He saw them and he saw their guns and knew the chase was over. He knew that his raincoat was open, that his guns were at his thighs, that he could kill one, two or even three men before they got him.
It could be done. It had been done. Mysterious Dave Mathers had killed five men in a gun battle in Dodge; Commodore Perry Owen had shot down four in Holbrook.
But Maria Cristina sat by the fire close to him and she might be hit or she would be left to the vengeance of those who did not fall.
“Howdy, boys,” he spoke casually. “Kind of wet out there, ain’t it?”
At his voice, Maria Cristina looked up. Her face stiffened with shock and she got to her knees.
The heavy man in the slicker studied Jordan through the rain. It was no wonder, Hindeman thought, that it had taken so long. Lantz was right, this man was a curly wolf … with his back to the wall.
Jacob Lantz sat a little apart. He sat his saddle, looking at Jordan.
“You killed Old Bob?” Hindeman made a statement, rather than asked a question.
“He went for his gun.”
“But you killed him … why?”
“You know why. He was riding a stolen horse. Stolen from me.” He nodded his head to indicate their own horses. “That steeldust is mine, so’s the sorrel. And that dun answers to the name of Pet.”
He looked at the horse. “Pet!” he spoke sharply. The dun’s head came up, ears pricked.
The riders sat silent. Hindeman was unmoved but Joe Sutton had a guilty feeling. No question about it, these horses had been stolen and from this man. The feeling touched them all and made them uneasy, less sure of their ground.
“Makes no difference now,” Hindeman said. “We’re goin’ to hang you.”
“Don’t say we … there’s three, maybe four of you aren’t goin’ to hang me. Maybe none of you will. Wait until the shootin’s over… plenty of time to talk about hangin'”
Ben Hindeman studied the man and Ben was no fool. They were five to one … unless the girl declared herself in and it was likely she would. She had been quick enough to take a shot at Jack, that day.
Five to one. They had their rifle muzzles down, for the discovery of the hiding place had been sheer accident. They had only to lift their rifles but this man had only to draw; and Ben Hindeman knew any man who could beat Old Bob on an even break and who could outguess Jack Sutton would be fast and sure.
No question about it, somebody was going to die if shooting started.
“You throw down your guns,” he said, “then the girl won’t get hurt.”
“No!”
Maria Cristma’s voice laid across the morning like a whip. “Do not do it! They will only kill you! If you put down the guns, I will shoot!”
Ben Hindeman sat stolidly on his horse in the hard falling rain. For the first time in his life he was utterly at a stalemate.
Maria Cristina would shoot and she had a rifle. They might kill her but Ben Hindeman could not see a woman killed. Not like this.
He looked from the woman to the man, this lean fierce unbeatable man, his face haggard and unshaved, his back to the wall… but ready.
And this woman who stood now, her feet apart, her body poised to move, her eyes wide and beautiful but dangerous.
He knew with a kind of sickness that men would die here and a woman. And that never again would he ever look any man in the face without shame if she were killed. He looked at Jordan and for a long minute their eyes held and Hindeman knew with a sense of failure that there was no way out.
Nor did he have any false heroics about him. He was under no necessity to prove his courage and dying here today would prove nothing.
This was not the way he had planned it. To ride a man down, to trap him, to kill him in a blaze of gunfire. That was another thing.
But here was a showdown and Ben Hindeman was a man who knew how to retreat.
“Mind if we come in out of the rain?” he asked mildly.
There was no other word spoken for a long minute and in that minute Jacob Lantz started to walk his horse. He started slow but he was walking away. Whatever he had seen, the others had not.
He was getting out of the line of fire. And he had promised he would do just that. “No, by God!”
Across the stillness of the morning Mort Bayless’ voice lashed like a bull whip. And as he spoke, he grabbed for his gun.
Of them all, he alone did not have a rifle in his hand and it was he who chose to open the ball. He recognized, in Ben Hindeman’s quiet question, a yielding and his hand struck down for the gun.
Trace Jordan saw it all, saw it clearly and sharply. The black figures of the men etched against the slate-gray sky of morning, the driving rain, the horses darkened by rain, the ground steel-gray and glistening. He caught the essence of the moment in that instant, that nickering fragment of time when Mort Bayless’ drive to kill pushed them over the brink they sought to avoid.
Mort grabbed wildly. His hand caught his gun butt and the edge of his slicker. In any event, he would not have made it in time. A bullet smashed him through the body and as he slid from the saddle and his horse sprang from under him, a second bullet drilled a neat blue hole in his skull.
And then for a brief moment the lightning of the guns replaced the lightning of the storm and the stillness following the thunder was filled by the hard sharp reports of the guns.
In the split second after Mort’s voice, Jordan thought Hindeman gave a sort of groan and Jordan knew a sort of sympathy for a man saddled with such companions.
A moment-and it was over, a moment of brutal smashing gunfire. Mort, knocked from his horse, hit the ground in a pool of water. The man behind him, knocked off balance, was momentarily out of action.
Trace Jordan had fired at Mort Bayless and then threw himself aside and took a quick shot at Ben Hindeman, knowing he was the toughest and most dangerous man. Hindeman took the bullet and was knocked lopsided in the saddle, his gun going off into the ground.
From the ground near him Jordan heard the wicked blast of the Winchester 73. He felt a bullet from somewhere tear at his shoulder and steadied himself for another shot at Hindeman. The man knocked off balance by Bayless’ fall was lying still. Jordan fired again and then threw himself away from the girl to draw fire from her. She shot from the ground again and then a bullet from Hindeman spat rock into his face and he shot the big man a second time.
A man on a lunging horse swung the horse around and lifted his gun to chop a shot. Jordan and Maria Cristina fired at the same instant and the man threw up his hands.
The horse broke into a plunging run and the rider stayed with him for six or seven jumps, then spilled off, arms and legs thrown wide to hit with a splash of water like a doll thrown carelessly. The man lay sprawled and wet and dead.
So quickly it happened, so quickly it was over. A moment of madness laced by gunfire, a moment of thundering guns and spitting lead, and then only the quiet and the rain falling.
Slowly he straightened up. He held both guns, never conscious that he had drawn the second. Shoving one into his holster, he began to reload. One gun was empty, the other held but two shells. And he had no memory of firing more than three, perhaps four times.
Maria Cristina got up from the rock where she had knelt, half-concealed by boulders and brush.
“You are hurt?” she asked.
“A scratch.”
He stood there a minute or two, looking out into the rain. Jacob Lantz was still around and, although the tracker had left before the shooting started, he might declare himself in at long range. And he had the reputation of being good with a rifle.
Trace Jordan walked out into the rain. Lantz was nowhere in sight
Mort Bayless stared up into the sodden clouds, his eyes wide to the sky, unheeding the pounding rain. Blood stained the pool in which he lay. His shirt was plastered to his thin body, all the evil in him a thing gone now, emptied out of him with his life.