Brad had just drawn two cards, and he looked up only as Asa was putting Brad’s rifle in the rack.
“I’ll just set this rifle out of the way,” he said, with a malicious gleam in his eye. “I reckon you won’t be needin’ it.”
Schaum chuckled, deep in his throat. He won a small pot, and his eyes were bright and hungry as he looked at Brad Murphy.
“You fellows have played a lot of poker,” Brad drawled. Coolly, he began rolling a smoke. “Ain’t never wise to call unless you’re pretty sure what the other feller’s holdin’.”
Cornish stared at him. “What do you mean by that?” he asked sharply.
“Me?” Brad looked surprised. “Nothin’ but what I say. Only,” he added, “it’d sure make a man feel mighty silly if he figured an hombre had a couple of deuces, then called and found him holdin’ a full house.”
Butcher Schaum’s eyes were cautious. Somehow, Murphy was too confident, too sure of himself. Maybe it would be easier to get the gold by winning it over the table. He fumbled the cards in his big hands, then dealt.
Brad Murphy, his eyes half closed, heard the flick of the card as it slipped off the bottom of the deck. He smiled at Schaum, just smiled, and Butcher Schaum felt something turn over inside of him. He was a hard man, but in Murphy’s place he would have been scared. He knew it. Only once he had been cornered like that, and he had been scared. Luckily, some friends arrived to save him. This hombre wasn’t scared. He was cool, amused.
Schaum picked up his cards, glanced at them, and straightened in his chair, his face slowly going red under the deep tan. The three kings he had slipped from the bottom of the deck, all marked by his thumbnail, had suddenly become deuces!
Trying to be casual, he turned a card in his hand. The mark was there!
He looked up, and Brad Murphy was smiling at him, smiling with a hard humor. Brad Murphy had dealt last. Obviously, he had detected the marks and added his own, to the deuces.
Suddenly, Butcher Schaum knew there was going to be a showdown. He wasn’t going to wait. To the devil with it!
He tossed his cards onto the table. Brad Murphy looked up, surprised.
“Murphy.” Schaum leaned over the table. “You figger to be a purty smart hombre. You know us boys ain’t no lily-fingered cowpokes. We been owl-hootin’ for a long time now. You got a lot of gold in that poke. We want a split.”
Brad smiled. “I’m right grateful,” he said, “for you pullin’ me out of that canyon, and I wouldn’t mind payin’ you for a horse. But the future of this gold has already been accounted for, and I ain’t makin’ any sort of split.”
He shifted a little in the seat, turning his body. One hand placed two double eagles on the table, taken from the pocket of his jeans. He then shifted his winnings from the game to the same pile. “Now, if you boys want to let me have the horse,” he said, “I’ll split the breeze out of here. Like I say, it’s been a long time since I seen my wife and kid.”
“You play a pretty good hand of poker,” Schaum said, “but it’s you that’s bucking a full house. Asa’s over there by the door. Yore rifle’s gone. Cornish and me here, we figure we’re in a good spot ourselves. It’s three to one, and them ain’t good odds for you.”
“No,” Brad admitted, “they ain’t. Specially with Asa off on my side like that. The odds are right bad, I reckon. Almost,” he added, “as bad as when the Howells boys tried me.”
He smiled at Schaum. “There was three of them, too.”
“Split your poke,” Schaum said. “Ten pounds o’ that for each of us. That’s plenty of a stake.”
“I’m not splittin’ anything, Butcher,” Murphy said quietly. “If you shorthorns want to be paid for draggin’ me out of that hole, there it is.” He gestured to what was on the table. “But I worked down in the heat and misery for this gold. I aim to keep it.”
“We’re holdin’ the best hand, Brad,” Schaum said. “So set back and make it easy on yourself. You divvy up, or we take it all.”
“No,” Murphy replied, “I’m holdin’ the only hand, Butcher. You three got me cornered. You might get me, but that wouldn’t help you—you’d be dead!”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Butcher sat up, his lips tight.
“Why, the six-shooter I’m holdin’, Butch. She’s restin’ on my knee, pointin’ about an inch under yore belt buckle.” He tapped the underside of the table with the barrel.
He shoved back in his chair a little, then stood up, the Frontier Colt .45 balanced easily in his hand. “I’m takin’ a horse, boys, an’ I wouldn’t figure on nothin’ funny; this gun’s mighty easy on the trigger.”
Waving Asa around with the other two, he gathered his sack with his left hand and edged around the table toward the door. Slowly, he backed to the door, his gun covering them.
He stepped back. Butcher Schaum, his face swollen with fury, stared at him, his right hand on the table, fingers stretched like a claw, and stiff with rage.
He stepped back again, quickly this time. His foot hung. Too late he remembered the raised doorsill, he fell backward, grabbing at the air. Then a gun blasted and something struck him alongside the head. With his last flicker of consciousness, he hurled the sack of gold at the slope that reared itself alongside the cabin. It struck, gravel rattled, and he felt blackness close over him, soft, folding, deadening.
* * *
THE FIRST THING he realized was warmth. His back was warm. Then his eyes flickered open, blinding sunlight struck them, and they closed.
He was lying, his head turned sideways, sprawled facedown on the hard-packed earth outside the cabin door. It was daylight.
Butcher Schaum’s voice broke into his growing realization. “Where’d he put that durned sack?” he snarled angrily. “My shot got him right outside the door, he didn’t have no more’n two steps, an’ now that gold is plumb gone.”
“You sure he’s dead?” Asa protested.
“Look at his head!” Cornish snapped. “If he ain’t dead he will be. I couldn’t get no pulse last night. He’s dead all right.”
“Should we bury him?” Asa suggested. “I don’t like to see him lying like that.”
“Go ahead, if you want to,” Schaum snarled. “I’m huntin’ that gold. When I get it, I’m leavin’. You can stay if you want to. The buzzards’ll take care of him. Leave him lay.”
His head throbbing with pain, Brad lay still. How bad was he hurt? What was wrong with his head? It felt stiff and sore, and the pain was like a red-hot iron pressed against his skull.
Something crawled over his hand. His eyes flickered. An ant. Horror went through him. Ants! In a matter of minutes they’d be all over him. If there was an open wound—yet he dare not move. His gun? He had lost it in falling. No telling where it was now. If he tried to move they would kill him.
He could hear the three men moving as they searched. Schaum began to curse viciously.
“Where could it get to?” he bellowed angrily. “He didn’t go no more’n a few feet.”
Other ants were coming now, crawling over his arm toward his head. He knew now that he was cut there. The bullet must have grazed his skull, ripping the scalp open and drenching him with blood, making it appear that he was shot through the head.
Piercing pain suddenly went through him. The ants had gone to work. He forced himself to lie still. His teeth gritted, and he lay, trying not to tense himself.
“I’ll bet he throwed that sack down the gully,” Cornish said suddenly. “It couldn’t be no place else.”
He could hear them then, cursing and sliding to get to the bottom of the gully that curved close to the cabin from the left. The bank against which he had thrown the sack was to the right.
Two of them gone. The ants were all over him now, and he could not stand the agony much longer. It was turning his head into a searing sheet of white-hot pain.
Where was Moffitt? He could hear no sound. Then, as he was about to move, he heard a step, so soft he could scarcely detect it. Then another step, and Asa Moffitt was bending over him.
“In his shirt,” Moffitt muttered. “Where the gun was!”
Moffitt caught him by the coat and jerked him over on his back. “Ants gittin’ him,” he muttered. “Too bad he ain’t alive.” Asa knelt over him, and pulled his shirt open, cursing when he saw no sack. Then he thrust a hand into Brad’s pants pocket.