“If you put a hand on me,” Nancy Kerrigan said sharply, “I will see you hanged before sundown.”
Knowing the watcher’s eyes would be on Nancy, Flint rolled swiftly to his knees, gun in hand.
The guard turned swiftly, drawing. Flint fired.
He shot to kill, but his hand was unsteady, his gaze blurred. The bullet struck the man on the hip, ripping his empty holster loose and knocking him sidewise.
Flint lunged to his feet, swayed dizzily, and caught himself on the hitching rail to prevent a fall.
Another Baldwin man sprang into the street and Flint fired. The bullet ripped splinters from the walk at the man’s feet, and another struck the door jamb as he dove for shelter.
The guard was getting up and Flint, swaying drunkenly, cut down with a sweeping blow of his gun barrel that flattened him into the dust. Flint’s other pistol was in the gunman’s belt. He retrieved it, and took the guard’s pistol.
Nancy Kerrigan ran to him. “Oh, please! You’re hurt! Get into the buckboard!”
“There isn’t time,” he said.
He blinked slowly against the pain in his skull, and he swung his head like a huge bear.
The street was emptied of people. Yet they were there, all those who had beaten him. He shifted guns and thumbed shells into the Smith & Wesson.
With a queer, weaving, drunken gait he started up the street. Every breath he took brought a twinge of pain in his side. His head felt like a huge drum in which pain sloshed like water as he moved. He was going to die, and he no longer cared. What he wanted now was to find them. And he knew their faces.
He swayed, half-falling, then pushed himself erect and staggered through the swinging doors of a saloon. The Baldwin riders, some of them at least, were there.
Their laughter died, their half-lifted drinks stopped in mid-air, and Flint fired. He opened up in a blinding roar of gunfire, fanning his gun, for the range was close and there were a number of them.
One man grabbed for a gun and was caught by a bullet that knocked him sprawling. Panic-stricken, another man leaped through a window carrying the glass, frame, and all with him. Another bullet smashed a bottle from a man’s hand, and another — it was a face he remembered — struck a man in the spine as he dove for the back door.
Flint staggered to the bar, catching a glimpse of a bloody and broken face in the mirror. He picked up a bottle, took a short drink, and started for the door.
Out on the street he peered right and left. He realized his gun must be empty and holstered it for the guard’s pistol.
A window glass broke and a rifle barrel came through. Flint flipped the six-shooter up and snapped a shot through that window. A man sprang from a doorway and fired a quick shot that struck an awning post near Flint.
Flint fired, missed and fired again. The man’s knee buckled under him and he scrambled for the door, but Flint fired again and the man cried out sharply and fell forward.
From door to door he went, half-blind with pain and his own blood, dribbling from a lacerated scalp. Twice he almost fell. The men he faced seemed panic-stricken at the sight of him, and they shot too fast or simply ducked out and ran.
Somehow he was back in front of the stage station and his own horse was there. So was Nancy Kerrigan. He had to try twice before he could get a foot in the stirrup and pull himself into the saddle. He swung the mare and started up the street. He began to feed shells into the guard’s gun, but it slipped from his fingers and fell into the dust.
He slid forward on the mare’s neck, the horizon seemed to bob and vanish into wavering mist, and he felt himself falling. Nancy was beside him. He fell half into the buckboard, and she got down quickly and tipped him over into the back. Tying the mare on behind, she started for the ranch, driving at a rapid clip.
When Flint opened his eyes he was lying in bed between white sheets and staring up at a sunlit ceiling. Slowly, because his neck was stiff, he turned his head.
The room was large, square, and neat. The bed was a huge, old-fashioned fourposter, and there was a dresser and a mirror. The floor was almost painfully clean, polished, and there were several rag rugs. He started to move and felt a twinge of pain in his side that left him gasping. His body felt stiff and when he ran his fingers down his side he found he was taped tightly from armpits to hips.
On a chair back hung his gun belt with a Smith & Wesson in its holster. The other gun lay atop his freshly washed and neatly pressed jeans. His coat hung over the back of the chair also, and in the pocket were the letters.
For several minutes he lay still, luxuriating in the clean sheets. After a while he closed his eyes and slept. When he opened them again he lay looking at his coat and wondering whether the letters were worth the pain of getting them.
He heard footsteps. The door opened and Nancy came in, looking bright and pretty in a cotton dress of blue and white, carrying herself like a young queen.
“You should see yourself,” she said cheerfully. “You’re a sight.”
“If I look like I feel,” Flint said, “I can believe it.”
“You’re luckier than you have any right to be. The doctor doesn’t think there are any broken bones, but he is worried about you. He is afraid you may have internal injuries.”
Flint shot her a sharp glance. “Did he give me a thorough check?”
“There wasn’t time. He intends to do that when he comes back.”
Like hell he will, Flint told himself. “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said. “If Baldwin finds I’m here, you’ll be in trouble.”
She held the door for a Mexican girl, who brought in a tray of food.
One hand was bandaged, and he decided it must have been the hand that was stamped on. The other hand was bruised and somewhat swollen. When he sat up to eat he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, but there was little he recognized.
There was a great welt above one eye and his nose was swollen to almost twice its normal size. His lip and cheek were puffed out in a knot as big as his fist, and there was a cut on his chin. There was a bandage on his skull, and his eyes were scarcely more than slits, but he had expected worse.
“We brought your mare in,” Nancy said. “She’s out in the stable eating corn like she had forgotten how it tasted.” She straightened the bedcovers. “And don’t worry about us. If Port Baldwin had not moved in on Tom Nugent he would be here now. We’re expecting him.”
When she had gone, Flint lay back on the bed. His head was throbbing and he felt very tired.
He had come to New Mexico wanting no trouble. He had wanted no trouble at Horse Springs, and wanted none on North Plain, but long ago he had discovered that one has to make a stand. If a man starts to run, there is nothing to do but keep running. And if a man must die, he could at least die proud of his manhood. It was better to live one day as a lion, than a dozen years as a sheep.
Rolling to his elbow, he got the letters from his pocket. One was from the Baltimore attorney, forwarding papers that indicated his plans in some respects were complete, and some investments had been concluded. The other letter was the final report from the detectives.
Port Baldwin had been the man who arranged for Lottie and her father to secure the services of the gambler who tried to kill him.
And her father had been associated in some of Baldwin’s financial schemes.
With difficulty he brought his mind to consideration of the problem. Long ago he had heard of an old Chinese saying to the effect that any man who could concentrate for as much as three minutes on any given problem could rule the world. The thought had remained in his mind, and he had cultivated the ability to apply all his intelligence to any given situation. To close out everything from his mind but the one idea to be considered had taken long practice, but much of his success had been due to that ability to concentrate, to formulate the problem, to bring to it all the information and knowledge he had, and to reach a decision. Only now he was too tired, his head throbbed too much, and he wanted only to rest