Behind me Kid Reese spoke. “An’ you set still, Shell, or I’ll—”
Frank had a double-barreled shotgun in his hands and it was covering Heseltine. “Your fight is your own, and I want no part of it, but if you fire that pistol I’ll knock you right off those steps. I just mopped this floor, and blood is hard to get up.”
I tilted on the balls of my feet, clearing three legs of the chair off the floor and spinning on the other. I turned low and hard, swinging my arms wide. One of them struck the Kid’s wrist and knocked his arm over and I came up, driving into him with all my strength.
He was slim and wiry, not as strong as I was by a good bit, and my attack had taken him by surprise, his attention drawn by the bartender’s sudden challenge of Heseltine. He staggered back, and I slugged him hard in the wind, my left hand gripping his gun wrist. The gun went off into the floor and I hit him again.
He lost his grip on the gun and I turned loose with both hands. I had never realized how much I wanted to hit Kid Reese. He had always treated me with contempt, and I had always known he despised me but I had not wanted to admit it.
My blows were not only for him, but for the fact that I had once been stupid enough to want to be like him. I smashed him again and again in the face and the body until he sagged to the floor, blood dripping from a broken nose, his cheek ripped open by a blow.
Then I turned sharply around. Heseltine, his gun in hand, was standing very still, Frank’s shotgun held steady on his belt buckle. No man in his right mind, and especially not such a gun-canny man as Heseltine, wanted to tackle a shotgun at twelve feet.
“He’s supposed to be very good, Frank,” I said. “Let him holster his gun and then turn him loose. I want to see how good he is.”
“Nothing doing.” Frank’s voice was casual. “I have no part in your troubles. I want no shooting in here.”
He gestured with the muzzle. “You there! Shove that mouse back into its hole. Then you back out of here, get on your horse, and ride out. One wrong move and I’ll cut you in two.
“In case you want to know, by this time, my cook is settin’ by the back door with a Winchester, and he’ll have you dead in his sights from the moment you step outside. You ride out of here, and I don’t give a damn where you go, but get out.”
“As for you”—he spoke to me without turning his head—“you ride right after him…and don’t come back here wearing a gun. Now start moving.”
Bob Heseltine backed toward the door. There he stopped. “You’ll get your chance, Tucker. I’ll see to that.”
“Thanks, Bob,” I said. “I’ve been wondering why you were ducking me. Your friend Al Cashion couldn’t do your dirty work for you. I figured when you sent him you’d lost your nerve.”
“Lost my nerve? Why, you—”
“Move!” Frank yelled at him. “
Now!
”
Heseltine vanished through the doorway and I turned slowly to look at Kid Reese. He was on his hands and knees now, blood dripping in slow drops from his nose.
Doc Sites was still standing at the bar. He had held very still, his hands on the bar, his face dead white. He was scared…scared stiff.
“Thanks, Frank,” I said. “I’ll be leaving.”
“Don’t thank me. Just get out. This here is a decent place. I want no shooting.”
“Let these two go together,” I suggested. “They deserve each other.”
With that I stepped out into the darkness, listening to the fading sound of Heseltine’s horse’s hoofs. For a moment I waited in the shadows, then crossed swiftly to the corral and pulled the drawstring on the slipknot with which I had tied my horse.
I swung into the saddle, and turned up the coast. I had no intention of following Heseltine into the dark and into a possible ambush. Right now I wanted to get away. The sudden flurry of fighting with Kid Reese had taken a lot of the animosity out of me.
As for Doc Sites, I had nothing to do with him. He had been shot, he had evidently been robbed by his former companions, and he would suffer enough. What would happen between him and Kid Reese I neither knew nor cared. The thing I wanted was my money.
Suddenly, I wondered…where was that money? Who had it now? Ruby Shaw? She had some, perhaps, but not all. I could not believe Heseltine would be so gullible.
Turning my horse into deeper darkness, I rode with caution, seeking the white line of a trail that led along the plateau and through the brush and clumps of pin oak. And then I knew what I would do, and I circled and rode hard for the hills above the La Ballona ranch.
As I rode it came to me what I had done. Only a few minutes before I had challenged Bob Heseltine to a shoot-out!
I
had done that.
Conchita put her head out of the window as I rode into the yard. Yes, I could have a horse. Her grandfather was gone; only her brother was here. Swiftly, I swapped horses and rode out of the yard and down the trail toward Los Angeles.
When I rode down the street, across the Plaza, and into Sonora Town, it was nearly two o’clock in the morning. I knew the house to which I was going, and I dismounted in the shadows of an alleyway nearby. Heseltine might be here, but the chances were he had not yet returned—if, indeed, he was coming back at all.
Villareal’s house was dark. It was a small adobe with a porch across the front and a backyard with a board fence around it. There was a stable with a door opening to the alley.
Stepping into the stable door I stood at one side, my hand on my gun, waiting and listening.
The horses rolled their eyes at me. There was a smell of hay, of horse manure, and of sweat. I eased across the barn, speaking softly to the horses. One of them snorted a little, not loudly, but I spoke again and the horses continued with their chomping of hay.
I touched each one as I passed…and the last of the four horses was damp with sweat. It had been hard ridden, and not rubbed down.
Heseltine? Or Villareal?
I started to move on when a faint gleam from the back of the farthest horse drew my attention. It had been the first horse I had touched, when my eyes were not yet used to the darkness. I had merely put a hand on the horse’s hip in passing.
Now I saw something I had not seen before. That horse was saddled.
I went back along the space behind the stalls and stepping into the last one I spoke to the horse, then patted it…dry and cool. My hand went to the saddle, feeling the blanket. The blanket was damp.
I paused, listening. Somebody had ridden back here, riding hard. That somebody had swapped his saddle from the hard-ridden horse to a fresh horse and was evidently planning to leave at once.
He had gone into the house for something. For what? For his gear? For food and a canteen? Or for those things, and the money as well?
Glancing around quickly, I looked for a hiding place. The stalls were divided merely by poles that were waist-high, running from the wall to posts that supported the barn roof. I did not want to endanger the horses. The only place seemed beside the door.
As I turned to start for it the barn door opened, and there was a man with a lantern in one hand, a gun in the other. Over his shoulder was a pair of heavy saddlebags.
My own gun slid into my hand. “You can drop that gun,” I said quietly.
Light from the lantern reflected from silver conchas on the shotgun chaps. It was Villareal.
“No,” he said.
“I do not want to shoot you, but the money is mine.”
“But I have it,” he replied as quietly as I had spoken.
“A dead man does not spend money,” I told him.
“Nor does a dead man carry money away. You can die as well as me.”
“Both of us can die,” I agreed, “or both of us can live. You want the money for what it can buy you in Mexico. But you know and I know that Bob Heseltine will follow you for it, and then he will kill you…if not, you will live in fear from now on.
“If I take the money you will be as you were. You will be here. You will have what you have had, and you will have no fear.”
For a moment I paused, and then I added, “I think I want that money more than you do. I think I might die to get it, but I do not believe you want to die to keep it.
“In death,” I added, “there are no pretty women. There is no tequila, no food, no good horses, no sunshine or rain. A little money lasts a very short time, but death is for always.”
“You are a philosopher,” Villareal said.
“I am a man who has been robbed, a man who feels a debt to the poor men to whom this money belongs.” Quietly, there in the dark, holding the gun in my hand, I told him of the hard-working men down in Texas, the children who must go to school, the wives who needed shoes, the hard times all must face.
“I see,” he said quietly. “I did not know from whom the money had been taken.”
“I have followed Heseltine for many months,” I said. “My father has died because of this money. Doc Sites was shot and seriously wounded because of it. Al Cashion was killed, and another man too. As long as I live I shall follow him.”
He dropped his gun into his holster. “I am a bad man,
señor
, but not so bad as to rob the poor. Take the money. Only a little of it is here. The girl has it.”
He handed me the saddlebags, and I took them warily. “Thank you,
amigo
,” I said. “The men to whom this money belongs will speak well of Villareal. I shall tell them of your courtesy, and that you are a
caballero
.”
“Gracias,”
he said. “And now, if you will permit?”
Backing from the door, he closed it behind him. Saddlebags in hand, I went out the other door, crossed to my horse, and rode back toward the Plaza.
I was coming from a street into the Plaza when suddenly I drew up.
It was Hampton Todd, and he had a rifle on me. “All right, where is she?” he demanded.
“Who do you want?”
“I want that damned girl, and you know where she is, damn you! Tell me, or I’ll cut you down!”
“I wish I knew where she is,” I replied calmly. “I have been looking for her, and for the man she rides with.”
“You’re that man! You know where she is, and I want her. And I want my money.”
“
Your
money?”
“My money!” He shouted it at me. Windows were opening. His fury was attracting attention, but it did me no good. The man was trembling with rage, and he was ready to fire. At the slightest move, he would, and at that range he could scarcely miss.
“I do not know where she is, or what was between you.” I kept my voice even. “I do not deny that I followed her here, looking for the man who robbed me.”
“A likely story. There was no other man—
you
were the one!”
“Put the rifle down,” I said, “and we can talk. The man you want is the man I want. And where he is, the woman will be.”
“No!” He lifted the rifle again. “Tell me, or I’ll kill you!”
I felt the
whap
of the bullet past my ear. I saw him jerk as I heard the report. His own rifle exploded, and the bullet missed me only by inches, and then he was staggering, falling.
“He killed me!” He spoke the words loudly and clearly, pointing at me. And then he rolled over into the dust.
Men were running. Somebody yelled, “Get a rope!”
Sheriff Rowland was suddenly beside me. “All right,” he said. “Get off that horse.”
“Sheriff, before I move I ask you to check my rifle and my pistol. You will find that neither one has been fired.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Don’t listen to him, Rowland!” The man who spoke had obviously been drinking. His face was red and ugly-looking. A dozen other men were around him. “Hamp named him—pointed right at him!”
“Please, Sheriff,” I said quietly.
He drew my Winchester from the scabbard. The barrel was cold, it held a bullet, the chamber was loaded. One by one he ejected the cartridges.
“As you see,” I said, “the rifle has not been fired. Now the pistol, before anybody touches it, including me.”
He threw a hard look at me, but he did check the pistol, too. He held it to the light and looked through the barrel. The cylinder held five cartridges, a sixth chamber was empty, but that was the way we carried them.
“These guns have not been fired.” Rowland spoke clearly, emphatically. “This man could not have fired the shot.”
An angry sound rose from the men around us, but as the information circulated among them, it died down.
“Then who did shoot him?” Rowland demanded.
“Somebody behind me, Sheriff,” I said. “Somebody who must have been in a second-story window, or on a roof, for the bullet passed me, but killed him, and he was standing on the ground.”
The sheriff turned and looked across the Plaza. “Gone now, whoever it was. Question is, were they shooting at you or him?”
“At me,” I said, “although Todd was about to take a shot at me himself. I was trying to talk him out of it.”
“Get down and come inside,” he said. “We’ve got some talking to do.”
A deputy had come up and Rowland turned and spoke rapidly. The deputy hurriedly named five or six men in the crowd, and they scattered in the direction from which the shot seemed to have come.
Inside the Pico House we were away from the crowd, and Rowland led me into the hotel office. “Sit down,” he said. “I want the whole story.”
So I laid it out for him from the beginning. My pursuit of Heseltine, Reese, and Ruby Shaw, my discovery of her using another name here, Hampton Todd knowing some man was involved with her, and believing it was me.
“Why you?”
I shrugged. “I was probably the only one who seemed to know anything about her. I doubt if he ever saw Heseltine, so when he discovered another man was involved he thought it was me. I was a stranger in town, who knew her.”
“You think it was Heseltine who fired the shot?”
“Heseltine or Reese, shooting at me. My guess would be Heseltine. I don’t think Reese was in any shape to be shooting at anybody, and I doubt if he would have been able to get here in time. Bob Heseltine could have.”
“But he’s a gunfighter, not a back-shooter.”
“I’ve been dogging him, Mr. Rowland. I’ve been right on him. He can’t find anybody to work with him because I’m always right there, not far behind him. Nobody wants to try pulling a job when somebody is hunting them before they start, and they don’t want to get involved.”