Blood of the Mountain Man (20 page)

“Good-bye, Barrie,” he whispered. “You’re a good man.”

“Did you say something, honey?” Sally whispered.

“No, dear. You must have been dreaming. Go back to sleep.”

“Whahsiit?” the old man at the livery stable mumbled, still half asleep.

“I’ve rid hard to get here, old-timer,” Van Horn said, gruffing up his voice. “Here’s a dollar. Get over to the sheriffs office and tell him they’s been a stage holdup at Red Creek Crossing. It’s real bad. Dead folks all over the place. The outlaws took off up Devil’s Pass. Move, man!”

Van Horn slipped back into the darkness, pretending to be seeing to his horse. The rummy-eyed old hostler beat it over to Club’s place and within fifteen minutes, Club and his deputies were riding out for Red Creek. It would be a good five to six hours before they returned. By that time, Van Horn thought with a smile, it’ll all be over.

All but the buryin’.

Van Horn walked over to Clemmie’s and sat on the porch with Moses, who had just gotten up to stoke up the fire. The men sipped coffee as the sky grew silver in the east.

Barrie had a fine breakfast of biscuits and gravy and good strong hot black coffee. And then he bought a genuine five-cent cigar from the counterman. On the boards, he lit up and puffed contentedly. Man can’t ask for much more, he thought. The fire in his belly was gone, and Barrie knew it would never return. He brushed his coat back, exposing the butts of his .45s, then went for a little walk. He stopped for a time to pet a stray dog. The dog licked his hand and Barrie was pleased. He’d always liked animals. He never trusted a man who disliked dogs . . . serious character flaw there.

Then he saw a knot of gunhands come walking out of the South End Hotel, on their way to breakfast. One of the men was Luther Cone, and with him was his sidekick, equally no-’count Jim Parish. Barrie had run both of them out of at least two towns that he could recall. After two suspicious killings.

“Might as well start here and now,” he muttered. He stepped out into the street. “Cone!” he called. “Parish!”

The men stopped and turned to face Barrie. “Well, well,” Cone said. “Would you look at this, Parish. It’s old Barrie hisself. You ridin’ the grub line, Barrie?” “No,” Barrie called. “I’m ridin’ the killin’ line.” “Huh? What you mean, the killin’ line?”

‘You workin’ for Biggers, Fosburn, or Cosgrove?” “All three, if it’s any of your damn business.”

‘You come to make war against a fine little teenage girl, huh?”

“If you’re talkin’ about Janey’s daughter, she’s just like her momma, a slutty little two-bit whoor!”

‘You’ll not talk like that about her, Cone. Fill your hand, you scummy bastard!”

Cone and Parish drew —or tried to. Barrie’s right hand flashed and his .45 roared. Cone and Parish went down in the dirt, both of them gut-shot. Barrie stepped two paces to one side and plugged a third man, a no-’count who fancied himself a gunhand and called himself the Arizona Kid. The Kid should have stayed on the farm, milking cows. Barrie shot him through the heart and then stepped back across the narrow street and into the alleyway as a hail of bullets came at him. One tugged at his sleeve, another clipped the brim of his hat, and another kicked dirt on his polished boots. Barrie knocked a leg out from under the man who dusted up his boots.

“Gettin’ real interestin’ up yonder,” Van Horn said to Moses. “I think I’ll just mosey up that way.”

“I’ll get my hat and join you,” Moses said. “And my rifle.”

Very few of the older, more experienced gunhands in the employ of the Big Three took any part in the shootout with Barrie. Word had spread throughout the camps of the gunhands, and when those with rooms in the town’s several hotels heard about the town-tamer coming in all dressed to the nines and with polished boots and totin’ at least four pistols, they figured what was coming.

The gunfighters put all that together and reached the conclusion that Barrie had come to town to die . . . but only after making sure a whole bunch of others got sent down that same dark road.

And a man like that would be hard to stop.

Barrie ran around the rear of a saddle and leather shop and slipped back up to the street, walking between it and a gaming house. He saw Dev White, a Utah gunslick peeping around the corner of a hastily vacated cafe. Barrie sighted him in and the bullet knocked the man sprawling and hollering. A rifle roared and splinters tore into Barrie’s right cheek. He ignored the bleeding and dropped to one knee, leveling his .45. A New Mexico punk was sent howling to the ground, his belly punctured by town-tamer lead.

Jody Thomas, a North Dakota kid who was wanted for murder, came running out of the Eagles Nest Hotel, his hands filled with ,44s. Moses and Van Horn fired as one and Jody was knocked off his boots and went crashing through a window, back into the lobby.

“You’re bleedin’ all over the carpet!” the desk clerk hollered at the dying gunman.

Jody had no rebuttal to that. He simply closed his eyes and died.

“Stay out of this, you old goat!” Barrie hollered up the street at his longtime friend.

“We’ll try to keep it fair,” Van Horn yelled.

“Fair, hell!” Barrie said, reloading. “I got ’em outnumbered.”

“Get that crazy fool!” Cosgrove yelled from the upstairs window of his new apartment over his mining office.

The street filled with guns-for-hire.

Barrie stepped to the other side of the alley, both hands filled with ,45s, and yelled, “Here I am, boys. I’m half puma, half wolf, and Gloryland bound. So step up here and I’ll punch your ticket to Hell!”

Then he opened fire.

Larry Brown, Johnny Newman, and two gunslicks from Texas stepped off the boards and onto the street and Barrie put them on the hellbound train, punching their tickets with .45 slugs.

A bullet clipped Barrie’s ear and another one burned his shoulder. He didn’t feel a thing. “Here’s another for Miss Jenny and Smoke Jensen!” he yelled, jamming his empty guns into leather and jerking out two old long-barreled Peacemakers from behind his belt. He cocked and fired so fast the sound was one continuous roll of deadly thunder.

When Barrie ducked back into the early morning shadows of the alley, the street in front of the hotel was littered with wounded and dead.

He ran around the gaming joint and a man opened the rear door and stuck out a sawed-off ten-gauge and a small sack of shells. “You don’t remember me, Barrie. But I was bartender in a little mining town in Colorado you cleaned up. Give them no-goods hell, ol' hoss.”

Before Barrie could thank the man, the door closed.

Barrie checked both barrels for blockage and loaded the Greener up. He began walking toward the corner of the building. Cosgrove was still shouting from the window, joined by Fosburn, standing in the door of his mayor’s office.

The left side of Barrie’s suit coat was drenched with blood from his mangled ear, and he had taken lead in his right leg. He limped on, ignoring the pain. He’d endured a hell of a lot worse from the pain in his belly.

Dave Stockton and John Robinson came racing around the corner of the keno joint. Barrie smiled at them and gave the pair both barrels from the sawed-off express gun. The worthless pair was flung back, nearly cut in two from the heavy charge.

Barrie stepped into the narrow passageway between buildings and saw Cosgrove, standing in his window, yelling and screaming and shouting orders. The range was far too great to do much damage with the shotgun, but Barrie gave the man both barrels to keep him honest. The shot had lost most of its punch when it reached Cosgrove, but it bloodied his neck and face and sent him hollering to the floor, certain he’d been mortally wounded.

At the ranch, Jenny sat down at the table with Smoke and Sally and the hands and asked, “Where are Mister Barrie and Mister Van Horn?”

“Barrie went into town to even the odds a little bit, Honey,” Wolf told her. “I ’spect Van Horn went in to watch the show.”

“You mean . . .”

“Barrie is dying, Jenny,” Smoke told her. “This is the way he wanted to go out. After breakfast, Cooper, hitch up a team. Some of us will go in to bring the body back. Pasco, you and Ladd get shovels and ride up to the east slope, by that lightning-blazed tree above the spring. Dig a deep hole.”

“Right, Boss,” Pasco said.

“And be careful, that damn Hankins is probably prowling around. He’ll shoot anybody he sees on this range. If you see him, drop him.”

“With pleasure,” Ladd said, pouring syrup over his huge stack of flapjacks.

“I shore would like to be in town for this mornin’s show,” Wolf said. “When Barrie gets goin,’ he’s plumb hell with a short gun.”

“I’ll take that damned ol' has-been,” a young man who called himself Rusty said, hitching at his fancy rig. He pulled both guns and stepped out of the saloon, where he’d spent the night, drinking and gambling and whoring. With both hands wrapped around the butts of ,45s, Rusty marched right down the center of the narrow street.

“He’ll last one minute,” Kit Silver said, pouring a mug of coffee.

“Thirty seconds,” Ned Harden shortened it.

“Hey, turd-face!” Van Horn called to Rusty.

“Ten seconds,” Dan Segers said. “Van Horn just bought into it.”

“Rusty’s dead, then,” Les Spivey said.

Rusty whirled around and took a shot at Van Horn, standing in the gloom under an awning. Rusty’s shot went wide. Van Horn’s aim was deadly. Rusty sat down hard in the street and commenced to bellering, his guns in the dirt and both hands holding his stomach.

‘You should have stayed to home, boy,” Van Horn said, punching out the empty and filling the slot.

Ray Houston stood up in the hotel lobby and started toward the stairs.

“Where you goin’?” Kit Silver asked.

“I’m through,” Ray said. “This deal’s done gone sour. They got a range war shapin’ up down in New Mexico. I’m headin’ for there.”

“Hold up,” Nevada Jones said. “I’ll ride with you.” Ron Patrick picked up his rifle and said, “That makes three of us. This war ain’t for the likes of me.” Barrie’s wounded leg was about to buckle on him and some lucky gunhand he’d not even seen had shot him in the side. “Time to end it,” he muttered. He called out, “In the street, boys! Me agin you all. Holster your guns and meet me eyeball to eyeball. Who’s got the sand to do it?”

Moses lifted his rifle and Van Horn put a gnarled hand on the barrel. “We’re out of it unless they pull something sneaky, Moses. This is Barrie’s show from now on.”

Perry Sheridan, a tough from Oregon, stepped out onto the boards. “I’ll meet you, Barrie.”

“Well, come on, then,” Barrie shouted, standing tall and bloody in the street. “I ain’t got all the time in the world, you know.”

Andre McMahon joined Perry, as did four others. The older, wiser gunnies stayed put.

“Fools,” Kit said. “Can’t they see that Barrie ain’t got nothin’ to lose?”

“Fifty dollars says they’ll git him,” a young squirt tossed the bet out.

“Oh, they’ll get him,” Kit said. “But they won’t none of them be alive to brag about it. That’s too high a price to pay for ten seconds of glory.”

“If you want to call killin’ a dyin’ man something glorious,” a lanky gunfighter said. “Hell with this. I’m haulin’ my ashes out of here. Cosgrove and Biggers and Fosburn ain’t fit to polish that Jenny girl’s boots.” 

“That ain’t what I’d like to polish about her,” a brute of a man said with an evil grin on his dirty and unshaven face.

The lanky gunhawk lifted a .44 and shot him between the eyes, knocking him out of the chair. The gunhawk looked around the room. “Anybody else got anything nasty they want to say about that little girl?” No one did.

“I don’t like makin’ war agin kids,” Shady Bryant said, standing up. “I’ll ride out with you, Slim.”

Kit Silver poured a shot glass of whiskey into his hot coffee and stirred in a spoonful of sugar. “I tried to tell them money men this wouldn’t work. It might take time, but the right cause near ’bouts always wins. And that kid’s in the right. I’m out of this. I’m gonna stick around, but I ain’t rightly sure what side I’m gonna be on.”

“Then you better get clear of my sight,” Curtis Brown said.

“You want to try an’ make me?” Kit said softly.

“I think I’ll stick around, too,” Slim said. “I’m with you, Kit.”

“And me,” Shady said.

“I don’t hear no shootin’ out there,” Brown changed the subject.

“Barrie’s just standin’ in the street, laughin’ at them fools. He’s sayin’ something.”

“Can you make it out?”

“Naw.”

“What a pitiful lookin’ sight,” Barrie said to the men facing him in the street.

‘You’re the pitiful one,” Andre called. “Man, you’re bleeding bad.”

“I’ll live long enough to kill you,” Barrie told him. Andre flushed, cussed, and grabbed iron. Barrie shot him in the chest and then dropped to one knee as he cleared leather with his lefthand .45. When the smoke cleared, Andre, Rusty, and their friends were down and hard hit. Barrie staggered to his boots, blood leaking from two more bullet holes. He almost fell climbing up onto the boardwalk, but managed to stay on his feet and reload just as Eddie King stepped out from the doctor’s office.

“My brother, Vern, just died, you son-of-a-bitch!” he shouted across the way.

Barrie turned. “Good,” he said. “One less punk on the face of the earth.” Then he lifted his Peacemaker and drilled Eddie right through the brisket.

A would-be tough and fulltime bully leaned out of a second-story window and sighted Barrie in with a rifle.

“Not that way,” Kit Silver said, standing on the boards. “He’s too good a man to go that way.” He palmed his gun and put a hole in the bully’s head.

Leaning up against a post, Barrie looked at the man, questions in his eyes.

Kit shrugged. “It’s a free country, town-tamer. I can change sides if I want to.”

Barrie smiled as his mouth filled with blood. “That Jenny gal, she’ll do, Kit.”

“I’ll see to it personal, ol' son. You save me a place where you’re goin’. I figure this for my last fight.”

Shady Bryant and Slim Waters stepped out to join Kit. “Count us in, too, Barrie,” Slim said.

“Good men,” Barrie said weakly. “All of you. You make me proud. I told all of you more than once there was a streak of good in you. Even when I was runnin’ you out of some damn two-bit town. You just proved me right. Now point me toward a nest of snakes whilst I still got the strength to do some stompin’.”