“We might make a deal,” said Culver.
“I’m not dealing,” snapped Perkins. “Not with a man who hasn’t any chips.”
His right hand slammed the gun muzzle into Culver’s stomach, his left came up and struck, a savage open-handed blow that rocked Culver’s head.
“Next time,” snarled Perkins, “I will use my fist. I’ll knock every tooth you have down your dirty throat.”
Culver surged away from the wall, arms half lifted, but the gun barrel boring into his stomach drove him back.
“Gut-shot men die slow and hard,” said Perkins grimly, “but they always die. Try that once again and I’ll let you have it.”
Culver saw Perkins’ fist coming and he tried to duck, but it caught him alongside the jaw and drove his head back against the wall. The fist came up again and pain exploded in his brain. He felt himself falling and a shock went through him as he hit the floor. A heavy boot slammed into his ribs and knocked him over, flat upon his back.
Through the hazy grayness that filled the room, he heard Hamilton’s bawling voice.
“Perkins! Lay off for a minute. Give him a chance to talk.”
He was on his hands and knees now, head hanging toward the floor, and he wondered how he got there. The last he had remembered was lying on his back.
He shook his head and saw the dark drops that sprayed upon the floor. He lifted an unsteady hand and wiped his chin and his hand was red.
Eyes clearing, he stared along the worn pattern of the carpeting that covered the floor, and sucked in his breath. There, not more than five feet in front of him, was the gun that he had dropped. One chance; that was all that he would have.
He gathered his knees beneath him, tensed, then leaped. Pain wracked his body at the effort and his fumbling hand felt the touch of metal. His fingers tightened on the grip.
A boot crashed into his stomach and half lifted him, sent a wave of nausea through him, turned him into a watery mass of retching sickness. He felt the gun slipping from his fingers, groped for it in the blackness that rolled along the floor.
A hand reached out and grabbed the nape of his neck in steel-trap fingers, hauled him up.
In front of him he saw a face of twisted rage and a working mouth that screamed profanity. His bleary eyes caught the glint of a slashing six-gun barrel and then the barrel came down and his brain exploded.
For a long moment he lay in a torpor that was merciful, then slowly, bit by bit, he became aware of his battered body. His stomach was a piece of lead that held him down and behind his back his hands and wrists were a sharp, red ache.
Slowly, he opened his eyes, careful so that the lancing light would not hit them again. But there was no light. He lay still, eyes moving slowly to try to pick up something substantial in the darkness. One by one, he made out the dark, crouched presence of furniture. The posters of the brass bed on which he lay, catching the slight glimmer of stars through the window at his back. The table that stood beside the bed with the lamp upon it.
He moved an arm to reach out and touch the table at his side, and his arm moved an inch or two and would move no more. Sharp pain lanced from wrist to elbow.
Methodically, mechanically, he narrowed down his mind to consider his hands and his brain traced out the tortured lines of bloody rawness where the ropes bit into yielding flesh. His feet, too, lashed together at the ankles.
They would be coming back. Hamilton with his cold ruthlessness, Perkins with his twisted hate. They would come back to make him talk, and when he talked, they’d kill him.
He had to get out before the two came back. Somehow he had to escape this room. And the window was the only way. A man could break a window with his shoulder, heave his body through. He shuddered at the thought of jagged broken glass, but it was the only way.
Carefully, noiselessly, he swung his feet off the bed, pulled them around until he could stand up. Coldness seeped into him as he stood there in the dark, coldness and a terrible sense of helplessness. He hopped, slowly, carefully, inch by inch. One hop, then another, would take him to the window.
Something tugged at his wrists and he halted, stood with cold sweat breaking out on him. His wrists not only were tied together, but were secured to the bed!
He pivoted cautiously and stared at the table with the lamp upon it. A lamp meant that there would be matches. He bent forward from the waist to bring his eyes closer to the table top, and there the matches were, a water tumbler full of them, sitting near the edge.
Cautiously, he hopped backwards, waggling fingers searching for the table’s edge. He found it and halted, forced his arms backward to carry the fingers to the water tumbler.
Awkwardly one finger caught the tumbler’s top, tipped it over so that the matches spilled on the table top. Scraping, fumbling, his fingers pulled the matches in a pile, then groped to find the rope that bound him to the bed.
Carefully, fumbling time after time, he piled the slack in the rope atop the matches, then stood rigid for a moment, gasping for breath.
What he had to do next would take steadiness, sureness. He could not flinch or fumble. If he knocked the matches on the floor, if he …
He managed to get a single match between two fingers, pressed the head against the table’s edge, then swiftly flipped it up. Light flared in the room and dancing shadows jigged along the wall.
He held his breath,, kept the fingers closed tight upon the flaming stick, carried it back until another finger touched the pile of matches and the rope, then dropped it.
For a moment nothing happened, then another match caught with a sputter and a second, then at least a dozen, with a sudden flare of flame and the smell of burning sulphur.
Sudden flaring heat bit into his hands and the matches flared again with a sudden puff, lighting the room with a ghastly yellow glare. Another odor came through the smell of sulphur, the stench of burning rope.
He waited and the flame of the burning match-heap bit into his hands. He waited while the shadows danced and died upon the wall, then suddenly heaved himself forward. The rope caught, held for a single instant, then snapped and hurled him forward, flat upon his face. He rolled onto his side, jack-knifed with his feet, heard the crash of the falling table as his boots slammed into it.
Sitting on the floor, he stared in horror at the flame that ate into the bedding. His thrashing feet had knocked the table over, dumped the burning matches squarely on the bed.
He heaved himself upright with a single motion, hopped desperately toward the window. Behind him the flames crackled angrily as they worked into the corn-husks. In a minute, he knew, the room would be an inferno, a roaring sheet of fire. Scant second were left to reach the window.
He stumbled and went to his knees, surged up again. The hot breath of the fire lapped against his back. Feet were running on the stairs and voices shouted. Someone had heard the table crash.
The window was before him and he gave one last hop. He stumbled and his body hit the wall and held. Desperately, he dragged his feet beneath him, lowered his shoulder to press against the window.
The boots were running across the floor just outside the door. There was no time to lose. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sheet of flame curl toward the ceiling, leave the papered wall black and flecked with glowing ash.
The sash buckled beneath his straining shoulder and the window popped like the explosion of a gun. Glass tinkled on the floor and the sash crashed outward. A blast of air swept into the room and the flames leaped high, mushrooming on the ceiling.