Ralph Compton - West of the Law

McBride’s strength was fading fast. Nolan’s arms were an irresistible force, like steel hawsers crushing the life out of him. He knew his backbone could soon shatter, leaving him paralyzed and helpless on the floor.

Desperately McBride chopped a short right to Nolan’s chin and then another. The man shook off the blows and laughed. ‘‘You won’t hurt me with those punches!’’

The crowd was cheering wildly now, their blood-lust surging. Judging by the sound and the cries for Nolan to end it, McBride figured that a stranger had mighty few friends in the Golden Garter.

McBride suddenly went limp and hung his head. He heard Nolan’s triumphant yell and for a moment the terrible pressure on his spine eased a little as it dawned on the big man that the battle was won.

It was all the time McBride needed.

Straightening, he stabbed his thumbs into Nolan’s eyes, thrusting hard. The man screamed and jerked his head away, but he again immediately applied pressure to McBride’s weakening back.

Fear spiking at him, McBride again went for Nolan’s eyes. His powerful thumbs dug deep. He roared like a wounded animal, every last shred of civilized behavior fleeing from him. McBride rammed his thumbs even deeper, trying to blind Nolan.

Finally the man had enough. He broke his hold and stepped unsteadily back, dashing away blood from his eyes with the heel of his hand. Maddened by the pain in his spine, McBride went after Nolan, no mercy in him.

A killing rage welled in him and exploded in his skull like a million pieces of shattered glass reflected in fire. He slammed a wicked right hook to Nolan’s chin and followed up with a fist to the belly. His face gray under a grotesque mask of blood, Nolan backed up, his mouth hanging open and his knees like rubber. McBride kept after him, hooking short, punishing blows to the man’s head. Nolan started to go down, but McBride, his blood up, would not let him off the hook. He dug his fingers into Nolan’s hair and held him up as he hammered a smashing right into the man’s chin, then another.

McBride opened his fingers and Nolan dropped to the floor, his busted jaw hanging loose.

Used up, McBride stood where he was, his chest heaving. His left eye was swollen shut and he tasted the raw iron tang of blood in his mouth. It hurt to breathe, his ribs and lower back pounding spasms of pain at him. Finally he turned and walked back to the bar, the crowd of stunned miners and saloon girls opening a path for him. McBride was aware of the tangled combination of wonder, fear and apprehension in their eyes, like children watching a caged tiger at a traveling circus.

Even the bartender, who had seen much of violence, was wary when McBride leaned on the bar and ordered a beer. Palmer, his eyes as guarded as the others’, stepped beside McBride and opened his mouth to speak. He didn’t get the chance to utter a word.

‘‘Look out!’’

A woman’s voice.

McBride spun and saw Nolan on his feet, staggering a little as he drew his Colt. The man had made a reputation in the town as a bully and a hard case, good with his fists or a gun. If he lost that reputation now, he knew he was finished in High Hopes.

Nolan fired as McBride yanked his Smith & Wesson from his pocket. The bullet burned across the heavy meat of his left shoulder as he assumed the duelist’s stance as his firearms instructors had taught him. He held the revolver at eye level, his arm straight, the instep of his left foot behind the heel of his right. He and Nolan fired at the same time.

The big .45 slug from Nolan’s gun plowed across the top of the bar, inches from McBride’s waist, showering splinters. McBride’s bullet parted Nolan’s beard, thudding into him square in the middle of his chest. Hit hard, the man stumbled back, but he was still trying to bring his gun into line. McBride fired his self-cocker again, and once again, scoring both times.

Nolan went to his knees, pumping bullets into the floor. Then his eyes rolled up white in his head and he fell flat on his face as all that was alive in him fled.

A sickness curling in his belly, McBride let his revolver drop to his side. In the echoing silence that followed, gray gun smoke drifted through the saloon and he was aware of a young girl in a yellow dress at his side, her shuddering breasts rising and falling as, shocked by what she had just witnessed, she fought for breath.

‘‘Well done, that, man!’’

McBride turned to see a man striding toward him, a beaming smile on his handsome face. He paused momentarily when he drew abreast of Nolan’s body, then motioned to a couple of men. ‘‘Wilson, Reid, get that out of here. It’s staining my floor.’’

Trask stepped beside McBride. ‘‘Let me shake your hand, gunfighter. My name is Gamble Trask and I always figured that big Jim Nolan was one of my best men. Now I know differently.’’

Reluctantly McBride took the man’s hand. ‘‘John Smith,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m not a gunfighter and I’m just a traveler passing through.’’

He pocketed his gun as Nolan’s body was carried past, and heard Trask say, ‘‘You’d better get that eye seen to, Smith—it’s badly swollen. Believe it or not, we have an excellent doctor in town.’’ The man grinned. ‘‘Now let me buy you a drink.’’ He turned his head and yelled, ‘‘Hell, I’m buying everybody a drink! Piano player—music!’’

The piano player, maybe with the killing of Jim Nolan in mind, started up a spirited rendition of ‘‘Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie,’’ and men cheered and women laughed as they crowded up to the bar.

Trask, smiling, leaned closer to McBride so he could be heard. ‘‘I think you’re feeling bad, but don’t be. Nolan wasn’t much, so his was a small, meaningless death. Look around you, Smith—he’s already gone and forgotten. Now, how about that drink?’’

‘‘I have a beer,’’ McBride said, his dislike for Trask growing, The cheap price the man had just put on Nolan’s life served only to twist the broken shards of glass already lacerating his conscience.

‘‘Then I’ll join you,’’ Trask said. He ordered a beer, then said, ‘‘I have a proposition for you, Smith.’’

‘‘What kind of proposition?’’

‘‘Why, man, I’m offering you a job.’’

‘‘Not interested.’’

‘‘The least you can do is listen, especially since you just gunned one of my men,’’ Trask said. He was wearing the sly smile of a hungry lobo wolf.

McBride nodded. ‘‘All right, I’m listening.’’

Chapter 5

Gamble Trask led McBride to an unoccupied table in a corner, where there was a full view of the saloon. ‘‘Take a seat,’’ he said, waving. ‘‘This table stays reserved for me.’’

McBride sat and Trask took a chair opposite him. Hack Burns appeared out of nowhere, handed McBride his plug hat, then took his place behind his boss’ chair. When the gunman’s pale eyes fell on McBride they revealed nothing, neither interest nor hostility, but his thumbs were hooked in his gun belts and he stood ready. The livid purple stain on Burns’ left cheek seemed to McBride a living thing that threatened to spread and consume him, a grotesque mask that concealed the man’s innermost thoughts and feelings. His legs straddled, hips thrust forward, his cobra eyes roamed the crowd, missing nothing.

For the first time, McBride noticed that Burns wore a town marshal’s star on his black leather vest.

‘‘Now, John—’’ Trask smiled. ‘‘May I call you John?’’

The man was as smooth as silk, polished to a brilliant sheen, poised, confident and seemingly willing to be friendly. But there was a thin-lipped hardness about his mouth, and scars covered the knuckles of his big hands. The sixth sense that every good detective possesses told McBride that here was a man who would kill without compunction and never lose a night of sleep over the doing of it.