want is to make a getaway. We don't aim to hurt the young lady.'
The jaw muscles of Fenwick stood out tensely like ropes. Hal read the signal in the stormy evil lights flooding his eyes. The rifle and the revolver roared, almost together. Already Hal's pliant body was on its way to cover back of the lounge head. The guns crashed again. Frawley flung up his rifle to fire. Something hurtled across the room and struck him on the chin. He staggered back, his shot gone wild. The Hermes bust broke into fragments and littered the floor.
Fenwick swayed on his feet, which seemed rooted to the carpet. On his face was a horrible twisted look of agony. His third bullet went through the ceiling just as a slug from the revolver caught him in the stomach. It took a fourth one to bring him down. He rolled over, arms flung out at length, the rifle under his body.
The big ruffian had disappeared. He had snatched the key from the floor where Brick Fenwick had dropped it and had vanished through the doorway. His heavy boots clumped on the porch as he ran.
Hal's gaze did not lift from the inert figure on the floor. He moved slowly forward, gun in hand, a thin trickle of smoke rising from the barrel. With the toe of his boot he nudged the ribs of his fallen foe, to make sure the man was beyond doing any mischief.
He heard a strangled sob and turned to look at Dale. She was leaning heavily against the bookcase, the eyes in her ashen face big as a biscuit. Hal walked across the room and said gently, 'It's all over.'
'Are you… all right?' she asked, in a whisper.
'All right, thanks to you again. I couldn't watch Frawley too. If you hadn't flung the little statue he would have got me.'
Two rifles crashed outside, so close they sounded almost like one. Another sounded, a moment later.
Hal ran out to the porch. Nuney and Vallejo were approaching from the bunkhouse. Frawley lay in front of the coupe.
'Carlos got him,' Nuney cried. 'As he jumped down from the porch. We thought he had killed you.'
'No. Fenwick is dead in the house. Lucky for me they had rifles in their hands and couldn't use revolvers without warning me.'
Nuney looked at Hal with wondering admiration. 'You certainly take the cake, sir. Yore friends leave you here at the house to keep you out of trouble while they hunt down these two wolves, and I'm blamed if they don't come knocking at the door where you are and you rub out the worst of them. Come to think of it, you have busted this gang of bad men up almost single-handed. They start crowding you, and you kill three, take two prisoner, and reform two more. I never saw the beat of it. After today Tick Black will find himself playing a lone hand. What's left of the boys will be slipping away fast as they can.'
Nuney's prediction proved to be correct. There was an exodus of rustlers from the Rabbit Ear country. Cash Polk reached the border and escaped. Black, Chad, and two others were caught and faced a trial. Mullins turned state's witness. His companions in crime were convicted.
In the peaceful days that followed, there was a double wedding in the Soledad Valley. But a week later, both husbands were in the armed forces. Tom Wall joined the Navy, Hal Stevens the Marines. When the rumor came back that Hal had sailed for the South Pacific, Casey voiced an opinion in the Seven Up and Down bunkhouse that was enthusiastically endorsed by those present, even though they knew it was a humorous exaggeration.
'If Hal Stevens really has gone, the Japs had better throw in their hands,' he said, 'for that boy sure will clean them up.'
It is reasonable to hope that he will help a million or two more like him do that job.
THE END
