“You can’t blame them,” said Carson, shortly. “After all, they have families to think of. They have too much at stake.”
He picked up a pencil from his desk, deliberately broke it in one hand, hurled the pieces on the floor.
“They burned out Robinson,” he said. “Cold-bloodedly. They burned him out so they could wreck the shop. So they could stop that extra, scare us out of town. A gang like that would do anything. No wonder the other fellows didn’t come back. No wonder they high-tailed for home.”
He glanced at Purvis. “How do you feel?” he asked.
Purvis’ face didn’t change. “Got a place where I can stretch out for the night?”
“Sure you want to?”
“Might as well,” said Purvis. “All they can do is burn down my shanty and run off my stock.” He puffed smoke through his nostrils. “And maybe, come morning, you’ll need an extra gun.”
Carson awoke once in the night, saw Jake sitting with his back against the door, his head drooping across one shoulder, his mouth wide open, snoring lustily. The rifle lay across his knees.
Moonlight painted a white oblong on the floor and the night was quiet except for the racing windmill, still clattering in the wind.
Carson pulled the blanket closer around his throat and settled his head back on his coat-covered boots which were serving as a pillow. In the cot, Purvis was a black huddle.
So this is it, thought Carson, staring at the moonlight coming through the window.
The press broken, the type scattered, the men he had been working for deserting, scared out once again by the guns that backed Fennimore. Nothing left at all.
He shrugged off the despair that reached out for him and screwed his eyes tight shut. After a while he went to sleep.
It was morning when he awoke again, with the smell of brewing coffee in his nostrils. Jake, he knew, had started a small fire in the old air-tight heater in the back. He heard the hiss of bacon hit the pan, sat up and hauled on his boots, shucked into his coat.
The cot was empty.
“Where’s Purvis?” he called to Jake.
“Went out to get a pail of water,” said Jake. “Ought to be good and cold after running all night long.”
Somewhere a rifle coughed, a sullen sound in the morning air. Like a man trying to clear a stubborn throat.
For a moment Carson stood stock still, as if his boot-soles were riveted to the floor.
Then he ran to the side window, the window looking out on the windmill lot, half knowing what he would see there, half afraid of what he’d see.
Purvis was a crumpled pile of clothes not five feet from the windmill. The pail lay on its side, shining in the sun. A vagrant breeze fluttered the handkerchief around Purvis’ neck.
The town was quiet. The rifle had coughed and broken the silence and then the silence had come again. Nothing stirred, not even the wind after that one solitary puff that had moved the handkerchief.
Carson swung slowly from the window, saw Jake standing in the door to the back room, fork in one hand, pan of bacon in the other.
“What was it?” Jake demanded. “Too tarnation early in the morning to start shootin’.”
“Purvis,” said Carson. “He’s out there, dead.”
Jake carefully set the pan of bacon on a chair, laid the fork across it, walked to the corner and picked up his rifle. When he turned around his eyes were squinted as if they already looked along the gun-barrel.
“Them fellers,” he announced, “have gone a mite too far. All right, maybe, to shoot a hombre when he’s half-expectin’ it and has a chance at least to make a motion toward his own artillery. But ’taint right bushwhackin’ a man out to get a pail of water.”
Jake spat at the mouse-hole, missed it. “Especially,” he declared, “before he’s had his breakfast.”
“Look, Jake,” said Carson, “this fight isn’t yours. Why don’t you crawl out the back window and make a break for it? You could make it now. Maybe later you can’t.”
“The hell it ain’t my fight,” yelped Jake. “Don’t you go hoggin’ all the credit for this brawl. Me, I’ve had somethin’ to do with it, too. Maybe you writ all them pieces takin’ the hide off Fennimore, but I set ’em up in type and run ’em off the press.”
A voice was bawling outside.
“Carson!” it shouted. “Carson!”
Stalking across the room, but keeping well away from the window, Carson looked out.
Sheriff Bean stood in front of the North Star, badge of office prominently pinned on his vest, two guns at his sides.
“Carson!”
“Watch out,” said Jake. “If they see a move in here, they’ll fill us full of lead.”
Carson nodded, stepped out of line of the window and walked to the wall. Drawing his gun, he reached out and smashed a window-pane with the barrel, then slumped into a crouch.
“What is it?” he yelled.
“Come out and give yourself up,” bawled Bean. “That’s all we want.”
“Haven’t got someone posted to pick me off?” asked Carson.
“There won’t be a shot fired,” said Bean. “Just come out that door, hands up, and no one will get hurt.”
Jake’s whisper cut fiercely through the room. “Don’t believe a word that coyote says. He’s got a dozen men in the North Star. Open up that door and you’ll be first cousin to a sieve.”
Carson nodded grimly.
“Say the word,” urged Jake, “and I’ll pick ’im off. Easy as blastin’ a buzzard off a fence.”
“Hold your fire,” snapped Carson. “If you start shooting now we haven’t got a chance. Probably haven’t anyway. As it is they’ve got us dead to rights. Bean, over there, technically is the law and he can kill us off legal-like. Can say later we were outlaws or had resisted arrest or anything he wants to. …”
“They killed Delavan and Purvis,” yelped Jake. “They –”
“We can’t prove it,” said Carson bitterly. “We can’t prove a thing. And now they’ve got us backed into a hole. There’s nothing we can gain by fighting. I’m going to go out and give myself up.”
“You can’t do that,” gasped Jake. “You’d never get three feet from the door before they opened up on you.”
“Listen to me,” snapped Carson. “I’m going to give myself up. I’ll take a chance on getting shot. You get out of here, through the back. Weaver will let you have a horse. Ride out and tell the boys that Purvis is dead and I’m in jail. Tell them the next move is up to them. They can do what they want.”
“But – but –” protested Jake.
“There’s been enough killing,” declared Carson. “A bit of gunning was all right, maybe, when there still was something to fight for, but what’s the use of fighting if the men you’re fighting for won’t help? That’s what I’m doing. Giving them a chance to show whether they want to fight or knuckle down to Fennimore.”
He raised his voice. “Bean. Bean.”
“What is it?” Bean called back.
“I’m coming out,” yelled Carson.
There was silence, a heavy silence.
“Get going,” Carson said to Jake. “Out the back. Crawl through the weeds.”
Jake shifted the rifle across his arm.
“After you’re safe,” he insisted. “Until I see you cross that street, I’ll stay right here.”
“Why?” asked Carson.
“If they get you,” Jake told him, “I’m plumb bent on drillin’ Bean.”
Carson reached out and yanked the door open. He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking across at Bean, who waited in front of the North Star.