Shining Mark had made the mistake of staying too close, of miscalculating the distance an active man could hurl himself with the speed of a winking eyelid, when moved by a desperate resolve. Robin did not strike. He clutched with both hands for that gun, thrust it aside. Mark Steele was a strong and active man himself. For a few seconds they struggled. Robin clamped both hands over the gun, turning it back on Mark, jammed him against the wall. He was the heavier, the stronger of the two, but he could not tear loose the weapon from Steele’s grip. To loose one hand and strike was dangerous. To let go and stoop for his own weapon now fallen to the floor meant that Steele would kill him as he stooped. Any moment Thatcher might enter. Then of a surety he was a dead man. And it was more fitting Robin felt, with a fury that burned him, that Steele or Thatcher, or both, should die if death was to stalk in that camp.
Slowly he turned the muzzle back toward Steele. One of his fingers slipped inside the trigger guard. His thumb hooked around the curved hammer. He jabbed Steele suddenly with one knee, and in the momentary relaxation of the man’s grip Robin managed to pull the trigger.
The report of the .45 was like a cannon blast in the room. Shining Mark let go, left the gun in Robin’s hand. His fingers fumbled at the base of his throat. Then he sagged and weaved and his knees doubled under him. He became a sprawling figure face to the floor, with strange spasmodic twitching of his outstretched fingers.
Robin retrieved his own gun. His rifle stood by the wall. He picked the Winchester up. There was still another snake to scotch. Like a wolf at bay or a tiger in the circle of beaters pure savagery was driving Robin now. Every primitive instinct buried deep in man was on top. He opened the door. For the moment, rifle in hand, with that dark rage upon him, Robin would have faced all the fiends of hell itself—and Thatcher was only a man.
The Texan was walking rapidly toward the house. In Robin’s seething brain the thought arose: “They knew I was here. They followed me. He thinks Mark has downed me.”
He stepped, scarcely conscious of his stocking feet, out into the snow. As the foresight of his rifle lined on the Texan’s breast, Thatcher stopped dead in his tracks, flung both arms high in the air. Robin held his fire. Ripe to kill as he was he couldn’t shoot. He walked toward the Texan, the anger dying out of him like a receding tide. But for all that he cursed the man, slapped him brutally, raged at him with tears in his voice, disarmed him and drove him into the house. Thatcher grew pale at sight of his confederate stretched on the floor.
Then Robin stood still to collect his thoughts. He beheld himself yet between the devil and the deep sea. He had killed the Block S wagon boss as he had publicly declared he would. Adam Sutherland would remember that.
“Turn your face to the wall,” he commanded Thatcher.
“Kid, for God’s sake!”
“You dirty dog!” Robin gritted. “I don’t murder men from ambush, nor shoot ’em in the back. You do what I say.”