The Big Front Yard: And Other Stories

  “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.”

  Iron squealed against iron, an eerie sound that leaped at them from the dark.

  Quinn jerked around, and for the first time his gun-muzzle lifted from Carson’s body.

  Carson moved like lightning, clenched fist coming up and striking down, smashing against the wrist that held the gun; striking entirely by instinct, for it was too dark to see.

  Quinn cried out and the gun clanged to the floor.

  The back door was open. A figure stood outlined against the lesser dark outside, a crouching figure that carried a rifle at the ready.

  Shoulders hunched, head down, one foot braced hard for leverage against the whisky cases, Carson hurled himself at Quinn. He felt the man go over at the impact of the flow, knew he was falling on top of him, hauled back his arm for a blow.

  But a foot came up, lashing at his stomach. He sensed its coming, twisted, caught it in the ribs instead and went reeling back against the whisky cases, limp with pain.

  Quinn was crouching, springing toward him. A fist exploded in his face, thumped his head against the cases. He ducked his head, ears ringing, and bored in, fists playing a tattoo on Quinn’s midriff, driving the man out into the center of the room.

  A vicious punch straightened Carson, rocked him. The white blur of Quinn’s face was coming toward him and he aimed at it, smashed with all his might – and the face retreated as Quinn staggered backward on his heels.

  Carson stepped in, and out of the dark came piledriver blows that shook him with their viciousness.

  The face was there again. Carson measured it, brought his fist up almost from the floor in a whistling, singing loop. Pain lanced down his arm as the blow connected with the whiteness of the face and then the face was gone and Quinn was on the floor.

  Feet were pounding in the hallway and shouts came from the barroom. Behind him a rifle crashed, thunderous in the closeness of the room, the red breath of its muzzle lighting the place for a single instant.

  The rifle crashed again and yet again and the room was full of powder-fumes that stung the nostrils.

  “Jake!” yelled Carson.

  “You bet your boots,” said the man with th
e rifle. “You didn’t think I’d let you do it all alone!”

  “Quick!” gasped Carson. “Get in here, back by the door. They can’t reach us here!”

  A sixgun blasted and bullets chunked into the cases. Glass crashed and the reek of whisky mingled with the smell of gunsmoke.

  Jake came leaping across the room, crouched in the angle back of the door.

  Scraping his feet along the floor, Carson located his sixgun, picked it up.

  Jake’s whisper was rueful. “They got us bottled like a jug of rum.”

  Carson nodded in the dark. “Been all right,” he said, “If Quinn hadn’t found me.”

  “That Quinn you had the shindy with?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Had a mind to step in and do some work with the gunstock,” Jake told him, “but decided it was too risky. Couldn’t tell which of you was which.”

  Guns thundered in the passageway, the explosions deafening. Bullets thudded into the cases, chewing up the boards, smashing the bottles.

  Carson reached up and grasped a case from those stacked behind him. Jake’s rifle bellowed. Carson flung the case over his head. It smashed into the doorway. He heaved another one.

  Jake blasted away again. The guns in the hallway cut off.

  “Keep watch,” Carson told Jake. He heaved more cases in the doorway, blocking it to shoulder-height.

  From across the street came the sound of firing – the ugly snarling of a high-powered rifle.

  “That’s Robinson,” said Jake. “Some of them buzzards tried to sneak out the front door and come at us from behind, but Robinson was Johnny at the rat-hole.”

  “Robinson can’t stop them for long,” snapped Carson. “They’ll get at us in a minute or two –”

  A gun hammered almost in their ears and something stabbed Carson in the face. He brushed at it with his hand, pulled away a splinter. The gun roared again, as if it were just beside their heads.

  “They’re in the back room,” gasped Jake, “shooting at us through the partition!”

  “Quick!” yelled Carson. “We got to get out of here! Here, you grab Quinn and haul him out. I’ll take the other fellow.”

  He grasped the man he had stuck down with the gun-barrel, started to tug him toward the door.

  “Why don’t we leave ’em here?” yelped Jake. “What in tarnation is the sense of luggin’ ’em?”

  “Don’t argue with me,” yelled Carson. “Just get Quinn out of here.”

  The gun in the back room was hammering, was joined by another. Through the holes already punched by the bullets, Carson could see the red flare of the blasting runs. One of the bullets brushed past Carson’s face, buried itself with a thud in the stacked cases. Another flicked burning across his ribs.

  Savagely he yanked the door open, hauled his man through and dumped him on the ground. Reaching in, he gave the panting, puffing Jake a hand with Quinn.

  “Pull them a bit farther away,” said Carson. “We don’t want them to get scorched.”

  “Scorched?” yipped Jake. “Now you’re plumb out of your head!”

  “I said scorched,” declared Carson, “and I mean scorched. Things are going to get hot in the next five minutes.”

  He plunged his hand into a pocket, brought out a match, scratched it across the seat of his breeches. For a moment he held it in his cupped hand, nursing the flame, then with a flip of his fingers sent it sailing into the whisky-reeking room.

  The flame sputtered for a moment on the floor, almost went out, then blazed brilliantly, eating its way along a track of liquor flowing from one of the broken cases.

  Carson lit another match, hurled it into the room. The blaze puffed rapidly, leaping along the floor, climbing the cases, snapping and snarling.

  Carson turned and ran, Jake pelting at his heels. In the long grass back of the North Star they flung themselves prone, and watched.

  The single window in the building was an angry maw of fire, and tiny tongues of flame were pushing their way through the shingled roof.

  A man leaped from one of the side windows in a shower of broken glass. Beside Carson, almost in his ear, Jake’s rifle bellowed. The man’s hat, still on his head despite the leap, was whipped off as if by an unseen hand.

  From the Tribune office across the street came the flickering of blasting guns, covering the front windows and the door of the burning saloon.

  “Listen!” hissed Jake. His hand reached out and grasped Carson by the shoulder. “Horses!”

  It was horses – there could be no mistaking that. The thrum of hoofs along the dusty street – the whoop of a riding man, then a crash of thunder as sixguns cut loose.

  Men were spilling out of the North Star now, running men with guns blazing in their hands. And down upon them swept the riders, yelling, sixguns tonguing flame.

  The riders swept past the North Star, whirled and came back, and in their wake they left quiet figures lying in the dust.

  Jake was on his knee, rifle at his shoulder, firing steadily at the running, dodging figures scurrying for cover.

  A running man dashed around the corner of the flaming saloon, ducked into the broken, weedy ground back of the jail. For a moment the light of the fire swept across his face and in that moment, Carson recognized him.

  It was Fennimore! Fennimore, making a getaway.

  Carson leaped to his feet, crouched low and ran swiftly in the direction Fennimore had taken. Ahead of him a gun barked and a bullet sang like an angry bee above his head.

  For an instant he saw a darting darker shape in the shadows and brought up his own gun, triggered it swiftly. Out of the darkness, Fennimore’s gun answered and the bullet, traveling low, whispered wickedly in the knee-high grass.

  Carson fired at the gun-flash, and at the same instant something jerked at his arm and whirled him half-around. Staggering, his boot caught in a hummock and he went down, plowing ground with his shoulder.

  He tried to put out his arm to help himself up again and he found he couldn’t. His right arm wouldn’t move. It was a dead thing hanging on him, a dead thing that was numb, almost as if it were not a part of him.

  Pawing in the grass with his left hand, he found the gun and picked it up, while dull realization beat into his brain.

  Running after Fennimore, he’d been outlined against the burning North Star, had been a perfect target. Fennimore had shot him through the arm, perhaps figured he had killed him when he saw him stumble.

  Crouching in the grass, he raised his head cautiously. But there was nothing but darkness.

  Behind him the saloon’s roof fell in with a gush of flames and for a moment the fire leaped high, twisting in the air. And in that moment he saw Fennimore on a rise of ground above him. The man was standing there, looking at the flames.

  Carson surged to his feet.

  “Fennimore!” he shouted.

  The man spun toward him, and for an instant the two stood facing one another in the flare of the gutted building.

  Then Fennimore’s gun was coming up and to Carson it was almost as if he stood off to one side and watched with cold, deliberate, almost scientific interest.

  But he knew his own hand was coming up, too, the left hand with the feel of the gun a bit unfamiliar in it.

  Fennimore’s gun drooled fire and something brushed with a blast of air past Carson’s cheek. Then Carson’s gun bucked against his wrist, and bucked again.

  On the rise of ground, in the dying light of the sinking fire, Fennimore doubled over slowly. And across the space of the few feet that separated them, Carson heard him coughing, coughs wrenched out of his chest. The man pitched slowly forward, crashed face-first into the grass.

  Slowly, Carson turned and walked down to the street, his wounded arm hanging at his side, blood dripping from his dangling fingers.

  The g
uns were quiet. The fire was dying down. Black, grotesque figures still lay huddled in the dust. In front of the Tribune office the horses milled, and inside the office someone had lighted a lamp.

  Voices yelled at him as he stepped up on the board sidewalk and headed for the office. He recognized some of the voices. Owens, Kelton, Ross – the men who had ridden away the night before, afraid of what might happen to their homes.

  Owens was striding down the walk to meet him. He stared at Carson’s bloody arm.

  “Fennimore plugged me,” Carson said.

  “Fennimore got away. He isn’t here.”

  “He’s out back of the jail,” Carson told him.

  “We’re glad we got here in time,” said Owens, gravely. “Glad we came to our senses. The boys feel pretty bad about last night. It took Miss Delavan to show us –”

  “Miss Delavan?” asked Carson, dazed. “What did Kathryn have to do with it?”

  Owens looked surprised. “I thought you knew. She rode out and told us.”

  “But Fennimore had guards posted!”

  “She outrode them,” Owens declared. “They didn’t shoot at her. Guess even a Fennimore gunman doesn’t like to gun a woman. They took out after her, but she was on that little Star horse of hers –”

  “Yes, I know,” said Carson. “Star can outrun anything on four legs.”

  “She told us how it was our chance to make a decent land out here, a decent place to live – a decent place for our kids.”

  “Where is she now?” asked Carson. “You made her stay behind. You –”

  Owens shook his head. “She wouldn’t listen to us. Nothing doing but she’d ride along with us. She said her father –”

  “You left her at the house?”

  Owens nodded. “She said –”

  But Cason wasn’t listening. He wasn’t even staying. He stepped down into the street and walked away, his stride changing in a moment to a run.

  “Kathryn!” he cried.

  She was running down the street toward him, arms outstretched.

  Jake, prodding Quinn and Clay Duffy toward the Tribune at rifle-point, saw them when they met. He watched interestedly, and spat judiciously in the dust.