Helen, puzzled and troubled, pointed a question at Frawley. 'I don't understand. You're the foreman of the Seven Up and Down. Why are you helping these men against Frank?'
'I was the foreman,' Frawley contradicted harshly. 'I quit the lousy outfit this morning.'
'You had trouble with them?'
'What's that to you? Mind yore own business.'
'Keep yore shirt on, Jim,' Fenwick said gently. He was smiling thinly, but his eyes were cold. 'That's no way to talk to a lady.'
The big man stared at the boy, surprised at this unexpected consideration for a woman. 'What's eatin' you, Brick?' he snapped.
Helen said, suddenly, 'I'm going down the street to Flack's.'
'A good idea, Miss,' Brick agreed. 'Only that's a little near. I'd keep on going to some friend's house in the edge of town. And don't be frightened if you hear a little shooting.'
The girl looked at the evil face of the boy, and a surge of sickness went through her. 'If you go on with this, it will be murder,' she told him in a low voice.
'That's not a nice word for a lady to use,' the young scoundrel replied, grinning.
Cash would not let it go at that. He was always careful to build up a justification for whatever he did. He must have a color of legality to his outrages.
'We don't aim to hurt these boys at all, Miss Helen. They are both neighbors of mine. I like them fine, though I'm afraid they have gone too far this time. All we want to do is arrest them. Maybe you could talk them into having a little sense.'
'I wouldn't try,' she said. 'I don't know what this is all about, but I can see they are fighting for their lives. They can't trust you. I'll just say one thing before I go. If you kill those two men, the law will never let you rest as long as you live.'
She walked out of the hotel followed by her entourage of two men and a dog. There were more of these gunmen posted around the restaurant at different points and she meant to tell them all that if they persisted in violence they would be bringing trouble down on their own heads.
Another reason for leaving was urgent in her mind. She wanted to phone to the Seven Up and Down news of the trap into which Frank and his companion had fallen.
CHAPTER 11
Tom Wall Pays a Debt
HAL GUESSED they would have a few minutes before the attack. These fellows were not going to walk up to two rifles without contriving some way of making it as safe as possible. The trapped men could count on that as surely as on the certainty that next time there would be no wasted shots. They had tried Tick Black's way. Now it would be one devised by Cash Polk.
Frank stayed on guard in the front room while Hal looked after the defenses in the rear. The back door was locked and bolted. Hal piled the kitchen table and chairs against it. On a shelf he found a stack of old newspapers. These he crumpled and flung under the two windows until there was a mound of them knee-high. If anybody came in through a window, he could not reach the floor without a warning rustle of paper.
Through the swing doors Hal returned to the dining-room.
'All quiet on the western front,' Frank reported.
Helen Barnes and her followers came out of the hotel and passed down the street. She stopped in front of the Rest Easy and called to somebody inside the saloon. A man carrying a Winchester rifle came to the door and stepped quickly back of her. He was not letting himself be a target for a shot from the restaurant. The girl talked with him for two or three minutes. Once the beleaguered men heard her voice raised in urgent argument, but the distance was too far for them to make out what she said. Presently the little party walked down the sidewalk as far as the Flack store. They disappeared into it.
'Zero hour pretty soon,' Frank said. His voice was a little strained. Waiting for the enemy to make its move was trying on the nerves.
'They might get at us if we are not careful from the hotel upstairs windows,' Hal replied. 'They won't come ramping across the street at us, unless they have lost their senses.'
'No. I wonder what they will do.' Frank grinned. He meant to keep up a good front. 'I'm getting some good army training anyhow. I'll bet there won't be another fellow in my company get under fire as he was on the way to being inducted.'
They caught a glimpse of a man slipping across the cañon road from the back door of the hotel. Just after they saw him, he disappeared over the brow of a small hill. Their guess was that he was carrying instructions to the outposts watching the back door of the restaurant. The plan might be to drum in a heavy fire from the rear and under cover of it to slip across the road for a try at shooting the defenders through the windows.
Neither of them was under any delusion as to the determination of their foes to rub them out. Frank had tried to reach the Seven Up and Down to get reinforcements and found the wire from the restaurant cut. They could thank Cash Polk for thinking of that. The significance of it stood out like a sore thumb. The hill men intended to settle this before any help from outside reached their victims. There must be eight or ten of them in Big Bridge. Later they would try to escape the law by sticking to a common story that Stevens had fired the first shot.
The minutes dragged. Frank lit a cigarette.
'I got you into this, Hal,' he blurted. 'If I hadn't fooled with those poker games, you wouldn't be here.'
'And if I hadn't butted into the game you wouldn't be here,' Stevens answered evenly. 'I've been in spots just as hot before and wiggled out. I'm expecting us to get out of this one.'
'I don't see how.'
'Nor I yet. We've got to wait tor a break.'
Hal spoke more confidently than he felt. The few residents of the town would not dare to stand up to these ruffians from the hills. Given time, their enemies could smoke them out.
A bullet crashed through a window and tore a hole in the top of a table. It must have come from a rifleman stationed in an upstairs room of the hotel. Almost before the sound of it had died away, the rat-tat-tat-tat of a submachine gun began popping. Somebody in the brush at the rear was peppering the back of the building.
'This is it,' Frank said. 'They'll come tearing in the back way.'
'Not just yet. They are feeling us out — softening us up. I'll slip into the kitchen and see if I can get a crack at the busy boy in the mesquite.'
'I wouldn't. He'll spray the whole room.'
'He has quit for the moment. All I want to do is to let him know we can still sting.'
Hal crept through the swinging doors on all fours, reached a window, and looked out. He saw a surprising sight. A man was moving out of the bushes into the open, his hands in the air. At his heels, a revolver pressed into his back, another man walked with him stride for stride. They were headed for the restaurant. Hal tore away the chairs and the table that blockaded the door. He drew back the bolt and turned the key. The two men walked into the kitchen, and Hal slammed the door shut, bolted, and locked it.
'Where in Mexico did you come from?' Hal asked the man with the gun.
The man was a narrow-flanked, lean-shouldered customer wearing a white sombrero, hickory shirt, and corduroy trousers tucked into cowboy boots. He cocked an eyebrow whimsically at Stevens.
'From Salina, Kansas, if you're taking the census, fellow. Born in Lima, Ohio, twenty-five years ago come next Christmas Day.'
Tom Wall was the name of the man. He had spent six weeks at a line cabin on the M K ranch the winter before, a man wanted by the law for murder. Hal had not only kept him hidden; he had dug up the evidence to prove that the killing had been done in self-defense.
The captive he had brought with him out of the brush spoke bitterly. 'The boys will get you for this, Tom. This wasn't any row of yours.'