“Don’t argue with me,” yelled Carson. “Just get Quinn out of here.”
The gun in the back room was hammering, was joined by another. Through the holes already punched by the bullets, Carson could see the red flare of the blasting runs. One of the bullets brushed past Carson’s face, buried itself with a thud in the stacked cases. Another flicked burning across his ribs.
Savagely he yanked the door open, hauled his man through and dumped him on the ground. Reaching in, he gave the panting, puffing Jake a hand with Quinn.
“Pull them a bit farther away,” said Carson. “We don’t want them to get scorched.”
“Scorched?” yipped Jake. “Now you’re plumb out of your head!”
“I said scorched,” declared Carson, “and I mean scorched. Things are going to get hot in the next five minutes.”
He plunged his hand into a pocket, brought out a match, scratched it across the seat of his breeches. For a moment he held it in his cupped hand, nursing the flame, then with a flip of his fingers sent it sailing into the whisky-reeking room.
The flame sputtered for a moment on the floor, almost went out, then blazed brilliantly, eating its way along a track of liquor flowing from one of the broken cases.
Carson lit another match, hurled it into the room. The blaze puffed rapidly, leaping along the floor, climbing the cases, snapping and snarling.
Carson turned and ran, Jake pelting at his heels. In the long grass back of the North Star they flung themselves prone, and watched.
The single window in the building was an angry maw of fire, and tiny tongues of flame were pushing their way through the shingled roof.
A man leaped from one of the side windows in a shower of broken glass. Beside Carson, almost in his ear, Jake’s rifle bellowed. The man’s hat, still on his head despite the leap, was whipped off as if by an unseen hand.
From the Tribune office across the street came the flickering of blasting guns, covering the front windows and the door of the burning saloon.
“Listen!” hissed Jake. His hand reached out and grasped Carson by the shoulder. “Horses!”
It was horses – there could be no mistaking that. The thrum of hoofs along the dusty street – the whoop of a riding man, then a crash of thunder as sixguns cut loose.
Men were spilling out of the North Star now, running men with guns blazing in their hands. And down upon them swept the riders, yelling, sixguns tonguing flame.
The riders swept past the North Star, whirled and came back, and in their wake they left quiet figures lying in the dust.
Jake was on his knee, rifle at his shoulder, firing steadily at the running, dodging figures scurrying for cover.
A running man dashed around the corner of the flaming saloon, ducked into the broken, weedy ground back of the jail. For a moment the light of the fire swept across his face and in that moment, Carson recognized him.
It was Fennimore! Fennimore, making a getaway.
Carson leaped to his feet, crouched low and ran swiftly in the direction Fennimore had taken. Ahead of him a gun barked and a bullet sang like an angry bee above his head.
For an instant he saw a darting darker shape in the shadows and brought up his own gun, triggered it swiftly. Out of the darkness, Fennimore’s gun answered and the bullet, traveling low, whispered wickedly in the knee-high grass.
Carson fired at the gun-flash, and at the same instant something jerked at his arm and whirled him half-around. Staggering, his boot caught in a hummock and he went down, plowing ground with his shoulder.
He tried to put out his arm to help himself up again and he found he couldn’t. His right arm wouldn’t move. It was a dead thing hanging on him, a dead thing that was numb, almost as if it were not a part of him.
Pawing in the grass with his left hand, he found the gun and picked it up, while dull realization beat into his brain.
Running after Fennimore, he’d been outlined against the burning North Star, had been a perfect target. Fennimore had shot him through the arm, perhaps figured he had killed him when he saw him stumble.
Crouching in the grass, he raised his head cautiously. But there was nothing but darkness.
Behind him the saloon’s roof fell in with a gush of flames and for a moment the fire leaped high, twisting in the air. And in that moment he saw Fennimore on a rise of ground above him. The man was standing there, looking at the flames.
Carson surged to his feet.
“Fennimore!” he shouted.
The man spun toward him, and for an instant the two stood facing one another in the flare of the gutted building.
Then Fennimore’s gun was coming up and to Carson it was almost as if he stood off to one side and watched with cold, deliberate, almost scientific interest.
But he knew his own hand was coming up, too, the left hand with the feel of the gun a bit unfamiliar in it.
Fennimore’s gun drooled fire and something brushed with a blast of air past Carson’s cheek. Then Carson’s gun bucked against his wrist, and bucked again.
On the rise of ground, in the dying light of the sinking fire, Fennimore doubled over slowly. And across the space of the few feet that separated them, Carson heard him coughing, coughs wrenched out of his chest. The man pitched slowly forward, crashed face-first into the grass.
Slowly, Carson turned and walked down to the street, his wounded arm hanging at his side, blood dripping from his dangling fingers.
The guns were quiet. The fire was dying down. Black, grotesque figures still lay huddled in the dust. In front of the Tribune office the horses milled, and inside the office someone had lighted a lamp.
Voices yelled at him as he stepped up on the board sidewalk and headed for the office. He recognized some of the voices. Owens, Kelton, Ross – the men who had ridden away the night before, afraid of what might happen to their homes.
Owens was striding down the walk to meet him. He stared at Carson’s bloody arm.
“Fennimore plugged me,” Carson said.
“Fennimore got away. He isn’t here.”
“He’s out back of the jail,” Carson told him.
“We’re glad we got here in time,” said Owens, gravely. “Glad we came to our senses. The boys feel pretty bad about last night. It took Miss Delavan to show us –”
“Miss Delavan?” asked Carson, dazed. “What did Kathryn have to do with it?”
Owens looked surprised. “I thought you knew. She rode out and told us.”
“But Fennimore had guards posted!”
“She outrode them,” Owens declared. “They didn’t shoot at her. Guess even a Fennimore gunman doesn’t like to gun a woman. They took out after her, but she was on that little Star horse of hers –”
“Yes, I know,” said Carson. “Star can outrun anything on four legs.”
“She told us how it was our chance to make a decent land out here, a decent place to live – a decent place for our kids.”
“Where is she now?” asked Carson. “You made her stay behind. You –”
Owens shook his head. “She wouldn’t listen to us. Nothing doing but she’d ride along with us. She said her father –”
“You left her at the house?”
Owens nodded. “She said –”
But Cason wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even staying. He stepped down into the street and walked away, his stride changing in a moment to a run.
“Kathryn!” he cried.
She was running down the street toward him, arms outstretched.
Jake, prodding Quinn and Clay Duffy toward the Tribune at rifle-point, saw them when they met. He watched interestedly, and spat judiciously in the dust.