Gut-Shot (14 page)

The sun had lowered a little and Sam Flintlock's shadow walked in step beside him like a black dwarf as they crossed the street. Heat lay on Open Sky like an anvil. The matrons would not come out to shop until early evening, the sporting crowd a couple of hours later. The boardwalks were deserted and the air smelled of dust and horse manure.

Flintlock, to appear less threatening, had left his Winchester in his room and carried only the Colt tucked into his waistband, the walnut handle high and handy. Paying a social call on Beau Hunt always called for a measure of caution.

The doors of the Rocking Horse were pinned open in the forlorn hope of catching an errant breeze and Nancy Pocket stood outside nursing a beer and a black eye.

Flintlock touched his hat and said, “Ma'am,” as he stepped through the door and Nancy said, “You went to West Point, huh?”

Smiling at the woman's jibe, Flintlock stepped into the saloon.

The crowd had thinned some, but there were still a couple of dozen men and a few women in the saloon. They watched Beau Hunt or watched one another watching Beau Hunt.

“Well, Sam Flintlock as ever was.”

The man's voice came from a far corner to Flintlock's right.

“Howdy, Beau,” he said.

The draw fighter sat with his back to the corner as was his habit, a hand of solitaire spread out in front of him on the table.

“Still on the buttermilk, I see,” Flintlock said.

Hunt picked up the milk jug—with his left hand, Flintlock noted—and said, “Care for some?”

“Never touch the stuff.”

Hunt, immaculately dressed, his chin shaven close and his magnificent mustache trimmed, ran a critical eye over Flintlock, from his battered hat to scuffed boots then lingered for a moment on his Colt. “Sam, you really must do something about your tailor,” he said.

“Hell, I bought these pants new a year ago,” Flintlock said. “Or maybe it was two.”

“Very commendable of you, Sam. A step in the right direction.”

Hunt smiled and turned the silver gambler's signet on the little finger of his left hand.

“But the buckskin shirt really must go and I won't even mention the hat and your choice of footwear. As for your cologne, well, you aren't wearing any, are you?”

“I'm not here to discuss my wardrobe and how I smell, Beau.”

“Oh, how disappointing. And I thought this was a social call.”

“It's more serious than that.”

“Oh dear.”

Hunt pushed a chair forward with a polished, elastic-sided boot.

“Then you'd better take a seat, Sam.”

Beau Hunt always carried an air of danger with him, as palpable as the expensive cologne he wore. At the moment his eyes were smiling, but they could change to ice in a moment. He carried a short-barreled Colt in a shoulder holster and he was almighty sudden with it.

Flintlock sat and Hunt said, “Drink?”

“Anything but buttermilk.”

“A beer then?”

“Sounds good.”

After Flintlock was served his beer and had a cigarette lit, Hunt said, “Will we talk about business or pleasure?”

“A bit of both, Beau.”

“Very mysterious, Sam. Talk away.”

Hunt had hazel eyes and now they looked very green, like the shallows of an icebound ocean. He never seemed to blink.

“A friend of mine was murdered yesterday, gut-shot, a Pinkerton by the name of—”

“Clifton Wraith.”

“You heard already?”

“It's the talk of the town, Sam. Where have you been?”

Flintlock lifted his beer glass, with his left hand, and his eyes met Hunt's over the rim.

“Did you kill him, Beau?”

That last was loud in the hushed saloon and now people craned forward, listening. Most expected a gunfight and a few already looked toward the door, planning their stampede when the lead started to fly.

“You don't think much of me, Sam, do you?” Hunt said.

“We're in the same kind of business.”

Hunt smiled. “Doesn't really answer my question though, does it?”

“No, I don't think you killed him. It's not your style. Cliff's fingernails were pulled out before he was gut-shot.”

“Then there's your answer. I didn't kill him.”

“Do you know who did?”

“Sam, I just got into town.”

“Of course.”

Hunt tasted his milk. “It's sour,” he said. “Do you think you soured my buttermilk, Sam?”

Flintlock smiled. “Probably. I have a habit of doing that to folks.”

“Then don't ever do it again.” Beau Hunt's voice sounded like a death knell.

“What? Sour your buttermilk?”

“No. I mean accuse me of murdering a man.”

Flintlock rose to his feet, his smile firmly in place. “Thank you for your time, Beau. I just wanted to clear that matter up.”

“We're not enemies,” Hunt said. “At least, up until now.”

“No, we're not enemies.”

“Then don't make me draw down on you, Sam. In other words, don't push me too hard.”

“I wouldn't like that.”

“If I have to, Sam, I will.”

“Why are you here, Beau? Can't you tell me for old times' sake?”

“We don't have any old times' sake, Sam.”

“I reckon not. In the past we've always stepped wide of each other.”

“Then let's keep it that way.”

Flintlock turned to walk away, but Hunt's voice stopped him.

“Sam, the game's afoot so let it play out to the end. Don't take a hand.”

“Clifton Wraith was a friend of mine, Beau. I'm not playing a game.”

“Then step careful, Sam.”

Flintlock nodded. He was no longer smiling.

“And you too, Beau. You too.”

 

 

Sam Flintlock recrossed the street to the hotel. Marshal Tom Lithgow waited for him in the lobby. “Well?” he said.

“Well, what?”

“Did you brace Beau Hunt?”

“I spoke to him. He bought me a beer.”

“What did he say?”

“He said he didn't kill Cliff Wraith.”

“Do you believe him?”

“Yeah, I believe him.”

“What did he say about me?”

“Nothing. I never mentioned your name.”

“What do I do now, Flintlock?”

“Stay the hell away from him.”

“What do I tell Mr. Tweddle?”

“Tell him his plan to have you killed didn't work.”

Flintlock stared into the lawman's concerned eyes. “Lithgow, deep down you've got sand. You've proved that in the past.”

“I don't go on the brag about it.”

“But you don't have enough sense to spit downwind.”

“I'm not catching your drift, Flintlock.” Lithgow looked peeved.

“Why did Tweddle want you to arrest Beau Hunt?”

“You know why. Because of Wraith's murder.”

“No. He wants you out of the way. He knew Hunt would kill you.”

“Maybe Mr. Tweddle has more confidence in my draw than you.”

Flintlock didn't hear that. Or pretended not to.

“I'm still trying to figure out Tweddle's angle and I plan to study on it some. In the meantime, as I said already, stay the hell away from Beau Hunt. You're way out of your class.”

When Steve McCord reckoned he was a good twenty miles south of the ranch house, among the western foothills of Blue Mountain, he drew rein and pondered his situation.

Not that he had much to ponder. The stark fact was that he'd been thrown off his inheritance and forced like scarred Cain to wander the earth.

Steve McCord's smile was bitter. No, he wasn't bound for the land of Nod, but Laredo, Texas . . . six hundred miles away and east of nowhere.

His father hadn't even come to see him off. Frisco Maddox had done the dirty work.

“Cousin Judd will see you all right, Steve. Make a man of you.”

“Suppose I don't want to go?”

“Your pa wants you off the ranch, boy. You got no choice.”

“I didn't think he hated me that much.”

“He doesn't hate you, Steve. You're just a disappointment to him.”

“And when I come back?”

“We'll see. Things may be better then.”

“He wants to get married, have another son.”

“I don't know about that. Keep my letter of introduction safe, Steve. Cousin Judd will see you all right.”

“You told me that already.”

“Then there's nothing else to be said. Ride easy, pardner.”

Frisco Maddox had slapped the rump of his horse . . . and that had been that.

Steve McCord stared at the blue sky through the canopy of the pines, smiling.

He wasn't about to wander anywhere. This far and no farther.

All at once he was hungry for breakfast. His pa had wanted him off his land so badly that Maddox had stuffed a stale biscuit into his mouth, given him a wallet with two hundred dollars, then shoved him toward his horse.

Three, maybe four years of exile, the big foreman had said.

But Steve knew his pa meant forever.

 

 

He rode deeper into the pines, leading a mouse-colored packhorse, and up a gradual rise where dark green ferns grew in abundance. As Steve followed a wisp of game trail the land leveled again, forested with a mix of pine and oak, and noisy birds flew in and out of the branches. Deer and bear signs lay everywhere and once he caught a glimpse of a cougar as it glided through the trees like an amber flame.

A break in the trees promised a camping spot and the young man had seen a rock pool just a short ways back where birds came to drink.

He swung out of the saddle and searched through the pack, where he found a slab of bacon, a loaf of sourdough bread, coffee and a small sack of sugar. In addition there was a coffeepot and frying pan.

There was plenty of dry wood around and when he had a fire going Steve took the coffeepot and headed back to the rock pool. The surface of the water was streaked with strands of green algae. Those he brushed aside with the back of his hand before he filled the pot.

When he returned a man kneeled by his fire, slicing bacon into the frying pan. A skinny yellow mustang with a blanket thrown over its ridged backbone grazed nearby.

When the man saw Steve McCord he rose to his feet, grinned with bad teeth and said, “Howdy.”

“You're making mighty free with my grub,” Steve said.

“Figured your camp was abandoned, young feller.”

“You figured wrong.”

The man by the fire was a dusty, uncurried brute with greasy yellow hair that lay thick and tangled on his shoulders. His beard fell over his chest and his black eyes were alert and cunning. He was dressed in stained buckskins and cavalry boots and a worn Smith & Wesson Schofield in a cross-draw holster lay handy on the front of his left hip.

“Well, see, sonny, you abandoned your camp and I'm taking it over, like,” the man said. “No hard feelings, huh? Fair is fair.”

Steve McCord had a Colt with a pearl handle on his hip, as was his preference. Frisco Maddox had done his best to teach him the draw and shoot with the revolver but up until then he didn't know if he'd learned anything.

“Get on your horse and ride out of here,” Steve said.

“Hell, I'm a grown man, sonny, and you're a boy. Boys don't give orders to grown men.”

“You're trash and a thief. Now ride out.” Suddenly the man in buckskins looked like a tourist seeing one of the Seven Wonders of the World for the first time. He was so taken astonished he couldn't speak for a moment.

When he could, he said, “Why, you young whelp, I ought to take a stick to you.” But he said it grinning.

Steve McCord was not amused nor would not be intimidated.

“Take my bacon off the fire and get the hell out of here,” he said. “I won't tell you again.”

“How old are you, kid?”

“Twenty.”

“Damn it, boy, you're just a younker but you've got sand.”

“Take the bacon off the fire.”

“Sure, sure. Then we can share it and I'll be on my way.”

The man kneeled again, grabbed the handle of the fry pan and jerked his hand away. “Jeez, it's hot, hot, hot!” he yelled, shaking the fingers of his right hand.

It was a fatal mistake.

Steve McCord drew and fired.

 

 

The bullet crashed into the man's side two inches under his left armpit and knocked him onto his side. He staggered to his feet and stood bent over, feeling for the wound.

Steve's second round clipped off the man's middle finger and plowed into his chest. He fell over and this time made no attempt to get up.

“Yee-hah!” Steve hollered, his boots pounding the ground in an odd little jig. “I done you for sure.”

Grinning, he hopped and danced his way to the fire, his face split in a wild grin.

He moved the pan off the fire with the toe of his boot and holstered his Colt. With the point of his Barlow knife he speared a strip of bacon and shoved it into his mouth.

Talking around a mouthful of hot grease, he nudged the prone man with his boot and said, “You dead yet?”

To Steve's surprise the man had life enough left in him to raise his head. “You had no call to shoot me,” he said. “I was only hungry and I meant you no harm.”

“Mmm, good bacon,” Steve said. Then, “You would've shot me.”

“Sonny, I never shot at another human being in my life.”

“Then why do you carry a gunfighting revolver, huh?” He kicked the man's shattered ribs a few times. “Huh? Huh?”

“I . . . stole . . . it.”

“Well, don't that beat all,” Steve said. “Me mistaking you for a gun and you just a grub line tramp.”

The man said nothing as he battled pain.

“Well, I got to eat breakfast and then be on my way,” Steve said. “Busy, busy you know.”

He drew his revolver and smiled. “Slow in the belly or fast in the head? Call it.”

Grimacing, hurting bad, the man said nothing. “Ah, I see. Well, now you're boring me,” Steve said, his smile gone. He shot the man in the temple.

 

 

As he ate a bacon-and-bread sandwich and enjoyed the tree-shaded sunlight, Steve McCord contemplated the stillness of the dead man. He didn't twitch or make a sound, just lay there all crumpled up like a puppet that just had its strings cut.

Steve lay back on his elbows then reached out and toed the dead man's bloody chest.

Nothing. Only . . . deadness.

The young man sighed and lay on his back, his clasped hands under his head. It was, he considered, amazing what a couple of ounces of well-aimed lead could do to a man.

And it was a thing to remember.

Fringed by tree branches, the sky was blue but Steve much preferred a thunder sky, especially during the mad days of March when the wind drove off the Great Plains with the sound of locomotives and gray and black thunderheads towered upward like titanic boulders.

Ah, such a noble sky, one where the demon gods disported themselves. Steve smiled, well satisfied with himself. Indeed he had the soul of a true artist, but now he was much more. He was a warrior poet! A battle bard! A troubadour!

Jumping to his feet, he pumped a fist at the sky.

He'd finally proven himself a man, a status his father had long denied him. The evidence lay soundless and still at Steve's feet. The man had been armed and he'd outdrawn and killed him.

He wanted to shout to the world that Steve McCord was a man to be reckoned with, a draw fighter like Hardin, Longley and even the great Hickok himself.

Ah, but it was a fine feeling to be young and tough with fast hands and hellfire in the belly. Another couple of kills and no man would dare try to cut him down to size.

Hell, his father would welcome home his famous son with open arms.

And that would be his big mistake . . . because the next time they met Steve McCord would have a gun in his hand.