Culver thrust his head and chest through the broken window, saw the sloping roof of a shed beneath him. Lucky, said his brain. Lucky that it’s there to break your fall.
He shoved with all the power that was in his feet, felt his body sliding out the window. A knife-like piece of broken glass slashed through his trousers and gouged into his thigh. Then he was falling. He hit the slant roof and rolled, then fell again.
The ground came up and smacked him, drove the breath from out of his lungs. He rolled and kept on rolling, out of the mud and into a patch of weeds.
Crouched in the weed patch, he tried to orient himself. There was the livery barn and a vacant lot and beyond that the Antlers Hotel. The hotel, he told himself, was the place to go.
He surged to his feet and hopped, hopped with every ounce of strength that was in his body. Grass caught at his feet and tripped him and he got up again, hopped on, in a desperate race with time.
Men were yelling on the street, feet were pounding on the sidewalks. Someone was shouting in a bull-like voice, over and over again: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”
He wasted precious seconds to glance over his shoulder, saw that the Crystal Bar was a mass of twisting flame all along its second story. He glanced around again, stared upward at the hotel windows, suddenly shouted at a figure standing in one lighted square.
“Nancy! Nancy! It’s Culver!”
He stumbled to his knees, fought his way upright again.
Nancy Atwood had opened her window, was leaning out.
“Nancy!” he shouted.
His feet caught on a discarded wooden box and he went down again into a tangled, beaten heap.
CHAPTER FIVE
Fist Fight in Hell
The ground was soft and cool beneath him and the shouting of the men out in the street was a muted sound, as if from far away. Culver lay face down and waited. His mind was, for the moment, blank, resting too from the horror of the fire, from the unreasoning fear of an animal that is trapped and cornered.
Beating hoofs went by and roused him, twisted him upward from the ground. A horse went past, mane flying in the garish light of the burning building, feet pounding in terror. Someone had gotten into the livery barn and was turning loose the horses before the fire could spread from the flaming barroom.
He struggled to his knees, tried to rise to his feet, sank back again when his tortured ankles screamed in pain. Other horses galloped past, wild eyes gleaming in the light. Above the yelling of the men out in the street came the clank of buckets. A fire-fighting line was being formed, passing buckets filled with water from man to man, probably to wet down the livery barn. For there could be no hope of saving the Crystal Bar. The place was a torch that towered into the night, a pillar of curling fire topped by dense black smoke, seen faintly in the first grayness of the coming dawn.
“Grant!”
Culver twisted around, saw the girl running toward him, coat wrapped about her, hair flying across her shoulders.
“Nancy!” he shouted. “Over here, Nancy.”
He struggled to his feet as she came up.
She stopped before him, for a moment said no word, staring at him, face flushed by the flaring fire.
“What happened?” she asked.
“There’s a knife in my vest pocket,” he told her. “That is, if it hasn’t fallen out. No, the lower one on the right.”
Her fingers found it, brought it out.
“It was because of Bob,” she sobbed. “You got into all this trouble because of what you did for him. He told me.”
He shook his head. “It was something else,” he said.
She hacked at the rope that bound his wrists and he felt it loosen and fall away. His arms fell to his side and he lifted them in front of him. The wrists looked like so much raw meat and the hands were streaked with blood.
“Now your feet,” said Nancy. “Sit down so I can get at them.”
“Let me,” he said.
He reached out his hand and she gave him the knife. Seated, he hacked at the cords savagely.
“But what’s it all about?” she asked. “The fire and you out here like this.”
“Plenty,” he told her. “You see, I set the fire.”
He snapped the blade of the knife, returned it to his pocket.
“That man you were asking about all the way out,” said Nancy. “You found him?”
Culver shook his head. “No, I didn’t find him, but I found what happened to him. And this is just a start.”
He reeled to his feet, stamped to bring back the circulation.
“You better get back inside,” he said. “It’s no place for you out here. Thanks for coming down.”
Above the crackle of the fire and the shouting in the street, he heard the rush of feet behind him, swung around. With a yell of warning, he thrust out a hand at Nancy, sent her reeling back.
Perkins was running forward through the flame-streaked darkness. The gun in his hand glittered.
Culver ducked swiftly, heard the angry hum of the bullet above his shoulder. His fingers scooped along the ground and clutched the edge of the wooden box that had tripped him. Straightening quickly, he hurled it in an overhanded throw at the charging man.
The six-gun barked again. Then the box crunched into Perkins, sent him reeling sidewise, staggering.
Culver leaped forward savagely and felt the heat of the muzzle flare as the gun coughed. Then his hand chopped down with a savage blow that caught the wrist behind the gun. And even as he struck, he swung again, a looping right that started at his belt and came up in a jarring smash against Perkins’ jaw. Perkins dropped the gun.
Culver stepped in close with punching fists that worked like driving pistons. Perkins gave ground slowly, stubbornly, covering up.
Culver’s foot caught in a tangled clump of grass, threw him off balance, gave Perkins the chance that he had been awaiting. Culver sensed the smashing fist rather than saw it, got his elbow up, but only partially blocked it. It skidded along his forearm and exploded on his jaw.
Perkins’ right was coming in again and he ducked against it, slammed up blindly with his left. He felt his fist strike yielding flesh and sink into it with a hollow thud. Then Perkins’ blow connected and jarred him to his toes. Culver’s right worked automatically, lashing out with a desperate strength.
Perkins’ head was a punching bag swaying in the mist … a head that bobbed and tossed. Culver stepped close and swung his left and the head snapped over, rocking on the neck. Culver’s right came up, a blow that started from boot-top level, that gained speed as it came, that had the hunched, pivoting power of 180 pounds of bone and muscle behind it.
The head was gone and Culver did not know where he was, for the head had been all that he had to go by. He raised one of his hands and ran it across his eyes, stared at the flaming wreckage of the Crystal Bar. Perkins was a dark shape on the ground, a twisted, battered shape.
Culver felt a hand upon his arm and turned around. It was Nancy Atwood. He lifted a hand and ran it across his mouth, wiping off the blood that trickled from a battered lip.
“Here,” she said and he saw that she was holding a six-gun.
Numbly he reached out and took it, thrust it in the waistband of his trousers.
“Where did you get it?” he demanded.
“I picked it up,” said Nancy. “It was the one he dropped when you hit him. I was trying to—”
He gasped. “You mean you were trying to shoot Perkins.”
She nodded, half sobbing. “But you were always in the way. I was afraid of hitting you.”