De Spain's smile appeared unruffled: "You'll help him transact it, I suppose?"

Logan, looking again toward Sandusky, grinned: "He won't need any help."

"Who is your friend?" demanded de Spain good-naturedly. Logan's glance misled him; it did not refer to Sandusky. And even as he asked the question de Spain heard through the half-open window at the end of the bar the sound of hoofs. Hoping against hope for Lefever, the interruption cheered him. It certainly did not seem that his situation could be made worse.

"Well," answered Logan, talking again to his gallery of cronies, "we've got two or three friends that want to see you. They're waiting outside to see what you'll look like in about five minutes--ain't they, Gale?"

Some one was moving within the rear room. De Spain felt hope in every footfall he heard, and the mention this time of Morgan's name cleared his plan of battle. Before Gale, with an oath, could blurt out his answer, de Spain had resolved to fight where he stood, taking Logan first and Morgan as he should jump in between the two. It was at the best a hopeless venture against Sandusky's first shot, which de Spain knew was almost sure to reach a vital spot. But desperate men cannot be choosers.

"There's no time for seeing me like the present," declared de Spain, ignoring Morgan and addressing his words to Logan. "Bring your friends in. What are you complaining about, Morgan?" he asked, resenting the stream of abuse that Gale hurled at him whenever he could get a word in. "I had my turn at you with a rifle the other day. You've got your turn now. And I call it a pretty soft one, too--don't you, Sandusky?"

he demanded suddenly of the big fellow.

Sandusky alone through the talk had kept an unbroken silence. He was eating up de Spain with his eyes, and de Spain not only ached to hear him speak but was resolved to make him. Sandusky had stood motionless from the instant he entered the room. He knew all about the preliminary gabble of a fight and took no interest in it. He did _not_ know all about de Spain, and being about to face his bullets he had prudence enough to wonder whether the man could have brought a reputation to Sleepy Cat without having done something to earn it.

What Sandusky was sensibly intent on was the determination that he should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of anybody's reputation. His eyes with this resolve shining in them rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain's question seemed to arouse him. "What's your name?" he demanded bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected in the strained tone.

"It's on the b.u.t.t of my gun, Sandusky."

"What's that he says?" demanded the man known as the butcher, asking the question of Logan, but without taking his eyes off his shifty prey.

Logan raised his voice to repeat the words and to add a ribald comment.

"You make a good deal of noise," muttered Sandusky, speaking again to de Spain.

"That ought not to bother you much, Sandusky," shouted de Spain, trying to win a smile from his taciturn antagonist.

"His noise won't bother anybody much longer," put in Logan, whose retorts overflowed at every interval. But there was no smile even hinted at in the uncompromising vigilance of Sandusky's expressionless face. De Spain discounted the next few minutes far enough to feel that Sandusky's first shot would mean death to him, even if he could return it.

"I'll tell you, de Spain," continued Logan, "we're going to have a drink with you. Then we're going to prepare you for going back where you come from--with nice flowers."

"I guess you thought you could come out here and run over everybody in the Spanish Sinks," interposed Morgan, with every oath he could summon to load his words.

"Keep out, Morgan," exclaimed Logan testily. "I'll do this talking."

De Spain continued to banter. "Gentlemen," he said, addressing the three together and realizing that every moment wasted before the shooting added a grain of hope, "I am ready to drink when you are."

"He's ready to drink, Tom," roared Morgan in the deaf man's ear.

"I'm ready," announced Sandusky in hollow voice.

Still regarding de Spain with the most businesslike expression, the grizzled outlaw took a guarded step forward, his companions following suit. De Spain, always with a jealous regard for the relative distance between him and his self-appointed executioners, moved backward. In crossing the room, Sandusky, without objection from his companions, moved across their front, and when the four lined up at the bar their positions had changed. De Spain stood at the extreme left, Sandusky next, Logan beside him, and Gale Morgan, at the other end of the line, pretended to pound the bar for service. De Spain, following mountain etiquette in the circ.u.mstances, spread his open hands, palms down, on the bar. Sandusky's great palms slid in the same fashion over the checked slab in unspoken recognition of the brief armistice. Logan's hands came up in turn, and Morgan still pounded for some one to serve.

De Spain in the new disposition weighed his chances as being both better and worse. They had put Sandusky's first shot at no more than an arm's length from his prey, with Logan next to cover the possibility of the big fellow's failing to paralyze de Spain the first instant. On the other hand, de Spain, trained in the tactics of Whispering Smith and Medicine Bend gunmen, welcomed a short-arm struggle with the worst of his a.s.sailants closest at hand. One factor, too, that he realized they were reckoning with, gave him no concern.

No men in the mountains understood better or were more expert in the technicalities of the law of self-defense than the gunmen of Calabasas. The killing of de Spain they well knew would, in spite of everything, raise a hornet's nest in Sleepy Cat, and they wished to be prepared for it. Their manoeuvring on this score caused no disquiet to their slender, compactly built victim. "You'll wait a long time, if you wait for service here, Morgan," he said, commenting with composure on Morgan's impatience. Logan looked again at his two companions and laughed.

Every hope de Spain had of possible help from the back room died with that laugh. Then the door behind the bar slowly opened, and the scar-featured face of Sa.s.soon peered cautiously from the gloom. The horse thief, stooping, walked in with a leer directed triumphantly at the railroad man.

If it were possible to deepen it, the sinister spot on de Spain's face darkened. Something in his blood raged at the sight of the malevolent face. He glanced at Logan. "This," he smiled faintly, nodding toward Sa.s.soon as he himself took a short step farther to the left, "is your drink, Harvey, is it?"

"No," retorted Logan loudly, "this is _your_ drink."

"I'll take Sa.s.soon," a.s.sented de Spain, good-natured again and shifting still another step to the left. "What do you fellows want now?"

"We want to punch a hole through that strawberry," said Logan, "that beauty-mark. Where did you get it, de Spain?"

"I might as well ask where you get your gall, Harvey," returned de Spain, watching Logan hunch Sandusky toward the left that both might crowd him closer. "I was born with my beauty-mark--just as you were born with your d.a.m.ned bad manners," he added composedly, for in hugging up to him his enemies were playing his game. "You can't help it, neither can I," he went on. "Somebody is bound to pay for putting that mark on me. Somebody is bound to pay for your manners. Why talk about either? Sa.s.soon, set out for your friends--or I will. Spread, gentlemen, spread."

He had reached the position on which he believed his life depended, and stood so close to the end of the bar that with a single step, as he uttered the last words, he turned it. Sandusky pushed close next him. De Spain continued to speak without hesitation or break, but the words seemed to have no place in his mind. He was thinking only, and saw only within his field of vision, a cut-gla.s.s b.u.t.ton that fastened the bottom of Sandusky's greased waistcoat.

"You've waited one day too long to collect for your strawberry, de Spain," cried Logan shrilly. "You've turned one trick too many on the Sinks, young fellow. If the man that put your mark on you ain't in this room, you'll never get him."

"Which means, I take it, you're going to try to get me," smiled de Spain.

"No," bellowed Morgan, "it means we have got you."

"You are fooling yourself, Harvey." De Spain addressed the warning to Logan. "And you, too, Sandusky," he added.

"We'll take care of that," grinned Logan. Sandusky kept silence.

"You are jumping into another man's fight," protested de Spain steadily.

"Sa.s.soon's fight is our fight," interrupted Morgan.

"I advise you," said de Spain once more, looking with the words at Sandusky and his crony, "to keep out of it."

"Sandusky," yelled Logan to his partner, "he advises me and you to keep out of this fight," he shrilly laughed.

"Sure," a.s.sented Sandusky, but with no variation in tone and his eyes on de Spain.

Logan, with an oath, leaned over the bar toward Sa.s.soon, and pointed contemptuously toward the end of the bar. "Shike!" he cried, "step through the rail and take that man's gun."

De Spain, looking from one to the other of the four faces confronting him, laughed for the first time. But he was looking without seeing what he seemed to look at. In reality, he saw only a cut-gla.s.s b.u.t.ton. He was face to face with taking a man's life or surrendering his own, and he knew the life must be taken in such a way as instantly to disable its possessor. These men had chosen their time and place.

There was nothing for it but to meet them. Sa.s.soon was stepping toward him, though very doubtfully. De Spain laughed again, dryly this time.

"Go slow, Sa.s.soon," he said. "That gun is loaded."

"If you want terms, hand over your gun to Sa.s.soon," cried Logan.

"Not till it's empty," returned de Spain. "Do you want to try taking it?" he demanded of Logan, his cheeks burning a little darker.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder.]

Logan never answered the question. It was not meant to be answered.

For de Spain asked it only to cover the spring he made at that instant into Sandusky's middle. Catlike though it was, the feint did not take the big fellow unprepared. He had heard once, when or where he could not tell, but he had never forgotten the hint, that de Spain, a boxer, was as quick with his feet as with his hands. The outlaw whirled. Both men shot from the hip; the reports cracked together. One bullet grazing the fancy b.u.t.ton smashed through the gaudy waistcoat: the other, as de Spain's free hand struck at the muzzle of the big man's gun, tore into de Spain's foot. Sandusky, convulsed by the frightful shock, staggered against de Spain's arm, the latter dancing tight against him. Logan, alive to the trick but caught behind his partner, fired over Sandusky's right shoulder at de Spain's head, flattened sidewise against the gasping outlaw's breast. Hugging his shield, de Spain threw his second shot over Sandusky's left shoulder into Logan's face. Logan, sinking to the floor, never moved again. Supporting with extraordinary strength the unwieldy bulk of the dying butcher, de Spain managed to steady him as a buffer against Morgan's fire until he could send a slug over Sandusky's head at the instant the latter collapsed. Morgan fell against the bar.

Sandusky's weight dragged de Spain down. For an instant the four men sprawled in a heap. Sa.s.soon, who had not yet got an effective shot across at his agile enemy, dropping his revolver, dodged under the rail to close. De Spain, struggling to free himself from the dying man, saw, through a mist, the greenish eyes and the thirsty knife. He fired from the floor. The bullet shook without stopping his enemy, and de Spain, partly caught under Sandusky's body, thought, as Sa.s.soon came on, the game was up. With an effort born of desperation, he dragged himself from under the twitching giant, freed his revolver, rolled away, and, with his sight swimming, swung the gun at Sa.s.soon's stomach. He meant to kill him. The bullet whirled the white-faced man to one side and he dropped, but pulled himself, full of fight, to his knees and, knife in hand, panted forward. De Spain rolling hastily from him, staggered to his feet and, running in as Sa.s.soon tried to strike, beat him senseless with the b.u.t.t of his gun.

His own eyes were streaming blood. His head was reeling and he was breathless, but he remembered those of the gang waiting outside. He still could see dimly the window at the end of the bar. Dashing his fingers through the red stream on his forehead, he ran for the window, smashed through the sash into the patio and found Sa.s.soon's horse trembling at the fusillade. Catching the lines and the pommel, he stuck his foot up again and again for the stirrup. It was useless; he could not make it. Then, summoning all of his fast-ebbing strength, he threw himself like a sack across the horse's back, lashed the brute through the open gateway, climbed into the saddle, and spurred blindly away.