Dashiell Hammett: Afraid Of A Gun and Other Stories

To the alcohol-muddled eyes and brain of the man across the street Owen Sack's right hand was trying to get beneath his coat on the left side. Rip Yust could read but one meaning into that motion—the little man was going for his gun.

The weapon in Yust's hand spat flame!

Owen Sack sobbed. Something struck him heavily on one side. He fell, sat down on the sidewalk, his eyes wide and questioning and fixed upon the smoking gun across the street.

Somebody, he found, was bending over him. It was Henny Upshaw, in front of whose establishment he had fallen. Owen Sack's eyes went back to the man on the opposite curb, who, cold sober now, his face granite, stood awaiting developments, the gun still in his hand.

Owen Sack didn't know whether to get up, to remain still, or to lie down. Upshaw had struck him aside in time to save him from the first bullet; but suppose the big man fired again?

"Where'd he get you?" Upshaw was asking.

"What's that?"

"Now take it easy," Upshaw advised. "You'll be all right! I'll get one of the boys to help me with you."

Owen Sack's fingers wound into one of Upshaw's sleeves.

"Wh—what happened?" he asked.

"Rip shot you, but you'll be all right. Just lay—"

Owen Sack released Upshaw's sleeve, and his hands went feeling about his body, exploring. One of them came away red and sticky from his right side, and that side—where he had felt the blow that had taken him off his feet—was warm and numb.

"Did he shoot me?" he demanded in an excited screech.

"Sure, but you're all right," Upshaw soothed him, and beckoned to the men who were coming slowly into the street, drawn forward by their curiosity, but retarded in their approach by the sight of Yust, who still stood, gun in hand, waiting to see what happened next.

"My God!" Owen Sack gasped in utter bewilderment. "And it ain't no worse than that!"

He bounded to his feet—his pack sliding off—eluded the hands that grasped at him, and ran for the door of Upshaw's place. On a shelf beneath the cash register he found Upshaw's black automatic, and, holding it stiffly in front of him at arm's length, turned back to the street.

His china-blue eyes were wide with wonder, and from out of his grinning mouth issued a sort of chant:

"All these years I been running,

And it ain't no worse than that!

All these years I been running,

And it ain't no worse than that!"

Rip Yust, crossing the roadway now, was in the middle when Owen Sack popped out of Upshaw's door.

The onlookers scattered. Rip's revolver swung up, and roared. A spray of Owen Sack's straw-coloured hair whisked back.

He giggled, and fired three times, rapidly. None of the bullets hit the big man. Owen Sack felt something burn his left arm. He fired again, and missed.

"I got to get closer," he told himself aloud.

He walked across the sidewalk—the automatic held stiffly before him—stepped down into the roadway, and began to stride toward where pencils of fire sprang to meet him from Yust's gun.

And as the little man strode he chanted his silly chant, and fired, fired, fired.... Once something tugged at one of his shoulders, and once at his arm—above where he had felt the burn —but he did not even wonder what it was.

When he was within ten feet of Rip Yust, that man turned as if to walk away, took a step, his big body curved suddenly in a grotesque arc, and he slid down into the sand of the roadway.

Owen Sack found that the weapon in his own hand was empty, had been empty for some time. He turned around. Dimly he made out the broad doorway of Upshaw's place. The ground clung to his feet, trying to pull him down, to hold him back, but he gained the doorway, gained the cash register, found the shelf, and returned the automatic to it.

Voices were speaking to him, arms were around him. He ignored the voices, shook off the arms, reached the street again. More hands to be shaken off. But the air lent him strength. He was indoors again, leaning over the firearm showcase in Jeff Hamline's store.

"I want the two biggest handguns you got, Jeff, and a mess of cartridges. Fix 'em up for me and I'll be back to get 'em in a little while."

He knew that Jeff answered him, but he could not separate Jeff's words from the roaring in his head.

The warmer air of the street once more. The ankle-deep dust of the roadway pulling at his feet. The opposite sidewalk. Doc Johnstone's door. Somebody helping him up the narrow stairs. A couch or table under him; he could see and hear better now that he was lying down.

"Fix me up in a hurry, Doc! I got a lot of things to tend to."

The doctor's smooth professional voice:

"You've nothing to attend to for a while except taking care of yourself."

"I got to travel a lot, Doc. Hurry!"

"You're all right, Sack. There's no need of your going away. I saw Yust down you first from my window, and half a dozen others saw it. Self-defence if there ever was a case of it!"

"'Tain't that!" A nice man was Doc, but there was a lot he didn't understand. "I got a lot of places to go to, a lot of men I got to see."

"Certainly. Certainly. Just as soon as you like."

"You don't understand, Doc!" The doc was talking to him like he was a child to be humoured, or a drunk. "My God, Doc! I got to back-track my whole life, and I ain't young no more. There's men I got to find in Baltimore, and Australia, and Brazil, and California, and God knows where— all. And some of 'em will take a heap of finding. I got to do a lot of shootin'. I ain't young no more, and it's a mighty big job. I got to get going! You got to hurry me up, Doc! You got to..."

Owen Sack's voice thickened to a mumble, to a murmur, and subsided.

—End—

ARSON PLUS

JIM TARR PICKED up the cigar I rolled across his desk, looked at the band, bit off an end, and reached for a match.

"Three for a buck," he said. "You must want me to break a couple of laws for you this time."

I had been doing business with this fat sheriff of Sacramento County for four or five years—ever since I came to the Continental Detective Agency's San Francisco office—and I had never known him to miss an opening for a sour crack; but it didn't mean anything.

"Wrong both times," I told him. "I get them for two bits each, and I'm here to do you a favor instead of asking for one. The company that insured Thornburgh's house thinks somebody touched it off."

"That's right enough, according to the fire department. They tell me the lower part of the house was soaked with gasoline, but the Lord knows how they could tell—there wasn't a stick left standing. I've got McClump working on it, but he hasn't found anything to get excited about yet."

"What's the layout? All I know is that there was a fire."

Tarr leaned back in his chair and bellowed:

"Hey, Mac!"

The pearl push buttons on his desk are ornaments so far as he is concerned. Deputy sheriffs McHale, McClump, and Macklin came to the door together—MacNab apparently wasn't within hearing.

"What's the idea?" the sheriff demanded of McClump. "Are you carrying a bodyguard around with you?"

The two other deputies, thus informed as to whom "Mac" referred this time, went back to their cribbage game.

"We got a city slicker here to catch our firebug for us," Tarr told his deputy. "But we got to tell him what it's all about first."

McClump and I had worked together on an express robbery several months before. He's a rangy, towheaded youngster of twenty-five or six, with all the nerve in the world—and most of the laziness.