He went on, while Andrew sat shivering with passion.
“And any fool can get in a lucky shot now and
then. But, when I’m out of this, I’ll
hunt you down again and I’ll plant you full
of lead, my son! You can lay to that!”
The hard breathing of Andrew gradually subsided.
“It won’t work, Dozier,” he said
quietly. “You can’t make me mad enough
to shoot a man who’s down. You can’t
make me murder you.”
The marshal closed his eyes again, while his breathing
was beginning to grow fainter, and there was an unpleasant
rattle in the hollow of his throat. Andrew went
into the next room.
“Scottie,” he said, “will you let
me have your flask?”
Scottie smiled at him.
“Not for what you’d use it for, Lanning,”
he said.
Andrew picked up a cup and shoved it across the table.
“Pour a little whisky in that, please,”
he said.
Scottie looked up and studied him. Then he tipped
his flask and poured a thin stream into the cup until
it was half full. Andrew went back toward the
door, the cup in his left hand. He backed up,
keeping his face steadily toward the four, and kicked
open the door behind him.
War, he knew, had been declared. Then he raised
the marshal’s head and gave him a sip of the
fiery stuff. It cleared the face of the wounded
man.
Then Andrew rolled down his blankets before the door,
braced a small stick against it, so that the sound
would be sure to waken him if anyone tried to enter,
and laid down for the night. He was almost asleep
when the marshal said: “Are you really
going to stick it out, Andy?”
“Yes.”
“In spite of what I’ve said?”
“I suppose you meant it all? You’d
hunt me down and kill me like a dog after you get
back on your feet?”
“Like a dog.”
“If you think it over and see things clearly,”
replied Andrew, “you’ll see that what
I’ve done I’ve done for my own sake, and
not for yours.”
“How do you make that out—with four
men in the next room ready to stick a knife in your
back—if I know anything about ’em?”
“I’ll tell you: I owe nothing to
you, but a man owes a lot to himself, and I’m
going to pay myself in full.”
He closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but, though
he came to the verge of oblivion, the voices from
the other room finally waked him. They had been
changing subtly during the past hours and now they
rose, and there was a ring to them that troubled Andrew.
He could make out their talk part of the time; and
then again they lowered their voices to rumbling growls.
At such times he knew that they were speaking of him,
and the hum of the undertone was more ominous than
open threats. When they talked aloud there was
a confused clamor; when they were more hushed there
was always the oily murmur of Scottie’s voice,
taking the lead and directing the current of the talk.
