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The weapon in Yust’s hand spat flame!

Owen Sack sobbed. Something struck him heavily on one side. He fell, sat down on the sidewalk, his eyes wide and questioning and fixed upon the smoking gun across the street.

Somebody, he found, was bending over him. It was Henny Upshaw, in front of whose establishment he had fallen. Owen Sack’s eyes went back to the man on the opposite curb, who, cold sober now, his face granite, stood awaiting developments, the gun still in his hand.

Owen Sack didn’t know whether to get up, to remain still, or to lie down. Upshaw had struck him aside in time to save him from the first bullet; but suppose the big man fired again?

“Where’d he get you?” Upshaw was asking.

“What’s that?”

“Now take it easy,” Upshaw advised. “You’ll be all right! I’ll get one of the boys to help me with you.”

Owen Sack’s fingers wound into one of Upshaw’s sleeves.

“Wh—what happened?” he asked.

“Rip shot you, but you’ll be all right. Just lay —”

Owen Sack released Upshaw’s sleeve, and his hands went feeling about his body, exploring. One of them came away red and sticky from his right side, and that side — where he had felt the blow that had taken him off his feet — was warm and numb.

“Did he shoot me?” he demanded in an excited screech.

“Sure, but you’re all right,” Upshaw soothed him, and beckoned to the men who were coming slowly into the street, drawn forward by their curiosity, but retarded in their approach by the sight of Yust, who still stood, gun in hand, waiting to see what happened next.

“My God!” Owen Sack gasped in utter bewilderment. “And it ain’t no worse than that!”

He bounded to his feet — his pack sliding off — eluded the hands that grasped at him, and ran for the door of Upshaw’s place. On a shelf beneath the cash register he found Upshaw’s black automatic, and, holding it stiffly in front of him at arm’s length, turned back to the street.

His china-blue eyes were wide with wonder, and from out of his grinning mouth issued a sort of chant:

“All these years I been running,
And it ain’t no worse than that!
All these years I been running,
And it ain’t no worse than that!”

Rip Yust, crossing the roadway now, was in the middle when Owen Sack popped out of Upshaw’s door.

The onlookers scattered. Rip’s revolver swung up, and roared. A spray of Owen Sack’s straw-coloured hair whisked back.

He giggled, and fired three times, rapidly. None of the bullets hit the big man. Owen Sack felt something burn his left arm. He fired again, and missed.

“I got to get closer,” he told himself aloud.

He walked across the sidewalk — the automatic held stiffly before him — stepped down into the roadway, and began to stride toward where pencils of fire sprang to meet him from Yust’s gun.

And as the little man strode he chanted his silly chant, and fired, fired, fired…. Once something tugged at one of his shoulders, and once at his arm — above where he had felt the burn — but he did not even wonder what it was.

When he was within ten feet of Rip Yust, that man turned as if to walk away, took a step, his big body curved suddenly in a grotesque arc, and he slid down into the sand of the roadway.

Owen Sack found that the weapon in his own hand was empty, had been empty for some time. He turned around. Dimly he made out the broad doorway of Upshaw’s place. The ground clung to his feet, trying to pull him down, to hold him back, but he gained the doorway, gained the cash register, found the shelf, and returned the automatic to it.

Voices were speaking to him, arms were around him. He ignored the voices, shook off the arms, reached the street again. More hands to be shaken off. But the air lent him strength. He was indoors again, leaning over the firearm showcase in Jeff Hamline’s store.