One of the men held his hand to his ear, as if not understanding. They came on. They made no threatening gestures.
Then Joe took his hand out of his pocket, the pistol Sally’d given him gripped tightly.
“I mean that!” he said harshly. “Stand back!”
One of the three spoke sharply. On that instant three snub-nosed pistols appeared. Bullets whined as the men hurtled forward. The purpose was not so much murder at this moment as the demoralizing effect of bullets flying overhead while the three assassins got close enough to do their bloody job with precision.
A stone whizzed by Joe—Haney had thrown it—and the small target rifle in Mike’s hands coughed twice. Joe held his fire. He had only six bullets and three targets to hit. With a familiar revolver he’d have started shooting now, but thirty yards is a long range with a strange pistol at a moving target.
One of the three killers stumbled and crashed to the ground. A second seemed suddenly to be grinning widely on one side of his face. A .22 bullet had slashed his cheek. The third ran head on into a rock thrown by Haney. It knocked the breath out of him and his pistol fell from his hand.
Joe fired deliberately at the widely grinning man and saw him spin around. Mike’s target rifle spat again and the man Joe had hit wheeled and ran heavily, making incoherent yells. The one who’d tumbled scrambled to his feet and fled, hopping crazily, favoring one leg. Deserted, the third man turned and ran too, still doubled over and still gasping.
Mike’s voice crackled. He was in a towering rage because of the way the target rifle shot. It threw high and to the right. The shooting gallery paid off in cigarettes for high scores—so the guns didn’t shoot straight.
Until this moment Joe had been relatively calm, because he had something to do. But just then he heard Sally say “Oh!” in a queer voice. He whirled. Unknown to him, she had not been waiting under cover, but standing with her pistol out and ready. And her face was very white, and she was plucking at her hair. A strand came away in her fingers. A bullet had clipped it just above her shoulder.
Then Joe went sick ... weak ... trembling, and he disgraced himself by half-hysterically grabbing Sally and demanding to know if she was hurt, and raging at her for exposing herself to fire, while his throat tried to close and shut off his breath from horror.