One other man went down before a slug bit me in the leg and I started to fall. I braced myself against the wall, hammered the rest of my shells into them, and then commenced pushing the empties out.
The room was full of smoke from that old black powder, and from somewhere near the bar flame stabbed at me and I was hit again.
I didn’t fall. I just kept plugging fresh cartridges into those empty chambers and then lifted my six-gun for another have at them. Sliding down the wall to one knee I peered under the smoke that filled the room. I saw some boots, stabbed two shots about four feet above them, and saw a man fall.
I crawled toward the door and managed to push it open and get outside. Nobody needed to tell me I was hard hit, and nobody needed to tell me I’d done a damn fool thing to ride into the enemy camp and go to blasting.
My horse was yonder, and I crawled for him. A door opened in the side of the hotel, then closed easy like. I hitched myself down the steps into the street and using the hitch rail, pulled myself to my feet.
I was backing across the street, gun in hand, when Jake Planner stepped around the corner of the hotel on those crutches of his. He had a six-shooter in one hand, and he kind of eased his weight on the other crutch and lifted the gun. At the same moment I saw Brewer come out of the saloon door. He had a rifle in his hands and he was maneuvering himself into position for the kill.
My gun came up. I took a step back and my boot came down on a rock that rolled under it. Weak as I was, it was all that was needed. The stone rolled, I staggered and fell just as two guns went off, followed quickly by a third.
That last had a different sound. It was a sharper spang, not the dull report of the forty-four. I saw Brewer stagger and go down, then crawl around the corner and out of sight.
Planner was gone. An instant ago he was there and then he was gone.
I started to get up and felt a hand under my arm. “Easy now!” The voice was strange, but my eyes were fogging over and when I started to look around he said, “You’ll have to walk. I can’t carry you and shoot. Let’s go.”
Somewhere along in the next few minutes I felt myself getting into a saddle, and I felt the movement of a horse because every time he set a hoof down it hurt like hell.
There was a fire burning. I liked the pinewood smell. It was night and there was a roundup of stars right overhead. I could see them through the branches of a tree. My head ached and I didn’t feel like moving, so for a long time I just lay there looking up at the stars.
After a while I must have passed out again because when my eyes opened the sky was gray and there was only one star left on the range of the sky. For a time I lay there looking at it and then my eyes located the fire. It was down to coals and gray ash, and over beyond it I could hear that wonderful sound of horses munching grass.
Nothing moved so I just lay there, not even wondering what had happened to me or where I was. Then I smelled something else and my eyes located it, a blackened coffeepot on the coals.
I wanted coffee. I wanted it bad but I wasn’t so sure I could get to it or what I’d drink it out of. For a while I lay there, listening to the wind in the pines, and finally it began to come over me that I’d been shot … I’d been hit at least once, probably twice or more. Somehow I’d gotten out of town. Vaguely, I recalled a gentle voice and a hand on my arm. I recalled riding, and a hand on me much of the time. Finally I’d been tied into the saddle … but where was I now?
When I made a try at moving my right arm I found it was tied up somehow. My left was free.
Reaching out, my hand encountered something … my pistol! Well, I’d been left a gun, anyway. I could see the horses now, right yonder beyond a few scattered aspen. They were picketed and eating grass. Turning my head I saw somebody sleeping off on my left. His head was on a saddle, and he was bundled up in blankets with part of a ground sheet over him … but it was no type of ground sheet I’d ever known.
My right arm was hurt. Rolling to my left side a little I pushed into a sitting position. The horses looked over at me. There were two horses, one of them my roan.
Some gear was stacked on the grass near us, and two packsaddles. So this gent was a drifter. His gear looked a whole lot better than any drifter I’d ever come across, and he hadn’t much in the way of spurs on his boots … and they weren’t western boots.
When I started to twist a little I got a shot of pain through me that made me gasp, and when I gasped this sleeping man came awake suddenlike.
He was a tall man, not more than thirty, and handsome. He was one of the best dispositioned men I ever met, and he dressed neat. His outfit was all of the best, and while I couldn’t make out his rifle, it was a handsome weapon.
He sat up and looked over at me. “Don’t try moving,” he said, “you’ll start bleeding again. I had a hard time getting it stopped.”
“Where’d you come from?”
He chuckled dryly. “What does it matter? I came at the right time, didn’t I?” He shot me a look. “What happened in there, anyway?”
“We had us a fight. They were pushing us hard so I decided to push back. I done it.”
“Did you get any of them?”
“I got two inside. I thought I got another outside, or somebody did.”
“That was me. I took a shot at the man with the crutches but missed. Probably it was just as well. I’d hate to shoot a crippled man.”
“Just because a man’s got game legs doesn’t say he’s got a good disposition. That was the worst of the lot. That was Jake Planner.”
“What was the fight about?”
“Ranch out yonder,” I said, “called the Empty … for MT. There’s an old lady runnin’ it … salt of the earth … named Emily Talon. Those back in Siwash were tryin’ to run her out, and I got myself into the fight … I don’t exactly know how. They hit us, tried to burn us out, and we saved the ranch, then whipped them in a fight at the house. But they’d be coming again and I got sore, them pushing an old lady that way … so I rode into town.”
“Alone?”
“Why not? There wasn’t all that many of them. And I could take from them the only hand they’ve got.”
“You look familiar.”
“There’s a few posters around. My name is Sackett. Logan Sackett.”
“Hello, cousin. I am Barnabas Talon. Em is my mother.”
Lying back on my blankets, I looked him over. He had the look, all right. He reminded me of Em, and a little more of Milo. “Heard you were in England.”
“I came back. We’d received word a few years ago that ma was dead and buried. We were notified of it, and that the estate had been settled. There seemed no reason to return, so I kept on with what I was doing.
“A few months ago I was talking about Colorado with some English friends, and they commented on seeing the house, our house, and they had heard about an old woman who lived there alone.
“At first I thought it was nonsense, but it worried me, so I caught a ship and came over. In New Orleans I went to an old man who had been pa’s attorney, and he told me there had been no settlement of the estate and that he had a letter from ma not two months before. So I started home.”
He filled a cup with coffee and handed it to me. “My father taught me caution. I had been formally notified that the estate had been settled and ma was dead. Obviously someone had done so for a reason. Apparently the reason was to cause me to forget Colorado and whatever property we had there.
“Whoever had such intentions would not be pleased if I returned, so I came quietly, and when I reached Denver, I made inquiries. Nobody knew anything until I consulted a former deputy sheriff whom I knew. He told me that a man named Jake Planner, who had lived in Siwash, was hiring fighting men … the worst kind.