The dawn was clean and peaceful, and the street smelled of cool dust and the wind of the day had not yet arisen, but only stirred here and there, in tiny, warning puffs.
Carson took a step forward, and even as he stepped a rifle barked; a throaty, rasping bark that echoed among the wooden buildings.
Across the street something lifted Bean off his feet, as if a mighty fist had smote him – struck so hard that it slammed him off his feet and sprawled him in the dust.
At the sound of the shot, Carson had ducked and spun on his heel, was back in the room again, slamming shut the door.
The windows of the North Star sprouted licking spurts of gunflame and the smashing of the Tribune’s windows for an instant drowned the crashing of the guns. Bullets snarled through the thin sheathing and plowed furrows in the floor, hurling bright showers of splinters as they gouged along the wood.
Carson hurled himself toward his heavy desk, hit the floor and skidded hard into the partition behind it. A slug thudded into the wall above his head and another screamed, ricocheting, from the desk top.
Thunder pounded Carson’s ears, a crashing, churning thunder that seemed to shake the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jake crouched, half-shielded by the doorway into the back shop, pouring lead through the broken windows. Shell cases rolled and clattered on the floor as the old printer, eye squinted under bushy brow, tobacco tucked carefully in the northeast corner of his cheek, worked the lever action.
From the corner of the desk, Carson flipped two quick shots at one North Star window where he thought he saw for an instant the hint of shadowy motion.
And suddenly he realized there were no sounds of guns, no more bullets thudding into the floor, throwing showers of splinters.
Jake was clawing at the pockets of his printer’s apron, spilling cartridges on the floor in his eagerness to fill the magazine.
He spat at the mouse-hole with uncanny accuracy. “Wonder who in tarnation knocked off Bean,” he said.
“Somebody out in the windmill lot,” said Carson.
Jake picked up the cartridges he had dropped, put them back in the apron pocket again. “Kind of nice,” he declared, “to know you got some backin’. Probably somebody that hates Fennimore’s guts just as much as we do.”
“Whoever he was,” declared Carson, “he sure messed up my plans. No sense of trying to surrender now.”
“Never was in the fust place,” Jake told him. “Damndest fool thing I ever heard of. Steppin’ out to get yourself shot up.”
He squatted in the doorway, rifle across his knee.
“They didn’t catch us unawares,” he said. “Now they’ll be up to something else. Thought maybe they’d wipe us out by shooting the place plumb full of holes.” He patted the rifle stock. “Sort of discouraged them,” he said.
“It’ll be sniping now,” declared Carson. “Waiting for one of us to show ourselves.”
“And us,” said Jake, “waiting for them to show themselves.”
“They’ll be spreading out,” said Carson, “trying to come at us from different directions. We got to keep our eyes peeled. One of us watch from the front and the other from the back.”
“Okay by me,” said Jake. “Want to flip for it?”
“No time to flip,” said Carson. “You take the back. I’ll watch up here.”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “If we only can hold out until dark,” he declared, “maybe –”
A furtive tapping came against the back of the building.
“Who’s there?” called out Jake, guardedly.
A husky whisper came through the boards. “Open up. It’s me. Robinson.”
The man slipped in, dragging his rifle behind him, when Jake eased the door open. The merchant slapped the dust from his clothes.
“So you’re the jasper what hauled down on Bean,” said Jake.
Robinson nodded. “They burned my store,” he said. “So they could bust up your shop. They burned everything I had – for no reason at all except to let them get in here and stop that extra you were planning.”
“That’s what we figured, too,” said Jake.
“I ain’t no fighting man,” Robinson declared. “I like things peaceable … like them peaceable so well I’ll fight to make them that way. That’s why I shot Bean. That’s why I came here. My way of figurin’, there ain’t no peace around these parts until we run out Fennimore.”
“Instead of coming here,” Carson told him, “you should have ridden out and told the ranchers what was happening. Told them we needed help.”
“Lee Weaver is already out,” said Robinson. “I was just over there. The stable boy told me he left half an hour ago.”
A flurry of shots blazed from the North Star, and bullets chunked into the room. One of them, aimed higher than the rest, smashed the clock and it hung drunkenly from its nail, a wrecked thing that drooled wheels and broken spring.
“Just tryin’ us out,” said Jake.
To the north, far away, came the sound of shooting. They strained their ears, waiting. “Wonder what’s going on up there?” asked Jake.
Robinson shook his head. “Sure hope it isn’t Lee,” he said.
After that one burst there were no further shots.
The sun climbed up the sky and the town dozed, its streets deserted.
“Everyone’s staying under cover,” Jake opined. “Ain’t nobody wants to get mixed up in this.”
Just after noon Lee Weaver came, flat on his belly through the weeds and tall grass back of the building, dragging himself along with one hand, the right arm dragging limply at his side, its elbow a bloody ruin bound with a red-stained handkerchief.
“Came danged near lettin’ you have it,” Jake told him. “Sneakin’ through them weeds like a thievin’ redskin.”
Weaver slumped into a chair, gulped the dipper of water that Carson brought him.
“I couldn’t get through,” he told them. “Fennimore’s got men posted all around the town, watching. Shot my horse, but I got away. Had to shoot it out with three of them. Laid for two hours in a clump of sage while they hunted me.”
Carson frowned, worried. “That leaves us on the limb,” he said. “There isn’t any help coming. They got us cornered. Come night –”
“Come night,” suggested Jake, “and we fade out of here. No use in tryin’ it now. They’d get us sure as shootin’. In the dark we’d have some chance to get away.”
Carson shook his head. “Come night,” he declared, “I’m going into that saloon the back way. While you fellows keep them busy up here.”
“If they don’t get us first,” Weaver reminded him. “They’ll rush us as soon as it’s dark.”
“In that case,” snapped Carson, “I’m starting now. That weed-patch out there is tall enough to shield a man if he goes slow, inches at a time, and doesn’t cause too much disturbance. I’ll circle wide before I try crossing the street. I’ll be waiting to get into the North Star long before it’s dark.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The Plans of Mice and Men …
The doorknob turned easily, and Carson let out his breath. For long hours he had lain back of the North Star, his mind conjuring up all the things that might go wrong. The door might be locked, he might be seen before he could reach it, he might run into someone just inside. …
But he reached the door without detection and now the knob turned beneath his fingers. He shoved it slowly, fearful of a squeaking hinge.
The smell of liquor and of stale cooking hit him in the face as the door swung open. From inside came the dull rumble of occasional words, the scrape of boot-heels.