Free Desert of the Damned by Nelson Nye Page B

with a shell belt and holster. These were handstitched and fancy and the latter was loaded with a pearl-handled pistol. He slid the weapon from leather and hefted its weight. “You’ll get your pay,” he told Turner. “Got any bullets for this thing?”
    Turner still held the bottle he had taken from the drawer. The eyes behind his wire-rimmed glasses considered Breen bitterly. “Them’s the….
Watch where you’re pointin’ that — ”
    The crash of the shot sent the lamp’s flame scooting to the top of its chimney. With his mouth stretched wide in an unheard yell Turner reeled against the desk, took one staggering step, tried to catch himself and crumpled. The bottle skittered out of his loosening grasp and brought up with a thump against the farthest wall.
    Breen worked fast.
    With his hard glance raking the room in swift stabs he got into the things he had fetched from the closet. Time had swapped sides and was no longer an ally but Breen didn’t let that fact put his wind up. Every move he made had its own thought-out purpose, its full share of weight in this thing he was building to polish off Ben Reifel.
    Finished dressing, he caught up the pistol he had just used on Turner, dumped its loads and spent cartridge case into a pocket, ran a rag through its barrel and, returning it to leather, put it back with its belt on its nail in the closet.
    Gathering up the rag and broken pieces of Turner’s knife, he felt his way through the feedroom till he came to the broken window. Raising the sash he thrust his leg across the sill and quickly dropped to the ground. The rag and broken knife he tossed into some bushes. The loads and spent cartridge case he’d shaken from the liveryman’s gun he chucked into the shadows of the yard beyond the fence.
    He felt around then until he got hold of the gunbelts and pistol Ben had heaved through the window. Buckling these around him he went back inside and found the gun he had dropped when Reifel’s shot creased his elbow. He wasn’t worried about that wound; it was already clotted. The skin hadn’t hardly been broken.
    He paused in the stable to gather up the money Reifel had forced him to disgorge. He stopped again in the lamplit doorway of the office to pick up the currency Ben had left for Cy Turner. That goddam liveryman wasn’t going to need it.
    He pulled a couple of calendars off the walls of Cy’s office then went over to the desk and pulled all the papers out of its pigeonholes, scattering them as though he had been searching for something. He dumped the stuff from its drawers and pulled the stuffing from a cushion.
    He guessed that ought to hold them.
    He moved over to Turner. Being careful to keep the man’s gore off his clothing he lifted Turner’s head and had a look at his eyeballs. Satisfied, he dropped Turner’s head back into the blood and broken glasses, caught up a limp hand and pulled the arm out from under him. Squatting then, Breen used that hand dipped in Turner’s blood to daub Reifel’s name on the dusty floor.

8. BACKLANDS CAMERA MAN
    W HEN R EIFEL heard the roan horse call he froze in his tracks, every nerve end screaming with the dread of impact. Some sixth sense, shared by all hunted creatures, warned of hidden danger until need for flight was like a taste in his mouth.
    Yet he crouched there, frantic, and nothing happened. Ears cocked, Bugler watched with an unwavering regard. Like a thing of paint brushed onto canvas the roan horse stood. Like a dog at point. And all the roundabout shadows turned rigid. The wind fell away to a stealthy whisper, the owls quit calling and only the sound of the creek was unchanged.
    There were driven hollows beneath Reifel’s cheeks and sweat lay in beads on the backs of his hands. He could scarcely breathe in that unnatural quiet and fear was like a rock in the bottom of his belly. But he would not let himself be stampeded — he
dared
not. All too vivid in his mind was the desperate knowledge of how far