Six Feet Four by Jackson Gregory

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Swinging about angrily he rode back to join Comstock. Already the battle
there in the canon was over, the smell of powder was gone from the still
air, the last reverberating echo of a shot had died away. And in the
road lay three men, two of them severely wounded while the other was
already dead. Stooping over this man, a queer look in his eyes, stood
Comstock.

"I hankered to bring him in alive," he muttered. "But, after all it's
just as well. And it had to be him or me."

"Pollard?" asked Thornton quickly. But Comstock shook his head. Then
Thornton, riding close, looking down from the saddle, saw the white
upturned face. This time as his eyes came back to Comstock, Comstock
nodded.

"Cole Dalton, sheriff," he said gravely. "Yes. And he's the man I came
all this way to gather in, Buck. I've been after him for seven years,
never guessing until lately that he was out here working the old Henry
Plummer game of sheriff and badman at the same time. He's kept under
cover, that being always his way; you'd never have thought that Pollard,
Broderick, Bedloe were all tools.... But, I got him, Buck. At last."

A moment only Thornton stared incredulously. Then his shoulders twitched
as though this was a matter which could not concern him at present and
he had other things to think of.

"Pollard?" he asked shortly.

"Over yonder." Comstock nodded toward the patch of brush on the
mountainside. "Shot through the head."

"And the others? One was the Kid, wasn't it?..."

But now the Kid answered for himself. He rose to his knees among the
stunted manzanita bushes not twenty steps from them and for a moment
knelt there, his big bulky body wavering as he tried to bring his rifle
to rest at his shoulder, his eyes peering out wildly from a blood
smeared face. But his gesture was awkward and slow and uncertain; he
was too badly hurt to shoot straight or quick, and Thornton, swift and
sure and yet merciful withal, was before him. The Kid's rifle clattered
to the ground; the Kid's left arm, the bone broken, dropped uselessly to
his side. He tried to steady the gun with his one good arm alone, but it
shook hopelessly. He dropped it and turned bloodshot eyes on Thornton.

"Damn you," he said tonelessly. "Better do a clean job, you
white-livered coward, or I'll see you hang yet for killin' Charlie...."

"I was outside when he was shot," said Thornton coolly. "I saw just as
much as you did. Somebody shot him from behind me."

"Liar!" jeered Bedloe. "An'..."

"Don't be a fool, Bedloe," snapped Comstock. "The man you want is the
same man we want; only the other day he had a quarrel with Charlie and
got a bullet alongside the head...."

"Not Ben Broderick!" gasped the Kid stupidly. "Not him!"

"I think your little friend Jimmie Clayton knew," said Comstock. "And
you ought to know that Thornton isn't that kind."

With widening eyes the Kid stared at him. At last he got again to his
knees; finally and shakily to his feet.

"Jimmie tol' me to watch him," he muttered thickly. "An' him an' Charlie
did have words...."

He stared at them stupidly, hesitated, pondered the matter. Then he
turned and went lumbering down the road. Comstock, stepping forward
swiftly, called out:

"I say, Bedloe! None of that...."

But Bedloe neither turned again nor paused. Thornton's hand shut down
hard on Comstock's arm.

"He's going after Broderick," he said sharply. "Don't you see? He'll
know where Broderick is. And we don't. Besides ... I don't know just why
we should stop him.... If Broderick did kill Charlie...."

Comstock went back to administer to Hap Smith and the guard. Thornton
watched the Kid go to a horse hidden in a clump of trees; then as Bedloe
rode down into the road and passed on whither it led, sitting
slumped-forward and seeming at each step about to fall, Thornton rode
after him. The Kid did not so much as look around; perhaps it mattered
to him not in the least just then who followed or how many ... so that
they left him to ride on ahead....

It was straight into the town of Dead Man's Alley that the Kid's way
led. The high sun glared down into a deserted street when he and Buck
Thornton, a hundred yards behind him, passed by the Here's How saloon
and the Brown Bear and at last drew rein at Henry Pollard's gate. A
couple of men at the lunch counter stared curiously after the Kid; they
even got down hastily from their high stools and stared more curiously
still when they saw who it was who followed.

"They've rode hard, them two," said one of the men thoughtfully. "Their
horses is all in."

"The Kid ahead an' Buck Thornton followin'!" grunted the other musingly.
"An' the Kid never lookin' around!"

He shook his head and, long after both of the riders had passed out of
sight down the crooked street these two men looked after them
wonderingly.

At Pollard's gate the Kid dismounted stiffly. Now for the first time
Thornton came up to him.

"If you think Broderick's in there," he said sharply, "you'd better let
me go ahead. You're in no shape, Bedloe...."

"You go to hell," said Bedloe heavily. "He's mine."

He stepped forward and pulled open the gate. Here he paused just long
enough to drag his revolver from the holster at his hip. With the weapon
in his hand, swaying in his long-strided walk, he went to Pollard's
front door. Just behind him, almost at his heels, came Thornton.

As he tried the door cautiously the Kid looked over his shoulder with a
show of teeth.

"He's mine," he snarled again. "You keep your hands off."

Thornton offered no answer. The Kid, having ascertained that the door
was locked, drew back, steadied himself with his hand against the wall,
lifted his foot and with all of the power in him drove his heavy boot
against the lock. Something broke; the panel splintered; the door gave
a little. But only a little; the heavy bar which Henry Pollard used was
in its place.

"Again," said Thornton. "Together!... Quick!"

So together Buck Thornton and Kid Bedloe, two men who had long hated
each other, struck savagely at Pollard's barricade. And such was the
weight of the two men, such the power resident in the two big bodies,
that a hinge gave and after it an iron socket screwed to the wall was
torn away from the woodwork, and the door went down.

Gathering all there was of strength left in him Kid Bedloe pushed to the
fore and went down the hall; and Thornton followed at his heels. In this
fashion they came to the door of Pollard's study and saw through it,
since it had been flung wide open and so left.

In a far corner of the room was Winifred Waverly, her face dead white,
her body pressed tight into the angle of the walls, her hands twisting
before her, her eyes going swiftly to the two entering figures from that
other figure which had held her fascinated. Upon the floor, just rising,
knelt Ben Broderick. He had tossed a rug aside and had lifted out the
short sections of half a dozen strips of flooring, disclosing a rude
wooden vault below. Here was the accumulation of loot, here where the
Kid had known Broderick was to be found.

For a very brief yet electrically vital and vivid moment there was no
sound in the room, wherein never a single muscle twitched. And then
there were no words and only three sharp pistol shots. Broderick had
seen what lay in the Kid's eye, a look to be read by any man; he had
snatched his gun up from the floor beside him and had fired, point
blank. There is no name for the brief fragment of time between his shot
and the Kid's. But Ben Broderick had shot true to the mark, and the Kid
was sinking; Bedloe's bullet had gone wide.... And then the third shot,
Thornton's ... and as the two men fell, Kid Bedloe and Ben Broderick,
they pitched forward toward the centre of the room and the big body of
the Kid lay across the body of Ben Broderick. As the Kid died his eyes
were upon Thornton, and in them was a look of content and of gratitude!

"Again he tried to kiss me.... He is all brute. He ... he told me you
were dead.... Oh, dear God, dear God!" cried the girl, shrinking back,
covering her face with her hands.

Thornton, his face set and white and grave, came to her. She was
trembling so that he put his arm about her. She sobbed and caught at him
as a child might have done. His arm tightened, holding her closer.

"Let me take you away," he said gently.

With never a look back to see what long hoarded booty there in the hole
in the floor had drawn Ben Broderick back to Pollard's house, he turned
and with his arm still about her, led the girl from the room, from the
house and out to his horse at the fence. She moaned again and drooped
against him. He gathered her up into his arms tenderly. And with a
tenderness which was to become part of the man, he held her close while
he swung slowly into the saddle.

"Winifred Waverly...." he began.

There he stopped, looking with puzzled eyes down into her white face.
God knew how much she had gone through, what fear Ben Broderick had put
into her heart. But at the least now she had fainted.

"She's all alone," muttered the cowboy. "All alone. And somebody's got
to look out for her...."

He turned slowly and rode down the crooked street, carrying her lightly
in his arms. And now, more than ever, did the two men at the lunch
counter stare.

THE END

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