Step … step … and still a further step.
Spinner’s hands were like claws now, spread and eager. His eyes were blazing with a queer, leaping light and his teeth bared a little. His hands began to tremble now, with a strain. He was waiting, listening to the slow, even sound of that voice, and waiting for the one move … the move to kill!
Staring, her heart going faint from the strain, Jacquine suddenly glimpsed something in Matt’s fingers. He had brought one hand forward very slowly, so slowly that no mistake could be made, and now he held that bright, highly polished brass shell in his fingers, belt high. A brass cartridge shell, and he was toying with it casually, carelessly. The brass flashed in the bright sun, then flashed again.
He continued to walk, and she was trembling, fearful of the sudden crash of guns she just knew would come, but then she saw something else.
Spinner Johns was uneasy. He was trembling, he … “What’s Matt doing?” Barney whispered hoarsely. “What’s got into him?”
No more than fifteen feet divided them now and Bardoul continued to walk, still playing with his bright brass shell. Thirteen … eleven … nine….
“God!” Barney said. “Look at Johns! Look at him sweat!”
It was true. The killer’s lips were twitching, his hands trembling. Poised to draw, the slightest sound or wrong move might set him off, but he was tense now, riveted to his place as though fascinated by this tall man who walked on and on, endlessly.
Nobody had ever walked up to him like this! They would always stop, there would be a breathless instant… then the round of guns. With a kind of sick horror he saw Bardoul coming, nearer, nearer.
Jacquine had a hand to her mouth now. How could anything human stand the suspense? The strain? They were so close now that neither man could miss, they were…
The bright brass shell slipped from Mart’s fingers and fell into the dust.
Half hypnotised, the Spinner’s eyes followed it. Coolly then, Matt stooped as though to retrieve the shell, and then … incredibly fast, he scooped up a handful of loose sand and flipped it with a quick motion into the Spinner’s eyes!
Caught by the sudden movement, Johns took the full handful of sand in the face. Blinded, he staggered, then clawed wildly for a gun, but it was knocked spinning into the street before he could bring it high enough to shoot. Screaming with excess of fury, almost babbling in his insane rage, he clawed at his eyes with one hand and grabbed for his other gun with his left.
The left hand was struck aside with a blow that almost paralysed his arm, then a blow struck him in the pit of the stomach that knocked his wind out. He doubled up gasping but a powerful hand caught his collar and jerked him to his tip toes, and then, standing there in the street, Matt Bardoul proceeded to slap Johns until his face streamed with blood.
The first slap was a backhand blow across the mouth that split his lips, the second a hardened palm that smacked him across the ear, stunning him. Then blow after blow that rocked his head on his shoulders until it bobbed as loosely as a cork on a string.
One gun was still in its holster but every time he tried to grab for it the hand was knocked aside. Suddenly then, the six gun was jerked from its holster and tossed into the street. With a quick shift of hands. Matt caught the gunman by the shirt collar and belt, and swinging him off his feet, dropped him bodily into the waist deep water trough!
Johns went under the water, then came up, spitting and spluttering.
For a long moment, the street was breathless, and then somebody whooped, and suddenly the whole street was roaring with shouts and yells of laughter. Men slapped their legs and roared, then leaned weakly against each other, suddenly released from their tension, and roaring with appreciation. Matt Bardoul had walked up to one of the most feared gunmen in the west, slapped him silly and then dropped him into the water trough.
Had he killed him, the townspeople would have shrugged their shoulders and turned away, but this was something! This was a story to be told and retold! Spinner Johns slapped like a rag doll and then dropped into the trough!
Amid the laughter, Johns sprawled out of the trough into the dust, then he got heavily to his feet, and while the crowd behind him bellowed and cheered he turned and slunk down an alleyway between two buildings. Through his mind there beat the brutal realization that no one was afraid of him now, they would never be afraid of him again.
Clive Massey, standing in the door of the IXL, cursed under his breath, grinding his teeth in impotent fury. Portugee Phillips moved up beside him, grinning slyly. “Ever see the like of that, Massey? That took nerve! I’d ride through fifty blizzards afore I’d walk up to a gun fighter like that! Walked right up to him, took that crazy killer’s gun away and slapped the livin’ daylights out of him!”
Phillips looked up at Massey and his eyes were hard, knowing eyes. “If you’re smart, Massey,” he said softly, “you’ll never tangle with Matt Bardoul. If you do, he’ll kill you!”
“Shut up, damn you!” Massey wheeled, his eyes ugly, then walked away, his feet slapping the boardwalk in the violence of his temper.
Matt stepped up on the boardwalk and stopped in front of Jacquine. “Ma’am,” he said, his voice sharp from nervous tension, “you’d do better to stay off the street when there’s trouble! You might have been killed!’
Stung by the sharpness of his voice, she stiffened to her full height, angry and amazed. “Why … !” she gasped. “How dare you speak to me in that voice? If you think…!”
She might have forgiven him if he had not turned abruptly away leaving her with a furious temper and a mouthful of angry words for which she had no use. Angrily, she stamped her foot and stared after him. Then she flung herself around and started back to the IXL, her head high, her heart pounding. Barney heeled and started after her.
Murphy and Ban walked up to Matt. Murphy grinned at him. “You sure had me boogered,” he said, “I figured sure as all get out he’d draw on you.”
“What would you have done if he had?” Ban asked.
Matt Bardoul looked at him, surprised. “I’d have killed him,” he said, “what did you think?”
They started up the street toward the Gem Theatre. “Jack Langrishe is putting on a show up to that theatre opposite Gold Street tonight,” Ban suggested, “let’s go have a look at it. I ain’t seen a show since they took the first cows up from Texas!”
“Just so we get started for Split Rock in plenty of time,” Matt said. “Bill Shedd’s watchin’ our wagons. He’ll be on the job. He stopped by and told me this mornin’ he was headed out there.”
“That’s good,” Murphy struck a match on the seat of his jeans. “Stark’s been keepin’ an eye on ’em.”
The three men stopped on a corner and watched the crowd passing. It was thinning out now, but the bars were filled. “Matt, what’s wrong with this setup?” Hardy asked. “I don’t like the look of things, an’ never have. Logan Deane’s hangin’ out with Massey about half the time, an’ Lute Harless tells me he seen Massey talkin’ to Spinner Johns just an hour or so before he started huntin’ you.”
“That right?” It was possible, of course, Matt reflected, but somehow he had been divided between believing Johns was just out to get him because he had a sort of gunfighting reputation, or that Colonel Pearson had started the killer after him. That Clive Massey might have done it he doubted. It was possible, yet there would be no motive unless Massey had reason to fear him.
“Lute says there’s sixty-two wagons out there now, all ready to roll. More than ninety men.”
“That’s a good lot.”
“Enough to keep the Injuns off, all bein’ armed like they are.” Murphy shuffled his feet and shifted his pipe in his teeth. “Seen Abel Bain today.”
Bardoul’s head jerked around. “Did you say … Abel Bain?”
“Uh huh,” Murphy looked at him shrewdly. “An’ you know where? In Bat Hammer’s wagon outfit!”
So? Matt rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. Now it was Abel Bain. The man was a renegade of the worst kind. A murderer, known to be a horsethief and a rustler. If Massey was taking on men like Bain there was nothing that could not happen.
The man had been run out of Virginia City, had narrowly escaped lynching once at Laramie. There had been no evidence to convict him of killing Ad Wilson at Tascosa, but the man was found dead in his bed one night with a knife wound, and he had been robbed. A horse was trailed to within a mile of Bain’s ranch.