“Take off that rope, Poleffwas he said sharply.
The gunman’s face was cold. “I’ll be damned if I do!” he flared.
Sartain was suddenly quiet inside. “Take it off,” he repeated, “andwith mighty easy hands!”
Carefully, John Pole let go the rope. He stepped a full step to one side, his arms bent at the elbows, hands hovering above his guns. “You throwed a mighty big bluff, Ranger,” he said, “but I’m callin’ it!”
Carol Quarterman saw Pole’s hands move, and as if all feeling and emotion were suddenly arrested, she saw Sartain’s hands move at the same instant. And then she saw the lifting muzzle of a rifle from the livery-stable door!
“Jim!” Her cry was agonized. “Look out! The stable!”
Sartain, his eyes blazing from beneath the brim of his low-crowned hat, palmed his guns and fired. It was that flashing, incredible draw, yet even as his right gun spat flame he heard Carol’s cry.
A thundering report blasted on his right and he was knocked sprawling, his right-hand gun flying from him. Throwing his left gun over, he caught it deftly with his right hand and snapped a quick shot at the black interior of the barn, just below the round muzzle of a Spencer.
His head was reeling and the street seemed to be rocking and tipping, yet he got his feet under him.
John Pole was still erect, but his blue shirt was stained with blood and his guns were flowering with dancing blooms of flame. Guns seemed to be thundering everywhere and he started forward, firing again.
Staggering, Sartain lurched toward Pole and saw a shot kick up dust beyond the gunman, and believed he’d missed, having no realization that the shot had kicked dust only after passing through him.
Amazed, he saw Pole was on the ground, clawing at the dirt with bloody hands. A gun bellowed again from the barn door and he turned, falling to his face in the dust. He could taste blood in his mouth and his head felt big as a balloon, but he struggled to his feet, thumbing shells into his gun. Again a shot blasted from the barn, but he kept walking, then caught the side of the door with his left hand and peered into the gloom.
George Noll, his flabby face gray, stared at him with bulging, horror-filled eyes. He had a rifle in his hands and he stared from it to Sartain with amazement. And then Jim lifted his six-gun level and fired three fast shots.
Noll caught them in his bulging stomach and he went up on his toes, mumbled some ^ws lost in the froth of blood at his lips, then pitched over to grind his face into the hay and dirt of the floor.
Sartain’s knees seemed suddenly to vanish and the floor struck him in the mouth, and the last thing he remembered was the taste of dirt and straw in his mouth, and the sound of running feet. …
For a long time he was aware of nothing, and then there was sunlight through a window, a pump complaining, and a woman’s voice singing. He was lying now in a strange bed, and the hand that lay on the coverlet was much whiter than when he had last seen it.
A door opened and he looked into the eyes of Carol Quarterman. “Well!” she exclaimed. “I didn’t think you were ever coming out of it! How do you feel?”
“I … don’t really know. What house is this?”
“Dr. Hassett’s. He’s my uncle and your doctor. I’m your nurse, and you had four bullets in you, two rifle, and two pistol. That’s what Uncle Ed says, although I don’t think he could tell one from the other.”
“Noll?”
“He’s dead. You grazed him once, hit him
three times. John Pole is dead, too. You … killed him.”
“Wasn’t there some other shooting?”
“That was Holy Walker and Dad.
They finished off Newton and Fowler when they started to help Pole. Dad got hit in the side, but not badly, but Walker wasn’t scratched.”
“Mason?”
“He was luckiest of all. He was hit three
times by bullets aimed at other people and none of them more than broke the skin. All of them are back in the canyons again, and not even Steve Bayne has a ^w to say.”
“How long have I been here?”
“A week, and you’d better settle down for a
long rest. Uncle Ed says you can’t be moved and that you’ll have to stay in bed, with me to nurse you, for at least two more weeks.”
Sartain grinned. “With you as nurse? I’ll go for that, but what about Steve Bayne?”
She shrugged. “He’s gone back to his ranch with more headaches than the one you gave him. Pole had been rustling, branding some of it with Steve’s Bar B and selling the rest. Newton worked with him, and he talked before he died; he also swore he saw George Noll set the fire on the range that burned everybody out.
“Apparently he hated me, but when they went through his office they found figures showing how he had planned to buy up the ranches after the range war killed off most of the men. The questions you asked around town started the investigation of his effects, and proved you’d guessed right. As you knew, he was the only one with money enough to take advantage of the situation the range war would leave.”
“Anything on Parrish?”
“Nothing exact. However, he had been back
to the ranch and talked with the wrangler after leaving Mason. Probably that was Pole. Parrish must have caught him rustling, but we’ll never know.”
Jim Sartain stared out of the window at the sunlit street. He could see the water trough and the two lone trees. A man sat on the edge of the walk, whittling in the sun. A child was chasing a ball. Farther along, a gray horse stamped a patient foot and flicked casually at the flies.
It was a quiet street, a peaceful street.
Someday all the West would be like Gila Crossing.
…
Medicine Ground
A Cactus Kid Story
The Cactus Kid was in a benevolent mood and the recent demise of Se@nor “Ace” Fernandez was far from his thoughts. Had the Kid’s own guns blasted a trail down the slippery ladder to Hell, he would have been wary, for he knew well the temper of the four brothers Fernandez.
He had not, however, done a personal gun job on Ace. He had merely acted for the moment as the finger of destiny, and but for a certain small action of his, the agile fingers of the elder Fernandez might still be fleecing all and sundry at the Cantina.
Nobody who knew him could question the Kid’s sense of humor, and it extended as far as poker, which is very far indeed. The humor of Martin Jim (s-called because he was the second of two Jim Martins to arrive in Aragon) was another story. Jim had a sense of humor all right, but it ended somewhere south of poker. Martin Jim was a big, muscular man who packed a pistol for use.
On the memorable afternoon of Ace’s death, that gentleman was sitting in a little game with Martin Jim, the Cactus Kid, Pat Gruen, and an itinerant miner known as Rawhide. The Kid, being the observant type, had taken note of the smooth efficiency of Se@nor Ace when he handled the cards. He also noted the results of a couple of subsequent hands. Thereafter the Kid was careful to drop out when Ace was doing the dealing. The others, being less knowing and more trustful, stayed in the game, and as a result the pile of poker chips in front of Ace Fernandez had grown to an immodest proportion.
Finally, when Pat Gruen and Rawhide were about broke, there came a hand from which all dropped away but Ace Fernandez and Martin Jim. With twelve hundred dollars of his hard-earned money (cowhands were making forty a month!were in the center of the table, Martin Jim’s sense of humor had reached the vanishing point.
The Cactus Kid, idly watching the game, had seen the black sheep lead the burly lamb to the slaughter; he also chanced to glimpse the cards Ace Fernandez turned up. He held a pair of fours, a nine, ten, and a queen. A few minutes later his eyes shifted back to the hand Fernandez held and there was no nine, ten, or queen, but three aces were cuddling close to the original pair of fours.
Naturally, this phenomenon interested him no end, especially so as he had seen the way, an odd way, too, Ace held his arm.
When the showdown came, Martin Jim laid down two pair, and Ace Fernandez, looking very smug, his full house.
Leaning forward as if to see the cards better, the Cactus Kid deftly pushed the cuff of Ace’s white sleeve over the head of a nail that projected an inch or so from the edge of the table.