It all happened in a second. Two seconds at the most. I stood there watching the fat man die. He sagged, clutching at the bar to hold himself up. But his fingers missed and he hit the floor with his back, kicked once or twice, and lay still.
Pat Roark shouted, “The door, Tall. I'll keep them covered while you back out.”
But it wasn't over yet. Thornton, the man on the gallery, was still alive. He was on his knees clutching his middle, and bright red blood oozed between his fingers. I counted my shots in my mind. Two at Thornton, one at the big man, and one at the fat one. That was four. I had one bullet left. A six-shooter is actually a six-shooter only for fools and dime novels. There's always an empty chamber to rest the hammer on when the pistol is in the holster. I leveled the pistol at Thornton and fired my last bullet. I thought, This one's for you, Pa. It's too late to do you any good, but it's the only thing I know to do.
Thornton came crashing down from the gallery, falling across a poker table like a rag doll, then dumping into a shapeless heap on the floor.
I stood there breathing hard, the empty pistol still in my hand.
Pat said, “Tall, for God's sake, come on!”
But I waited a few more seconds, almost hoping that Thornton would move again so I could go over and beat the life out of him, the way he had done with Pa. But he didn't move. His eyes had that fixed glassy stare that always means the same thing. I had done all I could do.
The spectators—the carpetbaggers, and white trash, and scalawags—still hadn't moved. Their faces were pale with shock as they stared at the lifeless figures on the floor. That wasn't the way they had expected it to work out. They had been confident that their man could kill me easily from his place on the gallery, but now that it hadn't worked out that way, they weren't sure what they ought to do.
My pistol was empty, but they didn't realize that, so I kept it trained on them.
I said tightly, “Take a good look at the man that killed my father. Being a member of the Davis police didn't save his dirty hide; that's something the rest of you might remember.”
“Tall,” Pat Roark said again. I started backing out, keeping them covered with my empty pistol.
Outside, we hit the saddles and our horses lit out for the far end of the street in one startled jump. The other ranchers fell in behind us, fogging it out of John's City.
We traveled north toward Garner's Store for maybe two miles, and then the ranchers started splitting up, cutting out from the main body and heading toward their own outfits. They were nervous men for the most part, and I could see by their faces that they thought they had been suckered into something that they hadn't bargained for. Well, I thought, to hell with them. If they were afraid to fight for their own kind, there was nothing I could do for them.
By the time we reached the store, Pat Roark was the only one still with me. As we let our horses drink at the trough, Pat stood up in his stirrups, looking back along the road.
“The police don't seem so damned anxious to follow us,” he said, still with that thin grin of his.
I wasn't worrying about the police. It was the cavalry that was going to give us trouble when they heard about it. We hitched our horses and went inside the store.
Old Man Garner wasn't glad to see us. Things had a way of happening to people who helped fugitives. A man's store could burn down, or he could get robbed blind. All kinds of things could happen.
He came slowly out of the dark interior of the store.
He could smell trouble and he didn't like it.
“Tall, you get out of here,” he said gruffly. “I know the police are after you; so don't tell me different.”
“I'm not going to tell you different, Mr. Garner. But they won'tbe along for a while. Is my credit still good?”
He grunted. “I reckon. If it'll get you out of here.”
We got a dozen boxes of .44 cartridges, some meal, salt, and a slab of bacon. “If you don't see me for a while,” I said, “you can get the money from Ma.”
“Money won't do me no good,” he said peevishly, “if the police catch me helpin' you out this way. Now scat, both of you.” Then on impulse, he went behind the counter and came out with a small tin skillet and a bag of ground coffee. “You might as well take these too, as long as you're gettin' everything else you want.”
I took the things and wrapped them up in newspapers. Old Man Garner didn't like turncoats any better than most people, and he wasn't as put out about helping us as he tried to make us believe. As we started back for our horses, I said, “When the bluebellies come along you might just mention that you saw us heading east, toward Indian Ridge.”
At last his curiosity got the best of him. “Did you... kind of get things settled up, Tall?”
“As well as it can be settled,” I said. “Remember, east, toward Indian Ridge.”
“I won't forget. Now go on, get out of here.”
We headed northwest along the road to the Bannerman ranch for a mile or more, and then cut due west on some hard shale that would be difficult to trail us on. We moved on up to some low rolling hills and finally reached the arroyo. I looked at Pat Roark.
He was a funny guy. And, as we headed toward Daggert's Road, I began to wonder just why he was sticking his neck out this way. The Roarks had a small one-horse outfit over east of John's City—that is, the old man had the outfit. Pat, I remembered, was the youngest of five sons, and the others had drifted off to other parts of Texas before the war and hadn't been heard from since. Pat's old man had never amounted to much. What little money he made by brush popping went mostly for whiskey. Pat had never had the money to attend old Professor Bigloe's academy like the rest of us.
So maybe he was just looking for a chance to get away from John's City, and he figured this was it. Whatever the reason, I was glad to have him along.
We rode down the arroyo until we came to the cutaway that Ray Novak and I had ducked into before. Pat had never seen the place. I held some of the vines and scrub trees back and motioned him to go on in, and he said, “Well, I'll be damned.” He looked around appreciatively as I covered the entrance again. “So this is Daggert's Road,” he said. “Well, it'll be nearly hell for anybody to find us in a place like this.”
I said, “It'll do for tonight. We'll go on up to the old cabin and stay there. If things look all right I'll ride over to our place. There's that red horse of mine. I sure would hate to leave him behind.”
It was clear that we weren't going to be able to stay around John's City for long. Pretty soon the cavalry would be cutting tracks all over northern Texas looking for us, and it wouldn't be the work gang if they caught us this time. It would be a hanging.
Then, for the first time, I thought of those dead men back there in the saloon. I didn't feel anything for them, not even hate, because most of the hate had burned itself out the minute I emptied my pistol. There was just the faint feeling of satisfaction, that kind of feeling that comes to a man after he has paid off a big debt, and that was all. I didn't experience those few hard minutes, the way I had after killing Paul Creyton.