Showdown at Gun Hill (12 page)

“You want me to go . . . ?” Bowlinger said, suspicious to the core.

“Nothing to hold you here, Rudy,” said Anson. “Us either if everybody we wanted to kill had previous engagements for the evening.”

“Can I say something?” Ignacio asked in a humbled tone.

“Have at it, Iggy,” Bo said, “now that you've shown some manners. But if you were going to ask if you and Lyle can go traipsing off after Sheppard Stone, the answer is
no.
”

“Can we ask why?” said Lyle Cady.

“Because,
Cady brothers
,” said Anson in his mocking tone, “we came all this way to kill somebody. Least we can do is sack this stub of a town and light it up on our way out.”

“Whooiee!”
Mexican Charlie Summez shouted loudly. “Now you're talking.”

“What about this, Bo?” Bowlinger asked. He shook his shackled foot.

“Hold real still,” said Anson, drawing his big Colt and cocking it. “Boys, let's set ol' Rudy free.”

“Wait, Bo!” Rudy shouted. But he was too late. Rifle and pistol shots resounded. Outside, the darkened building flashed in the night like lightning. Townsmen heard the shooting and began grabbing guns of their own.

Bowlinger had covered his head with both forearms as dirt, splinters and ricochets rose and zipped all around him. When the firing stopped he looked, his ears ringing, and saw the chain had been severed from the wall, but he still remained shackled to the heavy anvil.

Anson and the men stared at the anvil for a moment. Anson shook his head in wonder.

“You might ought to just carry that around for a while, Rudy,” he said.

“And do
what
with it?” Bowlinger queried. “I can't even lift it the shape I'm in.”

Anson stepped forward and patted his good shoulder.

“But you
will
lift it, Rudy,” he said with feigned encouragement. “I just know you will.” He held the smoking Colt aimed loosely at Bowlinger's stomach. “Now pick it up. Get yourself on a horse.” He spoke slow and distinctly, like a man explaining the use of a spoon to an idiot. “And go tell Max what's happened here. Tell him I am now the man with the biggest stick”—he grinned—“or anything else for that matter.” He spat a stream and winked. “Now, don't let me look around and see you still standing here.”

Ten miles from Resting, Sheriff Deluna saw the glowing mantle of fire bellow up on the horizon only moments after hearing the barrage of heavy rifle and pistol shots split the night. As soon as she'd heard the gunfire, she stood up crouched from her buggy seat and slapped the reins to the team of horses. Now, as more gunfire echoed out from within the licking flames, she continued slapping the reins steadily but sparingly, knowing the horses were already giving her their all—
had been
giving it, galloping nonstop, the last three miles.

With over six miles left to go, she realized if she didn't slow the hard pace she would at the very least wear the horses out and render them useless. Or,
at the worst
, exhaustion could send one of the tired animals tumbling, snagging its hoof in a rut on the hard trail lying beneath the coating of loose desert sand. If one horse went down, like as not they both would, she warned herself. Ahead of her the shooting from the streets of Resting had died down. Whatever had happened there was now left to smolder in a bed of fire. She was still needed there. But the immediacy of
defending the town had passed. Now she was needed to bring order, to bring comfort, to settle her town in the aftermath of whatever terrible storm had struck it.

“Easy, now,” she said to the horses, slowing them with her reins taut until their pace fell to a safer, less exhausting level. She continued staring ahead at the wide strip of firelight glittering on what she knew by heart to be the length of Resting. On either side of the trail she noted both small and larger images in the purple darkness—creatures of the desert wilds. The poised images turned beady red eyes toward her as she rode past. Then their eyes turned back in the night toward the glow of fire that assaulted their domain. Black smoke rose like columns of raging apparitions, taking that same assault upward to the purple heavens.

As soon as her team of horses fell into a lighter gallop, she heard the sound of hooves pounding hard along the trail coming toward her. Instinctively she reined the horses down and swung the rig off the trail and out of sight into the darkness. At the same time she reached over and grabbed the rifle leaning against her buggy seat as the buggy rolled on. A mile out, she slid the buggy to a halt, tied off the reins quickly and jumped down. She took cover behind the rig and waited.

Her eyes searched the looming darkness until she saw the riders moving along the trail. They drew their horses to a halt at the place where the buggy wheels had cut off the trail out onto the flats. She held her breath. They saw the tracks. She was sure of it. She watched, barely able to make out the darker images of
men against the grainy starlight. The riders were black dots on a pale ribbon of sand that was the trail.

She looked all around. This was no place to stand off against a group of armed riders. She could put up a fight, but in the end the sheer volume of numbers and gunfire would win out. If they came for her, she would be dead staying here. She knew it. As she hurriedly considered her situation, she saw two of the black dots move off that ribbon of sand and come toward her. The others turned and rode on.

She crept away from the buggy, crouched, rifle in hand, knowing that an attempt to move the cross and worn-out horses would cause them to chuff and blow, maybe even whinny aloud. She couldn't have that. Better to leave them standing, she decided. Maybe the two riders would follow the buggy tracks only a short ways and turn back. She hoped so.

She moved as quietly as a ghost, out across the loose sand, through the sparse beginnings of a wide bed of cactus, over the low rise of a dune, praying not to be seen against the starlit sand.

Dropping down onto her stomach on the other side of the rise, she searched back and found the two black dots moving toward her. Had they spotted her boot prints? She didn't know; she wasn't waiting to find out. The others had ridden on. The odds were better now—two to one, she told herself. She cocked the rifle and watched and waited.

The two riders moved closer in silence until at length they heard a long bawling howl rise from the flatlands that drew their attention, Sheriff Deluna's as well.

“What the hell was that,
a wolf
?” said Lyle Cady.

“No,” said Ignacio. “That was no wolf like any I ever heard. It's not even a good imitation.” He jerked his horse around in the direction of the sound, just in time to hear it again. Lyle jerked his horse around beside him.

“That loco sheriff, Sheppard Stone?” he said.

“Sure it is,” said Ignacio. “Who else would be out here howling at the moon like a lunatic?” He gigged his horse. “Come on, Lyle. We've got the son of a bitch now!” he added, excited.

From atop the rising dune, Sheriff Deluna lay quiet, listening, barely making out their words. She stared down her rifle sights, her finger on the trigger. But the shot was too risky, she decided. One miss and the two would be charging her position—her without a horse, here on this barren dune. She lowered the rifle and watched the two black figures ride away toward the howling. She stared in that direction for a moment and decided the two were right. It was a terrible wolf imitation.

Damn him! What's he doing out here?
she asked herself, hearing a seemingly endless litany of drunken madness. Then she stood, dusted herself off and hurried down the loose, slippery dune. At least Sheriff Stone had drawn those two off her trail, she told herself, hurrying along. Instead of heading back to her buggy, she ran along the sand trail, her long gingham dress hiked up in one hand, her rifle in the other, following the two riders, keeping a safe distance back. The string on her sombrero loosened and let the big hat fly from her head, but she didn't go
back to retrieve it. She'd run almost a mile when she saw the shadowy figures stop their horses and step down from their saddles at a stand of rock that marked a water hole she was familiar with. She stopped for a moment, gasping for breath.

From the water hole came another bellowing howl that reminded her of the urgency and caused her to run on, getting closer now. When she stopped again she staggered to the stand of rock and hung there. The two horses stood only a few feet from her; she saw their curious eyes gleam in the moonlight. She watched the two riders approach the water hole on foot. She listened as they spoke.

“There's that drunken fool,” Ignacio Cady said, loud enough for her to hear him. She saw the sheriff squatting at the water's edge. Stone let out another howl, the sound of gunfire and the sight of the town burning on the horizon having stirred him from a drunken stupor only moments earlier. Now he sat staring bleary-eyed, trying to gather his senses. Three empty bottles lay in the rocky dirt beside him. He was naked save for a loincloth, his gun belt, one boot and a flop hat that he'd never seen before.

What in God's name are you doing here?
he managed to ask himself through a drunken swirl. He saw the two gunmen walking toward him, one limping. In his unsteady vision they pitched back and forth as if standing on a swaying boat floating toward him.

“There you are, you son of a bitch,” said Ignacio, the one walking with the limp; they stopped swaying a little and stood twenty feet away.

“The Cadys . . . ?” Stone managed to ask in a slurred, drunken voice.

“As you live and breathe, it's us,” Ignacio confirmed. He leveled his Colt out at arm's length, aimed directly at the drunken sheriff. “You thought you'd seen the last of us, but you were wrong.”

Seeing the gun pointed at him, Stone growled and bared his teeth in the shadowy moonlight. The Cadys glanced at each other and chuffed. Lyle chuckled under his breath.

“He's gone crazy as a blind bell ringer,” he said.

Blind bell ringer?

Ignacio looked his brother up and down curiously. Then he looked back at Stone.

“I'm not wasting any time on you, Sheriff,” he said, “and that two-bit Ranger ain't around swinging his rifle butt.” He stepped forward, bolder now, his voice raised in anger. “Where is Edsel Centrila's money, you chiseling crawfish?”

“I got it . . . put up,” Stone said in a drunken voice, swaying on his haunches. “You can't . . . have it.”

“You shouldn't take money given in good faith to bribe a judge, and not do what you was told with it,” Lyle said, stepping forward beside his brother. “Where
is it
?” he demanded.

Hand on his gun butt, Stone howled long and loud in the night.

Both brothers were taken aback, but only for a moment.

“Oh yeah,” Lyle said with a dark, quiet laugh, “he's as nuts as a monkey, this one.”

Ignacio stared steadily at Stone as he replied to Lyle, “When he yanks that Colt, try not to kill him. I want to cut on him for a while, find out where that bribe money is. Don't forget it's
our money
now—to hell with Centrila.”

Lyle said, “I ain't forgot—” He cut his words short as Sheriff Stone's Colt came up from his holster fast, awfully fast for a drunk.

The Cadys fired as one as the sheriff fell over onto his side and blue-orange fire streaked at them from his gun barrel. In the dark their shots went wild; so did Stone's. But one of his bullets managed to stab Ignacio hard in his upper left arm. The hot lead shattered bone and left a large bloody exit wound. Ignacio yelped, yet he continued firing without leaving his feet.

Even as the Cadys fired repeatedly, they heard a woman's voice call out behind them and the pounding of their horses' hooves coming directly for them.

“Yiiii!”
shouted Sheriff Deluna, charging forward atop one horse, leading the other close beside her.

“What the—?” shouted Lyle, the horse coming so fast that he had to leave his words unfinished and hurl himself out of the animal's path.

“Look
out
!” Ignacio shouted, launching himself away in the opposite direction. He landed on his wounded left arm and let out a scream of pain. His Colt went off in his right hand, but the shot streaked upward into the air like fireworks. At the water's edge he heard Stone let out another howl.

“Die, you crazy bastard!” Ignacio cried out. He tried to raise his gun for another shot at the shadowy figures. Before he could get a round off, he had to roll away to keep from being trampled by the horses that came running through again. This time one of the horses carried both Sheriff Deluna and Sheriff Stone on its back. Stone, almost naked, sat holding on behind the woman sheriff, his head tilted back, bobbing limply, howling straight up at the dark purple sky.

*   *   *

When Sheriff Deluna reached the place where she'd left her buggy, she set the two tired buggy horses free on the sand flats and rode on. She didn't bring the Cady brothers' horses to a halt again until she'd reached the main trail. Then she only stopped long enough to drag the drunken sheriff down from behind her saddle and shove him atop the other horse—Stone howling mindlessly all the while. A dull throb had lodged itself in her head from the sheriff's loud piercing voice so close to her ear.

“You've got to shut up, Stone,” she pleaded as she tried to right the limp, wobbling sheriff in the saddle. “Those two heard your voice. So can anybody else.” As she spoke, she noted that once atop he was the horse, some inborn sense of horsemanship seemed to stabilize him a little. He sat upright and shook his head.

“I—I will, Sheriff,” he said in a blurred tone. “I didn't mean to . . . cause you trouble—” His words ended in an attempted howl that curled up out of his chest. He stopped the sound before it gained its full volume. He
clamped a hand over his mouth as if stifling a belch. “Sorry,” he said.

Sheriff Deluna shook her head and turned away; she stepped back to the other horse. She raised a foot to the stirrup, rifle in hand, and had started to swing up into the saddle when she froze, hearing the sound of a rifle cock in the darkness. Looking around slowly, she saw four gunmen rise from sagebrush and stone only a few feet off the trail. They held rifles aimed and cocked toward the two sheriffs.

“Uh-uh-uh,”
said Bo Anson, stopping her from lowering her boot from the stirrup, her long dress hiked up over her knee. “Stay just like you are there,” he added, walking forward. When he stood a foot from her he took the rifle from her hand and stepped back. “Do I need to search you for additional firearms? Tell the truth, I don't mind at all.”

“That's my only gun,” Sheriff Deluna said quietly, ignoring the question of him searching her.

“Go on, search her, Bo. . . . Search her good!” said the excited voice of one of the riflemen.

“Easy, Ape,” Anson warned over his shoulder. “I've got this covered.” He looked up at Stone, then back at Deluna. “You're right. We could hear
Mr. Wolf
there all the way back at that water hole. Although I have to say, I've heard preachers pass gas that sound more like a wolf howling than he did. You should have knocked the damn fool in the head first—pardon my language.” He reached up and took Stone's Colt from his holster. Stone swayed and only stared blank-faced.