No light showed upstairs, though maybe there was one in back. I walked down the block to get a look at the back of the building. There was a dim light in one room on the upper floor.
Who was up there? Ruby Shaw was Heseltine’s girl, and Reese as well as Sites might be somewhere else. But Heseltine would have a part of my money.
My mouth was pretty dry as I walked toward the front again. I did not want to open that dark door, climb the stairs inside, and go along a dark hall to that lighted room. Every foot of it would be a danger, and thenra have to Imock on the door. I couldn’t just open it, there being a woman in there-she might be undressing. The thought of it almost stopped me. I didn’t want to run into any shameful things, or embarrass an undressing woman … or myself.
Yet I had to go ahead.
Slipping the thong off my gun-hammer, I went softly along the boardwalk and opened the door with my left hand. It opened out slowly … all was dark inside.
This was something new for me, and I did not want to get myself killed, and as pa always warned me, “If you go among the Indians you have to think like them.” Stepping through the door, I found myself in a narrow hall. On my left was a door that might lead to a storeroom or cellar. A stairway went up to the rooms on the second floor.
Walking along the hall toward the back, I found myself facing a door, invisible except for the white porcelain knob. On my left was the newel post at the foot of the stairway. Putting my left hand on the post, I went around it to the first step.
Something was on my foot … mud dropped by the girl, no doubt.
Pausing, I scraped my instep off against the edge of the stair, then started up.
I’d taken two steps when that door behind me opened. I turned, my left hand going to the wall as I sank to a crouch on the steps, my right hand coming up with my gun even as a shotgun belched a twin bore of flame. The thundering roar in the narrow hall drowned the two shots from my pistol.
There was a moment when I crouched in stunned silence. Scraping my foot had saved my life, for he had been counting my steps and believed I was one step higher. He had aimed for my waistline and had missed me by a foot or more.
It was only a split — second that I was still, then I went up the steps two at a time. A door was opening a crack; it was not quite dark inside.
My shoulder hit the door and smashed it open; somebody fell to the floor with a crash.
By a dim reflected light in the room I could see a bed topped with a gray blanket, the brass bedstead gleaming dully, a dresser with a white bowl and pitcher. Stepping back, I held my gun on the fallen man and said quietly, “Get up slowly and light a light. I can see you well enough to shoot, and I’ve just killed one man.” Whether that was true or not, I did not know, but I figured to see where I was and who I was with.
“Don’t shoot! For God’s sake, don’t shoot!” Slowly the man got up, struck a match, and lit the kerosene lamp. ‘When he turned to face me … a perfect stranger.
‘Mister,” I said, “I’d no right to bust in.
I was hunting Kid Reese, Bob HeseItine, and them.” “They pulled their freight,” he said, “Heseltine, the girl, and another gent.
One of them was layinfor you.” ‘allyou knew that?” “Heard talk.” He jerked his head toward the wall ‘ationobody builds walls thick enough these days. I heard some talk but I’d no idea what it meant. Then when the girl come up the steps, I seen her. Right off, she and two others left.” “How?” ‘allyonder.” He indicated the balcony. ‘A feller can step from this balcony to the next one pretty easy. There’s a stairway down.” I took up the lamp and went down the stairs. I could hear voices, and folks coming along the street.
The dead man lay sprawled at the foot of the steps only he wasn’t dead.
I’d put two bullets in him, all right, but he was alive and staring up at me.
“Doc,” I said, and I still held the gun, “I want my money.” “They … they got it.” “You’re not carrying any of it?” I Ideked the shotgun and bent over him.
just then the door opened and Duggan came in.
Con Judy was with him.
“I at this man is carrying some of my money,” I said.
“Take it off him then,” Duggan said. Looking down at Doc Sites he said, “You shot high, boy. You got to watch that.” “It was in the dark, and when he came out of that door I dropped on the steps. He’d counted wrong and figured I was one step higher.” Opening Sites’s coat, I saw a thick money-belt and took it from him.
Sites lay still, staring at me. “Help me!” he said hoarsely.
“I’m dying.” “My pa died,” I said, “because of you and them.” Duggan was sizing up the situation. Doc Sikes’s position, the place where the double charge of buckshot had hit the step and my own bullet holes in Sites made it clear enough.
The man into whose room I had burst came down the steps, slipping his suspenders over his shoulders.
They’d been hanging loose when I had him light the lamp.
‘It’s like this here man says,” he told them.
‘I was fixin” for bed when I heard all this sudden scurryin’ about and seen them take off across the balcony.
“Somebody-it mustve been the wounded manwent down the steps in the dark an’ I heard the door close at the foot of the steps. Now that there is an empty room, and it didn’t seem right, somehow, a man going’ into an empty room in the dark.
“Then I heard this man, comin’ cautious-like. I opened the door for a peek, then closed it. Heard the shots and opened it again.” The smell of gunpowder hung in the narrow hall. Sites still stared up at us.
“You going’ to let me die?” “Serve you right,” Duggan said, comb I’ll see you’re fetched.” I showed him the money-belt. “I’m taking this along,” I said.
“It’s part of my money.” Duggan shrugged. “Lucky to get yourself part of it, but was I you I’d take after those others.” Back at the Clarendon I opened the money-belt and counted out the gold.
One hundred pieces-one hundred twenty-dollar gold pieces, but it was only a small part of what I had lost.
“Either they have at t divided it up even,” I said, “or they have and Doc cached most of his share.” “We’d better search his room,” Con said thoughtfully, disand right away, before somebody else does.” “Con,” I said, ‘I don’t believe we’ll find it.” He studied me, then he smiled. “You’re learning, Shell.
You think the others took it along?” “Figure it out for yourself. From what I know of them I’d say they’d steal from each other as quick as from me and pa. Doc was going to lay for me with a shotgun.
They figured he’d get me, but in case he didn’t,” “And if he did?
And found his money gone?” “They’d give it back. He wouldn’t dare brace Bob Heseltine and call him a thief.
They’d just say they took care of it for him.” “So what are you going to d”…I shrugged. ‘Sleep.
In the morning I’m going to put most of this in the bank. I’m going to keep two hundred dollars as part of my share and use it to live on whilst tracking them down.” Before I went to sleep I sat down, and taking some paper the hotel provided, I struggled through the writing of a letter. I addressed it to Burton J. Ely, who was our neighbor, and who’d had a share in the herd.
By noontime everybody in Leadvine seemed to have heard about the shooting. Doc Sites was alive and might remain so, and I hoped he would. I had no need in me to kill Doc Sites, despite the fact he’d laid for me with a shotgun.
Because I had dropped on the steps, my shots had gone high, and his double charge had gone right past my head, a little high and to the right. At that close range the shots hadn’t begun to scatter, but they blew a hole in the step you could put a fist through.
At breakfast men stopped by the table where I sat with Con Judy.