Dragons Teeth Crichton 2017 (WWT)

All around him, the hotel was silent.
He stared at the hands of his watch. He listened to it tick, and he waited.
At two, there was a scratching on the wall. He jumped up, raising his gun.
He heard the scratching again.
“Who’s there!”
There was no reply. More scratching.
“Get away!” he said, his voice quavering.
He heard a low squeaking, and the scratching moved quickly off. He recognized the sound now.
“Rats.”
He slumped back down, tense and exhausted. He was sweating. His hands were shaking. This was
not his line of business. He didn’t have the nerve for it. Where was Wyatt Earp, anyway?
“I can’t figure what you’re so hot about,” Earp said, the next day.
“We had a deal,” Johnson said. “That’s what I’m so hot about.” He had not slept at all the night
before; he was angry and tired.
“Yes, we did,” Earp said. “To protect your fossils from the Curry boys.”
“And I paid you in advance.”
“Yes, you did.”
“And where were you?”
“Doing what I was hired to do,” Earp said. “I played blackjack all night. With the Curry boys.”
Johnson sighed. He was too tired to argue.
“Well, what do you expect me to do,” Earp said. “Leave ’em to come and sit in the dark with you?”
“It’s just that I didn’t know.”
“You look peaked,” Earp said sympathetically. “You go get sleep.”
Johnson nodded, started back to the hotel.
“You want to hire me again tonight?” Earp called to him.
“Yes,” Johnson said.
“That’ll be five dollars,” Earp said.
“I’m not paying you five dollars to play blackjack,” Johnson said.
Earp shrugged. “Suit yourself, boy.”
That night he put the loaded pistols and extra bullets in his boots again. He must have fallen asleep
after midnight, because he awoke to the sound of wood splintering. The broken door opened, and a
figure slid into the room. The door closed again. It was pitch-dark because of the crates blocking the
window.
“Foggy,” a voice whispered.
“Wyatt?” Johnson whispered.
The sharp clock of a gun being cocked. A footstep. Silence. Breathing in the dark. Johnson realized
he made an easy target and eased out of the bed and beneath it. He took one of the pistols out of its
boot and flung the boot against the wall.
At the sound of the boot hitting the wall, there was a tongue of flame as the man fired at the noise.
Someone yelled immediately elsewhere in the hotel.
“You get out, whoever you are!” Johnson said, the room filled with smoke now. “I have a loaded