The Big Front Yard and Other Stories (12 page)

“The hell it ain't my fight,” yelped Jake. “Don't you go hoggin' all the credit for this brawl. Me, I've had somethin' to do with it, too. Maybe you writ all them pieces takin' the hide off Fennimore, but I set 'em up in type and run 'em off the press.”

A voice was bawling outside.

“Carson!” it shouted. “Carson!”

Stalking across the room, but keeping well away from the window, Carson looked out.

Sheriff Bean stood in front of the North Star, badge of office prominently pinned on his vest, two guns at his sides.

“Carson!”

“Watch out,” said Jake. “If they see a move in here, they'll fill us full of lead.”

Carson nodded, stepped out of line of the window and walked to the wall. Drawing his gun, he reached out and smashed a window-pane with the barrel, then slumped into a crouch.

“What is it?” he yelled.

“Come out and give yourself up,” bawled Bean. “That's all we want.”

“Haven't got someone posted to pick me off?” asked Carson.

“There won't be a shot fired,” said Bean. “Just come out that door, hands up, and no one will get hurt.”

Jake's whisper cut fiercely through the room. “Don't believe a word that coyote says. He's got a dozen men in the North Star. Open up that door and you'll be first cousin to a sieve.”

Carson nodded grimly.

“Say the word,” urged Jake, “and I'll pick 'im off. Easy as blastin' a buzzard off a fence.”

“Hold your fire,” snapped Carson. “If you start shooting now we haven't got a chance. Probably haven't anyway. As it is they've got us dead to rights. Bean, over there, technically is the law and he can kill us off legal-like. Can say later we were outlaws or had resisted arrest or anything he wants to. …”

“They killed Delavan and Purvis,” yelped Jake. “They –”

“We can't prove it,” said Carson bitterly. “We can't prove a thing. And now they've got us backed into a hole. There's nothing we can gain by fighting. I'm going to go out and give myself up.”

“You can't do that,” gasped Jake. “You'd never get three feet from the door before they opened up on you.”

“Listen to me,” snapped Carson. “I'm going to give myself up. I'll take a chance on getting shot. You get out of here, through the back. Weaver will let you have a horse. Ride out and tell the boys that Purvis is dead and I'm in jail. Tell them the next move is up to them. They can do what they want.”

“But – but –” protested Jake.

“There's been enough killing,” declared Carson. “A bit of gunning was all right, maybe, when there still was something to fight for, but what's the use of fighting if the men you're fighting for won't help? That's what I'm doing. Giving them a chance to show whether they want to fight or knuckle down to Fennimore.”

He raised his voice. “Bean. Bean.”

“What is it?” Bean called back.

“I'm coming out,” yelled Carson.

There was silence, a heavy silence.

“Get going,” Carson said to Jake. “Out the back. Crawl through the weeds.”

Jake shifted the rifle across his arm.

“After you're safe,” he insisted. “Until I see you cross that street, I'll stay right here.”

“Why?” asked Carson.

“If they get you,” Jake told him, “I'm plumb bent on drillin' Bean.”

Carson reached out and yanked the door open. He stood for a moment in the doorway, looking across at Bean, who waited in front of the North Star.

The dawn was clean and peaceful, and the street smelled of cool dust and the wind of the day had not yet arisen, but only stirred here and there, in tiny, warning puffs.

Carson took a step forward, and even as he stepped a rifle barked; a throaty, rasping bark that echoed among the wooden buildings.

Across the street something lifted Bean off his feet, as if a mighty fist had smote him – struck so hard that it slammed him off his feet and sprawled him in the dust.

At the sound of the shot, Carson had ducked and spun on his heel, was back in the room again, slamming shut the door.

The windows of the North Star sprouted licking spurts of gunflame and the smashing of the
Tribune's
windows for an instant drowned the crashing of the guns. Bullets snarled through the thin sheathing and plowed furrows in the floor, hurling bright showers of splinters as they gouged along the wood.

Carson hurled himself toward his heavy desk, hit the floor and skidded hard into the partition behind it. A slug thudded into the wall above his head and another screamed, ricocheting, from the desk top.

Thunder pounded Carson's ears, a crashing, churning thunder that seemed to shake the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Jake crouched, half-shielded by the doorway into the back shop, pouring lead through the broken windows. Shell cases rolled and clattered on the floor as the old printer, eye squinted under bushy brow, tobacco tucked carefully in the northeast corner of his cheek, worked the lever action.

From the corner of the desk, Carson flipped two quick shots at one North Star window where he thought he saw for an instant the hint of shadowy motion.

And suddenly he realized there were no sounds of guns, no more bullets thudding into the floor, throwing showers of splinters.

Jake was clawing at the pockets of his printer's apron, spilling cartridges on the floor in his eagerness to fill the magazine.

He spat at the mouse-hole with uncanny accuracy. “Wonder who in tarnation knocked off Bean,” he said.

“Somebody out in the windmill lot,” said Carson.

Jake picked up the cartridges he had dropped, put them back in the apron pocket again. “Kind of nice,” he declared, “to know you got some backin'. Probably somebody that hates Fennimore's guts just as much as we do.”

“Whoever he was,” declared Carson, “he sure messed up my plans. No sense of trying to surrender now.”

“Never was in the fust place,” Jake told him. “Damndest fool thing I ever heard of. Steppin' out to get yourself shot up.”

He squatted in the doorway, rifle across his knee.

“They didn't catch us unawares,” he said. “Now they'll be up to something else. Thought maybe they'd wipe us out by shooting the place plumb full of holes.” He patted the rifle stock. “Sort of discouraged them,” he said.

“It'll be sniping now,” declared Carson. “Waiting for one of us to show ourselves.”

“And us,” said Jake, “waiting for them to show themselves.”

“They'll be spreading out,” said Carson, “trying to come at us from different directions. We got to keep our eyes peeled. One of us watch from the front and the other from the back.”

“Okay by me,” said Jake. “Want to flip for it?”

“No time to flip,” said Carson. “You take the back. I'll watch up here.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall. “If we only can hold out until dark,” he declared, “maybe –”

A furtive tapping came against the back of the building.

“Who's there?” called out Jake, guardedly.

A husky whisper came through the boards. “Open up. It's me. Robinson.”

The man slipped in, dragging his rifle behind him, when Jake eased the door open. The merchant slapped the dust from his clothes.

“So you're the jasper what hauled down on Bean,” said Jake.

Robinson nodded. “They burned my store,” he said. “So they could bust up your shop. They burned everything I had – for no reason at all except to let them get in here and stop that extra you were planning.”

“That's what we figured, too,” said Jake.

“I ain't no fighting man,” Robinson declared. “I like things peaceable … like them peaceable so well I'll fight to make them that way. That's why I shot Bean. That's why I came here. My way of figurin', there ain't no peace around these parts until we run out Fennimore.”

“Instead of coming here,” Carson told him, “you should have ridden out and told the ranchers what was happening. Told them we needed help.”

“Lee Weaver is already out,” said Robinson. “I was just over there. The stable boy told me he left half an hour ago.”

A flurry of shots blazed from the North Star, and bullets chunked into the room. One of them, aimed higher than the rest, smashed the clock and it hung drunkenly from its nail, a wrecked thing that drooled wheels and broken spring.

“Just tryin' us out,” said Jake.

To the north, far away, came the sound of shooting. They strained their ears, waiting. “Wonder what's going on up there?” asked Jake.

Robinson shook his head. “Sure hope it isn't Lee,” he said.

After that one burst there were no further shots.

The sun climbed up the sky and the town dozed, its streets deserted.

“Everyone's staying under cover,” Jake opined. “Ain't nobody wants to get mixed up in this.”

Just after noon Lee Weaver came, flat on his belly through the weeds and tall grass back of the building, dragging himself along with one hand, the right arm dragging limply at his side, its elbow a bloody ruin bound with a red-stained handkerchief.

“Came danged near lettin' you have it,” Jake told him. “Sneakin' through them weeds like a thievin' redskin.”

Weaver slumped into a chair, gulped the dipper of water that Carson brought him.

“I couldn't get through,” he told them. “Fennimore's got men posted all around the town, watching. Shot my horse, but I got away. Had to shoot it out with three of them. Laid for two hours in a clump of sage while they hunted me.”

Carson frowned, worried. “That leaves us on the limb,” he said. “There isn't any help coming. They got us cornered. Come night –”

“Come night,” suggested Jake, “and we fade out of here. No use in tryin' it now. They'd get us sure as shootin'. In the dark we'd have some chance to get away.”

Carson shook his head. “Come night,” he declared, “I'm going into that saloon the back way. While you fellows keep them busy up here.”

“If they don't get us first,” Weaver reminded him. “They'll rush us as soon as it's dark.”

“In that case,” snapped Carson, “I'm starting now. That weed-patch out there is tall enough to shield a man if he goes slow, inches at a time, and doesn't cause too much disturbance. I'll circle wide before I try crossing the street. I'll be waiting to get into the North Star long before it's dark.”

Chapter Four
The Plans of Mice and Men …

The doorknob turned easily, and Carson let out his breath. For long hours he had lain back of the North Star, his mind conjuring up all the things that might go wrong. The door might be locked, he might be seen before he could reach it, he might run into someone just inside. …

But he reached the door without detection and now the knob turned beneath his fingers. He shoved it slowly, fearful of a squeaking hinge.

The smell of liquor and of stale cooking hit him in the face as the door swung open. From inside came the dull rumble of occasional words, the scrape of boot-heels.

Holding his breath, he moved inside, slid along the wall, shoved the door shut. Standing still, shoulders pressed against the wall, he waited for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark.

He was, he saw, in a sort of warehouse. Liquor cases and barrels were piled against the walls, half-blocking the lone window in the room. Straight ahead was another door and he guessed that it opened into a hallway that ran up to the barroom, with another room, the one in which he had faced Fennimore the night before, off to the side.

A gun crashed ahead of him. A single shot. And then another one. Then a flurry of shots.

He felt the hair crawl at the base of his scalp, and his grip tightened on the gun in his hand. There had been occasional firing all afternoon, a few shots now and then. This might be just another fusillade, or it might mean that the kill had started, that the office would be rushed.

On tiptoe he moved across the room, reached the second door. And even as he reached for the knob, he felt it turn beneath his hand before his fingers gripped it.

Someone else had hold of the knob on the other side – was coming through the door!

Twisting on his boot-heel, he swung away, staggered back against the piled-up cases. The door swung open and a figure stepped into the room.

With all his strength, Carson swung at the head of the shadowy man, felt the barrel of his sixgun crash through the resistance of the hat, slam against the skull. The man gasped, pitched forward on buckling knees.

Moving swiftly, Carson scooped the guns from the holsters of the fallen man. He bent close to try to make out who it was, but in the dark the face was a white splotch, unrecognizable.

He straightened and stood tense, listening. There was no sound. No more shots from up in front.

He reached up to place the two guns he had taken from the holsters on top of the whisky cases, and as he stretched on tiptoe to shove them back away from the edge, something drilled into his back, something hard and round.

Rigid, he did not move, and a voice that he knew spoke just behind him.

“Well, well, Morgan, imagine finding you here.”

Mocking, hard – the voice of Jackson Quinn. Quinn, hearing the thud of the falling body, coming on quiet feet down the hallway to investigate, catching him when he was off guard.

“Mind if I turn around?” asked Carson, trying to keep his voice easy.

Quinn gurgled with delight. “Not at all. Turn around by all means. I never did like shooting in the back.” He chuckled again. “Not even you.”

Carson twisted slowly around. The gun muzzle never left his body, following it around from back to belly.

“Drop your gun,” said Quinn.

Carson loosened his fingers and the gun thudded on the floor.

“You've given me so much trouble,” Quinn told him, “that I should bust you up a bit. But I don't think I will. I don't think I'll even bother.” He chuckled. “I think I'll just shoot you here and have it over with.”