"Joe!"

Flynn was rising. Three shots then in quick succession in the close stillness and he went down flat, hearing the horses scream, knowing they had been hit. In front of him, Madora's mare fell heavily and did not move, but his own broke away and veered out into Stockman Street. His pistol was in his hand, but there was nothing, only the darkness and the stabled mounts moving nervously, bumping the boards and nickering.

Suddenly the rear door, not more than fifty feet away, swung open with the sound of hoofs striking boards and packed earth and momentarily horse and rider were framed against the dusk, pushing through as the door swung open only part way. Flynn fired, the heavy revolver lifting in his hand, and then horse and rider were gone and he could hear the hoofbeats outside, on the street beyond the livery.

Madora was breathing with his mouth open, his chest rising and falling with a wheezing sound. Flynn's hand went over him gently until he felt the wet smear of blood just above his waist at his side.

"Joe, you'll be all right. It probably went clean through you."

Madora tried to answer, but he could not. He was breathing harder, gasping.

There were footsteps behind them.

"What happened?"

Then more steps on the packed ground and a familiar voice. It belonged to the barber, John Willet.

"Soon as I seen him I knew…tearing up Commercial like that. I didn't even hear the shots and I knew."

Someone said, "Who?"

"Who do you think!" Willet's voice was edged with nervousness. "Frank Rellis. My God, he's done it now…"

3

Late in the afternoon the sky changed to pale gray and there was rain in the air, the atmosphere close and stifling, and a silence clung heavily to the flat colorless plain. The distant peaks to the east, the Dragoons, rose gigantically into the grayness, seeming nearer than they were, and the towering irregular crests were lost in the hazy flat color of the sky.