"Stand fast, Joe, or I'll shoot you, so help me!" he ordered. He looked at Kerrigan. "Five of them, Lew. I counted those shots, fast as they were; and a man like you would never carry a live one under the hammer. Your gun's empty. It's my turn now— Stand fast, Joe!" he warned again, and covered the sheriff.
"I could have made you rich, Lew. Both of us rich! But you wouldn't have it that way. You had to play it your way and now I've got all the trumps. As long as things had to end this way, I might as well tell you that I planned for you to kill Buck Havers."
"Why?" Lew Kerrigan asked in surprise. "I hardly knew you by sight at that time."
Harrow's lips beneath the clipped mustache twisted into a cruel smile that moved the long sideburns; the irrepressible gloat of a man who had known many women.
"Why?" he repeated softly. "Because of Kitty. Our long-jawed friend, Buck Havers, was just thick-brained enough to have Wild Bill Hickok ambitions after he became a twenty-five-dollar per month 'night marshal' here in Pirtman. I told him," he laughed pleasantly, "that you were a Texas gun fighter, and he sicked easy. Eagerly, I'd say. I knew you'd kill him, and I was temporarily in need of the territorial reward Joe would have to put on your head. I saw that you were guided to my place. By merest chance, old Bear Paw Daly came by on his way to you with news of the strike I was certain was Adams' Lost Diggings. I got the reward. I got the gold. And I got Kitty." He grinned at Stovers.
"I suspected some of it," Stovers grunted. "Just keep on talking a noose, Tom."
"There's nothing more to say now, I guess, except I won't ask for the reward this time. He's got an empty chamber under the hammer of his gun, and I'm going to kill him. And if I have to kill you, too, Joe, I'm quite prepared to do so."
"You made just one mistake, Harrow," Lew Kerrigan said coolly. "There's no empty chamber under the hammer."
Kitty let out a sudden wail of self-pity and fled toward the corner of the building. Only then did Kerrigan see Carlotta and Clara Thompson standing by it. He glanced at Carlotta, wondering what she would think of him now. He'd forced the man she was engaged to marry to expose his rotten soul, and, being a woman, she'd probably hate the man responsible for bringing hurt to her.
"I never thought I'd catch you with a dead chamber under the hammer," Harrow laughed and raised his pistol.
"You haven't," came the quiet reply. "I said there's a live one. But it's in one of the .44-40 repeating rifles you sold Loco. It's lined right at your head. Take a good look at it, damn you!"
He called sharply to the Indian and spoke something none of them understood. Forty feet away the Apache, naked to the waist, stepped into view as though he'd come up out of the ground. Kadoba slithered forward like a dark animal in a half crouch, the Winchester leveled.
Joe Stovers said sharply, "Hold off that damned Injun, Lew, while I get back my gun."
"Don't touch it!" Kerrigan snapped sharply.
Stovers swung around and stared. "You going to try disarming a sheriff, too?"
"I just don't want to risk you getting killed by an Apache with a nervous trigger finger. For two years he's been under the guns and clubs of guards wearing boots and broad-brimmed hats. To him you're a lawman anxious to put him back in Yuma to hang. He didn't kill Tom just now, because I'd ordered him to hold his fire no matter what happened."
"Then get him outa sight quick!" snapped the sheriff. "I see men looking over this way, and if they see an Apache after this bad scare—"
But Kadoba had already moved, disappearing around the horses under the shed. Kerrigan handed the sheriff the weapon he'd taken from Harrow's limp hand and tossed the pistol with the thin barrel a dozen feet away. Instinctively he opened the loading gate of the .44 and began to punch out five empty shells. He didn't look at the two huddled bodies. He felt all sick inside.
Two more dead men, and Kitty writing him letters while she'd been in Dalyville with Harrow. He wanted more than ever to get this thing over with and leave Arizona forever.
Stovers' handcuffs clicked into place on Tom Harrow's wrists. "I'm taking Tom over to Judge Eaton and I'll find where we all stand, Lew. Will you give me your word you won't leave Pirtman?"
"I wouldn't mind talking first. And thanks for my guns. We'll see."
"Good. I'll get back as quick as I can. Keep a sharp lookout for Jeb Donnelly and Ace Saunders… And for God's sake," he rumbled, "don't get into any more fracases. I don't want to resign to keep from arresting you again. Don't want to get my fool head shot off either. Come on, Tom, let's get walking."
Kerrigan spoke sharply to the Apache, telling him to bring in the horses and to saddle Big Red. He heard Stovers bellowing in a far-reaching voice, waving his arms to several men over among the trees and log buildings to stay over there; that everything was all right.
Kerrigan slid the six-shooter into the worn sheath and found two women coming toward him.
"Hello, Clara. Thanks for the letters you wrote." He nodded and touched the brim of his hat to Carlotta Wilkerson.
Clara looked up at him, her eyes searching over his clothing. "Lew, are you hurt? Did any of those shots—"
"No, Clara. LeRoy was over-anxious and missed twice. That other hardcase—Pete Orr— should have stuck to stealing horses and never come down here when Tom struck it rich."
"You'd better come over and try to eat some supper. Carlotta and I will bar the doors until Joe comes."
Kerrigan looked at Carlotta and a faint smile came to his lips. He found an answering one as she extended a slim hand. She said, "I didn't think you were capable of it—looking anything but grim, I mean, Mr. Kerrigan."
"Lew," he corrected her as the three of them walked toward the gap in the old wall. "You offered me your friendship in Yuma, Miss Wilkerson—"
"Carlotta," she said. "I'm offering it again, Lew. I suppose both of us have found out quite a number of things within the past few minutes. Somehow I feel much better."
He didn't answer that one and he didn't see the brief question that came into her eyes. They went up the path to the porch and on into the kitchen. Clara left them there and almost immediately he heard the faint jar of a front door being closed. He sat down in the same chair Joe Stovers had occupied that morning and Carlotta came with the same coffee pot. From somewhere upstairs came muffled whimperings like a frightened kitten locked outside and trying to get in.
"I had expected to find you married to Tom Harrow by the time I finally got here," he said.
She was pouring coffee for him, and to his nostrils came the clean, womanly smell of her and the awareness of how very close she was. Something he'd never felt before stirred inside him. He'd just killed two men in front of her eyes, although she didn't appear to be terribly shocked. He put it down to the fact that perhaps she'd witnessed much of it as a teen-age girl during the war Tom Harrow had fled from.
"And suppose I had been married to him, Lew?"
"It would have saved his life," he answered, looking down as he used the spoon inside the rim of the white cup. "I figured while I was making the long ride north with LeRoy and the others on my trail that you'd got a bad break you didn't deserve. I didn't want to make it worse by making a widow out of you so soon. I was going to let him live."
"And now should I overlook his sordid affairs with other women, his greed and dishonesty, his murder of an old man, and be noble? I'm afraid you don't know me very well, Lew. Thomas' destiny is now in his own hands. But I do wish to exact a promise from you: don't kill him. Will you promise me that?"
He felt a chill begin to course through him. He thought she was pleading for Harrow's life no matter how the man had turned out, what he had done to her.