Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

“I would have dealt me a hand anyhow,” Burns told her, “just as soon as I got the lay. Didn’t like Carson from the very first. A greasy sort of hombre.”

They rode in silence for a moment.

“I came to see Bob anyway,” said Burns. “Got a letter from him a couple of years ago. Said he needed a partner. Figured maybe that he still did. Figured maybe I could find a place where I could hang up the guns.”

He laughed shortly. “Guess I’ll need them for a while.”

For a long while nothing further was spoken, then Ann said: “I hear something.”

Straining his ears, Steve heard it, too. Heard it above the whistle of wind in his ears, the steady beat of the pony’s feet—a distant drum of hoofs.

“That’s the posse,” said Burns. “I was hoping they’d hold off for a while.”

At the end of ten minutes they turned off the trail, plunged into the tangle of hills that crowded against the valley.

The horse stumbled beneath them, regained his stride. But it was not as smooth and firm as it had been before—nor quite as fast.

Behind them the drum of hoofs was closer, louder. Once a man yelled and the yell cut above the rolling sound of pursuit.

The horse stumbled again, then went on, but this time the stride was broken, limping.

Burns pulled to a halt and slid off.

“Go on,” he yelled at the girl. “Tell Bob I’ll try to hold them off.”

“But, Steve …”

“Go on!” he yelled. “Ride!”

He hit the horse with his hat and the animal leaped away. The girl, he saw, had grabbed the reins, was bending low. Then the hoofs clattered up a rocky gorge and pounded into the distance.

For a moment Burns stood at the mouth of the gorge, eyes taking in the scene. Not too bad a place to make a stand, he told himself, and yet it could be better.

But there was one thing clear. He had to stop them, hold them up a while for Ann to make her getaway. Had to try to hold out until Bob Custer could send his men sweeping down upon the posse.

Swiftly he ran up the gorge, dodging around the boulders, heading for a tangle of rock and juniper to one side of the gorge. As he ran he heard the nearing thunder of the posse.

Jerking loose his guns, he leaped behind the rocks and junipers, crouched waiting, breath whistling in his throat.

Suddenly the horses and their riders burst over the brow of the hill, stormed down toward the gorge. Twenty five or thirty of them, Burns made out, counting swiftly. Too many—more than he’d thought there’d be.

Moistening his lips, he lifted the guns. The palms of his hands were wet and he wrapped his fingers with a tighter grip.

They charged up the gorge in a massed bunch and Burns tensed in his hiding place. Slowly, deliberately, his trigger fingers tightened.

The first rider reached the boulder that he had marked and Burns’ guns were hammering in his grip, spitting fire, blasting the night wide open with their talk.

Screams and yells burst out and the posse swirled madly for a moment with horses rearing and fighting the bits, men fighting to break free from the riders who were packed around them.

One man threw up his arms, his scream was drowned by the gurgle of blood welling in his throat. A horse jack-rabbited up the hillside, kicking at the bouncing thing that dragged beside it, foot caught in the stirrup.

Then, suddenly, the gorge was clear—clear except for three sprawled figures. One was bigger than the other two and that one, Burns knew, was a horse that one of his bullets had caught.

Horses were galloping wildly, reins dragging, while men raced like scurrying shadows for a patch of undergrowth, for a boulder, for anything that might serve as shelter from the storm of lead.

Flat on his belly, Burns fed cartridges into his guns. A gun coughed angrily and a bullet howled off a boulder, turning end over end into the moonlight night.

Another gun spat like a startled cat and the bullet crunched with a chewing sound through the screen of juniper, smacked into the earth. A third gun talked and then a fourth. Lead snarled and whined.

Huddled against the biggest boulder, Burns held his fire. Let them shoot. Let them burn a little powder. After a while they’ll wonder what they’re shooting at—now they’re just shooting blind, working off some steam.

A branch, clipped by one of the buzzing bullets, fell on top of his hat and he shook it off with a jerk of his head. Another plowed ground three inches from his boot.

It was more than he had bargained for, he admitted grimly. Twenty men or more against his guns. Right in the middle of the jackpot and plumb out of blue chips.

The guns quieted and there were rustling noises—the sound of men moving forward, working closer to his position, crawling up the hill so they could get above him.

Squinting through the tangle of junipers, he waited. Out in the moonlight a stealthy figure moved, inching along like a drifting shadow. Burns brought one gun up, waited tensely. The shadow moved again and the gun in his hand barked into the night. The shadow screamed and jerked half upright, then fell back, a huddled shape sprawling on the hillside.

Guns shrieked and hammered and the junipers danced wildly with the bullets. Hugging the ground, Burns felt the breath of death wing past, whispering in his ear. Sand geysered and sprayed into his face. A burning thing raked across his elbow. Screaming lead slid wildly from the boulders and went yowling away. They were doing their best to get him.

Another shadow moved and Burns jerked up his gun, triggered swiftly. The shadow yelled, leaped from the ground, became a running man. Burns’ trigger finger worked again and the man bent in the middle, hit the ground with his shoulders and pinwheeled into the gully.

Guns yammered and the hillside and gully were full of winking muzzles that spat out leaden death.

The boulders and thicket of juniper lay no more than ten feet from the lip of the dry stream bed that sluiced down the gully.

The guns were quiet again. They were waiting for a moving target.

Burns crouched, gathering his feet beneath him. Then he moved, straight toward the dry wash, hurling himself across the moonlit space.

One gun cracked and then he was over the edge, tumbling down into the darkness, steeling himself against the boulders and gravel that would bite into his body.

His shoulder crashed into something soft and yielding, something that grunted and swore, something that lumbered out of his way.

Scrambling to his feet, Burns swung around, face to face with Sheriff Egan.

The impact had knocked the gun from the sheriff’s hand and the sheriff was ambling toward him with a huge fist cocked.

Burns swung up his gun, but even as he did the fist exploded in his face and he felt himself lifted from his feet and sailing backward. He crashed into the gravelly bank behind him and for a moment his head seemed to burst and spin with screaming colors. Then he was crawling on his hands and knees, gasping for breath, while his stomach churned with an icy coldness and his knees and arms were so weak they ached.

A savage voice cut across his brain: “You damn fool, why didn’t you shoot him?”

The sheriff growled and Carson’s voice said: “Well, then, by Lord, I will.”

A third voice came. “If you shoot him, Carson, it’ll be the last thing you ever do. I’ll drill you where you stand.”

Cold seconds dripped by, breathless and taut.

The voice that had threatened Carson came again and this time Burns’ befuddled brain remembered it—the voice of the man who had stood propped against the door jamb with the pipe hanging from his mouth.

“Law and order, Carson. That’s what you’re pulling for and it’s what I’m pulling for and we’re going to have it if I have to shoot you to get it.”