Pete's face caved in just above the bridge of his nose. Blood spurted from the hole. The back of his skull flew off like a fragment of pottery and John could see the rosy spray, like a mist, burst from his head. The rifle dropped from his hands and clattered on stone, rustled the branches of the tree next to him. Pete's legs folded up and he crumpled, falling backward as his body twisted awkwardly, all mental control gone. He sprawled there, his body twisted, a lifeless heap.
John heard the bark of the Henry, then saw the claybank stagger before its forelegs folded up and his head dipped. A flower of blood blossomed on the horse's chest, a single jet spurting out as the bullet smashed muscle, severed an artery. The horse went down with a crash and the other two outlaws swung their rifles, seeking targets.
John jumped down from the rimrock and ran toward the knoll. He jacked another shell into the firing chamber, then carried the rifle in his left hand.
Ben emerged from cover and rode down Gent's path, his reins looped around the saddle horn, his rifle scanning back and forth with its snout until it barked again.
Mort saw John running toward him. He turned and swung his rifle in a short arc. He fired, and the bullet whined off a rock, several yards from John.
Dick turned and grabbed up the reins of Pete's horse just as his own horse went down, a bullet in its neck.
Mort shouted at Dick.
“Don't leave me,” Anders said, as John closed the distance.
“Look out,” Tanner yelled.
Mort spun around to look at John. Ben was riding toward them now, too, Dynamite at a lope.
Tanner seemed frozen where he stood, holding the reins of Pete's horse, his own horse lying on the ground, its legs jerking in the final spasms of death.
Both men stared at Savage as he drew his pistol, the pistol Pete had told them about. They saw the flash of its silver and the blue-black sheen of its bluing. They saw, too, the look on Savage's face.
“You're him,” Mort said, and clawed for his own pistol as he let the Spencer repeater drop onto a tree branch.
John saw the look on Mort's face and then that same face flashed through his mind, the same face he had seen on the man who shot down Lee at close range, a quirky smile of savagery on his lips. The pasty skin beneath his beard as he rode down on Lee and blew his face away with that same pistol now leaping into his hand.
Tanner stared at John, at that silver-inlaid Colt, and turned quickly, grabbing the saddle horn of Pete's horse and hauling himself onto the saddle. He spurred the horse just as Ben fired again. But the bullet sizzled harmlessly over Tanner's head as Dick wheeled the horse and charged down from the knoll. He rode away, using the hillock for cover, his heart in his throat as he waited for a pistol to fire. Either Mort's or the kid's. He wondered if he would be able to tell the difference.
Ben cursed as he saw Tanner ride away, the hillock blocking most of his view. He saw only a bobbing black hat and a horse's rump.
John went into a fighting crouch as he thumbed back the hammer of his Colt.
Mort's pistol barrel was just clearing leather when John fired. He was no more than fifteen yards from Anders. He felt the pistol jump as the .45 cartridge exploded. Felt the pressure against the heel of his palm. But he held tight and the pistol stayed level as fire belched from its throat.
The bullet smashed into Mort's abdomen, just below the ribcage. He buckled and bent over slightly from the impact, from the terrible burn of pain as the bullet coursed through his innards, ripping through his stomach and tearing a chunk of intestine to shreds before it lodged in a muscle near his spine, flattened lead like the jagged head of a mushroom.
“Ah.” Mort sighed, and sank to his knees. His fingers went slack and his pistol hit the rocky ground with a dull thunk. He grabbed his stomach and bright, fresh blood painted his fingers and wrists.
John closed the gap between him and Mort. Smoke seeped from the barrel of his pistol as he thumbed back the hammer, spinning the cylinder onto a fresh centerfire round. He looked into Mort's eyes as the man sank down on his legs. His eyes burned a final brightness as tears welled up in them and spilled onto his cheeks.
Mort's eyes turned to glass.
He opened his mouth to say something, but the only sound that came out was a low groan.
Ben rode up, saw that Tanner had left the plain and was no longer in sight.
“He's done for, Johnny,” Ben said quietly.
“He's got him a minute to think about why he's dying like this.”
Mort's eyes flickered with a final light.
“Torture,” he rasped. “You . . .”
John bent down, holding the barrel of his pistol to Mort's throat.
“Hell's waiting for you, Mort, and I'm in no hurry. Take all the time you want.”
“Jesus,” Ben said, and turned away. The look on John's face was almost rapturous, unnatural, an alarming sight to see.
Mort gurgled in his throat. His eyes fluttered for a moment as he gasped for one last breath.
It didn't come. A frost seeped over his eyes. They went dull as pewter as if a shadow had stolen the light. He voided himself as he sank down, every useless muscle relaxed in death. The stench rose to John's nostrils and he backed away, stood up straight.
“Can't you just kill 'em clean, Johnny?” Ben said, his voice just above a whisper.
“Go catch up Gent, Ben. Maybe we can catch that Dick feller who got away.”
“Yeah, anything to get away from this place.”
John looked at Mort's face one last time. He looked at his own hands. They were steady. He worked a bullet from his cartridge belt, put the pistol on half cock and turned the cylinder and opened the gate. He stopped where the cap was dented, worked the rod to eject the shell, then slid in the fresh cartridge. He looked once more at the bloody face of Pete, a feeling of revulsion rising up in him. Not revulsion at what he had done, but at what Pete and the others had done. Those despicable acts of murder. It wasn't enough that these two were dead. The worst of the murderous bunch were still alive. Their faces burned into his mind. He walked down off the mound, heading toward Ben, who had Gent's reins in his hand and was turning Dynamite around to head back to pick him up. He holstered his pistol and slung his rifle over his shoulder.
“Three down,” he said. “Five to go.”
And those five, the hardest, he knew. Dick would tell them what had happened here and they would be warned. They would be waiting for him and Ben. They would have to look at every stranger harder than before. They would jump at every squeak of a door opening. They would reach for their pistols at every shadow. They would sleep with one eye open.
As Ben approached, leading Gent, John looked up at the blue sky, at the distant range of mountains. None of it seemed real to him at that moment. It was just too peaceful and he still had the smell of burnt powder in his nostrils. And, still there, the scent of blood and death.
And the faces of the killers, those now dead, and those still alive.
Those still waiting for him. Looking over their shoulders. Watching for what surely was to come.
Death. Justice.
16
JOHN CUPPED HIS HANDS TO HIS MOUTH, FACED EAST WHERE Dick Tanner had escaped, and shouted at the top of his lungs: “I'm John Savage, Dick. I'm John Savage, Dick. Tell Ollie I'm coming.” His voice echoed off the rimrock and traveled in a half circle, bouncing off rocks and stone bluffs until it faded away in the distance.
“Reckon he heard you?” Ben said with dry sarcasm.
“I don't know. Maybe.”
“If I was you, I wouldn't advertise where I was goin'.”
“I want Ollie and the others to know I'm coming to kill them.”
“That's a mighty bold ambition, Johnny. And maybe dumb, too. That Ollie will be on the lookout for you if that man Dick heard your name and got your message.”
John slipped his Winchester back in its scabbard. He reloaded his pistol, spun the cylinder. He set the cylinder so that the hammer was in between two cartridges, set the hammer at half cock, and slipped the Colt back in his holster. He climbed up on Gent's back and looked Ben square in the eyes.
“Ben, any time you want to go back to camp and blow holes in the mountain, you just ride on back.”
“You want me to go?”
“That's your call, Ben.”
“No, I want to know what you want. If you think I'm in the way, or hinderin' you, just let me know. I can find my way back to my mine.”
“I welcome your company, Ben. I don't welcome your criticism about what I do.”
“Seems like when a man's got somethin' to hide, every word spoke to him is a mite like criticism, Johnny.”
“I got nothin' to hide,” John said quickly. Too quickly.
“Didn't say you did, son. But if I call you on some things, it's 'cause I mean you well. Ain't criticism. Just observation, maybe.”
“You got any other observations, Ben?”
“Just this, John Savage. You're mighty fast with that six-gun. I thought that feller Mort had you beat. I've seen some fast draws in my time, but yours beats all.”
“You're observing this, or criticizing it?”
“You don't watch it, Johnny, you're liable to get a reputation.”
The two began to ride away from the knoll. They followed Tanner's tracks, then veered back to the original trail they had been following. Both men took out their rifles and rested them on the pommels of their saddles. They spoke in low tones so they could hear any alien sound.
“A reputation? What's that mean?”
“It means, if word gets around that you're faster on the draw than anybody else, every young gunslinger within earshot is going to come after you.”
“Why?”
“Because that's how the hotheads get their reputations. And they want reputations, them young slicks. Oh, how they want reputations.”
“That's stupid.”
“Stupid or not, that's the way things is, Johnny. Heed my words.”
Hunger gnawed at John's stomach. He reached back and felt through his saddlebag for something to chew on, hardtack, jerky, whatever his fingers could find. He found a strip of jerky, put it in his mouth. The juices started flowing.
“Want some, Ben?”
“Naw, my belly's a little squirrelly after seeing that Pete's head blow apart from a .44/40 chunk of lead.”
“He's the one you missed.”
“I didn't miss him. I just didn't hit him real square the first time. Did you see his arm? His sleeve?”
“No. I was looking at what was left of his ugly face.”
“I put a bullet burn on him, and the side of his face that wasn't ruint by your bullet had marks on it.”
“Marks?”
“Ever bark a squirrel?”
“No, but I heard about men doing that down in Arkansas. They shoot right next to a squirrel's head, right at the bark. The bark hits 'em in the head and kills 'em without leaving a mark. So they say.”
“Well, it's true. And that's what I done to that Pete feller. Barked him like a damned squirrel. Whoo, I bet that stung him some.”
John chuckled.
“So, Pete was really living on borrowed time. If he hadn't run off up there, you'd have dropped him for sure.”
“Hard to shoot a man in the back. If he was runnin' off, I might have let him go.”
“You ain't serious, Ben.”
“No? Maybe I am. I guess I ain't got the stomach for such. A man comes at me with a loaded gun, that's something different.”
“Even a man like Pete? You saw what he done up there to our friends and kin.”
Ben sighed.
“I reckon I look at things different,” he said. “I figger a man pays for what he does somewhere down the road. Ain't up to me to be judge, jury, and hangman.”
A young bull elk bugled off in the distance, far up in the pines. It was so faint, John barely heard it, and for several seconds afterward, he wondered if he had heard it at all. Elk usually didn't come down this low in the summertime, and it was early for the young bulls to be calling. They weren't even in the velvet yet.
The tracks they were following were plain. The wet ground had let the hooves sink in deeper, and there were clumps of mud thrown off by their passing. But the ground was drying out fast, with the sun and the breeze, and they were in the foothills, the far ranges just pale blue outlines jagged against the sky, and the high peaks were losing their luster, the white peaks not shining so bright as they moved toward the plain.
They found the place where Dick joined the trail behind Ollie and the others. John pointed to the sign.
“That Dick feller's in a powerful hurry,” Ben said. “He come in here at a gallop.”
“And still galloping, from the looks of the tracks.”
“Ollie and them others are just keepin' up a steady pace, looks like.”
“We'll see how fast they run when Dick catches up to them.”
An hour later, John and Ben were descending onto another flat, a small valley ringed by low hills. The scents were different here, a hint of cactus flowers and sage woven in the breeze, the musty aroma of sand, pungent as wormwood or candlewax. The high peaks receded into the background, lofty above the lower range, a dull lavender in the afternoon haze, unreachable as stars.
“Looks like they stopped here for a smoke or a palaver,” Ben said, pointing to the moil of tracks, the brown remnants of burnt quirlys, the pocked dirt where some had taken a piss, including the horses. And fresh horse apples littered the ground, their acrid fumes still rising in wisps of steam.