Webb's Posse (17 page)

From the room beyond the window, Frieze screamed, “Take your hands off me!”

Teasdale raised his voice and said, “He's just one more reason I want to see the Peltry Gang dead! The longer these killers go free, the more decent people are going to suffer!”

The soldiers and possemen nodded in agreement. “I can see where it's to all of our advantage to ride together, Sergeant,” said Will Summers. “But I better tell you right now that I have a deal with the town of Rileyville and these men here. We're sharing the bounty money on the Peltry Gang.”

“That's strictly between you gentlemen,” said Teasdale. “I'm military through and through. I'm going after them for the murdering animals they are. Whatever you people make, you're welcome to it.”

Crouched in the dirt beside Hargrove, Doyle Benson
said to him in a whisper, “How much money do you think they're talking about?”

“Makes no difference,” said Hargrove. “You heard the sergeant. We'll not see a dollar of it.” He grinned mockingly. “We're military through and through.”

At the hitch rail, Sergeant Teasdale asked Will Summers and Abner Webb, “Which one of you is in charge?”

“I suppose you might say we both are equally, Sergeant,” said Will Summers. “The deputy here is officially in charge on behalf of Rileyville, but I'm more familiar with the country twixt here and the border.”

“I don't want to sound like my being a soldier gives me any longer spurs than either of you,” said Teasdale, “but I also know the desert, and I have Campbell Hayes here to show us around in Mexico.”

“So you think you should be in charge?” Webb asked bluntly.

Teasdale looked a bit embarrassed. “Not if the three of us can work together. But I'd like to think my word carries at least as much authority as either of yours,” he said.

“And so it will,” said Summers. “Only fools turn down good advice. Speak your piece at any time, Sergeant Teasdale. We're all after the same thing: bringing down the Peltrys.”

In the desert settlement of Diablo Espinazo, only a day's ride from the Mexican border, a small band of Mexican and American goatherders kept their distance from the Peltrys and offered no resistance as the gang helped itself to their meager food and precious wellwater. In the scorching heat of the day, one of the outlaws stood shirtless and glistening with
sweat as he turned a slaughtered goat above a licking mesquite fire. The goatherders stared at the gun wagon through caged eyes as Goose Peltry cursed and raged at his men.

“Then what good is this rotten, no-shooting sonsabitch?” Goose shrieked, out of control, standing in the gun wagon with Thurman Anderson and Roscoe Moore. He kicked the Gatling gun stand. Then he kicked the ammunition crates stacked beside it. Then he kicked the wagon's sideboard. He spun around toward Thurman and Roscoe. They jumped back with fear in their eyes. “Make the damn thing work! I'm sick of owning a machine rifle, hauling it all over hell and not being able to get it to fire a shot?!” He kicked wildly at the big cylinder of rifle barrels, missed it and fell backward onto the wagon bed in a puff of dust.

Standing on the ground watching, both hands clutched around his long beard, Moses Peltry shook his head in disgust at his brother's insane antics. “Get down here, Goose!” he shouted. “Before you break your idiot neck.”

Goose stumbled to his feet, slapping at Thurman and Roscoe, who had reached out to help him stand. “I want this gun fixed and firing! I don't want no more excuses!” He narrowed a hard stare at Thurman Anderson. “You had it working earlier…. How did you do it?”

“It only fired a few shots. Then the blasted thing jammed again,” said Thurman in a nervous voice. “I held this switch here up while Roscoe turned the crank. Soon as I turned the switch loose, it got stuck again. I've worked on every kind of weapon there is. But this piece of junk has got me and Roscoe both stumped.” He looked at Roscoe Moore for support.

“It's the truth, Goose,” said Roscoe. “Seems like
this gun's got a mind all its own. We've tried.” He shrugged.

“Then try again, damn it to hell!” Goose lunged forward, shouting in his face. Roscoe and Thurman stepped backward out of the blast of Goose's rage.

“Goose, get down here,” Moses demanded again, his poise the same but his hands clutching tighter around his long beard. “If we can't get it to work right, we'll have to abandon it. A gun that won't shoot is no better than a woman who won't cook. Let Thurman and Roscoe work on that blasted thing. You've never been worth a tinker's damn with machinery.”

But Goose ignored his brother and shoved Thurman and Roscoe out of his way. “Let me get my hands on this damn thing!” He reached down, wrapped his arms around the big gun and jerked it into the air, tripod and all. Staggering in place under the heavy weight, Goose yelled, “Roscoe, hold the switch up. Thurman, start turning the crank! We'll get her barking!”

“Goose! Put it down!” shouted Moses Peltry. “This is getting out of hand.” He turned loose of his beard and hurried forward toward the gun wagon.

“Oh shit,” said Monk Dupre, who'd been standing beside Moses along with three other men. All four of them ducked away, each seeking cover for himself. Dupre raced for shelter behind the stone wall of the well in the center of the clearing. A small herd of bleating goats scurried in every direction as he charged through them.

“Thurman, for God sakes, don't turn that crank!” Moses pleaded. But he was too late; Thurman had already started. The sound of rapid gunfire drowned out Moses' words. The hard, steady recoil of the big gun caused Goose, Thurman and Roscoe to bounce
around in a circle, the sweep of bullets kicking up dirt across the clearing. Goose clung to the gun with all his might. The line of fire crawled up the side of an ancient adobe building, leaving fist-sized bullet holes in the hard earthen wall, shattering clay pots and water gourds that stood along a shelf beneath an overhanging canopy.

“Turn it loose, Thurman!” Moses Peltry bellowed, ready to duck beneath the gun wagon as the three men and their deadly gunfire came circling toward him. On the far side of the clearing, skinny chickens rose up, batting their wings and screaming shrilly. A cat had jumped atop a crumbling adobe ledge only to disappear in an explosion of fur. “You're killing every damn thing in sight!”

Thurman would not or could not stop turning the crank; but in all the jerking and bouncing back and forth, Roscoe's hand came off the switch he'd been holding up, and the gun stopped firing with a loud metallic clunk. Goose and Thurman fell in the wagon; Roscoe flipped over the side and landed in the dirt at Moses Peltry's feet. “God almighty!” Moses shouted.

“Get it off me!” Goose screamed from inside the wagon bed, the hot rifle barrels burning his chest.

“I ought to let you lie there and bake under it,” said Moses. He dragged Roscoe to his feet and shoved him away. Climbing up into the wagon, he looked down at Goose and Thurman as the two wallowed beneath the gun and its tripod. “Nobody touches this gun again unless I say so!” Moses shouted, pulling the gun from atop them. Moses yanked his brother to his feet. Goose tore open his shirt and rubbed the long red burns across his chest.

Moses Peltry and the rest of the men were so consumed with watching Goose fire the Gatling gun that none of them had noticed the seven scalp hunters
who'd slipped up alongside the clearing and now sat atop their horses twenty yards away, watching with stonelike expressions on their weathered faces. Their saddles were adorned with long black strands of hair, bits of human bones and other unsavory mementos of their profession. “What do you make of that, Doc?” asked a skinny little killer named Pip Magger.

The leader, Elvin “Doc” Murdock, wore a long riding duster, a wide-brimmed hat and high Spanish boots that came up to his knees. A long, sharply waxed mustache mantled his upper lip. He stared at Goose Peltry as he said quietly to Pip and the rest of the riders gathered around him, “I've always said the Peltrys' folks were too close kin to sleep in the same room.”

A slight chuckle rippled across the serious faces of the scalp hunters. Doc Murdock continued. “Moses can make you think he's not a complete lunatic if you're not paying attention. But that poor Goose…” He shook his head. “There's a mercy killing in the making. Somebody shoulda felled him the first time they found a possum under his pillow.”

More dry, muffled laughter rose and fell among Murdock's men. From the gun wagon, Moses Peltry caught a glimpse of the scalp hunters and growled under his breath at Goose, “Damn it, here's Murdock. See if you can act like you've got some sense—bad enough he had to ride in and witness something like this.”

“If he don't like it, he knows where he can go,” Goose grumbled in reply.

“That's real smart of you, Goose,” said Moses. “Bad as we need men to put this outfit ahead, you better show Doc Murdock some respect.” Stepping down from the gun wagon, Moses raised an acknowledging hand toward Murdock and his men.
“Howdy, Doc. Howdy, boys. Come on in. Step down and make yourselves to home.”

“Howdy, Devil. Sure we're not interrupting anything?” Doc Murdock asked coolly, nudging his horse forward, his men gathered close behind him. He looked all around at the shot-up adobe and the broken pottery as he stepped his horse over to the gun wagon. His eyes settled on the Gatling gun lying on its side. “I never like to interfere in a family discussion.”

“Never mind about us,” said Moses. “We've just been having a hard time with this blasted Gatling rifle.”

“No kidding?” Murdock sounded bored. He said over his shoulder to one of his men, “Spears, see what's wrong with this gun.”

“Sure thing, Doc,” said Mort Spears, jumping his horse forward and stepping down beside the gun wagon. He climbed up onto the wagon and stood to one side as Goose Peltry stepped past him and down, grumbling under his breath.

“Hope you haven't been waiting long for us, Devil,” said Doc Murdock to Moses Peltry.

“Nobody calls him
Devil
anymore,” Goose said grudgingly, “unless it's me or some close, longtime friend of ours.”

Ignoring Goose, Moses said to Murdock, “We ain't been here long, Doc. Have you given any more thought to throwing in with us? We've just had ourselves a hell of a run…all the way down from the Milk River. The only ones big enough to stop us is the Yankee army. They've pretty much got their hands full with the Lakota up along the Bozeman Trail. “We've got ourselves an open door from Mexico plumb up to the high Montana line, providing
we keep striking while the iron's hot. From now on, everything's going our way.”

“Then why do you need me and my boys?” Murdock grinned slyly. “Just need somebody to keep your Gatling gun repaired?”

Goose cut in. “Don't get cocky, Murdock. My brother just made you the best offer you ever had in your life. If you're too good to ride with us, we understand. The fact is, I never thought you was anything but—”

“Goose!” Moses barked, cutting him off. “Why don't you see if you can help Spears fix that damn Gatling gun?”

“He's wasting his time,” said Goose. “The only way to fix that gun is with some gunsmithing tools.”

“There—all done,” said Mort Spears, standing up from beside the Gatling gun and wiping his hands on a wadded-up bandanna.

“Like hell,” said Goose with a sneer, seeing Roscoe and Thurman raise the gun on its tripod and aim it out across the wide desert floor. “I wouldn't be afraid to stand right smack in front of it.”

A string of blasts resounded from the barrels as Spears leaned down behind the gun and turned the crank three full turns. Fifty yards away, a tall cactus toppled over on its side.

Doc Murdock spread a thin smile and nodded at Goose as he said to Moses Peltry, “Shame we didn't have time to take him up on his offer.”

“Get out of the way!” shouted Goose, his face swollen and red with rage. He jumped up onto the gun wagon, shoved Spears aside and grabbed the Gatling gun's crank. He tried turning it briskly, but the crank seized up and wouldn't budge. “Damn it to bloody hell!” he shrieked. “Why won't this sonsabitch work?”

“Spears, show him
again
how it's done,” said Murdock. “I'm afraid he must've missed it the first time.” He turned to Moses Peltry and said, just between the two of them, “If you ever decide to have that fool put to sleep, I'd be glad to do it for you free of charge.”

Moses stared at him with a mixed expression. “That's my brother you're talking about, Doc.”

“I know,” Murdock said flatly, his eyes searching Moses.

Moses dismissed the idea. “Are you throwing in with us or not, Murdock?”

“Sure.” Murdock shrugged, taking a quick glance around at the men, then turning his eyes back to Moses Peltry. “I wouldn't miss it for the world.”