From down the street sounded a tin-panny piano, and suddenly she saw Jim, angling across the street in the dark. She would know his walk anywhere. She felt the weight of her purse where her gun lay. She was a fair shot and he was not far off and if she shot him now there was small chance she would ever be suspected … not with the enemies he had.
She put her hand in her purse and felt the cold steel of the pistol. She looked down the street and saw Jim walking up the opposite side, but toward her.
He seemed unconscious of her presence, and she drew the pistol from her bag, mentally judging the distance. Suddenly the hotel door opened and Nancy Kerrigan came out.
Quickly she put the pistol back into the purse and saw Nancy’s eyes upon her.
“You might miss,” Nancy said. “The dark can be deceiving. And if you missed … what then?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“A man like Jim,” Nancy said, “if he is shot at will shoot back. It is instinctive. You could be killed.”
She would not have fired, anyway. It was purely the impulse of the moment, and her own desperate need.
Lottie turned sharply away and walked down the street, her heels clicking on the walk. She had little cash. She would return to New York with only a check for one hundred dollars awaiting her and bills for twenty times that much. There were jewels she could sell, although precious few of them, and then she would be back to the old hand-to-mouth living with her father’s complaints in her ears.
Suppose she followed Jim down the street, told him she loved him, begged to take care of him? It would not work. She could not do it well and Jim was past believing anything she could say.
There was another way. There was that man of whom she had heard since coming to town. There was Buckdun.
She turned to look after Jim, but he had disappeared.
Suddenly from the shadows near the hotel, not thirty feet away, Buckdun emerged. She caught a glimpse of his narrow, pock-marked face in the light from the hotel window. She started toward him when, from down the street, there was a swift cannonade of gunfire.
Buckdun seemed to merge with the awning post and a tied horse, lean, towering, and waiting.
The gunfire burst briefly again. For an instant there was silence, and then the swinging doors of the Divide Saloon opened and a man lurched out, fell against the hitch rail, rolled around with his shoulder on the rail, and then fell off into the dust. He started to rise, and another man stepped into the doorway and fired, a cool, carefully aimed shot.
Buckdun stood for an instant, then glanced at her, and started toward his horse. He had his foot in the stirrup when she said, “Buckdun! Wait … I want to talk to you.”
Chapter 15
Julius Bent, walking toward the Divide Saloon when the sudden thunder of guns broke the stillness, was the sole witness to the stopping of Buckdun by Lottie.
The gunfire could mean but one thing. Kaybar was in trouble, and he noticed the meeting simply because it was in his line of vision and because Buckdun was a factor in the range war.
In the brief minutes before the outbreak of shooting, Baldwin had entered the saloon, then left, followed by Strett and Saxon. Three other Baldwin riders had gone in.
Julius Bent had not witnessed a brief conversation between Baldwin, Strett, and Saxon. “Flint has gone down the street. There’ll be a fight inside, and when it starts, he’ll come running. Pick your spots and get him when he comes up the street. He’ll never know what hit him.”
Dolan had seen Sandoval come in, and Alcott with him. Sandoval was wanted in Texas and Sonora, a cool, dangerous man. Alcott was poisonous as a rattler.
“Pete,” Dolan said under his breath, “for God’s sake, get your boys out of here. That’s Sandoval — and Alcott.”
Scott and Otero had come in, and there were now five Kaybar riders and seven Baldwin men. “Let’s go,” Gaddis said, to Milt Ryan, “the boss will be ready to go.”
“You go if you want,” Ryan said, “I ain’t a-gonna miss this.”
Gaddis saw that Milt was carrying his Winchester carbine. It hung by the sling from his shoulder, under the knee-length coat, muzzle down, trigger guard to the fore.
A dozen times Gaddis had seen Ryan shoot from that position, whipping the barrel up with his right hand, grasping it with the left and firing from the hip faster than most men could draw a pistol.
It was Alcott who started it. He was a lean youngster with a wolfish face above a scrawny neck that emerged from a collarless shirt. “Ain’t much of a man,” he said, “who’ll work for a lady boss.”
Sandoval had been watching Milt Ryan. The old wolfer was the man he feared.
As Alcott spoke, the Kaybar riders swung from the bar and a scar-faced kid among the Baldwin riders grabbed for a gun. Ryan’s carbine leaped from beneath his coat, and the shot caught the kid in the belly. He screamed and jumped back, butting into the table which slid along the floor.
It was pure accident that the table slid, but it was to make all the difference.
The scar-faced kid failed to get a shot off and the table staggered two men at the crucial instant. Gaddis got off two fast shots at a range of six feet and saw two men falling, one’s gun going off into the floor. Ryan’s Winchester was firing as fast as he could work the lever.
Alcott had stepped behind the corner of the bar, and in the split second it took for Ryan to fire and the table to slide, Alcott saw he was a dead man if he stayed. Turning he threw both arms across his face and dove through the window, glass and all. He lit on his knees and came up running.
With Ryan’s man down, Alcott gone, and two men down from Gaddis’ bullets the Kaybar men centered their fire on the three remaining. One of them, Sandoval, was already falling from Ryan’s fire.
As suddenly as it had begun, it was over, and the Kaybar riders stared at one another, amazed by their good luck. The shooting had lasted no more than ten seconds, and not one of them was scratched.
“Let’s finish the job,” Ryan said. “There’s still Baldwin men in town.”
One of the men Gaddis had shot tried to rise. “Call a doc!” he said. “I’m hit bad!”
“He’s right down the street,” Ryan said. “Get him yourself.”
As one man they started for the door.
Flint had not come running; contrary to Baldwin’s expectations. He heard the gunfire from the office of Doc McGinnis, where the old Army doctor, veteran of the Civil and Indian wars, had started a checkup.
Doc McGinnis stared at Flint through hard old eyes. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve got cancer.”
McGinnis put down his pipe. “You have, have you? Now, who told you that?”
“Dr. Culberton … Manning Culberton of New York. I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him.”
“You could be wrong, young man. I’ve heard of him, all right Plays wet nurse to a lot of chair-polishers … one himself. I don’t think he’d know a cancer from a fistula or a broken arm from a sore throat. He’s been treating people for imaginary illnesses so long he wouldn’t know what to do if he came bang up against something big. Cancer, eh? You lost any weight?”
“I’ve gained a little.”
“Tell me about it.”
Flint described his symptoms and what Dr. Culberton had said, as well as how he had felt then and now.
McGinnis checked him over carefully, asked a few more questions, then said dryly, “You’ve no more cancer than I have. What you seem to have is ulcers.” He walked to his desk. “You’re Kettleman, aren’t you? Heard you were in town. Ulcers a common thing for men in your business. Too busy, too tense, too much worry, wrong meals at the wrong times.”
McGinnis seated himself on the corner of his desk. “Losing weight at the start, that’s to be expected. From what I hear you haven’t been living a sensible life for a man with ulcers. What you need is rest, sleep, and lack of worry.”
Flint smiled. “Doctor, I’ve had more rest and sleep and less worry since I’ve been out here than ever before. I’ve eaten very little but beef or beef broth, and that almost without any seasoning because I didn’t have it.”
“Seems to me you’ve had plenty to worry about,” McGinnis said ironically. “You mean to say all that fighting didn’t worry you?”