The words had a nice sound and he said them aloud, but softly, listening to the smooth sound of them on his lips. He had the Irishman’s love of fine sounding words and the Irishman’s aptitude for rebellion. He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. The fellow in the construction camp who quoted that, he had been better than a book, and all he needed to start him off was a bit of rye whiskey.
It was past midnight when the horses came. Two riders led them up under the trees and then
across the street to the stable. One man remained outside in Duffy’s chair while the other helped Duffy’s man tie them in the stalls. They were all fine, beautifully built animals.
The man was stocky and not very tall. He lifted the lantern to the hostler’s face. “New?”
“Drifting.”
“You take good care these horses are ready. You do that and you’ll have no trouble. You might even find a few extra bucks in your kick when this is over. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
The man walked back to the door but did not step out into the light. There was a lantern over the door that was kept burning all night, and it threw a pale glow around the stable door.
Duffy’s man watched the glow of their cigarettes and then he went to the harness room. There were several old saddles, odds and ends of harness, and in a corner, behind a dusty slicker there was something else.
It was a Colt revolving shotgun.
He peered out a crack of the door, then put the lantern on the floor between himself and the door. Taking up the shotgun he wiped it free of dust, then he took it apart and went to work on it.
Several times he went to the door to peer out. After almost two hours of work he had the shotgun in firing condition. The cylinder would no longer revolve of itself but could be turned by hand. Duffy’s man fed shells into the four chambers. They were old brass shotgun shells, and he had loaded them himself. Then he stood the shotgun back in the corner and hung the slicker over it.
The short, stocky man was in the chair now and the other one was asleep on the hay just inside the door. Duffy’s man stopped inside the door. “What time tomorrow?” he asked.
The fellow looked around at him. “Maybe noon. Why?”
“Wonderin’ if I should feed them again. They won’t run good on a full stomach.”
“Say, that’s right. Feed ’em now, I s’pose. All right?”
“Yeah.”
Duffy’s man walked back inside and fed the horses. “They tell us, sir, that we are weak,” he repeated, “but when shall we be stronger?”
He thought it over as he stood there, rubbing the sorrel’s neck. “It has a nice sound,” he told the horse, “a nice sound.”
He walked to the door. “Soon be daylight,” he said, “the sky’s turning gray.”
“Yeah.” The stocky man got to his feet and stretched. Duffy’s man hit him.
It was a backhand blow with his left fist that caught the stretching outlaw in the solar plexus. Duffy’s man stepped around in front of him and with the practiced ease of the skilled boxer he uppercut with the left and crossed a right to the chin. The outlaw never had a chance to know what was happening, and the only sound was a gasp at the backhand to the solar plexus.
Duffy’s man pulled him out of sight behind the door. Then he tied his hands and feet and stuffed a dirty rag into his mouth for a gag, tying it there.
Leaning over the sleeping outlaw he very gently lifted the man’s hand and slipped a loop over it. His eyes flared open but the hostler grasped his upper arm and flipped him over on his face before he realized what was happening.
Shoving the man’s face into the hay and earth, he dropped on one knee on the man’s back and jerked his other wrist over to receive a second loop. Quickly, with a sailor’s skill with knots, he drew the wrists together and bound them tight, then tied his feet and gagged him.
They might, he thought, get themselves free just when he was most busy. He dragged them to the center of the barn where there was no loft. It was almost forty feet to the ridgepole. Climbing
the ladder to the loft he then mounted a ladder that led to the roof and rigged two ropes over a crosspiece, then went back to the floor.
The outlaws, both conscious now, stared at him, horrified.
“Going to hang you,” he said cheerfully, grinning at their agonized expressions. “But not by the necks … unless you struggle.”
Twenty minutes later he looked up at them with appreciation. More than thirty feet above the hard packed earth of the barn floor he had suspended the two outlaws. Each man had a loose noose around his neck. If they struggled to get free and the knots started to slip they would hang themselves.
“It’s up to you,” he explained. “You can hang there quietly and when this shindig is over I’ll let you down easy. You struggle and you’ll both be dead.”
He strolled to the door. Smoke was lifting from Ma’s Kitchen and Julie was sweeping off the step. He walked across and she glanced up, smiling at him. He saw her eyes go past him to the barn door. The chair was empty.
She got the coffeepot and filled his cup, stealing a glance at his face, which revealed nothing. She had heard the riders come in with the horses, and she knew it meant a bank holdup somewhere near.
The outlaws could run their horses at top speed, switch to fresh horses and be off to the mountains. The fresh horses would assure them of escape, for any posse would have to run their horses hard to try to catch them, and those horses would have been extended to the utmost before reaching Westwater.
Duffy’s man ate in silence. When he arose he dropped a quarter on the table. “Better stay inside today,” he told Julie, “and tell Ma.”
She stopped at the end of the table. “Whatever it is you’re planning,” she said, “don’t do it. You don’t know Clip Hart.”
“There are Clip Harts wherever one goes. If you start running there’s no place to stop. I have it to do or I have to run, and I don’t run easy.
“Anyway” — he spoke in a lighter tone, not looking at her — “a man has to stop somewhere and make a start. This seems as good a place as any. A man might even start a ranch of his own.”
“That takes money.”
“A man who is good with an ax might make some money cutting ties for that branch line they’re about to build. They will need ties,” he added, “or they’ll have to ship them a long way.”
He went out without looking back, but he heard Ma say, “I like that young man.”
Julie answered, “He won’t live long if he bucks Clip Hart.”
At the foot of the steps Duffy’s man stopped, thinking. How did one man handle seven men? And how far behind the outlaws would the posse be? How long would it take them to get to Westwater?
Duffy’s man considered a half dozen ways of delaying the outlaws and still staying alive. Tying their horses with hard knots? They would cut the ropes. Opening fire as they entered the street? He didn’t have shells enough to kill them all if he scored with every shot, and they were too many. He would himself be dead.
There was no way. He had been foolish to begin what he could not end, and he was very glad he had not tried to enlist help in his foolhardy scheme. It had been all too easy to think of doing something, all too easy to say they would never be stronger.
Nonetheless, having started it, it was not in him to quit. What he had begun he would finish, and he would hope to do enough damage in the process that they would come no more to Westwater.
It was natural that he did not consider his own situation. Not that he had not thought of it before, but he had known what his chances were, and now that he had decided to go ahead he simply would have no chance at all. At least, none worth considering.
Finally, he brought the horses out and tied them, according to plan, at the hitch-rail. He’ tied them with slipknots, tying Clip Hart’s horse a little closer to the stable and just a little apart from the others. Then he brought the shotgun from the harness room and placed it beside the bam door, but out of sight.