Blood of the Mountain Man (23 page)

Smoke looked back. Wolf and Bad Dog were swinging down from the saddle at the creek. He walked on until he came to an empty building at the end of the first block of stores. All the stores that he could see were closed and locked.

Far up the street came the sound of a tinny piano and the high, shrill, false laughter of a hurdy-gurdy girl. Smoke looked across the street at the alleyway. Van Horn was standing there. He looked over at Smoke, shrugged his shoulders, and walked on.

Smoke paused, his eyes searching the second-story windows to his right. He was certain men with rifles had been posted along the way, but he could spot nothing that would give away their location. He resumed his slow walking.

The town was filled with gunfighters on the payrolls of Biggers, Fosburn, and Cosgrove; but where the hell were they? All scattered out in the town’s many saloons? Some of them, yes. But he rather doubted that all of them were in the bars. Smoke stopped his walking. They had to be in the stores, all spread out along the narrow, twisting streets.

Smoke slipped off the boardwalk and stepped into the coolness of a shadowed alley. He slipped one of the spare .44s from behind his belt and jacked the hammer back as he walked toward the rear of the buildings. At the alley’s opening, he looked back left, toward the Golden Cherry. Clemmie waved to him from a window on the second floor. Smoke returned the wave and walked on. By now, Wolf and Bad Dog would be a block behind him and Pasco and Kit would be hobbling their horses at the creek. The hired guns would know their quarry was in town. So why didn’t they make a move?

That question was answered when a young man who looked to be in his early twenties suddenly stepped out from behind the rear of a building, both hands hovering over the butts of his guns. “Leather that six-shooter, Jensen, and face me like a man. I’ve come to kill you.”

“Don’t be a fool, man,” Smoke told him, the cocked .44 in his right hand. “I’ve got no quarrel with you. Give this up and go on back home.”

“Yellow, that’s what you are!” the young man sneered.

“I’m offering you your life, partner,” Smoke reminded the young man. “Take the offer. Don’t die for nothing.”

“You ain’t gonna holster that gun and try your luck with me?”

“Not a chance, kid. This is not a game. Give it up, go home, and live.”

The would-be gunslinger stood for a moment, cussing Smoke. Then, with a strange cry of desperation, his hands closed around the butts of his guns and Smoke fired, knocking a leg out from under the young man. The young tough hollered in pain, both hands grabbing at his shattered knee. Smoke walked up to him and took his guns from leather, noticing that one was a .44 and the other a .45. He kept the .44 and threw the .45 into the bushes.

He looked down at the young man, writhing in pain on the bottle- and can-littered ground. “Boy, if I ever see you again and you’re carrying iron, I’ll kill you on the spot. Do you understand all that?”

“Yes . . . sir,” the young man groaned out the words. “I swear to God I’ll never tote no gun again. But Jesus, I hurt something awful.”

“Pain is good for a man. It’s a reminder that you’re still alive.” Smoke walked on.

His shot had been the only one thus far. Smoke felt that was about to change. Now the hired guns knew where he was and they surely would be coming after him.

He heard a pistol bark and a man scream. That was followed by a crash of breaking glass and the thud of a body after falling a distance. Van Horn had nailed one of those on a second floor ... or a rooftop.

He heard running boots and stopped, filling his left hand with a .44. Two men sprang out of a narrow passageway between buildings and pulled up short, spotting Smoke. Smoke did not recall ever seeing the men before. But they cursed him, their guns lifting. Smoke had no choice but to open fire. He fired four times, the slugs taking the hired guns in belly and chest as the muzzles lifted. They spun around and jerked their way into the rapidly enveloping darkness of death.

Behind him and to his right he heard a curse, a shot, and a short cry of pain. He turned his head for a second, spotting Ol’ Wolf some distance behind him, both hands filled with guns.

Smoke walked on, now slipping into the dark and narrow passageway the hired guns had sprung out of. He stopped just short of the street, listening.

“I’ll give a sack of gold for every dead Jensen supporter!” he heard Cosgrove scream. “A sack of gold, men, do you hear me? A sack of gold.” The voice was slightly muffled, so Smoke figured Cosgrove was safely behind walls.

Boots sounded on the boardwalk and the entrance was suddenly filled with men from the Triangle JB.

“Is it a good day to die, boys?” Smoke threw out the question a second before he opened fire.

The booming of the .44s was enormous in the narrow space, and the alley became thick with gunsmoke. Smoke dropped to his belly and crawled under a building, leaving the Triangle JB men moaning and groaning on the ground. He inched his way toward the street, stopping just before he reached the high boardwalk in front of a saloon that he knew belonged to Fat Fosburn. Above him, the floor was heavy with pacing boots. He rolled over on his back and listened to the muffled talk.

“Goddamnit, there ain’t but seven or eight of them. What the hell are we waitin’ for?”

“I just caught me a glimpse of Kit,” another said. “Damn turncoat! I can’t figure what got into him.” The voice came from right above Smoke. He emptied one .44 into the floor above him, then swiftly rolled to his left, screams of anguish ripping from several men inside the saloon. Smoke was to the rear of the building and running up the littered way before the men in the saloon could gather their senses and start pouring lead into the floor.

He forced open the door to a barbershop, closing and locking it behind him, then ran to the front of the establishment. The door was bolted and the shades drawn halfway down. Kneeling down by the front and peeping out, Smoke quickly reloaded and caught his breath.

By now, all those backing him up would be in town and ready to force the hands of the Big Three. Smoke and Van Horn had cut the odds down some, but those supporting Jenny were still badly outnumbered . . . by how much was something none of them with Smoke knew.

Smoke had inflicted some damage by shooting through the floor back at the saloon. Maybe one or two men had caught lead. But so far, no class gun-hand had showed himself, and there were about a dozen or so of them still on the payroll of Fosburn, Cosgrove, and Biggers.

Back of Wong’s Chinese Cafe, Pasco came face to face with a slick who called himself the Lordsburg Kid. He’d killed a couple of Mexican sheepherders and raped one Mexican girl. The Kid thought he was hell on wheels with a gun.

“Damn greaser!” the Kid hissed at Pasco. “Anybody who’d work with sheep is scum.”

“Oh?” Pasco said easily. “My cousin, Carbone, used to herd sheep as a boy. I do not think you would say that to him. If he’s still alive, that is,” he added.

“You ain’t Carbone.”

“This is true. I am better than my cousin, amigo. Faster, and a much more accurate shot.”

‘You’re a damn greasy liar!”

Pasco drove the Kid’s center shirt button all the way out his backbone with one slug. The Kid never even cleared leather. Pasco stood over the body and shook his head. “You should have learned some manners from your madre and padre, amigo. Now it is too late.”

He walked on.

“Jenkins!” Van Horn called to a particularly vicious gunhand he remembered had said some terrible things about Miss Jenny.

Jenkins turned and grinned at Van Horn, his teeth yellow and rotted. “Why, you damned old wrinkled-up worthless coot! I doubt you even got the strength to pull them wore out old Remingtons from leather. Will them things still fire?”

“Why don’t you try me and see, Jenkins?” Jenkins laughed at him and grabbed for iron. Van Horn shot him twice in the belly and left him dying in the alley. “Some folks nowadays just ain’t got no respect for their elders and betters,” Van Horn grumbled. “No tellin’ what it’ll be like a hundred years from now.”

Wolf Parcell clamped a gnarled old hand on the neck of a Biggers’ rider and drove his head against the outside wall of a building. Several times. On the fourth try, the gunhand’s head drove clear through the wood and Wolf left him dangling there by the neck, the toes of his boots dragging the ground.

“Either that was rotten wood or that boy’s shore got a hard head,” Wolf muttered.

Bad Dog just couldn’t resist it. He had spotted a man on the roof of a hardware and guns store and quietly notched an arrow. The man finally presented him with the target he wanted, and Bad Dog let the arrow fly. It embedded about six inches into the left cheeks of the man’s big ass. The gunslick dropped his rifle and went to bellerin’ loud enough to wake the dead. A man ran out the back of Darlin’ Lill’s Saloon, both hands filled with guns, and Bad Dog gave him a Cheyenne present. The man dropped silently, an arrow through the heart.

The gunhand on the roof was trying to climb down, hollering and squalling each time he moved his left leg. Bad Dog put an arrow into his right leg and the man fell off the ladder to land hard in the alley. He did not move.

Slim Waters stepped into the rear of the Cards and Wheels Club, both hands filled with guns. He toed open the door leading from the main room to the storage area and stepped inside.

“This here’s for Miss Jenny, boys,” he announced, and started shooting.

Kit Silver stood facing five men, the class gun-slick Val Davis among them.

“You’re a fool, Kit,” Val told him.

“Maybe,” Kit replied. “But you’re dead.” Kit smiled and grabbed iron.

Shady Bryant faced three top guns, his hands by his side. “Well, boys,” he told them, “I reckon this is my last hurrah. Let’s make it a good one.” Then he laughed, jerked his guns, and went to work, this time, on the right side.

Smoke heard the roaring reports of guns and knew it was root hog or die time. He smashed out the window of the barbershop — remembering that he must be sure to use some Big Three money to replace it —and yelled, “Here I am, boys. You want that sack full of gold, come get me!”

Smoke ran out the back of the shop and around the corner just as men ran out of buildings and sought cover where they could find it and started pumping lead into the barbershop.

Standing by the corner of a building, Smoke dropped two before the men realized he wasn’t in the barbershop and started throwing lead at him.

By that time, Smoke had crawled under a building and was working his way toward daylight on the other side of the establishment.

He paused to reload, shoved the Colts behind his belt, and pulled the sawed-off revolving shotgun from his shoulder. He checked the barrel for blockage. At short range, the ten-gauge was an awesome weapon. Smoke crawled out from under the building and looked at the backs of three men, Ned Harden and Haywood among the group —two of the more odious gunhandlers Smoke had ever had the misfortune to encounter. They would do anything, to anybody, at anytime. All that was about to stop — abruptly.

“You boys looking for me?” Smoke called, getting a good grip on the sawed-off, for its recoil could rip it from the grasp if a man wasn’t ready for it.

The trio spun around, eyes wide and mouths open. “Jesus God!” Harden yelled, spotting the cut-down revolving shotgun.

There was about fifteen feet between them. Smoke started pulling and cocking and blasting. It was a good ten feet from the corner of the alleyway to the mud and dirt of the street, and that’s where all three landed. Or what was left of them.

Smoke reloaded the hand cannon and listened for a few seconds. The shooting had stopped from inside the Cards and Wheels Club and from behind the apothecary shop. He had no way of knowing the outcome.

Kit Silver had taken five out with him. The gun-fighter sat with his back to a building, four slugs in him; but he was not dead yet. He smiled at Val Davis, who lay mortally wounded, looking at him. The others with him were dead.

“Why’d . . . you do it, Kit?” Val asked.

“Felt like it. Felt good, too. Sorry you’ll never get to know what it’s like to do something right for a change.”

“You’ve killed me!”

“Sure looks like it, don’t it?”

Val put his head on the ground and died.

Kit shook his head. “I hope I live long enough to die among better company than this,” he said.

The interior of the Cards and Wheels Club looked like a slaughterhouse when Pasco backtracked and entered the place. Slim was still alive, but just barely.

“I won’t lie to you, Slim,” Pasco said. “It’s bad.” “Yeah, I know. In the side pocket of my jacket. A napkin. Get it for me, will you?”

“A napkin?”

“Got . . . something wrapped up in it.”

Pasco opened the napkin. One of Jenny’s doughnuts. Slim held out his hand and grinned, the blood leaking from one corner of his mouth. He took a bite and chewed contentedly. “Mighty good, Pasco. Mighty good.” He swallowed, closed his eyes, and his head lolled to one side.

“Damn!” Pasco said.

Shady Bryant lay with his hands still gripping the butts of his guns. Three dead gunhands lay in front of him. A young man who called himself the Red River Kid and fancied himself a fast gun stood looking at the scene. He shook his head and took off his gunbelt, slinging it over one shoulder. He started walking toward where their horses were picketed. The farm back in East Texas looked real good to him right now.

“Is that you, Red River?” a man called, sitting on the ground, his back to the outside wall of a privy. Bullets had broken both his legs.

“Never heard of him,” the kid called over his shoulder, and kept right on walking. “My name’s Frank Sparks.”

“I’d a shot him yesterday,” the wounded gunfighter spoke to the slight breeze that wound around the buildings of Red Light. “But if I’d a done what he’s doin’ twenty years ago, I damn sure wouldn’t be in this fix now.” The wounded gunslick watched the young man walk across the meadow. “Good luck, kid,” he called weakly. “And to hell with this,” he muttered. He pulled his guns from leather and tossed them into the tall grass.