Страница 40 из 52
Blaze reined in his horse and stopped the little cavalcade. His eyes went from Mart to Slagle. “How long have you been here, Red?” he demanded.
“Me?” Slagle was i
Blaze turned his cold eyes on Jim Gary, then looked back to Ray. “We found a herd of Slash Four cattle east of here, Mart. They were wearin’ a Double A brand worked over our Slash Four. How do you explain it?”
Ray shrugged. “I don’t,” he said simply. “How does that hombre you got with you explain it?”
Kitty Blaze spoke up quickly. “Mart, did you ever see this man before? Did you?”
Ray stared at Gary. “Not that I recall,” he said seriously. “He sure don’t look familiar to me!”
“Blaze,” Gary said suddenly, “if you’ll turn my hands loose and give me a gun I can settle this in three minutes! I can prove he’s a liar! I can prove that he does know me, an’ that I know him!”
“There’s nothin’ you can prove with a gun you can’t prove without it!” Blaze said flatly. “Whatever you know, spill it! Else you’re gettin’ your neck stretched! I’m tired of this fussin’ around!”
Jim Gary kneed his horse forward. His eyes were hot and angry. “Mart,” he said, “I always suspected there was a streak of coyote in you, but I never knowed you’d be this low down. I don’t like to remind anybody of what I done for him, but I recall a stampede I hauled you out of. Are you goin’ to talk?”
Ray shook his head smiling. “This is a lot of trouble, Dan. Take him away and stretch his neck before I get sore and plug him.”
“You’d be afraid to meet me with a gun, Mart. You always were afraid!” Jim taunted. “That’s why you left Red and Tobe with the cattle. You wanted the profit but none of the trouble! Well, you’ve got trouble now! If I had a gun I’d see you eat dirt!”
Mart Ray’s face was ugly. “Shut up, you fool! You call me yellow? Why, everybody knows you’re yellow as—!” He caught himself abruptly, his face paling under the tan.
“What was that, Ray?” Dan Blaze’s face had sharpened. “Ever’body knows what about him? If you’ve never seen him before, how could you say ever’body calls him yellow?”
Ray shrugged. “Just talkin’ too fast, that’s all!” He turned and stepped up on the sidewalk. “He’s your man. You settle your own war.” Ray turned to go, but Jim yelled at him, and Ray wheeled.
“Mart, if I don’t know you, how do I know you’ve got a white scar down your right side, a scar made by a steer’s hoof?”
Ray laughed, but it was a strained laugh. He looked trapped now, and he took an involuntary step backward. “That’s silly!” he scoffed. “I’ve no such scar!”
“Why not take off your shirt?” Jerry said suddenly. “That will only take a minute.” The lean jawed cowhand’s face was suddenly hard. “I think I remember you having such a scar, from one time I seen you swimmin’ in the San Juan. Take off your shirt an’ let’s see!”
Mart Ray backed up another step, his face sharp and cold. “I’ll be damned if I take off my shirt in the street for any low down rustler!” he snapped. “This here nonsense has gone far enough!”
“Loose my hands!” Jim pleaded in a whisper. “I’ll take his shirt off!”
Kitty stared at him. Her face was white and strained, but in her eyes he now saw a shadow of doubt. Yet it was Jerry who acted suddenly, and jerked him around and before anyone realized what he had done, he severed the bonds with a razor sharp knife and jerked the ropes from his hands. With almost the same gesture, he slammed guns in Gary’s holsters. “All right! Maybe I’m crazy!” he snapped. “But go to it!”
The whole action had taken less than a minute, and Mart Ray had turned his back and started away while Blaze waited in indecision. It was Red Slagle who saw Jim Gary hit the ground. “Boss!” he yelled. His voice was suddenly sharp with panic. “Look out!”
Ray wheeled, and when he saw Gary coming toward him, chafing his wrists, he stood still, momentarily dumbfounded. Then he laughed. “All right, Yellow! You’re askin’ for it! This is one bunch of trouble you can’t duck! You’ve ducked your last fight!”
Furious, he failed to realize the import of his words, and he dropped into a half crouch, his hands ready above his gun butts. It was Jerry who shook him. Jerry who made the casual remark that jerked Mart Ray to realization of what he was facing.
“Looks like whatever Ray knows about him, he sure ain’t heard about Jim Gary killin’ Miguel Sonoma!”
Mart Ray was staggered. “Sonoma?” he gasped. “You killed Sonoma?”
Jim Gary was facing him now. Some of the numbness was gone from his hands, and something cold and terrible was welling up within him. He had ridden beside this man, shared food with him, worked with him, and now the man had tricked and betrayed him.
“Yes, Mart, I killed Sonoma. I ain’t afraid. I never was. I just don’t like trouble!”
Ray’s tongue touched his lips and his eyes narrowed to slits, he sank a little deeper into the crouch, and men drew away to the sides of the street. Scarcely twenty feet apart, the two faced each other. “Take off your shirt, Ray. Take it off and show them. Reach up slow and unbutton it. You take it off yourself, or I’ll take it off your body!”
“Go to blazes!” Ray’s voice was hoarse and strange. Then, with incredible swiftness, his hands dropped for the guns.
In the hot, dusty stillness of the afternoon street, all was deathly still. Somewhere a baby cried, and a foot shifted on the board walk. For what seemed an age, all movement seemed frozen and still as the two men in the street faced each other.
Kitty Blaze, her eyes wide with horror, seemed caught in that same breathless, time-frozen hush. The hands of the men were moving with flashing speed, but at that instant everything seemed to move hauntingly slow. She saw Mart Ray’s gun swing up, she saw the killing eagerness in his face, his lips thi
And she saw the stranger, Jim Gary. Tall, lithe and strong, his dark face passionless, yet somehow ruthless. And she saw his lean brown hand flash in a blur of movement, saw flame leap from the black muzzles of his guns, and saw Mart Ray smashed back, back, back! She saw his body flung sideways into the hitching rail, saw a horse rear, his lashing hoofs within inches of the man, she saw the gun blaze again from the ground, and a leap of dust from the stranger’s shoulder, and she saw Gary move coolly aside to bring his guns better to bear upon the man who was now struggling up.
As in a kind of daze, she saw Jim Gary holding his fire, letting Ray get to his feet. In that stark, incredible instant, she saw him move his lips and she heard the words, as they all heard them in the silence of the street. “I’m sorry, Mart. You shouldn’t have played it this way. I’d rather it had been the stampede.”
And then Ray’s guns swung up. His shirt was bloody, his face twisted in a sort of leer torn into his cheek by a bullet, but his eyes were fiendish. The guns came up, and even as they came level, red flame stabbed from the muzzle of Gary’s guns and Ray’s body jerked, dust sprang from his shirt’s back, and he staggered back, sat down on the edge of the walk, and then as though taken with a severe pain in the groin, he rolled over into the street and sprawled out flat. Somewhere thunder rolled.
For a long moment, the street was motionless. Then somebody said, “We better get inside. She’s rainin’.”
Jerry swung from his horse and in a couple of strides was beside the fallen man. Ripping back the shirt, he exposed the side, scarred by a steer’s hoof.
Dan Blaze jerked around. “Slagle!” he yelled. “Where’s Red Slagle! Get him!
“Here.” Slagle was sitting against the building, gripping a bloody hand. “I caught a slug. I got behind Ray.” He looked up at Blaze. “Gary’s right. He’s straight as a string. It was Ray’s idea to ring him in and use him as the goat after he found him with us.”