Clifford Simak - The Big Front Yard and Other Stories

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 the 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.