Clarice and I had broken apart, of course. She rushed into the bedroom. Jim came barging out and we turned out the lights. After that we opened the door and slipped outside. The moon was up.
The house was on top of a slope and its driveway turned into the dirt road about fifty yards away and ten yards below. There were Eucalyptus trees blocking the view and a lot of boulders and the car had put out its lights and wasn’t visible.
We lay flat on the edge of the porch and watched closely. I thought I saw a man run from one boulder to another thirty or forty yards away and fired. Answering shots came from three spots and one broke a window.
“A mess, all right,” said Dick. “I think the way we came is the only way out. We’re besieged.”
“There can’t be many of them,” I said. “Unless they called the police.”
“I don’t think they’d dare. With Jonathan out of their hands they don’t know what he might have told us. They’ll try to get him back, shoot the caboodle of us and accuse us of having kidnaped him and get acquitted of murder by any court. Well, they’ll have to fight to get him back.”
“You said something, Buddy,” declared Jim.
An hour went by; two hours. We fired an occasional shot. They sniped at us. They broke two or three windows in the house. The night very slowly passed. Dawn came with us three squatting on the porch. Occasionally Clarice called softly to us from the window of the bedroom and we answered her. We knew that nobody had worked up the slope but it was possible they might have climbed the cañon walls and got around behind us.
As it grew light we saw a car down the cañon blocking the road to prevent us making a dash for it but we couldn’t see our enemies, who had plenty of cover.
Our position on the porch being too exposed in broad daylight, we retreated into the house and watched from windows front and back. The cliff at the back of the house was almost precipitous but we stationed Clarice at the back window of the bedroom where Jonathan was confined. Jonathan had crawled under the bed when the shooting first started and remained there.
We expected a rush but none came. Clarice opened some cans she found in the pantry and made coffee. Sniping had completely ceased.
“If they expect to starve us out,” Clarice said gaily, “they’re batty. There are supplies enough here for a month.”
“They’re waiting for someone,” declared Dick.
“Lafe Morton, most likely,” I said gloomily. It was nine o’clock. Ten o’clock. Nothing had happened but we were nicely bottled up. If they brought up men enough they could rush us and recapture Jonathan. I was in an awful state on account of Clarice.
“We can’t fight it out,” I told him. “On account of her.”
“I know it. God knows I didn’t want her along.”
“We’ll fight it out,” declared Clarice. “And we’ll win. He broke down and admitted he was Tommy Donnegan when the shooting started last night.”
“That’s no good. We won’t be around to testify — even if we surrender, I’m afraid.”
“Did he tell you how he got into this?” I asked Clarice to change a horrible subject.
“It’s weird,” she said. “It seems that ten years ago, Mr. Farrell, who was Mr. Steele’s secretary, was a clerk in the office of the Soldiers’ Home. When Jonathan died, he remembered that Tommy Donnegan looked a lot like him and he called at the home and offered Tommy fifty thousand dollars and the chance to live like a king for the rest of his life. You can’t blame the poor old thing for accepting the offer.”
We laughed. I looked at my watch. It was ten o’clock.
Bridgeman from the front window called out. “I see a car coming. It’s stopped down there. Six men are getting out. Look, they’re coming out of hiding, one, two, four, five of them.”
“Eleven to three,” said Dick. “We’ll make a good showing.”
“One of them’s coming up, waving a white handkerchief,” called Jim. “How about it?”
We were all at the window. “It’s Maroni,” I exclaimed.
“I recognize him,” Dick said grimly.
“Let me go out and meet him,” I pleaded.
“Go ahead. We won’t accept anything he proposes, of course.”
So I walked down the slope. Maroni recognized me, stopped in his tracks, and then came on.
“How are you, Joe?” I asked cheerfully.
He gazed at me with a poker face. “So you got away from the boys. I thought as much.”
“Cinch,” I said airily. “What’s on your mind, Joe?”
“Turn him over,” he replied. “Let him walk down this hill and I’ll take my boys back to Santa Barbara.”
“You mean when there’s no danger of hitting him, you’ll rush the house,” I came back. “Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’ll give you my word, Cody. I keep my word whatever else they say about me.”
“I don’t take your word, Maroni. We can stand you off. Ever hear of the Battle of Bunker Hill?”
“I don’t go in for history. Turn him loose and we’ll let you go. You’ve a dame with you. We don’t want to hurt her.”
“You don’t intend to let any of us go. Start your war, Maroni.”
“Okay,” he said with a scowl. “If Steele gets hit — well, he’s lived to a ripe old age. I’ll be right back, Cody.”
“I’ll save a slug of lead for you,” I promised him. He turned his back on me — more than I would have done with him — and walked down the slope. I ran back, zigzagging. Sure enough a couple of bullets came flying by. Dick fired a shot at Maroni but he was out of range. I told them the proposition and they all laughed.
“Let ’em come,” said Jim Bridgeman. “I won’t get the thousand but I’ve had a lot of fun.”
“Put it there,” said Dick. “So have I.”
“And I,” declared Clarice.
I didn’t say anything. I had a horrible pain in my heart when I looked at Clarice,
The gang below had spread out and began a dropping fire from behind rocks. We had sixty or eighty cartridges between us which ought to last as long as we’d need them. We decided to hold our fire until they made the rush.
It was a long time in coming. I could see Maroni moving round out of pistol range and apparently having trouble getting the boys nerved up to running up that slope.
He finally did what I didn’t think he had the nerve to do. He led the charge.
They came up slowly, darting from boulder to boulder and hiding behind the thick trunks of the Eucalyptus trees. Dick and Jim took pot shots at them but didn’t hit anybody. I waited. I was waiting for Maroni if he gave me a chance.
I had him spotted behind the nearest tree. It was about three hundred feet away. A long shot. I crouched there with my eyes just above the window sill figuring out where he’d next take cover. There was a boulder about twenty or thirty feet nearer the house and the same distance from his tree. He doubled over and made a run for it. I fired two shots and one of them knocked off his hat but he reached the boulder.
The others were creeping up and lots of bullets were coming through the windows and the stucco walls of the flimsily constructed if pretentious bungalow. One man lay stretched out in plain view. I don’t know who got him.
Maroni’s next move would be to a boulder twenty-five feet from his present rock and twenty feet closer. I trained my gun that way. He darted out. I fired, missed, he was half way, and the second shot got him. He pitched forward and lay flat on his face.
“Got Maroni,” I shouted. “He’s through for the day.”
“For life, by the looks of him,” called Dick. He fired as he spoke. “Damn it, I missed,” he exclaimed.