It was like him that he wasted not a look at Hopalong. He had been given his chores, and he knew what he should do was what he had been told to do. He started on a run for the corral. Framson, about to get into a new firing position at last, saw him coming. His eyes swung one way, then the other, but Mesquite was too close a danger, and he snapped a quick shot at him, felt a bullet smash his shoulder. He dropped his gun, scooped it up, and dodged across the corral. Mesquite circled it, firing between the planks.
Framson went down coughing, got up, and leaped for the corral fence, grabbing the top pole with his hands. He swung himself over and Mesquite stood, wide-legged with lifted guns, and for an instant they looked at each other. And in, the cold eyes of Mesquite Jenkins, Ed Framson saw death. He grinned suddenly, feeling the red heat of the bullets he had taken in his body.
“Why, you lucky blister!” he said. “You lucky blister! I’ll kill you!”
He dropped, landing miraculously on his feet, his grin wide.
“You got me, but I want company!”
His gun swung up, and Mesquite’s Colts hammered death into him, knocking him back step by step, until he fell.
Even as Mesquite was crawling through the window and Johnny fighting among the rocks, Hopalong Cassidy was walking out into the open against Sparr. And Avery Sparr, who had never known fear of another man, suddenly felt a strange certainty welling up within him. The battered gray hat, the fringe of silver hair, the frosty blue eyes, the sloping shoulders, and the curious, short-stepping cowman’s walk—that was Hopalong Cassidy, and it was death.
In that clear, sun-bathed luminous instant Avery Sparr knew his time had come. It came to him with a flash of realization, such a certainty as he had never know before. He knew he was going to die, and somehow then he knew that it had been in his mind ever since he had first seen this man. All his plans had gone wrong. His big gamble, which until then had been so safe, so sure, all had failed.
Yet in that clear instant of realization, his cold and haggard face revealing nothing, Avery Sparr knew that a man has but one time to die. All other things he can do many times, but he can die but once, and if a man cannot live proudly, he can at least die proudly.
Tall, gray, and bleak, he stopped, facing Hopalong across the thirty yards of distance that separated them. In that instant—such is the way of fighting men—he felt almost an affection for the gunfighter facing him. At least he wouldn’t be like Hickok, shot in the back without a chance by a tinhorn, or shot from the dark like Billy the Kid. He could end it out here in the sunshine and take Cassidy with him.
“How d’you like it, Cassidy?” His voice was harsh. “Let’s see how good you really are!”
They stared at each other, each knowing well how the other felt, for both were fighting men. No matter how far apart the ways of life, the divisions of color, creed, or living, there is between fighting men an understanding, and such these felt now. Sparr spoke once more before the guns began to talk.
“You know, boy, it’s a nice way to go, out in the sunshine, with the sound of the first snow meltin’!”
His hands dived for his guns, and as if on order, guns began to crash about them.
To men in great moments of suspense, moments of great emotion and action, comes a suspension of time, so that the action of seconds seems to drag to long, long minutes.
Avery Sparr’s big hands dropped in that old familiar gesture of death, dropped for the butts of the big guns he loved so well, and like darting lightning, the guns cleared their holsters and leaped to position, yet in a breathless instant before him, flame shot from the guns of Hopalong Cassidy.
Sparr’s teeth bared in a snarl as he took the hammering lead; his cheeks seemed to sink to deep hollows. His hat was gone somehow, and there was the dark, smoky taste of battle in his mouth, and he was shooting, shooting, shooting!
He had no way of knowing in those last gun-blazing split seconds of his life that his equilibrium had been destroyed by the first bullet he took, that the second had torn his left arm, smashing the bone and tearing flesh as the misshapen bullet found a way through. He had no way of knowing that the big guns in his hands were hammering into the sun-baked earth and that his own body was knocked right and then left by lead from Cassidy’s smoking guns.
Hopalong, his face bleak, stepped around the big gunman as a fast boxer steps around a slow-moving slugger—stepped around and shot him to doll rags, for Hopalong knew that while one tiny breath of life wavered in this man he was a fighter still. Cruel he might be, criminal he might have been, but he was a fighting man.
Once only he paused to flash a shot at a window. Then he finished the job and left Sparr flat on his face in the sunshine. Wheeling, he ran for the storeroom.
Anse Mowry was there. Anse, who had cursed Hop-along and sworn to kill him. Anse, who was vicious and cruel, but who had watched with amazement as the mighty Avery Sparr went down beneath Hopalong’s guns. Suddenly something thick and bitter climbed in his throat, and with a cry of half-animal fear he saw Hopalong wheel away from Sparr and come toward him.
Wheeling, Mowry clawed at the window. Forgotten were all the boasts he had made; forgotten his claims and his meanness.
He clawed at the frozen-shut window, then grabbed a chair and smashed out the glass. With a lunge he dived through, the glass ripping his flesh. He started on a run for the woods, his throat torn with cries of fear.
Sanity had left him, and he had only one idea: to get away, to escape. Suddenly, fearfully, he glanced over his shoulder and snapped a wild shot at the window where Hopalong’s face was framed. The long gun spoke, and he turned half around and stretched out in the snow, his boasts as dead as his fears, his blood staining the snow, as red as any man’s.
A spatter of shots came from the buildings, and Hopalong sprang back. Somewhere a horse’s hoofs hammered and died away, and then the air was soft with sunshine and the smell of melting snow. Hopalong fed bullets into his guns and stepped into the open. Mesquite was coming toward him, limping. “Burned me,” he said. “You hurt?”
“No.” And then, thoughtful as he always was, “Where’s Johnny?”
“Comin’!” Johnny Nelson came down the rocky hill toward them.
“Mowry?” Mesquite asked.
“Dead.”
“I got two in the house,” Mesquite said, “an’ Framson’s gone.”
Johnny Nelson waited until he recovered his breath. “The Piute an’ his sidekick lit a shuck when Sparr went down.”
“How about Lydon? Wasn’t he the one in the bunkhouse?”
“My first shot. Let’s look.”
Lydon lay inside the window, beyond the rustling of cattle.
“That other hombre, the one up in the rocks, I knocked him out, but he got up an’ came for me with a knife. He’s finished too.
Hopalong picked up his hat, which he had lost in the fight. “One man still missing,” he said. “Where’s Johnny Rebb?”
“Lit out, maybe?” Nelson suggested.
“Uh-uh. Not him.” Mesquite was positive. “He ain’t the runnin’ kind.”
At the sound of approaching horses all three turned swiftly. Mesquite’s rifle swung up.
“Hold it!” Hopalong grasped the gun barrel. “That’s Sim Thatcher an’ his crowd.”
Thatcher rode up, his horse shying at the body of Avery Sparr. The rancher stared at him, then turned to Hopalong. “Dead, huh? You did it?”
“Yeah. I reckon two or three got away. The Piute an’ one of the Gleasons. No sign of Johnny Rebb.
“Sim, I’m ridin’ to Alma to tell Dick about this. While I’m over there I’ll pick up that buckskin o’ yours. Now look, that’s the best mountain horse I ever rode, an’ I want him.” He paused, and sobered. “Of course he’s a mite old, an’ a little sway-backed, but—”
“You durned no-account, silver-headed liar!” Sim Thatcher chuckled. “That buckskin ain’t quite five yet, and if he’s sway-backed I’m the next Emperor of China. Don’t star
t runnin’ him down to beat me out of him. I like that horse. He’s one of the best I ever saw, but you done me a big favor, Hopalong, so if you don’t take that horse as a present, you need never speak to me again. Nor,” he grinned, “you don’t eat no more apple pie at my place!”
Hopalong rubbed his jaw, his blue eyes twinkling. “I reckon that last argument cinches it, Sim! I sure was figgerin’ on more pie!”
Mesquite looked at Johnny Nelson. “Did he say pie? Apple pie?”
“Sounded like it.” Johnny looked serious. “I don’t believe it, but in the interests of truth an’ veracity, not to say science an’ history, I figger we better ride over to the T Bar an’ carry on a little investigation-like.”
Hopalong watched them start for their horses. “Better leave a couple of men here, Sim, if you can spare ’em. I’m headin’ for Alma. Also,” he added, “you better take all the rest of them back to your spread if they want to protect that pie. There’s only one thing those boys do as good as fight, an’ that’s eat!”
* * *
Dick Jordan was sitting up in bed when Hopalong entered the room. “Confound it all!” he bellowed. “These here women sure keep a man hemmed in! They don’t give me enough grub to keep a yearlin’ youngster goin’ an’ expect me to get better!” He held out a hand. “I sure am pleased, Hoppy! Fact you’re here proves things is better! Leastways, you’re still on your feet!”
“Yeah.”
Hopalong dropped to a chair and tried to comb his hair with his fingers, conscious of Pamela’s presence. They were bursting with questions and it was like him to tease them by ignoring their curiosity. “Looks like a good winter, Dick. Nice fall of snow, some meltin’ now, but that’s only in the low places. Purty quick she’ll snow real hard again, an’ we’ll have good summer grass. Now—”
“Consarn you, Hoppy!” Jordan interrupted. “Stop that infernal beatin’ around the bush! What happened? Where’s Sparr?”
Hopalong glanced at Pamela, who was staring at him, avid with interest and excitement.
“Sparr?” he inquired. “Oh? Oh, yeah! Sparr.”
“Well, what happened?” Jordan demanded, scowling.
Pamela leaned forward, looking even more charming than usual. “Hoppy, stop teasing! Please, please tell me!”
Cassidy chuckled. “All right. Well, there ain’t much to tell. Mesquite an’ Johnny had a run-in up in Turkey Springs—”
Quietly he told them the story, adding no unnecessary details, merely giving them the information.
“About all it amounts to is that your ranch is in your hands again and those outlaws are either dead or runnin’ for the border.”
“You didn’t say nothing about Rebb,” Jordan complained. “What happened to him?”
“Not a word or a sound. He vanished just like the earth swallowed him. I wanted to leave the same day to come over here, but couldn’t. One of Thatcher’s boys found Soper. He was dead, had been shot and killed at that guard cabin on the ford of the West Fork. From sign around he figgered Johnny Rebb done that.
“Mesquite trailed Rebb’s horse up to the cabin an’ saw where he was joined by Soper. Soper evidently tried to kill him because we, saw Rebb’s tracks goin’ away, then where he turned real fast. And Soper had a stingy gun lyin’ near by him.”
“What about Rebb’s trail?”
“He started for the Circle J, but evidently heard the shootin’ an’ saw the T Bar outfit come up. Maybe he ran into some of the boys who took out, but anyway, he never showed up.”
Outside, the moonlight was bright as moonlight can only be on an early winter night. The street was empty of snow, save in a few sheltered places where the day’s sunlight could not reach, but in the east the high peaks of the Mogollons sparkled like moonlit diamonds, impossibly, unbelievably beautiful.
* * *
In an empty cabin almost a block away from the house where Hopalong Cassidy talked with the Jordans, a man fed a fire in a glowing red stove, and close to the stove he held his hands, and from time to time he kneaded his fingers with care. The room in which he sat was dark but for the fire, but it had the lonely, empty feeling of a room long deserted.
This was the home of one of the men Hopalong had run out of the Eagle. The room’s only window opened on the street, and from it one commanded an excellent view of the house where Dick Jordan lay recuperating from his mountain journey.
The man in the cabin smoked a cigarette, then carefully put it out, and sat still beside his fire, waiting with such patience as only the hunter knows. And he was, indeed, a hunter—Johnny Rebb, waiting to kill Hopalong Cassidy.
He had not much longer to wait. Death is rarely impatient and can conjure up a multitude of tiny delays. Death definitely has dramatic sense and understands the rules of suspense, for upon this night Johnny had come to his feet more than once, his gun ready. First it had been the doctor coming out, and then somebody who delivered an armful of groceries, and then a visitor. Hopalong was staying a long time.
He would not stay the night. Johnny Rebb had taken precautions to find out, but it did not matter, for Rebb was prepared to wait a week, a month if necessary. He had a good store of dry wood. He allowed little smoke to emerge, no light to be seen. His supplies had been brought in by night.
Hopalong Cassidy was a careful man. Always a fighting man, he had learned that survival was a matter of intelligence, of knowing things first, and being always ready for the unexpected. Pamela had come with him to the door, and they stood there, talking.
“Will you go back to Buck now, Hoppy?” she asked.
“No.” His eyes strayed down the street and rested upon a dark house; rested, then moved on. “No, I reckon not. I want to ride south from here, down near the border. Little town down there I want to see, and some new country.”
“Won’t you ever settle down? Stay in one place?” Her hand was on his sleeve. “Why don’t you stay here, Hoppy? Somehow—Oh, I feel so much better when you’re near, and lately I’ve been almost sick when you were gone.”
He avoided her eyes, reflecting miserably that she would probably be sicker if he stayed and then went. And he would go.
“Who lives in that house down the street? The one that is out farther than the others? On the corner almost?”
“That one? It’s empty. Frager used to live there, they tell me. He was an outlaw, I guess. Anyway, when the Eagle closed, he left very fast.”
“I see. Anybody been in there lately?”
“Oh, no! It’s empty. It has been for days.”
Hopalong Cassidy nodded, and his eyes gleamed in the darkness. The snow in the street where it had been walked over and run over was gone. There were still a few roofs that had snow, however, but they were the roofs of sheds and barns without inner heat. The houses where lights showed had no snow on the roof, for the fires within had helped to melt it away. There was no snow on the roof of the house in question, although there was snow on the porch, unbroken, untrodden snow.
“I’d better go,” he said quietly.
“You’ll come back?” Pamela pleaded gently.
“Yeah, maybe.” It was better to say you would come back. Better than flatly saying no. It wouldn’t work, he knew. Pamela was lovely, but he was a man who lived by the gun. She deserved better. Maybe she was a little in love with him, but he was not at all sure. And in a little while, if he was gone, there would be somebody else.
“Yeah,” he said quietly, “I’ll come back, Pam. After I go south.”
He stepped quickly off the porch, intent now upon something else.
No snow on the roof. He smiled, seeing again a pattern of living and a pattern of going shaping itself. “So long, Pam! Tell Dick I got a little job to do down the street, but I’ll be ridin’ on right after.”
Within the dark window of that house his eye had caught, in the moment he first stepped from the door of the house, a tiny fleck of light that might have been a suddenly extinguished cigarette. And it might have been his imagination
.
He huddled his sheepskin coat around his ears but stripped off his gloves and shoved them into the capacious pockets. He walked slowly down the street. And then the door of the empty house opened and a man made tracks in the hitherto untracked snow. His boots crunched on the porch snow, and then he stepped down on the walk. He wore a heavy buffalo coat that hung open.
“A cross draw,” Hopalong said to himself, “an’ it will be fast.”
Johnny Rebb stopped and watched the man approaching him. He was young at this game, but good. He knew he was good. He was too young to have the feeling of going too often to the well, too young to have any premonition of death or to recognize it if it came. He was a young man of singularly basic emotions. An uncomplicated young man. His ideas were few, his tastes and desires simple. Right now he wanted to kill Hopalong Cassidy. Right now he felt he was going to kill him.
“Howdy, Cassidy.” He spoke in a low voice, and waited.
“Yeah, Johnny. I been expectin’ you. Fact is, I knowed you was here.”
“How?”
Johnny Rebb was puzzled. How could he have known?
“No snow on the roof. Only houses with the snow gone are those with fires.”
“Well, what d’you know? I never figgered on that.” He chuckled. “You’re a smart one, Hoppy. Too bad you have to go this way, but Sparr, he done me some favors.”
“Do yourself one, kid,” Hopalong suggested quietly. “Call this off an’ beat it. You had luck. You beat out a tough game, so take the luck you have an’ go someplace else. Start ranchin’ or punch cows. This killin’ won’t get you no place.”
“Talkin’ too much, Hoppy. Them who talk too much are usually scared.”
Hopalong’s chuckle was dry. “Not this time, kid. I hate to see this happen.”
Johnny Rebb’s right hand lightly held the edge of his coat, only inches from his gun butt. “Sorry, Hop—!”
The Hopalong Cassidy Novels 4-Book Bundle Page 20
