Holding his breath, he moved inside, slid along the wall, shoved the door shut. Standing still, shoulders pressed against the wall, he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark.
He was, he saw, in a sort of warehouse. Liquor cases and barrels were piled against the walls, half-blocking the lone window in the room. Straight ahead was another door and he guessed that it opened into a hallway that ran up to the barroom, with another room, the one in which he had faced Fennimore the night before, off to the side.
A gun crashed ahead of him. A single shot. And then another one. Then a flurry of shots.
He felt the hair crawl at the base of his scalp, and his grip tightened on the gun in his hand. There had been occasional firing all afternoon, a few shots now and then. This might be just another fusillade, or it might mean that the kill had started, that the office would be rushed.
On tiptoe he moved across the room, reached the second door. And even as he reached for the knob, he felt it turn beneath his hand before his fingers gripped it.
Someone else had hold of the knob on the other side – was coming through the door!
Twisting on his boot-heel, he swung away, staggered back against the piled-up cases. The door swung open and a figure stepped into the room.
With all his strength, Carson swung at the head of the shadowy man, felt the barrel of his sixgun crash through the resistance of the hat, slam against the skull. The man gasped, pitched forward on buckling knees.
Moving swiftly, Carson scooped the guns from the holsters of the fallen man. He bent close to try to make out who it was, but in the dark the face was a white splotch, unrecognizable.
He straightened and stood tense, listening. There was no sound. No more shots from up in front.
He reached up to place the two guns he had taken from the holsters on top of the whisky cases, and as he stretched on tiptoe to shove them back away from the edge, something drilled into his back, something hard and round.
Rigid, he did not move, and a voice that he knew spoke just behind him.
“Well, well, Morgan, imagine finding you here.”
Mocking, hard – the voice of Jackson Quinn. Quinn, hearing the thud of the falling body, coming on quiet feet down the hallway to investigate, catching him when he was off guard.
“Mind if I turn around?” asked Carson, trying to keep his voice easy.
Quinn gurgled with delight. “Not at all. Turn around by all means. I never did like shooting in the back.” He chuckled again. “Not even you.”
Carson twisted slowly around. The gun muzzle never left his body, following it around from back to belly.
“Drop your gun,” said Quinn.
Carson loosened his fingers and the gun thudded on the floor.
“You’ve given me so much trouble,” Quinn told him, “that I should bust you up a bit. But I don’t think I will. I don’t think I’ll even bother.” He chuckled. “I think I’ll just shoot you here and have it over with.”
Iron squealed against iron, an eerie sound that leaped at them from the dark.
Quinn jerked around, and for the first time his gun-muzzle lifted from Carson’s body.
Carson moved like lightning, clenched fist coming up and striking down, smashing against the wrist that held the gun; striking entirely by instinct, for it was too dark to see.
Quinn cried out and the gun clanged to the floor.
The back door was open. A figure stood outlined against the lesser dark outside, a crouching figure that carried a rifle at the ready.
Shoulders hunched, head down, one foot braced hard for leverage against the whisky cases, Carson hurled himself at Quinn. He felt the man go over at the impact of the flow, knew he was falling on top of him, hauled back his arm for a blow.
But a foot came up, lashing at his stomach. He sensed its coming, twisted, caught it in the ribs instead and went reeling back against the whisky cases, limp with pain.
Quinn was crouching, springing toward him. A fist exploded in his face, thumped his head against the cases. He ducked his head, ears ringing, and bored in, fists playing a tattoo on Quinn’s midriff, driving the man out into the center of the room.
A vicious punch straightened Carson, rocked him. The white blur of Quinn’s face was coming toward him and he aimed at it, smashed with all his might – and the face retreated as Quinn staggered backward on his heels.
Carson stepped in, and out of the dark came piledriver blows that shook him with their viciousness.
The face was there again. Carson measured it, brought his fist up almost from the floor in a whistling, singing loop. Pain lanced down his arm as the blow connected with the whiteness of the face and then the face was gone and Quinn was on the floor.
Feet were pounding in the hallway and shouts came from the barroom. Behind him a rifle crashed, thunderous in the closeness of the room, the red breath of its muzzle lighting the place for a single instant.
The rifle crashed again and yet again and the room was full of powder-fumes that stung the nostrils.
“Jake!” yelled Carson.
“You bet your boots,” said the man with the rifle. “You didn’t think I’d let you do it all alone!”
“Quick!” gasped Carson. “Get in here, back by the door. They can’t reach us here!”
A sixgun blasted and bullets chunked into the cases. Glass crashed and the reek of whisky mingled with the smell of gunsmoke.
Jake came leaping across the room, crouched in the angle back of the door.
Scraping his feet along the floor, Carson located his sixgun, picked it up.
Jake’s whisper was rueful. “They got us bottled like a jug of rum.”
Carson nodded in the dark. “Been all right,” he said, “If Quinn hadn’t found me.”
“That Quinn you had the shindy with?”
“That’s right.”
“Had a mind to step in and do some work with the gunstock,” Jake told him, “but decided it was too risky. Couldn’t tell which of you was which.”
Guns thundered in the passageway, the explosions deafening. Bullets thudded into the cases, chewing up the boards, smashing the bottles.
Carson reached up and grasped a case from those stacked behind him. Jake’s rifle bellowed. Carson flung the case over his head. It smashed into the doorway. He heaved another one.
Jake blasted away again. The guns in the hallway cut off.
“Keep watch,” Carson told Jake. He heaved more cases in the doorway, blocking it to shoulder-height.
From across the street came the sound of firing – the ugly snarling of a high-powered rifle.
“That’s Robinson,” said Jake. “Some of them buzzards tried to sneak out the front door and come at us from behind, but Robinson was Johnny at the rat-hole.”
“Robinson can’t stop them for long,” snapped Carson. “They’ll get at us in a minute or two –”
A gun hammered almost in their ears and something stabbed Carson in the face. He brushed at it with his hand, pulled away a splinter. The gun roared again, as if it were just beside their heads.
“They’re in the back room,” gasped Jake, “shooting at us through the partition!”
“Quick!” yelled Carson. “We got to get out of here! Here, you grab Quinn and haul him out. I’ll take the other fellow.”
He grasped the man he had stuck down with the gun-barrel, started to tug him toward the door.
“Why don’t we leave ’em here?” yelped Jake. “What in tarnation is the sense of luggin’ ’em?”