Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

Breathlessly they waited, but the steps went past, turned in at another door farther down the hall.

“You got to get out of here,” Burns whispered. “There’s too much chance of someone spotting you.”

“Bob asked me to bring you out to the hills,” the girl whispered back. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

“Sure, I’ll come. What the hell. Bob Custer’s the best friend I ever had. If he’s in trouble, it’s time I was sitting in and calling for a hand.”

“I’ll meet you on the road just west of town.” She started for the door, but Burns halted her with a gesture. Swiftly, he stepped to the table, blew out the lamp.

“I’ll be there just as soon as I can get my horse,” he said.

He heard the doorknob turned.

“Just a minute,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Since you know my name, miss, maybe …”

“Ann,” she said.

The door opened and closed softly and her footsteps were faint tappings.

Burns stood for a moment, listening, then socked his hat on his head, walked out of the room and down the stairs. There was no sign of Ann. Probably, he told himself, she sneaked out the back way. Probably had her horse out there, back of the hotel.

There was no one in the lobby and he strode across it, came out on the porch.

The town was quiet. Somewhere a drunken puncher gurgled on a song and two horses stood slack-hipped at a hitch rack across the street.

Steve shucked up his gunbelt, stepped swiftly from the porch and headed for the livery barn.

A whining thing brushed past him and thudded into the hotel’s side. A heavy rifle coughed hollowing in the night.

Burns flung himself toward the dark alley between the hotel and barber shop, hands clawing for his guns even as his legs drove him toward the place of safety.

The rifle coughed again and another bullet chewed into the siding, throwing bright splinters that flashed like tiny spears of light in the glow that came from the window just above them.

Burns hit the alley running and kept on, stumbling in the darkness.

And as he ran, thoughts hammered in his skull.

Someone knew who he was. Probably Carson had planted that rifleman in the building across the street.

The livery stable, he remembered, was to the west. He had to reach there quickly, get his horse and ride—west out of town to meet the girl.

A sudden thought stopped him in his stride. That girl! Was she really who she said she was? How was he to be sure that Custer had sent her? Maybe she was nothing more than bait to Carson’s trap. A ruse to get him out of the hotel. If he rode to meet her, that might be another trap.

He shook his head, befuddled. He’d been a blundering fool, should have demanded some proof of the girl’s identity. But it was too late now.

Carson was out to get him—for no one else would have planted that rifleman. Probably out to get anyone who rode into town and looked as if he might be troublesome.

Carson had said a word for him, he remembered, but that probably meant nothing now. Maybe Carson had figured on hiring him for one of his gunslicks until he’d shown too much interest in the empty valley and had asked about Bob Custer.

There was no one in sight at the alley’s end and Burns swung to the west, slipped along the buildings, gun out, eyes and ears alert for danger.

From the street behind him came the uproar of shouting voices. Probably, he thought, grimly, those rifle shots had emptied every business place.

“Got to be fast about it,” he told himself. “Another minute and the whole town will be on top of me.”

Out of the silence ahead a pebble clicked and Burns froze against the building. Behind him the boards gave way and pushed inward as his shoulder pressed against them. In the darkness there was another sound, the slither of a foot, of a man moving up ahead coming toward him.

Steve froze tighter against the building, felt the boards against his back swing farther inward. Putting his hand behind him, he pushed and a hinge squealed faintly, like the sound of a cricket in the grass.

It was a door, he knew. A door leading into the rear of one of the buildings, although he could not know which one.

Backing silently into the darkness, he felt the floor beneath his boots, ducked swiftly into the cavernous blackness.

From outside came the scuff of boots, the scuff of several boots. More than one man out there, he told himself.

Reaching out with his toe, he found the door’s edge, exerted gentle pressure. The door swung easily. The hinges squeaked just once then the latch clicked softly.

Relaxing from the strung-up tension of a moment before, he caught the sweetish smell of whiskey in the darkness, heard the subdued mumble of voices that came from just behind him.

His eyes made out the shapes of things piled against the wall. Kegs and cases and a pile of empty bottles, thrown helter-skelter in the corner.

A voice came higher than the others, cutting through the mumble.

“But, damn it, Egan, Gardner never misses. He’s pure death with that gun of his. That’s why I picked him for the job.”

The sheriff’s throaty rumble answered. “But he did miss, Carson. Shot twice and missed slick and clean each time. The boys are out hunting down the hombre.”

Straightening up, Burns tiptoed back into the darkness, nearer to the sound of the voices.

The sheriff said: “Just wait. You’ll hear a gunshot pretty quick. That’ll be the end of him.”

“The end of someone else more than likely,” growled Carson. “You don’t seem to get it into your thick skull who this man is. Steve Burns, the toughest marshal that ever packed a star. Cleaned up Devil’s Gulch single-handed and you know what kind of a place that was. A jasper like that would have to ride in just when we’d gotten things to rolling. Wonder if Custer sent for him…”

The back door, the one Burns had latched a moment or so before, burst open with a crash.

Burns wheeled, stepped swiftly backward, felt his body wedge between two piles of cases.

“Hey!” yelled a voice. “Hey, in there!”

There were three figures in the doorway and one of them was struggling, fighting furiously and silently to break from the clutch of the other two.

The sheriff’s voice boomed. “That’s Gardner. They got him!”

A door opened and a flood of light splashed into the room, lighting up the three who struggled in the doorway.

From his position between the cases, Steve Burns gasped and his guns jerked up.

The one who stood between the other two, the one who had been fighting to get free, was the girl with the blue eyes, the girl Bob Custer had sent to guide him to the hills!

Across the room, Burns saw Ann’s mouth shape a warning cry, saw the blank astonishment that slipped like a mask across the face of one of the men who stood beside her. He sensed rather than saw the lightning move that brought a gun flashing from the holster of the other man.

In that timeless space while the flashing gun was moving, Burns twisted his wrist and thumbed the hammer. The gun bucked in his hand and across the room the other gun was spinning in the lamplight that flooded from the inner door.

Spinning like a wheel of light while in the doorway the man who had drawn it was wilting like a sack from which the grain was pouring.

Shuffling feet scraped swiftly across the floor and Burns spun clear of the packing cases, pivoting on his toes. The burly sheriff was almost on top of him, his drawn six-gun dwarfed almost to toy size by the ham-like fist that clutched it.

The sheriff’s gun crashed in the closeness of the room and Burns felt a slash of fire rip across his ribs. Savagely he lashed out at the charging figure and his sixgun barrel slapped across the sheriff’s face.