Chapter IV

That moment Streak Malone flung the door open. That is, he would have flung it open, but something caught under the door, blocking it half-open.

A man ripped out a curse, and a bullet smashed into the door. At the same moment the other man crashed the lamp, throwing the place into darkness. Streak managed to force his way past the partly-opened door, clawed for the doorway into the saloon. He heard the men racing down the saloon to the door, but he was not able to orient himself enough to shoot in the dark. Then the front door banged shut, and the men were gone.

Streak said, “Are yuh all right, Flack?”

“Yes, I am all right, thanks to you, Malone. That was a close call. Let’s get the lamp from the bedroom.”

The windows were covered, the door shut, when Streak lighted the lamp, and they looked at each other.

Flack said, “You came just in time, Malone. He was pulling the trigger.”

“Glad I did.” Streak smiled. “But I’m sorry the door stuck. Do yuh know either of them fellers, Flack?”

Flack shook his head. “They were both masked,” he said.

“Do yuh know Buck Smith?”

“Oh, you mean the name on that bill-of-sale? No, I don’t. It was only a name. But we know why they let me go ahead with this place. Well, they’ve ruined their first attempt, Malone, thanks to you. I’ll go out the back way and get to the hotel. I don’t believe they’ll make another attempt tonight.”

They went into the dark office and Jim Flack opened the back door.

“I don’t know how to thank you, Malone,” he said. “Maybe I can make it up to you--some way.”

“Forget that part of it,” said Streak. “Good luck.”

Streak went back to the bedroom and examined the bullet hole in the door. That bullet hadn’t missed him by more than a scant few inches. In fact, it had blown splinters onto the blanket. He stretched out again, trying to figure out more angles, but went to sleep quickly.

Jim Flack was over there next morning, before Streak awoke, and they talked things over. Flack said that he had talked with the superintendent of the hard-rock men on the railroad, and that the man was worried. Some of the more intelligent laborers realized that Zero Brant’s brace-games were keeping the men broke, and the bad liquor had made several of them unable to work at all. He said that any incident might start serious trouble.

“It’s a bad situation,” agreed Streak. “But what can be done about it, Flack? You can’t make arrests on what people think. Zero Brant has a tough following, and as far as enforcing the law is concerned, who or what is the law? I could put a man in jail, but how could he ever be convicted? What jury could, or would, decide guilt or innocence? Flack, this is a case where Old Man Colt is the only judge and jury.”

“I realize that, Malone,” nodded Flack. “I realize more than ever now that there will be trouble. Those men, last night, trying to force me to sign this place over to them, proved to me that they will stop at nothing.”

Streak found Mack Shell on the street and told him what happened at the Eureka. The little outlaw grinned slowly.

“So that’s why they let Flack go ahead with everythin’,” he remarked. “If you hadn’t been there, Flack would be dead now. Zero Brant is behind all this, Streak.”

Streak nodded. “But we can’t prove it,” he said.

The opening of the Eureka was not auspicious. Zero Brant was furnishing free whisky at the Silver Dollar and the house was packed with half-drunk humanity, mostly foreigners. A half-dozen bartenders were working at top speed but the games were not being patronized too well. A three-piece orchestra could hardly be heard above the roar of the crowd.

* * * * *

Brant was watching the crowd, a scowl on his face. The free whisky was keeping the crowd away from the games. Streak stood back against the wall, watching Brant. It was the first time Streak had ever seen Zero Brant without a hat, and he noticed that Brant’s forehead was criss-crossed with scars which were not too visible under a low-pulled hat-brim.

Chap-clad cowboys, wild as hawks, rubbed elbows with perspiring, muck-stained laborers, who gulped free whisky and roared songs in strange tongues. Here and there in the crowd were men in buckskin, bearded, long-haired, buffalo-hunters and trappers. The buffalo hunters furnished meat for the railroad crews.

At one end of the room El Chuchilla, the Knife, presided over a Three-Card-Monte game. This layout was not popular with the rank and file of patrons, but it placed the knife-throwing halfbreed in a good position to overlook the room, and flash signals to Zero Brant.

Mack Shell worked his way through the crowd and came in beside Streak. He said, “There’s a storm comin’, Streak.”

Streak nodded. “It’s bound to.”

“I mean outside,” said Shell. “Wind blowing, and yuh can hear the thunder. Yuh can’t hardly see through the dust right now.”

Streak nodded, watching Conchita at the roulette wheel. She was blazing with jewels, but the wheel was stopped. Shell laughed.

“Free whisky and no gamblers,” he said. “Serves him right.”

Conchita was looking at them now, and Streak noticed that her eyes were almond-shaped and almost green.

Mack Shell said, “Some day she’ll kill Brant. There’s a rattler down along the Mexican Border, with green eyes--like hers--and they don’t always rattle before they strike.”

One of Mack Shell’s cowboys forced his way through the crowd and came in beside them. He said, “If you think Conchita is pretty, take a look at the gal in the Eureka. She’s got this’n beat four ways from the jack. And she’s runnin’ an honest wheel. I won forty dollars on one whirl.”

The cowboy went on, circulating through the crowd, telling them about the Eureka. Streak smiled. Flack had probably hired several cowboys to pass out the good news, and the patrons were already drifting outside.

“Let’s go over to the Eureka,” suggested Shell.

“These men won’t leave free whisky,” said Streak.

“The free whisky is over.” Shell laughed. “They’ve just put up the sign.”

Slowly the crowd was drifting out of the place, some of them barely able to walk. Streak and Shell went outside. Lights were blotted out in the swirl of dust, and flashes of lightning were frequent now. Just as they found the entrance to the Eureka, a crash of thunder brought the first splatter of rain.

The new saloon was filling fast as they came in. The polished furniture reflected the lamplight, a thing of beauty in that rough, wild country, but the patrons were not interested in that sort of beauty.

Jim Flack, backed against the bar, was watching the gathering crowd, many of whom crowded around the roulette, where Clare Ames was running the layout. Mack Shell circulated among the crowd but Streak stayed near the end of the bar, out of the crowd. Men shoved through the open doorway, most of them drenched with rain.

The building shuddered under the concussion of thunder.

More men shoved in around the roulette, singing, cursing. It was a terrible place for a woman--even for the wrong kind. Flack came slowly over to Streak, tense, hard-eyed.

“I don’t like it, Malone,” he said. “They tell me that Zero Brant dished out free whisky to this mob. They’re all drunk.”

Streak nodded, his face grim. “Even free whisky wouldn’t hold ’em, Flack. They’re like a pack of wolves.”

* * * * *

More men surged in, possibly twenty or thirty huge foreigners, singing some sort of a chant. The room filled to suffocation, humming like a giant bee-hive, rank with the smell of unwashed humanity, liquor and strong tobacco smoke.

Somebody deep in the crowd cursed in a foreign tongue, screaming his words against the thud of a pistol shot. Came a babel of oaths, two more pistol shots, and pandemonium broke loose. Men surged toward the disturbance, and Streak caught sight of upraised bottles as the wave of men crushed tables and chairs, trampling drunken men to the floor, yelling like animals.

Suddenly they seemed to split into two factions, fighting each other. Streak knew what this meant. This drunken horde was bent on destroying everything in the Eureka.

Streak backed in against the end of the bar, gun in hand. He lost sight of Jim Flack. Out of the packed mob, like a football player packing the ball, came a huge, bearded giant, carrying a man in his arms. It was one of Mack Shell’s men. He dropped the unconscious cowboy and drew back a foot to kick him in the head when a shot crashed out, and the kick was not delivered. The big man went down, and the crowd trampled over him. Mack Shell was there, smoking gun in hand, dragging his cowboy away. Streak tried to help him, but a man crashed into him, and he went spinning against the wall at the end of the bar.

Streak went to his knees but came up quickly. Bottles were whizzing across the room, smashing the lamps, and the smoke-chopped room became a blurred mass of fighting men. Windows were smashed, letting in the wind and storm, and while men battled in the Eureka, nature battled outside, the claps of thunder shaking the building.

Streak fought his way across the room, forcing his way by swinging his six-shooter over-hand, climbing over men, trying to reach the smashed roulette layout. It was like a nightmare, where everything went wrong. Men screamed curses in his face, but he drove them aside and kept on going, while that crazy mob destroyed everything in the place.

He found Clare Ames, pinned under the wreckage of the wheel, unable to escape or protect herself. She was too dazed to know what was going on, when Streak picked her up in his arms. She tried weakly to strike him, but her strength was gone. A man crashed into him and tried to take her away, but he shouldered the man back into the mob.

Streak clawed his way along the wall to a broken window where he shoved her through. Then he crawled after her into the downpour. From inside the saloon came a warning scream, and he looked back. The smashed lamps had started a fire. Someone threw a smashed keg of whisky into the flames and a moment later the place was an inferno.