Part 2

Tud Drury still sat at the poker table, but the game had broken up and his hands idly stacked and divided the chips before him. It was six-thirty. His hour of appointment with Anna had come and gone, his plans were smashed by the ruthless three waiting in the street with a cold, patient stolidness that seemed like the inevitable signal of death. The saloon was filling, other tables occupied. Yet the word was out and he was let alone. Men watched him in catlike attention and all this while he sat with his head slightly bowed, his dark cheeks passive, unmoved.

But under the cover of that outward indifference his thought raced along in futile swiftness, running down one blind alley and another, striking barriers at every turn, and collecting again with ever mounting desperation. There was no hope for him on Pistol Gap’s main street, no possible chance of reaching his horse. Perhaps he might slip quietly through the rear of the saloon and leave town afoot, perhaps he might reach timber if he elected to try his solitary fortune. Yet in so doing he abandoned Anna, and when he abandoned her he also threw over whatever of hope and self-respect there was left in him.

At a gesture Tud Drury swept the chips from the table and rose. The rumble of talk in the saloon sagged as he walked to the bar, took his drink, and seemed to collect himself. There was a glinting anger in his eyes and all his features tightened down--the expression of one staking everything on the turn of a card. Then, without warning, he strode to the back door of the saloon, placed his hand on the knob and paused. A chair scraped, accenting the stillness that gripped every soul in the place. Drury squared his shoulders, stared behind him and spoke bitterly.

“If this town’s waitin’ to watch me die--see how I do it. Damn Pistol Gap and all that it means!”

With that, he ripped the door open and lunged into darkness, falling on all fours. Crouched there he awaited the bullet. But it never came. No prowling sound disturbed the back lots, no lurking body moved across the thin lanes of light winking down from the residences high placed on the canyon wall. Judgment still was suspended, still ominously withdrawn and waiting. Drury cursed with a rising rage. But even as he cursed he felt the first flare of hope in the long dragging hours of the afternoon. Getting on his feet, he ran beside the back building line, cut across the gap existing between the main street and the smaller gulch of Chinatown, and halted again. Over the creek lay the Pride of the Hills, filled with sound of music and men; the tide of traffic streamed into it and the voice of the announcer at the door rose stridently.

“They know,” he muttered. “They know to come there. And that’s where they’ll be. No use to avoid it now. Can’t stay in the dark much longer, can’t sidestep a showdown.”

A Chinaman trudged along the creek, leading a belled burro. Drury skirted a pair of cabins and approached the trail at a dark angle. The Chinaman came abreast, saw the figure of the man dimly in front of him, and halted defensively.

“Sen Yat?” said Drury.

“Ah,” said the Chinaman and peered closer. “Dluly. Long time no see.”

“I’m no hand to beg,” muttered Drury. “But I did you a favor one time, and I need help now.”

“You say, Dluly.”

“I need two horses placed back of the dance hall, Sen Yat. Away up on the slope. I need ’em now. Right where the trail cuts down from old Number Two below Discovery. You do that?”

“Can do, Dluly.”

“Don’t go to the stable for horses. Use your own. Here’s a hundred dollars. Let nobody see you.”

The Chinaman took the money and plodded deeper into Chinatown. Drury watched him wind through the maze of shacks and disappear. He held his position as the lagging, dreary minutes went by, never letting his eyes stray from the upper end of the gulch. In his mind he reconstructed every step of the Chinaman’s way--getting the horses, saddling up, leading them around the throat of the gulch, laboriously climbing the steep slopes. All these acts he allotted a space of time, throttling his uneasy impatience. Half a dozen miners tramped by at arm’s length and curved into a chop suey joint. A youthful Oriental slipped forward as if he were balancing a basket on his head. Drury stepped farther into the dark shelter, but the Chinaman swerved and came against him. A soft phrase passed between. “You go now.” And then the Chinaman padded on.

Drury took a deep breath and left his shelter. He crossed the creek without recourse to the bridge lower down. He climbed the bank and, still using the shadows, arrived at the corner of the dance hall. Another step meant coming into the full light and mixing into the eddying crowd. Nowhere did he see his three ex-partners. That they were nearby he never doubted; they had laid their trap with skill, leaving no footprints to show.

“I’ve done my last dodgin’,” he murmured to himself. “I may die, and God help the girl if I do. But here’s jump-off for Tud Drury.” On the heels of the thought he walked into the light and was carried through the door to the dance hall.

Once inside, Drury stepped out of the milling current of men, back to the wall; and his first glance went forward to the stage, thinking that Anna might have gone on with her part of the evening’s entertainment to cover the breech of time. But she was not there, nor anywhere along the smoke crowded vastness of the room. A hundred faces shifted before his eyes, none of them of importance to him. So he slid casually through a side door and started up the stairs; in one cautious backward glance he caught sight of Bully McGrane’s features fixed on him, cynically amused; and it seemed to Drury that the marshal was waiting for the inevitable burst of shots. It brought him to a pause. He studied the dim inner hall sharply, ran his hand across the butt of his gun. Chill touched his nerves. Shaking it off, he ascended the two flights and went toward the girl’s room. The door was ajar and through the opening he saw her waiting.

* * * * *

Drury scarcely had cleared the dance hall when Bully McGrane stepped out of a corner and crossed the same inner door. Framed there, he turned to consider the crowd. The three gunmen had been in sight until a few minutes back and he knew they had seen Drury. Subsequently they had departed, not by the front but by a stage exit. McGrane considered this a sure indication as to the scene of the kill. Yet he was curiously inclined and he wondered if Drury’s next move would be in accordance with the arrangements. Being a shrewd, weather-wise man he knew that in life’s everlasting rabbit chase the pursued occasionally tricked the pursuer. Whatever the case, he meant to be on hand; for to him it was a grim jest, another piece of sport to feed his blunt and frankly brutal nature. So he went up the stairs, treading near the banister to check the squeaking of the boards. On the second landing he heard the murmur of voices and he went down on his toes until he stood near enough to make out the rapid play of talk. The girl’s voice rose clearly.

“You never should have come here. What does it matter? Go ahead--any way to get away from them. I’ll come later. In a few days.”

“And let ’em take their spite out on you?” came a deeper, male voice. “Not in a thousand years. That’s what they’d do. They’re a pack of savages.”

“They’ll kill you, Tud!”

Drury’s answer was small and indistinct. McGrane shifted, a scowl coming over his face. Then the girl broke in.

“I won’t go! You’ve got to do it without me! Oh, Tud, I will not drag you down like that. What does it matter about me? But if they kill you, then I have nothing left.”

“I’m through dodgin’,” said the man. “And I ain’t leavin’ you behind. I’ve got to stand up like any man would who’s worth his salt. I been through enough torment thinkin’ of you here. We’ll stick together from now on, and if I can’t take care of you, then I reckon I ain’t worth botherin’ about. Get your grip. There’s a small back door at the foot of the stairs....”

McGrane retreated quietly and descended the first flight. There he halted, scowling massively into the dingy shadows as if displeased at what he had overheard; as if this man and this girl had refused to play the part assigned them. Drury was a crook, Anna a dance hall girl. They had made their bed, now let them lie in it. All people in this world were the same. Every man struggled for himself, every man looked to the main chance and pushed the other fellow over the cliff in the showdown. There was mighty little difference between the best and the worst and every last soul crawled before the gods of fear and greed and appetite. What right had either of those two people to act as if they were any different?

He heard them coming and he crept on down the next flight of stairs. There was a single lamp bracketed to the side of the hall. He dimmed the wick and hurried on to the back door, opening it and stepping swiftly aside. A gust of cold air scoured through and the night wind rattled the brush all along the gulch. Some woman was singing from the main room and the tramp of feet shook the structure, but out yonder a kind of bated stillness held the shadows. McGrane’s sharp eyes raked the cloaked foreground; very softly he lifted his gun; and the next moment he had closed the door behind him and was flat on his stomach, ten yards away. No sooner was he settled than the door opened again, letting out Drury and the girl. He saw their bodies sway aside from the opening and he heard Drury’s soft murmur of reassurance run into her suppressed sigh. Suddenly they broke into a run, and passed him.

The soft echo of their steps came back in a straight line and he knew then what they meant to do. Over the summit lay old Discovery and from there it was a clear road out to the high desert, out to a different land. Probably Drury had managed to picket horses along the gulch and probably he thought himself safe. But McGrane, growling softly and strangely irritated, understood very well how few were the moments stretching between that delusion and gunplay. Somewhere in this tricky blackness the three crooks were waiting.

* * * * *

All sound, all echoes died off; A palpitating stillness flowed down the slope. McGrane rose to his knees, big fist tightening about his gun. “Once a crook always a crook,” he rumbled. Anger rose vastly in him, the old desire to sweep out with his massive fists and destroy took hold. He got to his feet, big body swaying, forward as if his very will sought to tear away the impenetrable blanket of that night. A faint murmur of rattling brush came to him. Distinctly a voice said, “You’re done for.” McGrane let out a roar and charged onward up the incline.

A bullet’s flat smash broke across the gulch, the echo rolling wider. The girl screamed and hard on that sound a pair of explosions rocketed together. McGrane saw the muzzle flashes; he heard Anna crying, “Tud--Tud!” And; placing those two, he opened up on the point he had seen the more remote mushrooming of powder light, still beating inward, still booming his rage into the mystery of the night. The outline of a pair of horses lay across the path, Tud’s gun answered from another angle. Then there was no more firing. The brush crackled beneath a threshing body and Bully McGrane, blowing like an engine, halted in his tracks.

“Who’s that?” challenged Drury. “By the good God, if you’ve touched this girl----!”

“Tud--I’m all right.”

“Who’s that?” repeated Drury.

“Shut-up,” grumbled McGrane. “Them yore horses?”

“Yes.”

“Well, get on ’em and go. Yuh deserve to be hung but there ain’t no reason I should see you do it. Get on ’em and go.”

Drury’s voice jerked out a halting phrase.

“McGrane--I’m in no shape to pay my obligation to you. But----”

“Damn the obligations. Get on them horses and go! You know what I think about you.”

The girl’s arm touched his great shoulder. McGrane stiffened. Her lips brushed his cheeks and he felt a tear fall on his rigid hand. “After all the hurt and cruelty of Pistol Gap,” said she, “you leave us this kindness. Somewhere there is a guiding star for us--and for you.”

“Be good,” said McGrane in the ancient farewell and stood quite still as he heard them mount and climb the trail. The hoofbeats diminished and died. McGrane stirred himself, shook his burly shoulders and walked off the trail. The figure of a man lay there and the marshal touched him with the toe of a boot. “Now where,” he rumbled, “is the others?”

An unexpected voice cut in. “Right at my feet,” said Billy Monteith. “Knocked cold with an ax handle. I figured you’d come.”

“Damned sure of yourself, ain’t you?” muttered McGrane.

“I liked Tud and I liked Anna,” was Monteith’s quiet reply. “They had good luck comin’.”

“I dunno,” growled McGrane. “But there’s one crook less, anyhow. The best of folks in this world are none too good and the worst of ’em ain’t always so bad. Not that it makes any difference. Sentiment don’t get you anywhere, Monteith. Might’s right and tonight proves it. Bring those two tough nuts to the jug and we’ll let ’em cool off while that pair of young fools gets a good start from the country.”

He turned down the slope, swinging his arms--morose and fuming and ready to vent the loose ends of his temper on whoever crossed his path; for Bully McGrane hated to have his grim philosophy of life disturbed and in that philosophy there was no place for a man like Tud nor a girl like Anna. So he kicked open the dance hall door and stamped down the hall. Music and revelry came unabated from the Pride of the Hills and the sound of firing had brought no curiosity seekers to the slope. In Pistol Gap life ran to suddenness and intensity.

[Transcriber’s note: This story appeared in the November 25, 1930 issue of _Short Stories_ magazine.]