The West being the West, that did not prevent there being fantastic legends told about him. He was a gallant dare-devil who robbed the rich to give to the poor. The Mexicans, who had lost several of their less important members to his gun, were known to hide him and lie for him when the law was too close upon his heels for comfort. He was said to have a fatal charm for virtuous women. Looking at him, you might be forgiven for thinking that a man who could believe that could believe anything.
Binns said: ‘Do you never knock?’
‘Never,’ said Billy, grinning and looking puzzled at the question.
Seeing that irony was wasted on him, Binns tried: ‘Sorry to interrupt you at your devotions, Billy.’
Cross said: ‘You didn’t interrupt nothin’. I come when I was through.’
Binns asked: ‘Do you know a man called Blade?’
Cross picked up the La Raine whiskey bottle and drank from it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Sure, I know a man called Blade. Joe Blade?’
‘That’s the man.’
‘Ever’body knows Joe. Nice feller,’
‘Too nice to kill?’
Cross looked puzzled again – ‘Who’s too nice to kill?’
‘Maybe this one isn’t easy to kill,’ said Binns.
The grin flickered on Cross’ face again – ‘Like this evenin’. Bunch of fellers tried to knock him off. They burned up enough powder for a goddam army. Takes a pro to rub out a man like Joe. Christ, fellers’ve tried it all over.’
‘Could you kill him?’
‘Sure. Why not?’
‘Tonight?’
Cross was silent. Suddenly, his face was masked and still. His dark eyes flicked to Binns’ face for a moment, dwelt there penetratingly and gazed into a corner of the room.
He was all business now. Quietly, he drew up a chair so that he sat almost knee-to-knee with Binns.
‘This don’t come under the contract,’ he said. ‘A special price.’
‘Understood,’ said Binns. He found that he was sweating even more now. He thought he could feel a sudden tension in the gunman. ‘The most important thing is that there should be absolutely no possibility of my being connected with the killing. Which means there should be absolutely no chance of it going wrong or of you being caught.’
Cross said softly: ‘A long shot at night. That ain’t easy and it ain’t sure.’
They discussed it back and forth for a few minutes. Then they were silent while Cross sat deep in thought, hunched in his chair.
‘There’s only one way to make sure,’ he said. ‘That is goin’ on the details you gave me. Two tries. First, a knife in the dark. I have good men. Never knowed ’em fail. But Blade is special. Too many men met their come-uppance tryin’ to knock him off. If he gets back to his hotel room, we’ll use a rifle on him.’
‘Suppose he kills the man trying to knife him?’
Cross showed his large yellow teeth savagely.
‘I’ll guarantee to carry off my own dead,’ he said. ‘If we fail with the rifle, there’ll be distance between him an’ us. The getaway’ll be easy. Quit frettin’. I never yet failed with a first try.’
‘All right,’ Binns mopped his wet face. ‘Now – price.’
Cross said: ‘One thousand dollars.’
The sweat dried cold on Binns.
‘Good God,’ he exclaimed, ‘have you taken leave of your senses, man?’
Cross stood up and walked to the door.
He said: ‘You can’t fool me. This is a big one. If you want a man like Joe Blade dead, you’re movin’ in the top class. There’s the speed. You didn’t give me time to organise. Men don’t like their necks on the block for pennies.’
Binns put on his secretive I-know-men-in-high-places look.
‘You must have guessed there is some pretty important men behind this, Billy,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ said Cross. ‘One reason why the price is high.’
‘It cuts both ways,’ said Binns. ‘A man like you could, use important contacts one of these days.’
Cross flickered that smile again – ‘That’s what kept the price as low as one thousand.’
Binns looked slightly in despair.
‘Billy, Billy,’ he cried, ‘if you want half now and half later, where the hell do I find five hundred this time of night?’
‘I trust you,’ said Cross. ‘I want half for starting, half for completion. In other words you pay me at least five hundred win or lose. Agreed?’
Binns gave it some thought and said: ‘All right. But, remember, whatever happens, nothing must be traced back to me.’
Cross said: ‘My word on it.’ He turned and walked out of the room.
Almost immediately Daffodil La Raine re-entered. She jerked her head after Billy Cross and said: ‘Billy looks like the cat that got the cream.’
‘That just about sums it up,’ Binns agreed.
‘Lally’s waitin’ on you,’ Daffodil told him. ‘You know her crib.’
Binns jumped up eagerly – ‘She is?’ The tension had built up in him so for the past few minutes that he felt he must explode. His little eyes were bright and eager. Without another word, he hurried from the room and ran panting up the stairs. Daffodil poured herself a whiskey. Seeing men like Binns gave her a wonderful sense of security. While there were men as randy as him around, she and her girls would never starve. Maybe, she thought, it was time she expanded the business. Binns was a man of some influence, he had connections in the capital. The refugee from the Cossacks began to dream of owning a great mansion full of fine girls and patronised by wealthy politicians and businessmen.
Three
Blade knew that, as one attempt on his life had failed, another would eventually have to be made. But events in sleepy Arizonan towns like Crewsville did not customarily follow quickly upon each other’s heels. He therefore doubted very much that he stood in any immediate danger. Which did not mean that he in any way abandoned caution. When he returned to his hotel that night, he moved through the shadowed streets with his senses as sharpened for danger as they had ever been.
As he made his way down Main and was within a hundred yards or so of his hotel, the thought passed through his mind that it was no bad thing that in the semidark as he was, he was a tempting target for an assassin. He would be the last to deny that walking the streets under sentence of death constituted what could only be referred to as a trying circumstance. In fact, should the attack be made here and now, it could only be a relief to him. Violent and dangerous action is never more a strain to a man than a persistent threat lurking in the shadows.
He was within sight of the Clayton House when he heard the soft whistle from the alleyway. This was a narrow passage between the bank and a saloon, thrown into deep shadow by the lights of the saloon and a street lamp which hung outside a store on the far side of the road.
Blade had that ability, precious to a man of his profession, to take in a multitude of details of a scene at a glance. Swiftly running his eyes over the street, he realized that he was almost alone. Outside the saloon were two drunks quarrelling noisily and obscenely. The saloon itself was fairly well patronised, throwing out the uproar of some fifty raised voices and the tinny sound of a professor’s piano. Behind Blade, at a distance of some fifty yards, stood a solitary man apparently fully occupied in staring at the night from the centre of the street.
Blade was very much aware that he was between whoever had whistled in the alley and the street lamp. If the man held a gun, he could not miss Blade at that distance. But he had not fired, he had whistled.
Blade knew that if he walked on he would be as clear a target in the lights of the saloon. He had only one choice. He turned, almost casually retraced his steps and mounted the sidewalk in front of the bank. Close against the wall of the bank and in half-shadow, he halted.
‘Joe Blade?’
The voice came softly from the alleyway. He could scarcely hear it above the din from th
e saloon. The horses tied outside the saloon shifted uneasily. One of the drunks yelled at the top of his voice and struck the other. The man who had been hit fell off the sidewalk and rolled into the street.
Blade called: ‘Who is this?’
‘George McMasters,’ came the reply.
Blade knew that was a lie. He had just spoken to McMasters back in the Cattleman on Donaphan.
‘What do you want, George?’ he asked.
The light from the lamp across the road touched the right side of a man and one eyeball glistened. The light hit the barrel of a gun.
The man said: ‘This smoke-pole is pointed plumb at your guts, Joe. Walk this way kind of easy-like.’
The drunk in the dust rolled over and came to his feet with a gun in his hand. Blade heard it come to full-cock.
Blade knew these men did not intend to shoot him right here and now or they would have done it already. But he was not convinced they did not intend him dead. Bullets were not the only things that could kill a man. He toyed very briefly with the idea of drawing and firing and finishing the business in the minute, but he brushed the notion aside. He had no measure of the calibre of the men he faced. They might have the speed and ability to cut him down before he could get iron from leather.
The drunk on the sidewalk stepped down on to the street and slipped into the dark maw of the alley.
Blade decided they intended a silent job – they would either batter his head in or cut his throat. The awful cold calm that is so necessary to a man standing very close to his own destruction came to him.
‘All right,’ he said.
He heard booted feet pounding down the street and knew that the man who had been watching the night was on his way. He was up against four men and he didn’t know that he liked the odds much.
He halted on the edge of the sidewalk and looked down at the man with the gun.
‘Why,’ he said, ‘it’s Billy Cross. I should of known.’
Cross grinned briefly.
‘We’re not goin’ to have no trouble from you, Joe,’ he said, ‘are we?’
‘I’m no fool, Billy,’ Blade said. ‘I know when I’m braced.’
Cross gestured with his gun – ‘Just step down the alley a ways.’
The running man arrived, panting. The drunk who had been knocked into the street closed in.
The man in the alley said: ‘Come ahead.’
Blade walked into the dark and it seemed to drop around him like an impenetrable cloak. The lamplight touched a silver concho on a man’s hat. Bootheels scuffed the hard rutted ground, spurs jingled softly. They were a dozen yards down the alley and a soft shaft of moonlight had taken over from the lamplight when Cross’s voice came – ‘This is it.’
They halted.
‘Go ahead, Star,’ Billy Cross said.
Blade gently but firmly pulled one long breath into his lungs. He heard a whisper of sound to his right as a man drew back an arm for a blow and gasped in air.
A hand grasped at Blade from behind, but he was already moving forward and down, hurling himself at the feet of the man about to strike him. He felt his left shoulder drive into the lower legs of the man. His arms wrapped themselves around those legs and tore the man from his feet. The fellow’s shrill cry of alarm was cut short as his head cracked resoundingly against the wall of the bank behind him.
Dimly, he heard Billy Cross’s frantic demand that somebody kill him. He knew that the only way to stay alive was to move fast, violently and continuously. He rolled three times, came up against a wall and rose untidily to one knee, his right hand tearing his Colt’s gun from its scabbard. As he fired his first shot, he was aware of a sharp burning sensation in his side. A man barged blindly against him. Thrusting the muzzle of his gun into the solidity of the body above him, Blade fired.
The heavy bullet hurled the man, suddenly an inanimate mass, across the alleyway. The muzzle-flame had caught his clothes alight and they burned dully.
As Blade pulled himself to his feet, he heard a startling cry of a kind which he had heard only once before. This told him that George McMasters was now in on the game.
From across the alleyway there came the dull thud of George’s knife-hilt thudding into a resistant breastbone. A man screamed piercingly.
Somebody fired a shot. The gun was so close to Blade that he was half-blinded by the muzzle-flash. The dark form of a man darted at him and he struck hard at it with the barrel of his gun. He missed the head and struck a shoulder. The blow drove the man against the bank wall.
A hand seized his left arm and McMaster’s voice came – ‘Run.’
The next moment, they were both legging it down the alleyway away from the street. Two guns fired several shots rapidly behind them, the gunmen thumbing hammers and triggering as fast as they could move. No point in aiming, the targets could not be seen. A window collapsed with a crash of glass.
At the bottom of the alleyway, they turned abruptly left, along the edge of the loading platform of the saloon. At once they were stumbling awkwardly amongst trash. McMasters tripped and went down, filling the night air with some choice curses in three languages. Blade halted and watched him climb to his feet. The moonlight hit George’s face. Somebody had laid a cheek open to the bone. They both stayed still, listening. There was a commotion in the street, but there was no sound of pursuit.
McMasters said in his short way: ‘Do you know what all that was about?’
‘Only that it was Billy Gross trying to kill me.’
‘Billy Cross? Oh, my Christ.’ McMasters took a closer look at Blade. ‘Joe, were you hit?’
‘A knife.’
‘Green Rivered?’
‘No, nothing but a flesh wound.’ Blade touched his friend on the shoulder. ‘George, we’d best split up. We go ahead as planned. All right? Watch your back. Did any of those men recognize you?’
‘Maybe, but I doubt it.’
‘Get that face fixed. It don’t look too good at the best of times.’
McMasters, one ear still listening to the night, said: ‘Joe, they made a try for you earlier. Now this. You reckon there’s an organiser in town? Gould it be Billy Cross?’
‘Not his style,’ said Blade. ‘He’s a hired man.’
‘He’ll try again for sure.’
‘I know it. I’ll leave word at the Clayton House.’
McMasters gave a silent Cheyenne hand sign. It wished him good luck. Blade returned it and reckoned they both needed some luck. He watched McMasters tramp away west, picking his way carefully through the trash. Blade reloaded his empty chamber and slid his gun away into leather. A few minutes later he was at the rear of the Clayton House tapping softly on the kitchen door.
Hope Clayton opened the door. She looked mildly surprised to see him. She also looked pleased.
She smiled pleasantly and half-mockingly and said: ‘You don’t have to call at the kitchen door for me, Joe.’
He grinned briefly and said: ‘You look good enough for someone special, Hope.’
‘Hope springs eternal,’ she replied and indeed she was too beautifully dressed for any girl in a cow-country hotel kitchen. Blade wasn’t too sure what it was called, but to him her robe looked a cross between a ball gown and a bath-robe. It showed and hid what it wanted to and its effect would have devastated a man of stone.
Blade stepped inside, shut the door and slipped the two bolts into place. When he turned and faced the girl, he could see from the expression on her face that she knew there was trouble. Her eyes flicked to the blood on his coat.
‘You’re hurt, Joe,’she said.
‘I’m all right,’ he told her, ‘but I don’t want you and Charlie mixed up in this. I have to reach my room without being seen. If anybody asks, as far as you know I never went out.’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘But you’re bleeding.’
‘I’ll fix it.’
‘Charlie’s in bed,’ she said. ‘There’s a couple of men from the second floor still out. The lobby�
�s empty. I’ll go stand by the street door and stop anybody coming in.’
‘Thanks, Hope.’
‘Any time, Joe.’
She gave him a tight smile and went out of the kitchen down the hall into the lobby. She glanced through the glass of the street door and signed to him. He walked down the hall and reached the stairs. The whole building seemed silent. He ran softly up the stairs, turned along the upper hall and reached his room.
He heard Charity’s whisper: ‘Joe?’
‘Light the lamp, honey,’ he told her and shut the door behind him. Her match flared and he saw her face bright in its flame. He found the chair and propped it under the door handle. In the warm glow of the lamp, she kissed him. And at once she knew that something was wrong. She drew back and looked at him – ‘That’s blood.’
He peeled off his coat – ‘A small knife cut. You can fix it for me, no trouble at all.’
‘Does this mean you were attacked?’
He nodded. He swore when he found that his fine silk vest was ruined. It doesn’t pay to dress well in my trade, he thought.
The girl did not fuss. She just went ahead and fixed that wound for him, washing the deep cut out with whiskey, tearing his shirt into strips for the bandage. The blade had crossed three ribs and cut him to the bone, but it had been the bone that saved him. It had turned the steel like plate armour. She wound him into a cotton corset, looping straps over his shoulders so it would not slip.
‘There,’ she said, patting the dressing with a grin of pride, ‘good as new.’
She found him a fresh shirt and he slipped into it. She took the blood-stained clothing and rolled it into a neat bundle. She would burn that in the kitchen stove. Blade dropped the coat on the bundle – ‘Burn that, too. That knife cut could put me in the sheriff’s cell.’
She said: ‘Is our hero too badly hurt to suffer the embraces of the heroine?’
He said: ‘With the heroine looking good enough to eat in her nightshirt, the hero can’t hardly wait.’
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