“He’s alone, ain’t he?”
“No, Tin, he ain’t. Nick Shadow’s down the street, and Nick is just plain poison with a six-gun and he’s one of the kind who just don’t care. He’s like the mule who butted his head into a tree, an’ somebody asked if he couldn’t go around it and they answered sure, but he just didn’t give a damn. Shadow is like that. Did you ever buck a man who just plain don’t care? Everybody dies but him. I seen it before.”
Hone walked slowly to the bar. “There’s six men out there and four more a-coming up. Not even Logan Sackett and Nick Shadow can buck them odds.”
Red chuckled. “You ain’t countin’ me. I been on the wrong side too often. This time I’m on the right ride. I think I’m as good as you, Tin.
“And I’ll tell you something else. Galloway was cuttin’ a tree down in the breaks by the river and when he came out he saw you Dunns a-coming. Right now him and Parmalee and that breed of theirs, Charlie Farnum, they’re right over yonder in the livery stable.”
“Gimme a beer,” Tin-Cup said. “It’ll be thirsty, riding.”
“Drink it on your horse,” Logan said, “they’re going to open the ball.”
Bull Dunn came through the door. He saw the back door closing after Tin-Cup Hone and he turned his cruel eyes on Logan. “Heard about you,” he said.
“I usually fight with a gun,” Logan said, “but this time I’m going to whip you with my hands.”
Dunn glanced at him, disgusted. “Don’t be a fool. Nobody ever came close.”
“Maybe they didn’t do it right,” Logan said, and hit him.
He had put the beer down on the bar and he simply backhanded Bull Dunn across the mouth, smashing his lips. Bull Dunn was huge and powerful, but Logan Sackett, while considerably lighter, was almost as tall and a man with huge shoulders and chest. His blow did not even stagger Dunn when it mashed his lips, but Logan let the impetus of the blow turn him, so he threw a left hand at Bull’s head. The bigger man pulled his head aside and grabbed Logan with his huge arms.
Logan shoved the butt of his palm under Bull’s chin, forcing his head back, then he struck him twice in the ribs and shoved him off. Dunn struck out hard and knocked Logan into the bar, then charged him, head down and swinging. Logan rolled free, smashed a wicked short right to the side of the face that split Bull’s ear, showering him with blood.
Bull turned like a cat, landed left and right to the head and rammed in again, but Logan slapped a hand down on Dunn’s head, thrusting it down to meet Logan’s rising knee. Dunn staggered back, his nose and mouth a gory wreck.
Then toe-to-toe they began to slug, smashing punch after punch, neither man trying to evade, each one soaking up punishment. Logan was a little the faster, Dunn the heavier and perhaps the stronger. It was rough, brutal, and beautiful to watch. People crowded into the room. Up and down they went. Logan pulled free and knocked Bull Dunn down with a smashing right, but the big man lunged up from the floor, grappled Logan about the hips and lifted his body clear of the floor, then slammed him down across a table, which crashed beneath them. Bull dove at him, but Logan hit him with a short right to the face, then heaved him off. Both men came up together. Dunn swung a kick for Logan’s groin, and Logan brought his knee up across in front of him, blocking the kick.
Then he walked in, smashing blow after blow to Dunn’s face. Bull broke away, charged again and threw Sackett hard. Dunn jumped for Logan’s face with his boots and Logan rolled aside. He got to his feet in time to meet Dunn’s rush. Again they stood slugging, grunting with every punch. Shirts torn and faces bloody, they swung and swung, but Logan was slowly pushed back by the larger man’s brute strength. Back he went down the room, then suddenly he seemed to weaken, and fell back against the bar.
Seeing victory, Dunn set himself and drew back his fist for a finishing punch, and Logan Sackett, who had faked his weakness, threw a short inside right. It dropped like a hammer to Dunn’s chin inside of his swing, and stopped the big man flatfooted. Stunned, Bull Dunn stood, his fist poised, and then Logan Sackett punched short and hard with both fists—a left to the face, then a ripping right uppercut to the midsection.
Dunn’s knees sagged and Logan Sackett whipped another right to the face.
Bull went down. He hit the floor on his knees and Pete Dunn screamed as if stabbed. “No! No, pa! They can’t lick you! Nobody can!”
Bull Dunn lunged up, dazed and shaken, staring blindly for his enemy. Logan Sackett was pouring beer into a glass, and Dunn lunged at him. Logan Sackett lifted a foot to fend him off—boot against Dunn’s chest, knee bent. Then he straightened the knee and Dunn staggered back and fell again.
Logan Sackett rinsed his cut mouth with a swallow of beer, then gulped it down. “Stay down, you damn fool,” he said. “You’re game enough.”
Bull Dunn stared up at him. “I wish … I wished I could get up, damn you, I’d—”
“Have a beer,” Logan said. “You fight pretty good.”
He walked over and taking the bigger man’s arm, helped him to his feet where he half fell against the bar. Logan shoved a beer in front of him. “It’s cold,” he said. “Tastes good after a fight, and before a long ride.”
Bull looked at him. “You don’t need to grind it in,” he said. “I should have listened to Rocker.”
It was hot in the street outside. Nick Shadow stood in front of the livery stable, well out of sight. Galloway was in the doorway, staying in the shade to see better. The sound of fighting from the saloon was finished.
“Somebody won,” Shadow said, “and somebody lost.”
Parmalee came from the store. “I guess it’s all over,” he said.
“Not quite,” Ollie Hammer said, “not quite.”
“Why not?” Parmalee suggested. “It’s finished in there. If your people won they’d be out here in the street, looking for the rest of us.”
“What about your crowd? Won’t they come out?”
Parmalee smiled. “They know we can handle it,” he said calmly.
“You? You dude? You’re leavin’ it to Shadow, or that cousin of yours, or whatever he is.”
“Second cousin, I believe. Oh, they could handle it all right, Hammer, but if you prefer me, I’m at your pleasure. Draw when you will.”
“Now there’s the gent,” Ollie Hammer said, ” ‘draw when you will’ ” he mimicked. “All right I’ll—”
His hand flashed for his gun.
Parmalee’s gun was an instant faster, his shot smashed Ollie’s gun hand and the gun fell into the dust. “And to show you that was intentional,” Parmalee said, and he fired again, the bullet smashing the gun’s butt as it lay in the dust. “I really don’t want to run up a score, Hammer,” Parmalee said. “I’m a ranching man, not a gunfighter.”
“You ain’t seen the last of this,” Ollie Hammer said. “Huddy is still up on the mountain. When he’s finished there won’t be a Sackett left. And then there’s Rocker.”
Parmalee put his gun back in the holster and walked across to Galloway. “What about it? Shall we go up there and help Flagan?”
“Flagan don’t need help. And right now he knows he’s up there alone. He can shoot at anything that moves. If we go up it’ll just complicate things. Leave him be.”
He hitched up his pants. “Let’s all go home. We got some siding to build. We’re goin’ to have a barn-raisin’ soon, and we’re going to build us a house.”
Galloway gestured toward the hills. “I want to come out of a morning and look up at those hills and know nothing can be very wrong as long as there’s something so beautiful.
“My pa used to say that when corruption is visited upon the cities of men, the mountains and the deserts await him. The cities are for money but the high-up hills are purely for the soul.
“I figure to live out my life right here where I can hear the water run and see the aspen leaves turn gold in the autumn and come green again with spring. I want to wake up in the morning and see my own cattle feeding on the meadow, and hear the horses stomping in their stalls. I never had much chance for book learnin’, but this here is a kind of book anybody can read who’ll stand still long enough. This here is the La Plata country, and I’ve come home.”