Were they waiting for him to move? If so, why? If they wanted to kill him, why hadn’t they tried it already?
He went over his every move. He had approached under cover of the brush and trees; he had been only momentarily in the open when he fed the horse and when he went into the house.
If somebody was waiting here, that somebody was waiting for him to do some expected thing he had not yet done. He evidently had not put himself in the line of fire yet; but why didn’t the man move into a different position? If he had not done so, it must be because he could not without attracting attention. Which indicated that the unseen man, if there was one, was in a position where he would draw attention to himself if he moved. It would, no doubt, be a position with an easy escape route, in case his shot was a miss.
Suppose he himself had arrived at this place with a memory that was not confused? What would he have done? As there were no supplies in the adobe, and no sign of occupancy, it was likely he would have ridden away. No doubt that was exactly what he had done in the past. If the marksman believed that to be the case, where would he be? Obviously, somewhere along the road that led away from the ranch, hi some place that did not allow him to cover the ranch yard itself.
Was he imagining all this? Or was there actually someone hidden nearby, someone primed and ready to kill?
If there was a man waiting, he must be growing nervous and restless by now. It might be that he could be provoked into a move. But on the other hand, he might have the patience of an Indian and lie quiet, knowing that Noon must sooner or later leave the place.
He got up and went into the adobe, and crossed to the back room. He did not want to kill anyone, but neither did he want to be killed. He looked out the back window.
A dozen yards away there was a ditch masked by undergrowth. He studied it for a long moment. It looked inviting, too inviting. Glancing around, he saw a large olla such as the Mexicans use to cool water. On the bed lay an old blanket. He took it up, wrapped it around the olla, put his hat over the top, and thrust it up to the window. It looked like a man about to climb through. A rifleman, tense with waiting, might –
The olla had not been in position an instant when there was the crash of a volley … more than two rifles … three, at least. The olla shattered under his hand.
He raced for the front of the adobe and was in time to see a man running from behind the stable toward Noon’s horse. If they got his horse he was trapped … to be killed at leisure.
He never knew when he drew. The sight of the running man, the realization of what this meant, and his own draw must have been simultaneous. He heard the bellow of his gun in the close confines of the room as he shot through the open door.
The runner took two steps, then stumbled and hit the ground. And then silence….
The bare, hard-packed earth of the yard was empty, except for the dead man and the horse. Nervously, the roan had moved nearer.
Keeping his voice low, Ruble Noon called to the horse, which looked toward him uncertainly.
A boot grated on gravel behind the adobe. They were coming for him. The roan was nearer now, no more than fifteen or twenty feet off. The long stable was a wall between the yard and the thickets beyond. There were at least three men out behind, and they were hunting him now. He could try for the horse….
Suddenly he knew he was not going to run. Not yet. They had planned for that, were ready for it. He backed into a corner where he could watch the door and the windows at the same time.
He thumbed back the loading gate of his Colt and thrust out the empty shell, then added a fresh cartridge. Moving the cylinder, he added another. The six-shooter was now fully loaded.
He could see a shadow at the window. Somebody was looking into the room, but the corner where Noon stood could not be seen.
Someone else was at the door. Would they be so foolish as to try a rush?
“Now!”
The word came sharply, and three men leaped into the room, two through windows, one from the door. It was then – first mistake.
They came out of the bright sunlight into the dim light of the room, and one man stumbled as he landed from the window. All held guns, but only one got off a shot. He fired as he was falling, the gun blasting its bullet into the floor.
Ruble Noon shot as they came, and held the gun in his hand and waited a slow minute while he watched the windows and the door. One of the men on the floor stirred and moaned. Noon squatted on his heels and stayed quiet.
Outside nothing stirred, and then he heard a magpie. Following that he heard the pound of hoofs racing away… one rider.
They had thought to surprise him, not thinking of the dimness inside, and he was in the darkest corner, the last place on which their eyes could focus.
Now the wounded man was staring at him through wide, pain-filled eyes. “You goin’ to shoot me?” he asked.
“No.”
“They said you was a killer.”
“Who said so? Who hired you?”
“I ain’t goin’ to tell you that. They said you was a back-shootin’ killer.”
“I don’t need to shoot men in the back.”
“No,” the wounded man admitted, “I guess you don’t…. But there’s one still out there.”
“No. He rode away – I heard him.” Ruble Noon was thinking hard. He said, “What will he do? Will he bring others?”
“Him?” The wounded man spoke bitterly. “That there louse? He’ll run his hoss’s legs off gittin’ away. Never was no fight in him!”
Ruble Noon bolstered his gun and moved over to the wounded man. He had hit twice, once through the shoulder, the second time through the leg. Working as swiftly as he could, Noon plugged the wounds and wrapped them with bandages torn from a dead man’s shirt
“Where’d you leave your horse?” he asked.
The man stared at him. “You goin’ to run me out of here?”
“I’m going to get you out of here. Or do you want to explain those?” He gestured to the dead men. “You came here to murder me… remember?”
“We sure didn’t cut the mustard,” the man said. “You outfoxed us.”
Noon collected the guns from the dead men, and packed them outside. He collected their horses and tied the dead men on them. He pinned on each one a paper which read:
He tried to dry-gulch Ruble Noon.
Then he turned the horses loose.
The wounded man raised up on an elbow. “What was them papers you pinned on them?”
“It makes no difference,” Noon answered, and sat down. “Now you and I are going to have a little talk.”
The gunman looked at him warily. He was a grizzled, hard-faced man with a broken nose. “About what?”
“About who hired you.”
“And supposin’ I ain’t of a mind to?”
Ruble Noon shrugged. ‘I’ll just pull out those plugs I put in you and I won’t tell anybody where you are. You might manage to walk a mile, but I doubt it. You’d start bleeding again and before dark you’d be buzzard meat.”
The gunman lay back and closed his eyes. “Mister, I don’t know who it was. These boys an’ me was in a joint … the Acme Saloon, it was. There was a gent come in we knew as Peterson. It wasn’t his real name, but that’s of no matter. Anyway, he said we could pick up fifty dollars apiece and he wanted five of us, for a little shooting.
“He said this was a known man, and there’d be no worry about the law if we done it. This here Peterson had been in the Rangers at one time, and he knowed a lot of folks around about town. We taken his word for it. We’d seen him talkin’ with some high-powered men around El Paso, like A. J. Fountain, the Mannings, Magoffin, and the like of that.
“He laid it out for us, but all the time we knowed he was talkin’ for somebody else and not for himself. You see, this Peterson knowed a lot of folks on both sides of the fence, and he’d been a sort of go-between before this. If a man wanted to sell stolen cattle, Peterson could always put him in the way of it.