“Sure,” Deland said. “Don't worry about me.”
Owen heard the bleakness in that weak voice and felt sick with helplessness. Until this moment he had tried to keep his mind clear and free of emotion, but now he was seized with an anger blacker than the night. He smoothed the ground under Arch's head and tried to make him a bit more comfortable, and that was all he could do. There was very little that he could do about the wound; the bullet had come from a rifle and the hole was small and clean and the bleeding had already stopped.
“Take it easy, Arch,” Owen said tightly.. “I'll try not to drag this out.” Then he picked up the deputy's carbine and crawled back up the hill to where Dunc Lester was waiting.
“How is he?” Dunc asked.
“Rifle bullet in the groin. I couldn't tell how bad.”
Dunc cursed again. “Goddamn it, I ought to of remembered! I saw them when I was out scoutin', but I forgot to tell you.”
“Are they Brunner's men? Did you recognize them?”
“Sure, they're Wes Longstreet and two boys from up toward the Verdigris. Wes is one of Ike's top hands; been with him ever since the gang was formed.”
“Where are they now?”
“They haven't moved, far as I can tell. The last gun flash came from about thirty yards straight ahead.” He sounded vaguely uneasy, but not frightened. “I can't say I like this much. Ike's outposts can't miss hearin' all this shootin', and pretty soon they're goin' to be comin' out to see what it's all about.”
“They can't find us in the dark.”
“You don't have to see too well to locate a battle.”
“Well,” Owen said grimly, “we'll have to end the battle.” He checked the carbine and reloaded his revolver. “You stay here. I'll be back before long.” Dunc started to protest, but Owen had already slipped around the boulder and disappeared in the brush.
The guns up ahead ripped the night wide open. Quickly Dunc blasted his shotgun at the flashes, then grabbed his ancient revolver and emptied it. Suddenly it was quiet again.
Dunc felt weak, and the sweat was cold on his face. He peered into the darkness until his eyes began to jump, but there was no sign of the marshal anywhere. What the hell's he tryin' to do? Dunc raged to himself. Does hewant to get his fool self killed?
The seconds dragged slowly by and little ripples of nervousness crawled up Dunc Lester's back as he reloaded shotgun and revolver. Seconds were getting more precious all the time. Why did I ever get in this mess in the first place? he wondered angrily. And for a moment his cornered savagery went out in all directions, and he hated Toller and Ike Brunner alike. Now that fool marshal's got himself killed, he thought. And the old deputy's shot in the groin and can't move. What the hell am I goin' to do?
Then his sharp, trained ears picked up a whisper of sound in the darkness, a gentle, almost silent movement of stones and brush. Dunc's rage deserted him and he felt only relief. Toller was out there somewhere, still alive.
Still the seconds ticked away. They were tied to this particular piece of ground. Brunner's men wouldn't let them leave. All they could do was wait for the rest of the gang to find them. And that would be the end.
But Dunc had recovered from his moment of panic. For one wild moment he had considered desertion, but he had recognized the impossibility of such action, simply because he had so much at stake here, too much to run away from.
Several yards in front of Dunc Lester, Owen lay perfectly still, hardly breathing, in a dark thicket of scrubby blackjack. A short distance away Brunner's men were waiting, but Owen could not see them. Vaguely he could make out the shapes of many boulders, but there was no way of knowing behind which boulders the gunmen were waiting. I've come as far as I can, he thought, without giving myself away.
He reached out with his right hand and found a small stone the size of his fist. His rage lay tight within him like a coiled steel spring, and he thought, I hope Dunc's ready. I hope he doesn't shoot me in the back.
Then he flipped the stone over to his right and suddenly the darkness was ripped and torn by gunfire. Owen smiled bitterly, spotting the two guns and the boulder, and then the noise was compounded by the bellowing of Dunc Lester's shotgun, and then by the boy's revolver. In that brief interval of quiet, before Dunc could start up again, Owen leaped to his feet and rushed the boulder recklessly.
To make things worse, the moon chose that particular moment to appear again, and Owen experienced the brief terror of a man racing naked through a nightmare. But perhaps, after all, the moon was the thing that saved him. Dunc Lester held his fire and Owen crashed through the brush with all the noise of a range cow in stampede.
The sudden noise and his abrupt appearance in white moonlight must have startled the two gunmen for just an instant, and an instant was all that Owen asked for. Suddenly before him loomed the flushed, youngish face of one of the gang members. He's just a kid, Owen thought. But there was no time to think of it further. Surprised, the young man curled back his lips in rage and swung his heavy saddle gun to face the charge.
He did not get to complete the turn. Owen triggered Deland's carbine once, and the face fell away.
Another man appeared from behind the boulder, and this one was also young and angry, and his hair was the color of burnished copper. Owen knew that this must be Wes Longstreet, for his pale blue eyes held the bitterness of great age, although his body was young and tough.
Snarling, the young hothead fired once with a revolver, and the heavy slug smashed sickeningly against the boulder. With elaborate deliberateness that came of long experience in deadly matters, Owen let Wes have the first wild shot, and then he gently squeezed the grip of the carbine, firing from the hip, but carefully, and he knew that it was over.
As it sometimes happened, even among older and more experienced men than Owen Toller, a sickness rose up inside him and left him weak and sweating. It was all over. Only the echoes of the shooting remained in the hills. Owen let himself sag against the cold bulk of stone and wondered vacantly how long it had been since he was last forced to kill a man. This was something a man never got used to.
“Marshal!” Dunc Lester called, his voice high-pitched and excited.
“Yes,” Owen answered wearily.
“Are you all right?”
Dunc, holding his shotgun across his chest, came crashing through the waist-high growth of brush. He stared at Owen as though he had never see him before. He looked down at one of the sprawled bodies.
“Wes Longstreet,” he said with a touch of awe. “Wes was a quick man with a gun.”
“But excitable,” Owen said flatly.
Together they left the two bodies and found the third several yards down the slope, this one riddled with buckshot from Dunc's shotgun. “Homer Clinkscale,” Dunc said.
He walked a little more heavily and his shoulders were not quite so straight as they went back to see about Arch Deland.
The old deputy lay exactly as Owen had put him, his faded eyes gazing blankly at the dark underbellies of the flying clouds. “It's over?” he asked weakly.