Again he went to his knees, and again he came up. Then he uncorked one of his own, and Dan Shute staggered. But Dan had shot his bolt. Head ringing, Rafe Caradec walked in, grabbed the bigger man by the shirt collar and belt, right hand at the belt, and then turned his back on him and jerked down with his left hand at the collar and heaved up with the right. He got his back under him and then hurled the big man like a sack of wheat! Dan Shute hit the table beside which Gene Baker was standing, and both went down in a heap. Suddenly, Shute rolled over and came to his knees, his eyes blazing. Blood streamed from the gash in his cheek, open now from mouth to ear. His lips were shreds, and a huge blue lump concealed one eye. His face was scarcely human, yet in the remaining eye gleamed a wild, killing, insane light. And in his hands he held Gene Baker’s double-barreled shotgunl He did not speak just swept the gun up and squeezed down on both triggers!
Yet at the very instant that he squeezed those triggers, Rafe’s left hand had dropped to the table near him. With one terrific heave he spun it toward the kneeling man. The gun belched flame and thunder as Rafe hit the floor flat on his stomach and rolled over to see an awful sight.
Joe Benson, crouched over the bar, took the full blast of buckshot in his face and went over backward with a queer, choking scream.
Rafe heaved himself erect, and suddenly the room was deathly still. Pod Gomer’s face was a blank sheet of white horror as he stared at the spot where Benson had vanished.
Staggering, Caradec walked toward Dan Shute.
The man lavcom on his back, arms outflung, head lying at a queer angle.
Mullaney pointed. “The table!” he said. “It busted his neck!” Rafe turned and staggered toward the door. Johnny Gill caught him there. He slid an arm under Rafe’s shoulders and strapped his guns to his waist. “What about Gomer?” he asked. Caradec shook his head. Pod Gomer was getting up to face him, and he lifted a hand.
“Don’t start anything. I’ve had enough. I’ll go.” Somebodv brought a bucket of water, and Rafe fell on his knees and began splashing the ice-cold water over his head and face. When he had dried himself on a towel someone handed him, he started for a coat. Baker had come in with a clean shirt from the store. “I’m sorry about that shotgun,” he said. “It happened so fast I didn’t know.” Rafe tried to smile and couldn’t. His face was stiff” and swollen. “Forget it,” he said.
“Let’s get out of here.” “You ain’t goin’ to leave, are you?” Baker asked. “Ann said that she-was “Leave? Shucks, no! We’ve got an oil business here, and there’s a ranch.
While I was at the fort I had a wire sent to the C Bar down in Texas for some more cattle.” Ann was waiting for him, wide-eyed when she saw his face. He walked past her toward the bed and fell across it. “Don’t let it get you, honey,” he said. “We’ll talk about it when I wake up next week!” She stared at him and started to speak, and then a snore sounded in the room. Ma Baker smiled.
“When a man wants to sleep, let him sleep, and I’d say he’d earned it!”
The End