“I didn’t need a nursemaid over on the Tierra Blanca,” he said cheerfully. “From the way you hightailed over them rocks, I figured it was you needed one!”
Lacey’s face flamed. He came off the
bench, his face dark with anger. “Why, you—“
Johnny looked around at him. “Better not start anything,” he said. “You ain’t got a gang with you.”
Lacey was in a quandary. Obviously the girl was more friendly to Johnny than to him. That meant that he could expect no help from her should she be called on to give testimony following a killing. If he drew first he was a gone gosling, for he knew enough about old Tom West to know the Slash Seven outfit would never stop hunting if this kid was killed in anything but a fair fight. And the kid wasn’t even on his feet.
“Listen!” he said harshly. “You get out of town! If you’re in this town one hour from now, I’ll kill you!”
Slamming down a coin on the counter, he strode from the restaurant.
“Oh, Johnnyffwas Mary’s face was white and frightened. “Don’t stay here! Go now! I’ll tell Gar where you are. Please go!”
“Go?” Johnny was feeling a fluttering in his stomach, but it angered him that Mary should feel he had to leave. “I will not go! I’ll run him out of town!”
Despite her pleading, he turned to the door and walked outside. Gar Mullins was nowhere in sight. Neither was Lacey. But a tall, stooped man with his arm in a sling stood across the street, and Johnny Lyle guessed at once that he was a lookout, that here was the man he had winged in the canyon fight. And winged though the man was, it was his left arm, and his gun hung under his right hand.
Johnny Lyle hesitated. Cool common sense told him that it would be better to leave. Actually, Uncle Tom and the boys all knew he had nerve enough, and it was no cowardice to dodge a shoot-out with a killer like Hook Lacey. The boys had agreed they wouldn’t want to tangle with him.
Just the same, Johnny doubted that any one of them would dodge a scrap if it came to that. And all his Texas blood and training rebelled against the idea of being run out of town. Besides, there was Mary. It would look like he was a pure D coward to run out now.
Yet what was the alternative? Within an hour, Hook Lacey would come hunting him. Hook would choose the ground, place, and time of meeting. And Hook was no fool. He knew all the tricks.
What, then, to do?
The only thing, Johnny Lyle decided, was
to meet Lacey first. To hunt the outlaw down and force him into a fight before he was ready. There was nothing wrong with using strategy, with using a trick. Many gunfighters had done it. Billy the Kid had done it against the would-be killer, Joe Grant. Wes Hardin had used many a device.
Yet what to do? And where? Johnny Lyle turned toward the corral with a sudden idea in mind. Suppose he could appear to have left town? Wouldn’t that lookout go to Hook with the news? Then he could come back, ease up to Lacey suddenly, and call him, then draw.
Gar Mullins saw Johnny walking toward the corral, then he spotted the lookout. Mullins intercepted Johnny just as he stepped into saddle.
“What’s up, kid? You in trouble?”
Briefly Johnny explained. Gar listened
and, much to Johnny’s relief, registered no protest. “All right, kid. You got it to do if you stay in this country, and your idea’s a good one. You ever been in a shoot-out before?”
“No, I sure haven’t.”
“Now, look. You draw natural, see?
Don’t pay no mind to being faster’n he is. Chances are you ain’t anywheres close to that. You figure on getting that first shot right where it matters, you hear? Shoot him in the body, right in the middle. No matter what happens, hit him with the first shot, you hear me?”
“Yeah.”
Johnny felt sick at his stomach and his mouth was dry, his heart pounding.
“I’ll handle that lookout, so don’t pay him no mind.” Gar looked up. “You a good shot, Johnny?”
“On a target I can put five shots in a playing card.”
“That’s all right, but this card’ll be shooting back. But don’t you worry. You choose your own spot for it.”
“Wait!” Johnny had an idea. “Listen, you have somebody get ^w to him that Butch Jensen wants to see him. I’ll be across the street at the wagon yard. When he comes up, I’ll step out.”
He rode swiftly out of town. Glancing back, he saw the lookout watching. Gar Mullins put a pack behind his own saddle and apparently readied his horse for the trail. Then he walked back down the street.
He was just opposite the wagon yard when he saw the lookout stop on a street corner, looking at him. At the same instant, Hook Lacey stepped from behind a wagon. Across the street was Webb Foster, another of the Lacey crowd. There was no mistaking their purpose, and they had him boxed!
Gar Mullins was thirty-eight, accounted an old man on the frontier, and he had seen and taken part in some wicked gun battles. Yet now he saw his position clearly. This was it, and he wasn’t going to get out of this one. If Johnny had been with him—but Johnny wouldn’t be in position for another ten minutes.
Hook Lacey was smiling. “You were in the canyon the other day, Gar,” he said triumphantly. “Now you’ll see what it’s like. We’re going to kill you, Gar. Then we’ll follow that kid and get him. You ain’t got a chance, Gar.”
Mullins knew it, yet with a little time, even a minute, he might have.
“Plannin’ on wiping out the Slash Seven, Hook?” he drawled. “That’s what you’ll have to do if you kill that kid. He’s the old man’s nephew.”
“Ain’t you worried about yourself, Gar?” Lacey sneered. “Or are you just wet-nursing that kid?”
Gar’s seamed and hard face was set. His eyes flickered to the lookout, whose hand hovered only an inch above his gun. And to Webb, with his thumb hooked in his belt. There was no use waiting. It would be minutes before the kid would be set.
And then the kid’s voice sounded, sharp and clear.
“I’ll take Lacey, Gar! Get that lookout!”
Hook Lacey whipped around, drawing as he turned. Johnny Lyle, who had left his horse and hurried right back, grabbed for his gun. He saw the big, hard-faced man before him, saw him clear and sharp. Saw his hand flashing down, saw the broken button on his shirtfront, saw the Bull Durham tag from his pocket, saw the big gun come up. But his own gun was rising, too.
The sudden voice, the turn, all conspired to throw Lacey off, yet he had drawn fast and it was with shock that he saw the kid’s gun was only a breath slower. It was that which got him, for he saw that gun rising and he shot too quick. The bullet tugged at Johnny’s shirt collar, and then Johnny, with that broken button before his eyes, fired.
Two shots, with a tiny but definite space between them, and then Johnny looked past Lacey at the gun exploding in Webb Foster’s hands. He fired just as Gar Mullins swung his gun to Webb. Foster’s shot glanced off the iron rim of a wagon wheel just as Gar’s bullet crossed Johnny’s in Webb Foster’s body.
The outlaw crumpled slowly, grabbed at the porch awning, then fell off into the street.
Johnny stood very still. His eyes went to the lookout, who was on his hands and knees on the ground, blood dripping in great splashes from his body. Then they went to Hook Lacey. The broken button was gone, and there was an edge cut from the tobacco tag. Hook Lacey was through, his chips all cashed. He had stolen his last horse.
Gar Mullins looked at Johnny Lyle and grinned weakly. “Kid,” he said softly, walking toward him, hand outstretched, “we make a team. Here on out, it’s saddle partners, hey?”
“Sure, Gar.” Johnny did not look again at Lacey. He looked into the once bleak blue eyes of Mullins. “I ride better with a partner. You got that stuff for the ranch?”
“Yeah.”
“Then if you’ll pick up my horse in the
willows, yonder, I’ll say good-bye to Mary. We’d best be getting back. Uncle Tom’ll be worried.”
Gar Mullins chuckled, walking across the street, arm in arm with Johnny.
“Well, he needn’t be,” Gar said. “He needn’t be.”
In Victorio’s Country
The four riders, hard-bitten men bred to the desert and the gun, pushed steadily southward. “Red” Clanahan, a monstrous big man with a wide-jawed bulldog face and a thick neck descending into massive shoulders, held the lead. Behind him, usually in single file but occasionally bunching, trailed the others.