He fired again from the shelter of his car, and then dashed for a narrow arroyo—a sharp-edged, ten-foot crack in the earth—off to the left. On the brink, he wheeled to snap another cap at me—and jumped down out of sight.
I twisted the wheel in my hands, jammed on the brakes and slid the black touring car to the spot where I had seen him last. The edge of the arroyo was crumbling under my front wheels. I released the brake. Tumbled out. Shoved.
The car plunged down into the gully after him.
Sprawled on my belly, one of Gooseneck’s guns in each hand, I wormed my head over the edge. On all fours, the Englishman was scrambling out of the way of the car. The car was mangled, but still sputtering. One of the man’s fists was bunched around a gun—mine.
“Drop it and stand up, Ed!” I yelled.
Snake-quick, he flung himself around in a sitting position on the arroyo bottom, swung his gun up—and I smashed his forearm with my second shot.
He was holding the wounded arm with his left hand when I slid down beside him, picked up the gun he had dropped, and frisked him to see if he had any more.
He grinned at me.
“You know,” he drawled, “I fancy your true name isn’t Painless Parker at all. You don’t act like it.”
Twisting a handkerchief into a tourniquet of a sort, I knotted it around his wounded arm, which was bleeding.