nicked.'
Green handed him the empty shells. 'Would yu say they were fired outa that gun?' he asked.
Darky gave them one glance. 'Hell! There ain't a shadder o' doubt,' he said. 'Them marks is eedentical.' He looked at Raven and spat disgustedly. 'An' I was for him,' he added. 'Stranger, I'm right ashamed.'
A tense silence followed the black-bearded man's verdict and instant condemnation. Swiftly the tell-tale tubes passed from hand to hand, but in every case the scrutiny was of the briefest. Familiar with weapons as all present were the evidence was conclusive, even to the dullest intellect. Had further proof been needed, Raven's ashen face supplied it. The blow, coming in the moment of triumph, had shattered his self-control. He knew that he was beaten, that nothing he could say or do would save him. Not only had the fatal weapon been on him, but he had admitted that he prized it; Green, too, had been astute enough to have the cartridges examined by one of his, Raven's, supporters; there was no loophole. A cold fear clutched at his heart and he cursed himself for having kept and worn the gun. Furtively he glanced about, reading his doom in the set, lowering faces of those who, but a few moments before, had been his friends. At the thought of all he had so nearly gained a madness came upon him, a fierce desire to taunt these men, to vent his spleen upon them for the last time. He rose and faced them, a sinister, evil figure.
'Yo're a clever lot, ain't yu?' he sneered. 'Superior race, salt o' the earth--scum would fit yu better. Me, I'm what yu called me. The Vulture, that damned Injun, the unwanted brat of a pore white an' his copper-coloured squaw, yet I've beaten an' fooled yu all--killed, robbed, an' had yu pattin' me on the back for a good fella. Bite on that! Why, if it hadn't bin for a stranger'--his gaze rested viciously on Green--'yu'd be eatin' outa my hand this minit like the dawgs yu are. Which of yu has the pluck an' savvy to plan an' do as I did? Not one o' yu.'
The stinging, scornful voice lashed them like a whip and he had his moment. Silent, spellbound, they stared at the extraordinary spectacle of a criminal glorying in his evil, baiting the men at whose hands he must shortly die. Only Strade spoke:
'Yu admittin' Potter was right, Raven?' he asked.
The half-breed grinned hideously. 'Yu pore pin-head, ain't I said so?' he retorted. 'Potter knowed all, an' I killed him, for that, an' so's I could buy the town with its own coin.' The mad laugh came again. 'Oh, I played big, an' damn near got away with it.'
'Yu--robbed--the stage?'
He turned on the speaker. 'Yeah, Pardoe, I stole yore roll an' flung a bit of it back to yu in charity,' he gibed. 'Ah, would yu?'
For Pardoe, with the growl of a savage beast, was reaching for his hip. Raven's hand flashed to his breast, a shot crashed, and the gambler went writhing to the floor, and was still. The killer faced round, crouching, the smoking weapon poised.
'Fooled yu too, Sudden,' he jeered. 'Yu guessed at one gun, but yu didn't figure on two, did yu? Now'--the muzzle was directed point-blank at Green's breast--'if anybody makes a move, yu die.' His beady eyes gloated over the man whose life he held in the crook of a finger, for Green's guns were back in their holsters. Raven broke the tense silence. 'Sudden the Second is goin' to hell presently,' he rasped. 'Sudden the First is goin' now, damn him.'
As the last words left his lips Green's right hand swept to his side. To the onlookers the reports seemed simultaneous. They saw the younger man stagger back as a bullet seared his left temple, and then Raven reeled, his knees hinged under him, and he collapsed like a house of cards. For a long moment there was no sound--men were breathing again--and then Rusty voiced the thoughts of all:
'My Gawd!' he said in awed admiration, 'Raven had him covered an' he beat him to it! Sudden, huh? Well, I believe yu.'
Green sheathed his gun and mustered up a grin as Pills came to bandage his hurt. 'On'y a scratch, doc,' he said.
'H'm, another inch to the left and yu'd have been travelling together,' the little man said grimly. 'I'd given you up.'
'He figured wrong--reckoned I'd raise the gun, but I fired from the hip,' the patient explained. 'If he hadn't been so keen on cussin' me--'
At the far end of the room a crowd gathered round the fallen men; both were dead. Raven's thin lips were drawn back in an ugly snarl and between the staring eyes was the mark where the bullet had entered.
'An' we thought he never packed no artillery,' Durley said.
'I knew different,' Green told him. 'Twice he nearly went for it; when he shot Jevons, and again when I throwed him off the Double S, but I didn't suspect he carred a brace.'
'Good thing he was totin' the one he did his dirty work with,' Strade commented.
'I figured he would be,' the marshal explained. 'Yu know how it is with a gun; they has differences, an' a fella gets fond of his own, an' wise to its little ways. When he told us it was a favourite, I felt pretty shore.'
'Well, he's saved thisyer town the cost of a rope,' Loder put in.
Which was the best that anyone could find to say of the late owner of the Red Ace.
* * *
Lawless was itself again when, two weeks later, Green emerged from the Red Ace and went in search of his deputy. He found him in the office, sitting with his feet on the ramshackle desk, moodily smoking.
'Howdy, marshal,' the new-comer greeted.
Pete looked up. 'Yo're a-goin' then?' he asked, and regret was plain in his voice. 'How'd they take it?'
'One an' all they wept copious,' Green grinned. 'But I guess that was just to spare my feelin's. Yu see, they know yu wouldn't accept unless I pull my freight, an' they're pinin' for yu.'
'Yo're seven sorts of a liar, includin' the damn kind,' the little man smiled. 'Dunno as I wanta be marshal anyways. I'm goin' to miss yu a whole lot, Jim.' And then, with the cowboy's natural aversion to showing emotion, he added, 'I'll have no one to talk to.'
'Too bad we couldn't persuade Black Feather to stay put,' the other suggested slyly. For the Indian, astride his Spanish horse and gripping his cherished carbine, had departed a few days earlier, refusing all offers save cartridges and a small supply of food. After solemnly shaking hands with his 'white brothers' he had delivered a long harangue in his own tongue, and then, with a dignified gesture of farewell, had ridden into the wilderness. His address had left Pete gasping.
'Now whoever would 'a' guessed he had all that conversation concealed in him?' was his comment. 'Would yu say he was blessin' or cussin' us?'
'I gather he was askin' the Great Spirit to make our trails pleasant, to confound our foes, an' give us plenty cattle, bosses, an' wives,' was the marshal's free translation.
'I hope the Great Spirit don't hear that last bit. I don't want no wives--none whatever,' Pete had said.
A recollection of this remark reminded Green of something else. 'The bride an' bridegroom is due back from Tucson,' he said. 'Yu'll have Andy to chatter with, an' there's allus Durley.'
Pete grunted. 'Andy's slid back into his early childhood agin: can on'y speak one word--Tonia,' he complained. 'Oh, I know she's wonderful--he told me so hisself, 'bout a million times. Durley's as bad, though he can say two words--Red Ace. Holy cats! yu'd think he'd took over the White House at Washin'ton. No, I'll have to win me a parrot, if yu must go, an' won't let me trail along.'
'I have it to do,' Green said gravely. 'An' it's a one-man job, ol'-timer.'
So the day came when Andy and Tonia stood on the veranda of the Double S ranch-house to take farewell of the man to whom they owed their happiness. Reuben Sarel, Strade, and Pete were there, and all were loth that he should leave. But he had met every protest with a slow shake of the head, and now, as from the saddle of the big black, he looked at these good friends, there was a suspicion of sadness behind the smiling eyes.
'I don't see why you have to go,' Tonia told him for perhaps the twentieth time that morning.
'I got a rovin' disposition,' he evaded. 'Allus did wanta find out what was the other side o' the hill.'
The girl gave a gesture of despair. 'But you will come to see us again?' she pleaded.
At once she was reminded of that first time she had met him, sprawling outside the Red Ace. Little creases came in the corners of his eyes, and the firm lips softened under the disarming grin which made a boy of him again, as he replied:
'I'll shore be back--for the christenin'.'
