Clifford Simak - Dusty Zebra - And Other Stories

“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 past. 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.

Bullets rattled in the weed stalks, plunked into the ground, hissed through the grass.

Burns’ fist tightened on his gun and there was a tightness in his throat and his tongue was saying something that was almost a prayer:

“Just let me get one good shot at him—just one good shot—that’s all I ask—just one good shot …”

He crawled in unison to the words that rattled in his brain, as if they were a march to go on his hands and knees.

Crawled, not away from the flaming, jabbering guns, but toward them, crawling with grim determination, spurred on by hate and the hope of vengeance.