Dusty Zebra: And Other Stories

  “Far as I can see you ain’t fixing on hanging them up right away.”

  Fists hammered on the front door and Humphrey spun about.

  “Quick,” he hissed at Burns. “Out you go.”

  Burns did not move, stood watching Humphrey walk swiftly for the door. Then he stepped out of sight of the door, into the shadow of the shop.

  The front door grated open and a voice boomed at Humphrey.

  “Thought I’d find you here.”

  “Come in, Osborne,” said Humphrey.

  Osborne—that would be the banker, Burns knew. Soft footed, he ducked around the press and type cabinets, moved closer to the door between the front and back rooms.

  A chair creaked under Osborne’s weight and the man spoke again.

  “I suppose you know that Burns escaped.”

  “Hadn’t heard of it,” said Humphrey. “Been back in the shop, catching up on some work I had to do.”

  “Well, he did,” growled Osborne. “Took the Mexicans with him.”

  “Imagine Egan is fit to be tied,” said Humphrey.

  “Carson is the one that’s really sore,” said Osborne. “If you hadn’t interfered out there tonight Burns would have been out of the way for good and all.”

  The banker cleared his throat. “I been sitting up going over the bank records,” he said. “I find you owe us quite a bit of money.”

  “A thousand dollars,” said Humphrey.

  “Plus interest,” Osborne pointed out.

  “You told me to forget the whole thing until I was in shape to pay it.”

  “Right,” said Osborne. “We liked you. But in view of the present situation, something will have to be done about it. The note already is ninety days overdue.”

  “There isn’t a thing I can do about it,” said Humphrey.

  “Then I’ll have to start some action,” said the banker. “I been letting it ride along because you seemed a smart young fellow …”

  “Because,” asked Humphrey, “I kept my mouth shut?”

  Silence swept the office, a tense and terrible silence.

  “Kept my mouth shut,” said Humphrey, finally, “about you and Carson and Egan taking over the valley.”

  Osborne sighed and his chair creaked.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It would have been nice to have let you keep on living. Just running you out of town would have been enough. But after this …”

  Burns’ hand snatched out for a short steel bar that lay on the make-up stone, was at the door in two quick strides—all poised.

  Osborne still sat in the chair across the desk from Humphrey, but he held a sixgun in his hand. Humphrey, half risen from his chair, was frozen, half standing, hands clenching the desk edge, white face staring at the weapon’s muzzle.

  Burns hurled the bar with terrific force. It whistled in the air, whirling end for end, smashed with a crunching sound into the banker’s gun arm.

  The arm flopped down and dangled, the gun spilling from the trailing fingers to clatter on the floor beside the fallen bar. Osborne sat motionless, as if stunned, still staring straight ahead.

  Slowly Humphrey straightened up, then stooped and opened a desk drawer. When his hand came out it held a gun.

  “If you so much as open your mouth,” he told Osborne, “I’ll fill you full of this!”

  Burns slouched in the doorway. “What’re we going to do with the ornery cuss,” he asked, “now that we got him?”

  “Personally,” said Humphrey, “I favor hanging, but we can’t do that without due process of law. And Carson’s crooked judge would turn him loose.”

  Osborne’s lips moved in his frightened face, but Humphrey twitched the gun and he did not speak.

  “Better tie him up,” said Burns, “and cache him some place. Probably be a good witness against Carson and his gang. His kind always turn state evidence.”

  “There’s an old shed out back,” said Humphrey. “Keep my paper stock in there.”

  “Good place,” decided Burns. “We got to be careful tying him up. That one arm of his is broke surer than hell.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Hang Your Guns!

  The jail office was dark and Burns ducked quickly inside, slid to one side of the door, flat against the wall, and listened. There was no sound of breathing, nothing to indicate there was a second person in the room.

  Probably all of them out chasing the Mexicans, Burns told himself. Probably think they are chasing me, too.

  Unmoving, he stood flattened against the wall and gradually his eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness until he could make out the dimness of furniture—the battered desk, the swivel chair in front of it, the dull gleam of a spittoon at one corner of it.

  Something else gleamed on the desk and Burns sucked in his breath. There they were—just where Egan had tossed them.

  Swiftly, he strode across to the desk, picked up the gunbelt and the guns. He strapped the belt around him, took the guns out one by one and checked them. Still loaded, except for two empties in one that he had used back there in the hills before he made the dash for the dry wash. After he had reloaded he put them back in the holsters.

  The sound of racing hoofs tensed him where he stood. Instinctively, he started for the door and then turned back. There was no time for that, he knew.

  Like a trapped animal, he stood in the center of the room and probed the darkness for some way of escape. A spidery ladder in the hallway between the office and the cell-room caught his eye. A ladder! Probably leading up to an attic above the office, maybe a place for the jailer to sleep and cook his meals.

  The hoof-beats were nearer now and there was more than one horse.

  Burns leaped for the hallway, scrambled frantically up the ladder. A dark hole loomed above him, just wide enough for his shoulders to squeeze through. His hands clawed at the smooth boards of the floor and he hoisted himself into the attic even as the hoof beats came to an explosive halt just outside the jail.

  He lay flat on the floor and listened to the tramp of heavy feet as they came into the office, heard the mumble of many voices.

  A closer sound, a stealthy padding, edged into his brain and he moved swiftly, alarm growing in his mind, but even as he moved, hands came out of the darkness and closed around his throat.

  Maddened by unreasoning fear, Burns fought to break away, arching his back, twisting, bucking like a locoed horse, tearing at the hands that throttled him. But the fingers held and tightened while the breath whistled in his throat and darkness churned within his brain.

  From somewhere far away he heard the rasp of a striking match, a tiny, terrible sound that penetrated through the buzzing in his skull—the rattle of a lamp chimney being lifted. Then light flared in his face and even as he fought he knew that someone in the sheriff’s office had lit a lamp and the light was sifting through the attic hole.

  The fingers were steel bands now that shut off even the whistle in his throat and inside his head the black ball grew and even while he still clawed feebly at the constricting fingers, the blackness exploded with a shrieking roar and was a pinwheel of light that hissed within his brain.

  He felt himself pitching forward, head slamming on the floor—then, suddenly, the fingers had left his throat and there was an arm around his shoulders, lifting him into a sitting position. He gulped great breaths of air and inside his brain the pinwheel slowed down and there was a soft voice in his ear, a frightened voice.

  “Take it easy, bub,” the voice said. “Just take it easy, now. I didn’t know it was you. So help me, I didn’t know.”

  Words rose to Burns’ tongue, but his tongue refused to say them. He choked and gasped, gulped for air.

  Bob Custer! Custer choking him, not knowing who it was. he sat up straighter and stared at the man who squatted face to face with him.

&n
bsp; In the office below boots crunched across the floor.

  A voice said sharply: “Be still, can’t you. I tell you I heard something up there in the attic.”

  The sheriff’s voice rumbled back: “Ah, hell, Carson, you’re spooky, that’s all. This Burns has got you on the prod.”

  “Spooky, eh,” said Carson, viciously. “Where are Burns’ guns?”

  “On the desk,” the sheriff said. “Right where I left them, on the …”

  His rumble trailed off and ran down. “Maybe,” the sheriff agreed, reluctantly, “you did hear something after all.”

  Crouched beside the ladder hole, Burns and Custer heard the sheriff stalk into the corridor, could sense the man standing down below, staring at the hole.

  His bellow came up to them. “Burns, you better come down. If you don’t we’ll plumb come up and root you out.”

  Custer’s voice was sharp and crisp. “You got two of us to root out, sheriff. You better bring plenty of men along when you come to do it. Men that are ready to die!”

  Boots scuffed hurriedly back along the corridor and Carson shrieked angrily: “Go on up and get them! What are you standing there for?”

  “First man that does, gets it in the guts,” said Custer and although he did not speak above an ordinary tone, there was no doubt that those in the office heard him.

  A gun coughed sullenly from downstairs and a bullet splintered the floor a good ten feet from the attic hole, plunked against the roof.

  Burns rubbed his aching throat.

  “What was you doing, messing around a jail?”

  “Figured you might be in it,” Custer told him. “Ann told me you stood off the posse and when I got there I couldn’t find hide nor hair of you. Figured, then, they hadn’t killed you outright.”

  “Why didn’t you bring your men?”

  “Couldn’t. Got worried about things, you see, and started back alone. Met Ann on the trail.”

  In the office another gun crashed and another bullet chewed its way through the attic floor.

  “We sure are in one hell of a fix,” Burns said, dolefully. “Cooped up in this place. Sooner or later they’ll figure out a way to smoke us out.”

  Other guns were bellowing now, bullets chunking faster and faster through the flooring.

  The sheriff was bellowing. “Stop that shooting! You ain’t doing any good. You ain’t coming within a mile of them.”

  Carson’s voice dripped acid at him. “Just how do you plan to get them, sheriff?”

  “Starve them out,” the sheriff told him. “They can’t get out, nohow. All we got to do is just sit…”

  “I have a better way,” snapped Carson. His feet moved purposefully across the floor.

  “Hey,” the sheriff yelled, “you can’t do that. You’ll burn down the place.”

  “Sure,” said Carson. “That’s exactly what I mean to do.”

  The light that sifted up through the attic hole danced weirdly as Carson lifted the lamp, poised it for the throw.

  “No!” screamed the sheriff.

  Glass crashed in the corridor below the hole and a sheet of flame puffed out, flame that flared, then licked swiftly up the walls.

  Burns leaped to his feet, stood stricken as the ladder hole became a fiery mouth…a mouth that gushed flame and smoke, lighting up the attic.

  Custer grabbed at his arm.

  “Quick,” he gasped. “Through the roof.”

  Burns jerked his arm free. “They’d pot us like squirrels,” he said.

  Swiftly he ran his eye around the room, saw the hatchet lying on the rickety table. With a leap, he was at the table, snatching up the hatchet.

  “The floor,” he yelled.

  Smoke billowed down upon them and the flame, funneled through the ladder hole, reached and curled against the roof.

  Kneeling, Burns inserted the hatchet blade in a crack between two flooring boards, pried with all his might. Nails creaked protestingly.

  “Grab hold,” he yelled at Custer. “Pull!”

  He coughed as smoke swept down to the end of the room. A glowing spark fell on the back of his neck, burned agonizingly.

  Cooler air puffed up from the cell room as Custer ripped away a board, flung it to one side. Nails screeched again as Burns pried at another board. Squealing thinly, it came loose.

  “Drop down,” Burns yelled at Custer.

  “But…”

  “Get down there!” shrieked Burns. “It’s the only way.”

  He reached out, tugged at Custer, and the man let himself down, dropped to the earth floor.

  Hurling the hatchet away, Burns followed him, thudded on the floor. Staggering, he righted himself, stood for a moment to get his bearing in the flame lighted room.

  The box that had served as a table stood in its corner and beside it gaped the tunnel.

  “Follow me,” said Burns.

  On his hands and knees he crawled into the hole, wriggled his way along, saw the circle of light appear ahead of him.

  Cautiously, he poked his head out.

  Flames leaping from the roof of the jail lighted up the night and in the flickering light, Burns saw two men standing off to one side, guns in hand, watching the roof intently.

  Waiting for us to chop our way out, he told himself. Swell chance we’d had if we’d tried to do it.

  Gathering his body together, bracing his hands, he flung himself out of the tunnel, stumbled as he hit the ground, fought desperately to keep his balance. Hands clawing at his guns, he spun on his toes.

  Yelling, the two men were swinging around to face him and his guns came up.

  Flame speared out at him and lead chugged past his cheek. Then his guns were hammering, left and right, left and right—with that old rhythmic cadence that spelled sudden death.

  Out in the flame lighted night the two men were staggering, one of them slumping like a sack, the other fighting to keep on his feet, fighting to bring up his gun again. Still fighting, he tilted forward, slammed downward on his face.

  A mighty fist slapped Burns in his shoulder and he stumbled, spinning sidewise with the impact of the blow. Behind him a sixgun bellowed angrily and a whining thing threw a shower of dust and pebbles as it struck the ground before him.

  Another gun was growling, coughing with jerky gasps and Burns, still dizzy from the blow, righted himself and faced around, lifted his guns. But only one hand, the right one, came up. The other dangled and the gun had fallen from his fingers. His shoulder was numb and his forearm tingled and a tiny rivulet of blood was trickling through his shirt.

  Sheriff Egan was lumbering toward him, guns in both fists, and as he walked he staggered, uncertainly, like a blind man who has lost his cane.

  Beside the tunnel’s mouth Custer crouched, gun leaping in his hand, the muzzle flare splashing angrily against the flame-etched night.

  The sheriff stumbled again and then sat down, like a huge tired bear. The guns dropped out of his hands and his arms hung limp and he sat there watching them. As the flames flared up from the burning jail, Burns saw that a look of stupid wonder had spread across his face.

  Custer was up now and racing toward the darkness, away from the fiery pillar, yelling as he ran.

  “Come on, Steve! They’ll be after us like a swarm of…”

  A gun belched out of the darkness and Custer went limp even as he ran, struck the ground like a sodden sack, somersaulted and lay still.

  Steve started forward.

  “Bob!” he shrieked. “Bob!”

  The hidden gun snarled again and a mighty hand swept the hat from Burns’ head, swept it off and sent it wheeling on its rim toward the burning jail.

  Steve spun on his toe in midstride, jerking his body to one side. The gun out in the darkness was a drooling mouth of red and Burns heard the bullet whisper pa
st. His gun hand jerked up and his finger tightened. The sixgun bellowed—yammering at the point where the red mouth had opened in the night.

  Even before the hammer clicked on an empty cartridge, Burns was running, head down, legs driving like pistons beneath him, his numbed left shoulder and arm a dead weight that seemed to unbalance him as he ran.

  A patch of weeds loomed ahead and he hurled himself for them, smashed into them, wriggled frantically forward and then lay still.

  Gasping, he hugged the earth, awkwardly reloaded the sixgun with his one good hand.

  Above him the weeds whispered in a rising dawn wind and the licking flames from the jail sent flickering shadows across his hiding place.

  He grasped the sixgun with a fierce grip, felt a dull rage burning through his body.

  Bob Custer was dead, shot down by someone who had raced out into the darkness to trap them between his guns and the flaming building. Someone who had waited until they stood there outlined against the fire.

  The grass rustled in the tiny puffs of breeze and Burns lifted himself cautiously, staring through the weeds. Directly in front of him, not more than a dozen feet away, was a wooden post. Slowly, realization dawning in his brain, his eyes followed it up to the grim crossbar of new, unweathered lumber.

  It was the gallows—the gallows that he had seen riding in the afternoon before. The gallows that had been waiting to hang four men who now were free, but who had been ticketed to die for a thing they’d never done.

  Just four more men who had been slated to die so that Carson might hold the valley he’d swept with steel and fire—

  A voice, thinned by distance, came to his ear:

  “He’s in there somewhere. Over by the gallows. I want you men to cover that ground. Run him out …”

  A whiplash report broke off the words and a bullet screeched off the gallows post. Another gun roared and the weeds bent before the storm of hissing lead.

  Steve dropped back to the ground, hugged it tight.

  That had been Carson’s voice—Carson rounding up his men like pack of hounds to hunt him down. Men who would cover every inch of the weed patch with bullets to flush him out.

  It had been Carson who had been out there in the darkness, Carson whose bullet had cut down Bob Custer—Carson who had planted the rifleman in the window across from the hotel—Carson who had wanted to shoot him in cold blood out there in the hills. He had quite a few debts to settle with him.