“Say, stranger!” he said, beginning to smile … for this was surely someone’s joke, and Herk Avery could take a joke as well as any man. Especially after four chops and a mountain of mashed. “Howdy! What business do ye—”
The hand which hadn’t closed the door had been under the scrape. When it came out, it was clumsily holding a gun all three of the prisoners recognized at once.
Avery stared at it, his smile slowly fading. His hands unlaced themselves. His feet, which had been propped up on his desk, came down to the floor.
“Whoa, partner,” he said slowly. “Let’s talk about it.”
“Get the keys off the wall and unlock the cells,” the vaq said in a hoarse, artificially deep voice. Outside, unnoticed by all save Roland, more firecrackers rattled in a dry, popping string.
“I can’t hardly do that,” Avery said, easing open the bottom drawer of his desk with his foot. There were several guns, left over from that morning, inside. “Now, I don’t know if that thing’s loaded, but I don’t hardly think a traildog like you—”
The newcomer pointed the gun at the desk and pulled the trigger. The report was deafening in the little room, but Roland thought—hoped—that with the door shut, it would sound like just another firecracker. Bigger than some, smaller than others.
Good girl, he thought. Oh, good girl—but be careful. For gods’ sake, Sue, be careful.
All three of them standing in a line at the cell doors now, eyes wide and mouths tight.
The bullet struck the comer of the Sheriff’s rolltop and tore off a huge splinter.
Avery screamed, tilted back in his chair again, and went sprawling. His foot remained hooked under the drawer-pull; the drawer shot out and overturned, spilling three ancient firearms across the board floor.
“Susan, look out!” Cuthbert shouted, and then: “No, Dave!”
At the end of his life, it was duty and not fear of the Big Coffin Hunters which propelled Dave Hollis, who had hoped to be Sheriff of Mejis himself when Avery retired (and, he sometimes told his wife, Judy, a better one than Fatso had ever dreamed of being). He forgot that he had serious questions about the way the boys had been taken as well as about what they might or might not have done. All he thought of then was that they were prisoners o’ the Barony, and such would not be taken if he could help it.
He lunged for the cowboy in the too-big clothes, meaning to tear the gun out of his hands. And shoot him with it, if necessary.
12
Susan was staring at the yellow blaze of fresh wood on the comer of the Sheriff’s desk, forgetting everything in her amazement—so much damage inflicted by the single twitch of a finger!—when Cuthbert’s desperate shout awakened her to her position.
She shrank back against the wall, avoiding Dave’s first swipe at the oversized serape, and, without thinking, pulled the trigger again. There was another loud explosion, and Dave Hollis—a young man only two years older than she herself—was flung backward with a smoking hole in his shirt between two points of the star he wore. His eyes were wide and unbelieving. His monocle lay by one outstretched hand on its length of black silk ribbon. One of his feet struck his guitar and knocked it to the floor with a thrum nearly as musical as the chords he had been trying to make.
“Dave,” she whispered. “Oh Dave, I’m sorry, what did I do?”
Dave tried once to get up, then collapsed forward on his face. The hole going into the front of him was small, but the one she was looking at now, the one coming out the back, was huge and hideous, all black and red and charred edges of cloth …
as if she had run him through with a blazing hot poker instead of shooting him with a gun, which was supposed to be merciful and civilized and was clearly neither one.
“Dave,” she whispered. “Dave, I…”
“Susan look out!” Roland shouted.
It was Avery. He scuttled forward on his hands and knees, seized her around the calves, and yanked her feet out from under her. She came down on her bottom with a tooth-rattling crash and was face to face with him—his frog-eyed, large-pored face, his garlic-smelling hole of a mouth.
“Gods, ye’re a girl,” he whispered, and reached for her. She pulled the trigger of Roland’s gun again, setting the front of her serape on fire and blowing a hole in the ceiling. Plaster dust drifted down. Avery’s ham sized hands settled around her throat, cutting off her wind. Somewhere far away, Roland shrieked her name.
She had one more chance.
Maybe.
One’s enough, Sue, her father spoke inside of her head. One’s all ye need, my dear.
She cocked Roland’s pistol with the side of her thumb, socked the muzzle deep into the flab hanging from the underside of Sheriff Herk Avery’s head, and pulled the trigger.
The mess was considerable.
13
Avery’s head dropped into her lap, as heavy and wet as a raw roast. Above it, she could feel growing heat. At the bottom edge of her vision was the yellow flicker of fire.
“On the desk!” Roland shouted, yanking the door of his cell so hard it rattled in its frame. “Susan, the water-pitcher! For your father’s sake!”
She rolled Avery’s head out of her lap, got to her feet, and staggered to the desk with the front of the serape burning. She could smell its charred stench and was grateful in some far comer of her mind that she’d had time, while waiting for dusk, to tie her hair behind her.
The pitcher was almost full, but not with water; she could smell the sweet-sour tang of graf. She doused herself with it, and there was a brisk hissing as the liquid hit the flames. She stripped the serape off (the oversized sombrero came with it) and threw it on the floor. She looked at Dave again, a boy she had grown up with, one she might even have kissed behind the door of Hockey’s, once upon an antique time.
“Susan!” It was Roland’s voice, harsh and urgent. “The keys! Hurry!”
Susan grabbed the keyring from the nail on the wall. She went to Roland’s cell first and thrust the ring blindly through the bars. The air was thick with smells of gunsmoke, burned wool, blood. Her stomach clenched helplessly at every breath.
Roland picked the right key, reached back through the bars with it, and plunged it into the lockbox. A moment later he was out, and hugging her roughly as her tears broke. A moment after that, Cuthbert and Alain were out, as well.
“You’re an angel!” Alain said, hugging her himself.
“Not I,” she said, and began to cry harder. She thrust the gun at Roland. It felt filthy in her hand; she never wanted to touch one again. “Him and me played together when we were berries. He was one of the good ones—never a braid-puller or a bully—and he grew up a good one. Now I’ve ended him, and who’ll tell his wife?”
Roland took her back into his arms and held her there for a moment. “You did what you had to. If not him, then us. Does thee not know it?”
She nodded against his chest. “Avery, him I don’t mind so much, but Dave . . .”
“Come on,” Roland said. “Someone might recognize the gunshots for what they were. Was it Sheemie throwing firecrackers?”
She nodded. “I’ve got clothes for you. Hats and scrapes.”
Susan hurried back to the door, opened it, peeked out in either direction, then slipped into the growing dark.
Cuthbert took the charred serape and put it over Deputy Dave’s face. “Tough luck, partner,” he said. “You got caught in between, didn’t you? I reckon you wasn’t so bad.”
Susan came back in, burdened with the stolen gear which had been tied to Capi’s saddle. Sheemie was already off on his next errand without having to be told. If the inn-boy was a halfwit, she’d known a lot of folks in her time who were running on quarters and eighths.
“Where’d you get this stuff?” Alain asked.
“The Travellers’ Rest. And I didn’t. Sheemie did.” She held the hats out. “Come on, hurry.”
Cuthbert took the headgear and passed it out. Roland and Alain had already slipped into the scrapes; with the hats added and pulled well down over their faces, they could have been any Drop -vaqs in Barony.
“Where are we going?” Alain asked as they stepped out onto the porch. The street was still dark and deserted at this end; the gunshots had attracted no attention.
“Hockey’s, to start with,” Susan said. “That’s where your horses are.”
They went down the street together in a little group of four. Capi was gone; Sheemie had taken the mule along. Susan’s heart was thudding rapidly and she could feel sweat standing out on her brow, but she still felt cold. Whether or no what she had done was murder, she had ended two lives this evening, and crossed a line that could never be recrossed in the other direction. She had done it for Roland, for her love, and simply knowing she could have done no different now offered some consolation.