There was a line of hitching-racks around the dusty plot in which the court house stood, like a fence dividing that seat of dignity from the iniquitous and worldly institutions which hemmed it on every side. There were wide gaps in this line of racks, through which footfarers passed in and out of the court house doors, or on short cuts on other business through the square. Between hitching-racks and business houses a broad roadway stretched, dusty and muddy by turns, according to the caprice of nature.
At this hour of the April day when Andrew Hall went to the door of the West Plains hotel to see what the shooting and yelling was about, the roadway was gray with a thin coating of dust that had been mud but a little while before. It was a hard road, resounding almost like a pavement under the feet of the three horses which their riders were holding in what seemed to be a neck-and-neck race around the deserted square.
These riders were doing all the yelling and most of the shooting, as they appeared to have chosen a bad hour for putting on a demonstration in the square of Damascus. Whatever the cause of their animosity, Hall concluded it must lie against the town, and not individuals, as they were shooting impartially at everybody's business front as they passed. Some of their shots crashed windows, the tinkle of the falling glass sounding plainly in the turmoil of their assault; more of them seemed to find no mark at all, conspicuous as the targets stood.
Now and then somebody fired from a window or door; now and then a man appeared suddenly on the sidewalk, to wheel and run as if to arm, all in the manner of people who had been taken by disadvantageous surprise. The three riders galloped around the square in a headlong haste that seemed as if they must have accepted somebody's dare to do the trick, and must get it over with as quickly as possible. Before the citizens could assemble to check their defiant insult, they had rounded the last corner and were galloping again toward the hotel, coming back into the road by which they had entered.
At this moment Hall saw an elderly man come out of the court house door, and stand at the top of the short flight of broad wooden steps, a questioning alertness about him, as if he had been disturbed at some late official task by the unfriendly noise. He leaned forward a little, in attitude of cautious defense, the skirt of his long frock coat pushed back as if his hand rested on a weapon.
Hall could see him plainly, scarcely fifty yards' space lying between them, even to the sharp, concentrated expectancy of his face. A remarkable figure, tall and bony, his long black coat striking to his knees, his long white hair sweeping down to his shoulders in ringlets, a little dab of white beard on his lip, a long, pointed mustache extending beyond the outline of his dark, thin face.
This extraordinary old gentleman stood on the little landing before the broad door of the court house, which stood open behind him, bending in that watchful attitude of defense, hand on the weapon under his coat. The three riders broke around the corner of the court house, two of them pulling up their horses to reload their guns for a parting salute to Jim Justice's windows as they rode out of town.
The one in the lead gave a yelp like a hound picking up a hot trail when he saw the venerable figure before the court house door. He waved his companions forward, reined his horse up sharply, fired. The old gentleman had his gun out, giving the fellow on the horse as good as he sent, with no damage on either side that Hall could see. The other two invaders came up, their horses raising so much dust that the immediate proceedings were obscured to Hall, whose station before the hotel gave him an oblique view of the court house steps.
At the next clear sight Hall caught of him, the defender of the town's honor was down, lying as though he had slipped at the top step and slidden. His body was presented full length to the three shooters, his feet on the ground, his white hair on the topmost step. He was making a vain effort to prop himself to his elbow and lift his pistol, the three scoundrels cracking away at him in what seemed to Hall a most unsportsman-like spirit, to allow for even a just provocation.
Without a thought of his own danger in meddling in a quarrel that might have as much merit on one side as the other, Hall ran into the road on the impulse of his resentful indignation. He only considered that this was an old man, whose white hair had been brought down to desecration by a trio of questionable courage. He shouted to the old man's assailants to stop shooting as he ran diagonally across, heading for the court house steps.
When the three invaders saw that the man dashing into the square was unarmed, they held up their shooting, but only long enough to make sure his errand was one of mercy to the object of their assault. Hall was still several rods distant from the wounded man when they began shooting again, the impingement of their bullets against the brick walls and wooden steps as plain to him as raindrops in a field of corn.
Hall ran crouching, reaching the foot of the steps untouched. The old man appeared to have been struck again. He had collapsed from his outstreched rigidity in a broken crumple of dusty black coat and pure white hair, down to the bottom of the steps. His body was propped in a half-sitting posture by his right elbow in the angle of the bottom tread; his legs were doubled under him, his head was bent, the white veil of his long hair falling over his face. From all appearances he was dead, pistol still gripped in his hand.
As Hall bent over the old man he felt a bullet strike his hat; saw it fall brim upward, and flip over as if somebody had jerked it with a string when another bullet clipped it, not a yard from where he stood. He lifted his hand to show his pacific intention and unarmed state, turning his face toward the shooters, rising a little out of his stooping position over the fallen man. A bullet slapped the skirt of his long coat as if an insolent finger had flicked it in a challenge to fight.
"Cut that out!" Hall yelled, straightening up, shaking his fist in ridiculous menace, mad to the backbone, careless, if not entirely thoughtless, of his danger.
One man was doing the shooting in Hall's direction at that moment, the other two having advanced to the middle of the road in front of the saloon, where some not overly valiant spirit had been throwing a shot now and then at them over the swinging door. Now men with guns were coming down the street, pitching a running shot or two ahead as they came. It was time to leave that exhilarating diversion of shooting up a town. The two raiders out in the road yelled to their companion and rode off, slamming a few shots into Jim Justice's hotel as they passed.
The fellow who had been cracking away at Hall was either a very vindictive man, or felt that his reputation was likely to suffer from all that shooting with so little damage. He ignored the warning shouts of his companions and, persistent scoundrel that he was, charged at Hall, his gun lifted to throw in an effectual parting shot.
The sight of the fellow coming clattering toward him down the gravel walk leading to the court house door, pistol lifted in that expressive gesture of determination, raised Hall's fighting temperature till it foamed over the sides of the pot. He was so mad that odds and perils were obliterated from consideration as he looked around for something loose to grab.
There was nothing but the bricks lining the gravel walk, set obliquely to present a serrated border, and they were bedded in cement. And straight down the middle of the walk this ruffian was coming to put a finish to that incidental of his busy day. There was no time to kick a brick loose, no time to cast around. In a panic of desperate chagrin over finding himself unprovided to meet this pressing exigency, Hall backed up against the court house steps. He saw the big pistol still gripped by the old man who had fallen, its long barrel pointing down pathetically in his nerveless grasp, and thought of it for—the first time as a ponderable article applicable to the needs of that perilous moment.
Hall grabbed the gun, whirling to meet the raider, a feeling of prickling exultation, of hair-lifting defiance, sweeping him refreshingly. The fellow's horse squatted and skated over the bricks as he pulled it up to veer off and bring his gun arm to the clear. It was a moment of confusion in which the rider was disconcerted in his scheme, and that was the moment when Andrew Hall, swinging the heavy pistol by the long barrel, just as he had snatched it from its owner's hand, let it drive at his assailant's head.
There was no aim about it; just the rough calculation one makes in throwing a rock, but not more than four yards divided the men, and Hall's calculation was good. The bandit, or whatever he was, heeled backward over his cantle, where he swayed a breath, and slumped off to the ground. His horse gathered its legs and galloped away, reins flying, stirrups thumping its sides.
Hall piled himself on the prostrate ruffian, the feeling of outrage he had suffered, a neutral and peaceably disposed man, growing in his heated senses every moment. He had the scoundrel by the neck, bony knees pinning his arms to the ground, when several men came running up eager to relieve him of the responsibility for any further punishment.
It was Bud Sandiver, Hall heard somebody say, an awesome respect in his voice. There was blood on his forehead, whoever he was, where Hall's sinewy arm had slammed that desecrated old gentleman's pistol. The fellow was coming out of it. They upended him, where he scowled bloodily at his captors, and tied his hands with the blue silk handkerchief he wore about his neck. Hall turned away from him at that point, his interest in him being concluded. He found the patriarch huddled at the bottom of the steps still breathing, although he had got a bullet through the lung.
Jim Justice had come out of his retreat, money untouched, hearty life illuminating his face again. He held the door open for them to carry the wounded defender of the town under the shelter of his questionably hospitable roof. Somebody told Hall the wounded man was Major Bill Cottrell, county recorder and treasurer. They stretched the old fellow on a bed, and some one went off on the jump to summon Old Doc Ross.
Hall returned to the hotel office, thought of supper dispersed by his adventure among the bullets in the square. Several men were there, talking with considerable excitement; others were collected on the hotel porch, where Jim Justice's chair stood like an abdicated throne. Hall went outside, wondering what had been the motive in the dash of the three shooters, and the reason for their animosity toward Major Bill Cottrell. He noted that the men in the office stopped talking when he appeared, some of them grinning in an unmistakably friendly way, but exchanging glances and grins between themselves which had another meaning, unaccountable to him.
While standing outside the door, noting the sudden animation of the town which this foray had awakened, Hall was approached by a man who offered his hand with a familiar grin, introducing himself as Burnett. He was a man of medium height, about Hall's age, that is to say somewhat past thirty, stocky in appearance on account of his thick shoulders and slightly bowed legs. From the familiar deference shown him, Hall concluded that he was of some importance in the town.
Burnett was a fair man, tender-skinned as a faro dealer, with a little brown mustache and a continual smirk, which might have been a reflection of his satisfaction with himself and life as he found it, or a sneer at foolish persons who went up against his game, whatever that game might be. That he was a gamester of some kind Hall was certain at the first glance, for he carried about him that outward swagger of a man best described as a four-flusher. He was dressed flashily in a suit of small white and black checks, current in frontier places of that time among gamblers and come-on men. There was a large clear stone in his necktie that had all the appearance of a costly diamond; there were others of the same brilliance in rings which he wore on the third finger of each hand.
"You can sling a gun, all right, Hall, even if you don't do it the way it's generally done around here," Burnett said, his tone appreciative, his smirk broadening into quite a friendly and pleasing smile.
"I hardly know one end of a gun from the other," Hall confessed, feeling that his part in the affair had failed of the heroic in some way, in the eyes of Damascus, and Burnett in particular.
"You seemed to get hold of the wrong end of that one, all right," Burnett said.
A chuckle went around those on the porch, extending to others who stood inside the door.
"I'd like to know how old Bud Sandiver felt when he caught that gun between the eyes!" somebody speculated.
"It was the first time Bud ever had a gun throwed in his face that way," another declared with solemn emphasis, to the great entertainment of all.
Burnett stood by grinning. He reached into his trousers pocket with one chubby white hand, drew out something which he began pouring from palm to palm, abstractedly as a dealer shuffling chips at a gaming table between plays. What he poured from palm to palm in that detached way appeared to be small bits of glass, or even counterparts of the gems in his necktie and rings, if one could conceive such a possibility of careless wealth in a town so barren as Damascus.
Whatever it was, Burnett stood there pouring from hand to hand without even following the movement with a glance. He smiled as he shifted the bright fragments, winking at Hall as if to say they were two who understood each other, let the clowns have their laugh as they would.
"What was it all about?" Hall inquired.
"Oh, some of them Simrall fellers out tryin' to throw a little scare," Burnett replied, more annoyed than concerned over such a trivial business. "I guess they'll be holdin' you for the inquest."
"Inquest?" Hall repeated curiously, not getting the drift of it.
"Over Bud. If you're in a hurry—"
"Did somebody kill him?"
"Darn fool made a break to get away," Burnett replied, his annoyance growing into disgust.
"Oh," said Hall, fully enlightened.
He felt that his own poise and dignity had been unduly disturbed in the turmoil of that incident, as well as Burnett's. More than that, it had thrown him uncomfortably before the public eye. Damascus was amused, rather than thrilled, by his effective interference in behalf of Major Bill Cottrell. In taking that gun by the handiest end that presented in that moment of necessity, he had broken the code of gentlemanly encounter.
It was a comical procedure, it seemed, to: smash a man between the eyes with a gun that was still in service. The regular, the neat and gentlemanly, thing to do was shoot in such a pinch. Knocking Bud Sandiver out with a loaded gun took all the tragedy, all the heroism, all the thrill out of the incident for Damascus. It was nothing but a joke.
Andrew Hall turned himself about without another word, went into the turnip-flavored dining-room and arranged himself at a table for the ministrations of the snuffling, frizzled, young woman who bore on and off, leaving Damascus to get as much fun out of the case as it might.
There was no other guest in the dining-room, although there were several unfinished suppers spread around, tablecloths pulled awry on some of the tables from which the feeders had jumped to rush away and get the news. The waiting lady appeared to be greatly agitated, bringing the guest his meal a dish at a time, with starts and shyings which slopped the soup over and emptied half the cup of melancholy coffee into the saucer. She gasped and exclaimed, keeping a wild eye on the door.
It was a miserable meal: water-logged potatoes in the skins, bread that would have sunk a seine, butter from the odorous packing-houses in Kansas City, ingenuously termed bull butter in frontier places such as Damascus, roast beef that was gray leather in a thin, brown slop. The pie was a pale-crusted, watery wedge of something which curiosity alone could have tempted one to explore. Justice's bluster over people who slept in hotels and took their meals elsewhere was explained. It was about the only inducement he advanced that might bluff a timid man into eating at his board.
Justice came into the dining-room with a rush and a bang, shutting the door behind him as a man does when he reaches shelter out of a dust-driving wind. He hurried to Hall's table, such a solemn look in his face that it was almost a reproach.
"If you're a doctor, come out here and look after this man," Justice requested in a severe, commandeering way.
"What man?" Hall inquired. He looked up from a calculative study of the dough-covered pie, fork in hand, napkin across his thigh.
"Bill Cottrell, damn it! Who else do you suppose?"
"Oh, Bill Cottrell. Where is the eminent Doctor Ross?"
"Drunk, stinkin' blind drunk, laid out like a dead man over in the saloon. They've tried everything that's ever fetched him around: ducked him with ice water, drenched him with coffee in a beer bottle like you give medicine to a sick horse, stood him up and walked him, rolled him over a beer kaig, but they can't bring him to. If you're a doctor you'll have to come on and take the case."
Hall prodded the pie introspectively, not greatly moved by the town's gallant efforts to bring old Doc Ross out of his alcoholic trance.
"There must be another doctor around here somewhere," he said. "Send for him. I'm the railroad doctor; I didn't come here to practice in town."
"Ain't no other town in fifty-three mile of here but Simrall, and Doc Ross chased the feller away from there that tried to settle. He was a little homeopathical feller with whiskers in front of his years."
"If you'll stand for that kind of a doctor, then you ought to die. Is that old man still alive?"
"Yes, but he's bleedin' like a stuck hog. That bed of mine'll be ruined! I tell you, you've got to come on out there, Doc, and do something to stop that blood."
"Oh, well, if it's to save your bed, Mr. Justice, that's another thing."