Ranger Tom Bender cruised through the open double doors of Botchey Miller's Happy Hour Club.
It was a long, wide room with a partition separating half of it. The front half contained pool tables and domino tables and both were well patronized. Voices came above the click of the balls and the slap of the dominoes on the wood.
Tom Bender went through the portieres into the rear half.
Here were dice tables, a chuck-a-luck game, a keno game and a stud poker game going full blast. Dealers were at each game, wearing green eye shades and small black sateen aprons and a number of hard-looking workmen were waiting their chances to play.
Bender sauntered over to one of the dice tables and watched a boisterous roughneck who smelled of cheap perfume throw a double ace for ten dollars, a double six for twenty dollars and then get six for a forty-dollar point. He lunged all around it but no six, and eventually tossed a four-tray for craps. The roughneck rubbed his hands, backed out and said nothing, and the space was quickly filled by another eager gambler.
A waiter passed by with a tray filled with drinks and Bender stopped him and asked where Botchey was. The waiter said he was in the back and Bender asked him where the back was. The waiter pointed to a door and went on.
Bender went to the door and opened it without knocking.
It was a little office lighted by a single light that was suspended from the rafter on a single cord and the glow was deflected down by a shade to cut through the smoky atmosphere in a lurid shaft. Three men were inside. Two of them were sitting at a table looking at magazines and the third was leaning back in a chair with his feet propped up against an opened drawer.
He was forty, sallow and hook-nosed. He wore a soft hat, no coat, his sleeves were rolled up and his collar was open.
None of them got up as Bender entered. They stirred and the man at the desk said: “All right?”
Bender stopped beside the table and said he was looking for Botchey Miller. The man at the desk stood up and walked over slowly saying: “I'm him, brother.”
Bender nodded and said: “I'm Tom Bender, Captain, Texas Rangers.”
Botchey Miller's face took on a puzzled look and the two men at the table closed their magazines and looked around.
Miller said: “Ranger, hunh? Well, what's it all about?”
“Nothing much,” Bender drawled; “only you're out of a job. This joint is closing.”
Miller's lips worked in and out like a fish breathing and Bender took a step closer to the table where the two men were sitting. One of them was dark and wore a blue suit and a small black bow tie. He was scowling and biting his lower lip. The other man was younger and had a pleasant face. Bender asked him what his name was and he said Eddie Price.
Bender asked the dark man the same question but he leered and tried to get hardboiled.
“Ah, hell, tough guy,” he said. “What's coming off here?”
“I asked you a question,” Bender said evenly.
The man guffawed and looked at Botchey. “Say, Botchey,” he called, “these Rangers are sure big tough babies, ain't they?” Miller laughed because he didn't know what else to do.
Bender flattened a great hand against the dark man's mouth and nearly slapped him out of the chair. He scrambled up, his eyes blazing, and made a move to his hip pocket. Bender laid his .38 Police Positive across his hip and the yellow light glinted along the barrel.
“What's your name?” he repeated.
Unintelligible growls came from the man's throat and words finally took form. “Wright, you!” he cried. “You got a nerve—”
“Yeah,” Bender said. He looked at Miller, who was standing stiff and straight as a tent pole. “All right, Miller, clean the house out. You're closing tight as a drum.”
Botchey Miller was boiling inside and his eyes were swimming in anger, but he managed to say: “Aw, hell... I got to have a chance. Let's talk this over.”
Bender shook his head and kept his .38 across his hip. Wright and Price were a little way in front of him and both of them were itching to go after their guns, but they were afraid to.
“Talkin's out,” Bender snapped. “You're closing right now. Are you gonna do this or am I?”
“Well,” Miller sneered, “since you're so—tough suppose you do it.”
“Okey. Your roadhouse is closing, too. I'm going out there later and if it's open I'll roll you guys good.”
He turned around and walked out.
Outside Tom Bender stopped in the middle of the floor and raised his voice.
“Everybody listen,” he said. In a minute or two there was quiet and they all were looking at him. “Cash in your chips and get out quietly. This joint is closing for good. There ain't no argument. . . cash in and beat it.”
Tall, square-built, his eyes unwavering, he stood there loosely and looked out at them... and they began to do his bidding. There were mutterings and an undercurrent of antipathy, but he conveyed to them a quiet force and although he hadn't told them who he was everybody sensed that he was a Ranger. They began to shuffle... and in a little while the room was devoid of customers. A few of the dealers and two or three waiters stood around. The rear door opened and Botchey Miller ambled out, smiling sourly.
“Miller,” Bender said, “keep this place shut down. Tomorrow I'm gonna start a bonfire with your furniture.”
Botchey Miller said between his teeth: “You'll never get away with this—you'll never get away with it.”
Tom Bender grinned and told him he'd been getting away with it for fifteen years.
“You close that roadhouse tonight or I'll fix it for you,” he said.
“Aw, lissen—” Miller said, “you—”
“You heard me. You guys catch a rabbit.”
He walked out.
The taxi driver kept his appointment and at ten o'clock straight up he parked his flivver in front of the hotel and started inside. At precisely the same moment the Negro bell-boy came through the lobby paging Mr. Bender. The driver spotted him and came over, but Bender told him to wait a moment and answered the page. The bell-boy took him over to the desk and said that gentleman there was waiting for him.
He was bulky, a little fat and wore a greenish suit and a wide black hat with the brim curled in cowboy style. He introduced himself as Jim Lovell, the chief of police, and asked if they couldn't go where they could talk.
Bender asked him what was the matter with right here and the chief said he'd rather not.
“All right, then,” said Bender; “we'll go to my room.”
They went upstairs and Jim Lovell sat down and made himself comfortable and asked him bluntly if he didn't know he was violating all ethics by not reporting to the chief of police.
Just as bluntly Bender told him he wasn't a damn bit interested in ethics.
“I know,” Lovell said, “but just the same I'm the chief here even
if you are a Ranger. I might be able to help you.”
“I don't need any help,” Bender said. “A job like this is a cinch for me.”
“Cinch huh?” Lovell drawled, lifting his eyes.
“Yeah—a cinch.”
Lovell laughed a little and said there ought to be some way out that wasn't so violent. He was acquainted with Botchey Miller and after all Botchey wasn't such a bad egg. He didn't see any use in getting hard without some reason and he thought Botchey ought to have a couple of days to get his business straight.
Bender began to get sore and he told Lovell it didn't make a — what he thought, that he was running the show.
Lovell's face turned red as a beet and he declared loudly that he had some rights in the matter and that if Bender didn't hold off a while and co-operate with him he'd wire the Adjutant-General and raise some hell.
That sounded like a funny story to Tom Bender and he laughed and told him to go right ahead and wire. He had his orders and he wasn't afraid of any wire.
“Look here,” he said, “these guys have been splitting wide open for months. Did you know that not three hours ago old Jeff Peebles had a mob together to clean the place up?” Jim Lovell winced a little and Bender went on: “Now, there ain't gonna be no more foolishness. They're shutting down pronto.”
Lovell nodded and said all right, his only reason for saying anything was to try to head off a war. Bender asked him what he meant.
“Well,” he said, “you know you can't lock everything tight without something happening. As long as you got an oil field you're gonna have bootlegging and gambling...”
“Yeah, I know. There'll be hip-pocket bootlegging and a man'd be a damn' fool to think he could stop that. There'll be dice shooting and poker games, too... but that'll be when the boys get together. I ain't trying to stop that. It's these organized gangs I'm after.”
“Well,” Lovell said, “I've warned you. Now there's just one more thing: you want me to help you or not?”
“Thanks,” Bender said dryly. “I'll handle it. I wanna know all my trouble's in front.”
Lovell jumped up, his cheeks scarlet and asked him what the hell he meant by a crack like that. Bender told him it meant any thing he wanted it to mean.
His enmity was brutal and open and Lovell choked with rage. For a minute it seemed that the old over-ripe hatred between police chiefs and Rangers would come to a head. Lovell was excited but Bender was impassive and relaxed because he knew the Rondora chief wouldn't start anything. To have done that would have been mutely to testify to something Bender already suspected—that he was on Botchey Miller's payroll.
Lovell finally decided there wasn't anything he wanted to do about it. He said, compressed: “All right... all right...” and walked out, slamming the door.
For a moment Bender stood there looking at the door, the inside of him rising and falling slowly like an infallible barometer that recorded trouble close at hand. With a lurch the inside of him settled and he felt heavy... and in the next moment energy flowed into him as if he had drained it from the floor.
He rushed to the door, flung it open and went downstairs. The driver was waiting.
“Let's go!” he said.
Three miles out on the Amarillo road stood a two-storied, high-gabled house alone in the open country. Once upon a time it had been a pretentious dwelling but now it made no pretense. It was a mile beyond the frontier of the drilling rig lights.
This was Pack Patton's notorious dive—the Fishtail Club and it was lighted from top to bottom, making no effort to hide the secret of what went on inside. It was pretty generally known that in the basement was a big still and that upstairs were rooms and gambling apparatus.
Bender went up the wide front stairs two at a time but at the front door he was met by three men who had their hats off. One of them, heavy-set and with thick jowls, intercepted him as he started inside and told him he'd have to show his card. The other two men crowded around him close.
Bender said he didn't have a card and asked him who the hell he was. The man replied that his name was Patton.
“You're just the guy I'm looking for,” Bender retorted. “I see you was expecting me.”
Patton leered and said he always made it a rule to meet distinguished guests. He said he was sorry but the club was closed.
“You're— right it's closed,” Bender said. “It's closed for good. I wanna go in and look around.”
“Sorry,” Patton said; “you can't go in.”
Bender nodded.
“Yeah,” he said; “I'm going in.”
He started in and somebody grabbed his arm. Bender whirled around, reaching for his .38 with right hand and swinging out with his left. It struck something hard and they closed in on him and tried to throw something over his head.
He gave up trying to get the .38 and lashed out hard, struck one of them and heard him grunt. He fell back, still swinging and something hit him a powerful lick behind the head and he thought it was going to snap off. A white explosion ascended in front of him and he staggered. As he did he came out with his .45 from his hip pocket and shook his head desperately to clear the mists and locate one of his assailants. In a moment he saw a form before him and he leveled the .45 and squeezed the trigger.
The narrow alcove lighted in a great red glare, a man swore loudly, doubled up and pitched on to the floor. A moment later Bender saw a form running up the steps and was about to shoot when he recognized the driver of the taxi. He wanted to shout a warning but before he could the driver had swung a heavy tire tool against one of the men's heads and knocked him back against the wall. He followed it up swinging and grunting, the man trying to get his gun out and the driver banging away with the tire tool.
Tom Bender looked at the third man who stood before him and looked down the muzzle of his gun. It was Patton, his face contorted in the pale light.
“Get your hands up,” Bender rasped.
Patton swore and raised them and Bender reached out and searched him carefully. He took a nickel-plated pistol out of his coat pocket. The door surged with people from the inside who had been attracted by the shot and Bender yelled:
“Get the hell back in there!”
The men in the lobby groaned and the taxi driver came over beside Bender and said: “Where do we go from here?”
“Keep these guys right here,” Bender said, passing over Patton's gun. “I'm going inside.”
He pushed his way in. There were perhaps a dozen persons within the dance space, some of them women. Everybody was excited and several already had made their exits through the rear.
“Everybody beat it!” Bender said. “The joint is pinched!”
“By—!” somebody yelled. “There's a coupla guys out there dying! Why don't you call the ambulance?”
Bender looked coldly in the direction of the voice. “You call it,” he said. “I'm busy.”
He walked across the dance-floor to the steps leading upstairs. This was his element and his powerful figure dominated the foreground. He went up the steps and in the corridor he reached for his gun and walked on. He opened a door and stepped inside a brilliantly lighted room that was equipped with a dozen tables and gambling devices.
There were five employees inside, regarding him calmly. They seemed not in the least disturbed.
“All right, boys,” Bender said; “this is the finish. Get out.”
One of them asked if this was a pinch. Bender told him it wasn't if he got the lead out and beat it. Three of them marched out without a word, but the other two changed their eyeshades for hats and told Bender so long.
Bender followed them out, went down the hall and looked inside three other rooms. They were all dark, but from the light outside he could see they were comfortably furnished and all the beds wore silk spreads.
When he came back downstairs the lower floor was emptied. Employees had deserted Patton in his hour of need and he stood alone and captured by a taxi driver.
Bender went in the kitchen. The Negro chef was hurriedly putting on his pants and when he saw the Ranger he began to jabber and protest his innocence.
“Never mind,” Bender said. “You go on home and don't take any more jobs like this. How do I get downstairs?”
The Negro pointed to a door in the wall beside a big gas stove and Bender went over and opened it. A flight of narrow steps was revealed. Gun in hand, Bender rolled down them. The cellar smelled strongly of raw mash and before him he saw two great copper stills. The lights were on but nobody was there.
“Hey!” he yelled.
He came back upstairs. The Negro was on his way out.
“Anybody down there?” he asked.
“Naw, sir,” the Negro said. “They come up a while ago and went outside.”
“Sure?”
“Yes, sir, I'm sure.”
“Okey. Beat it.”
The Negro went out and left him alone in the kitchen. Bender looked around. In the corner was a basin of waste paper and trash. Bender grinned and went over and stood beside it. He put his gun in his pocket and lighted a cigarette.
He flipped the match in the trash box and came back to the lobby.
The taxi driver, charged with a sudden responsibility, was proving himself trustworthy. He had Pack Patton covered but there were a lot of people on the ground at the foot of the steps looking on with great curiosity. The man Bender had shot was stretched out on the floor on his face and there was another man slumped in the corner with blood pouring from his head.
“Get downstairs,” Bender told Patton. He said to the taxi driver: “Take him to the car and if he tries any monkey business let him have it.”
“Sure,” the driver said.
“—!” Patton swore and then erupted a stream of obscenity.
Bender stooped down and picked up the dead man. He worked him over his shoulder, followed Patton and the driver to the car. He flopped the dead man in the back.
Bender went back to get the other man. The driver had beaten him into unconsciousness and Bender couldn't tell how badly he was hurt. As he came back to the car the people surged around him and headlights flooded the road as all the traffic stopped. There were shouts and murmurs and the discord of excitement.
Bender paid no attention. He put the other man in the back and told Patton to get in front. Patton swore again and crawled in. The driver put the gun in his pocket and got under the wheel.
“Just what the hell is this raid?” Patton gritted.
“Nothing,” Bender said. “You tried to get funny—that's all. Now you're going to jail.”
He got in the back and spread the men out so he could sit down.
On his right side was a dead man, on his left an unconscious man and both heads were down with their chins on their chests.
Patton swore again and said: “You killed a man, you big—” and Bender reached around with his hand and slapped him on the side of the head.”
“Pipe down,” he said; “or I'm liable to bump you.”
The driver grinned and cut on the switch. “He's piped,” he said.
“What'd you hit that guy with?” Bender asked.
“A spring leaf,” the driver said. “I was mad and I guess I hit him too hard.”
“Yeah,” Bender said dryly. “I guess I owe you a dinner for that. Let's be rolling.”
The crowd gathered around the car. One man came in close, stuck his head under the top, saw the men in the back seat and said:
“Well, I'll be—! Looks like a cyclone hit 'em.”
“You said it, brother,” the driver clipped over his shoulder.
The car jerked away down the road, rolled a few hundred feet and pulled into a dirt road. The driver reversed it, turned around and started back.
A puff of smoke vomited from the Fishtail Club and a roll of flame pushed out and licked its way upward.
“—!” Patton cried. “The place is one fire! The place is on fire!”
Bender looked out and nodded.
“Yeah,” he said; “the cook must of left in a hurry.”
Patton kept raving like a mad man and would have jumped out of the car but he knew that would be exactly what Tom Bender wanted for the big Ranger was waiting for a chance to mow him down.
When he returned to the hotel forty-five minutes later the main street was nearly deserted. The great wide glow that had spread over the heavens had attracted everybody and the fire had become the chief interest.
Bender went to sleep with his automatic under his pillow.
But his sleep was fuddled and semiconsciously he knew why. He had gone to bed wound up and taut and that was bad business. It had happened before and he had had bad dreams but even while he was having the dreams he was conscious of the reason. He always told himself the next time he got in a fight he would sit around and cool off before he went to bed but always in the morning he had forgotten.
Only half asleep, he heard noises. Somebody was raising the windows.
He lay still and prized his eyelids up a little and saw two shadowy forms coming through from the fire-escape. In a moment they were still and he lay there, hardly breathing, until the white beam of a flashlight struck him in the face.
He had the impulse to jump up and cover them but he had sense enough to fight that back because he knew they were waiting for him and ready and he wasn't.
They slowly walked over and he could tell from the way they held the light that they were nervous too.
They came close by the bed and he could hear them breathing. They were snorting like horses after a run and making enough racket to wake the dead. Whoever it was certainly was overanxious. When the light went out this time Bender opened his right eye and saw a man above him big as all outdoors and got a gleam of something steely in his hand.
The man was fixing to knife him.
Like a flash he slid out of bed backwards, pulling his automatic out from under the pillow with him and when his foot struck the floor he knew this was no time to play around.
He flicked his gun down and squeezed the trigger a couple of times and in the light of the explosion he saw an agonized face and imagined he could hear the bullets thud home with a soft plunk like he had shot a piece of liver.
He dropped down quickly to use the bed as a barricade but before he could hide himself or fire at the second man there was another crack, sharper and more staccato than his, and a finger of flame reached out and went through his right arm and he knew he was shot.
He fell to the floor and tried to push his gun over to his left hand but his right hand wouldn't respond. He had a frantic moment and his arm was numb and dead and somehow he got the crazy idea that he had been sleeping on it and that it was asleep. Then he knew that couldn't be... so he reached over with his left hand and got the automatic and stuck his hand up to rub out the other assailant.
The assailant could see better than he could and he fired again over the bed, the bullet singing by Tom Bender's head and biting off a lot of plaster behind him.
Bender turned the nose of his automatic down and got the bead and then crack — crack came from the window sill. The man across the bed spun around like a toy top and fell with a loud noise and somebody jumped down off the sill and ran into the room.
Bender crawled up saying: “Who is it? Who is it?”
“Cap'n? Cap'n?” the man said.
Bender switched on the light on the table by the bed and there stood the taxi driver, gun in hand, his cap on side-wise and excitement in his eyes.
“For—sake!” Bender rasped. “Where the hell did you come from?”
“I saw 'em, I saw 'em,” he said. “I knew they were up to something so I followed 'em up the fire-escape. When Botchey shot at you I located him and gave him the works.”
Bender swore and grinned.
“By—!” he said in a nasty bass, “you're the—guardian angel I ever had.”
The taxi driver came over and said: “Look—you're shot!” Blood was pouring down Bender's forearm and the upper part of his pajama sleeves was stained crimson.
“Yeah,” he said. “Call a doctor or something for these guys.”
The taxi driver went to the telephone and Bender went around the bed.
Botchey Miller on his side on the floor, a hole in his temple and one in his neck, but he was still breathing. Bender had to pull the other man off the bed to identify him, and he slid to the floor in a heap.
It was Jim Lovell, the chief of police. His right hand relaxed and stretched out and came close to a six-inch stiletto that lay gleaming on the floor. Lovell was hit once below the right eye and the bullet had ranged upward and come out at the back of his head.
Bender pitched his gun on the bed and sat down and looked at the men. Then he picked up the stiletto and held it up. The taxi driver came over and Bender said: “They was fixing to park that in my back.”
The taxi driver nodded. Bender squinted his eyes and stared at him. He wrapped his left fingers around his right arm just below the shoulder and squeezed hard to try to stop some of the pain.
“Say,” he said; “what the hell is your name?”
“Rusty Minton,” the driver said. “Why?”
Bender winced as a surge of pain rolled down his arm.
“Nothing,” he said; “only I thought it was about time you and I got acquainted.”