Pecos said, “How should we play it? Wait till it’s a little darker, then come around from behind ’em?”
“Hell, no.” Slash pushed up onto his knees, tossed the empty bottle aside, and shucked his Colts. “You know what I always say—there ain’t no time like the present. Besides, I’m right lonely without my Yellowboy!”
“Wait—hold on!” Pecos said under his breath. “You’re drunk!”
“Maybe so, partner, but I—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Pecos said dreadfully. “You straighten up at the trigger.”
Grinning, Slash cocked his Colts.
“Wait for me, now!” Pecos stood, slid his shotgun around in front of him, checked to make sure both tubes were deadly. Snapping the Richards closed, he picked up his rifle and looked at Slash, who stood glaring, a muscle in his cheek twitching, toward Billy Pinto.
Pinto had just gotten up from where he’d been kneeling by the open strongbox with Cletis Brown, giggling like a hyena.
“We’re so damn rich,” he cried, “I feel like dancin’!”
He marched over to the fire and dragged Miss Elsie up off her knees. She gave a little cry of protest, but it did her no good. Pinto immediately took her off dancing a scuffling, bizarre sort of waltz to the left of the fire. Her feet were bare, and she groaned at the pine needles and small, sharp rocks grieving her feet.
Billy hummed loudly to the music, if you could call it that, of his haphazard, manic waltz, his spurs trilling, dust kicking up around his boots. He stepped on the girl’s feet several times, and she cried out in pain.
Billy stopped suddenly and slapped her with the back of his hand. “You stop complainin’ and dance with me!”
The others laughed. Standing with Tex Halstrom and Poncho Davis by the fire, Earl Willey spit out a mouthful of the whiskey he’d been drinking straight out of the bottle he and the others were passing around.
Sobbing, the girl danced, though it was obvious her heart was not in it but she was only shuffling her feet to save her life.
Slash glanced at Pecos, who now stood glaring toward the fire himself.
“Let’s get this done,” Slash said.
“I hear that.”
“Don’t hit the girl.”
“I hear that, too!”
Slash stepped out around the rocks and shrubs. He marched holding his cocked Colts straight down at his side. Pecos strode out to Slash’s right and raised his Colt revolving rifle, aiming straight out from his right shoulder.
Billy Pinto had just screamed at and slapped the girl once more, who’d dropped to her knees, sobbing.
Gritting his teeth, Slash raised both his Colts, aimed, and punched a bullet through the kid’s left leg. Pinto lifted his clean-shaven face and howled maniacally.
Pecos’s rifle roared twice on the heels of Slash’s first, still-echoing shot, blowing both Poncho Davis and Earl Willey off their feet with clipped screams, dying fast.
Slash drew a bead on Cletis Brown, who’d been sitting atop a log near the strongboxes, swilling from a bottle. Brown had dropped the bottle when Pinto had yelled, and jerked his surprised eyes toward the two cutthroats walking out from the thicket on the north side of the clearing.
Slash’s next slug punched into Brown’s thick right shoulder, evoking a shrill cry and knocking the man back off the log, where he flopped, trying to unholster one of his three six-shooters.
Meanwhile, Pecos had just shot Tex Halstrom, who reached for his rifle as soon as Billy had screamed. Halstrom dropped his rifle, jackknifing forward from the bullet in his guts, fumbling for the pistol on his hip. Pecos fired two more rounds. One plunked into Halstrom’s right knee, the other one into his left arm, making it flap out wide, like a broken wing. The tall Texan stumbled back and around and fell face first into the fire, howling and kicking.
Doc Peterson had just gotten himself tucked back into his pants after evacuating his bladder, and now as the Texan fell into the fire, Doc bellowed, “I’ll be damned—it’s them two old goats, Slash an’ Pecos!”
Pecos’s next shot missed Peterson, who grabbed his rifle and ran back into the trees, away from the fire.
“Dammit!” Pecos bellowed, and fired again as he strode after Peterson.
Both Slash’s Colts bucked in his fists as he hurled lead toward the still howling Billy Pinto, who had just then run, limping, off to Slash’s left, grabbing the Yellowboy leaning against the pine and stepping behind it, pumping a cartridge into the chamber. Slash slammed two more bullets into the side of the tree just as Billy had edged a look out from behind it.
The bark splattered into the kid’s face, making him howl even louder.
“You go to hell, you old devil!” he screeched.
A gun barked to Slash’s left. The bullet was a knife’s nick across the outside of Slash’s left ear. Slash turned to see Cletis Brown trigger another shot at him from behind the log. That bullet howled just wide of Slash’s head. Flinching, Slash raised both his Colts, aiming at Brown’s head.
Both Colts roared at the same time, planting neat, round holes in Brown’s forehead, just above each eye. Brown’s head bounced like a rubber ball against the log and then dropped out of sight behind the log. Just beyond the log, his legs and boots kicked spasmodically.
“Help me!” Tex Halstrom roared shrilly from where he was rising up out of the fire—a human torch running straight out away from the camp and into the darkening trees, apparently heading for the river.
The girl lay belly down in front of the fire, swatting at the sparks that had geysered out of it when Halstrom had landed in it.
The horrific vision of Tex Halstrom running into the trees engulfed in bright orange flames had stunned Billy Pinto, who stared toward him in shock. Slash saw the kid’s rifle poking out from behind the pine. He triggered both Colts at it. One of the bullets tore into Billy’s left hand. The kid shrieked and dropped the rifle as though it were a hot potato. He stared at his bloody left hand, howling.
“Damn you! Damn you!” Unholstering one of his two Remington revolvers, Billy strode angrily out from behind the tree. He was limping badly. He was squeezing one eye closed, the eye with the bark in it. He limped over to where Elsie lay on the ground and extended his pistol at her head.
Slash walked toward him, drawing a bead on him, firing.
Only, his right-hand Colt clicked empty.
“I’m gonna kill this little girl, an’ it’s gonna be all your fault!”
“Just like you did to the girl from La Junta?”
Billy didn’t respond to that. He clicked his Remy’s hammer back and pressed the barrel to the back of the girl’s head.
Still striding toward the kid and the girl, Slash triggered his second Colt.
Billy screamed as the bullet tore into his left arm.
He stumbled backward as though drunk, grunting, staring at Slash in bright-eyed fear.
“No!” he cried, dropping the Remington as he got his boots under him and ran shambling off into the trees, in the general direction in which the human torch of Tex Halstrom had fled.
Slash dropped to a knee by the girl, who lay belly down, sobbing.
Slash placed a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, honey. You’re gonna be all right. We’ll get you out of here soon. . . back to your grandpa.”
She looked up at him in surprise, sobbing.
“That’s right.” Slash was punching the spent shells out of his first Colt and replacing them with fresh from his cartridge belt. “Everything’s gonna be all right. . . .”
He turned to his right, toward where Pecos was exchanging shots with Doc Peterson, Peterson howling and cursing and Pecos bellowing back at him amidst the din of their gunfire.
Slash flipped his Colt’s loading gate closed. He looked straight out toward the far side of the camp, past where the horses were frogging around, whickering anxiously and pulling at their picket line. Billy was running, stumbling toward the river, grunting and groaning.
“Just s
tay here and stay down,” Slash told the girl.
Wincing against his sundry aches and pains, ignoring the blood showing through the makeshift bandage around his waist and the other one around his arm, Slash strode out away from the fire, heading in the direction of the fleeing kid. As he entered the trees sheathing the river, he stopped.
Billy knelt before him on one knee, his wounded leg extended out to one side. The eye that Slash had peppered with bark was half open now and weeping. The other eye wept, too, for Billy was sobbing as he said, “Don’t kill me, Slash.” The words had come in a hushed, pleading, sorrowful tone. “I’m sorry for what I did. Truly I am. . . .”
Slash walked slowly forward, rage a fist of fire burning just beneath his heart.
“Remember what I told you when you first joined up, Billy?” he asked, stopping ten feet away from the kid. “About killin’?”
“Sure, sure, I do,” the kid said. “You said . . . you said . . .”
“No killin’ unless it’s your life or theirs.”
“Yes, that’s what you told me, all right.”
“Remember what I said the punishment for killing in cold blood was?”
The firebrand stretched his quivering upper lip away from his small, white teeth, more tears streaming down from his light blue eyes. “Oh, please, Slash. Please, don’t kill me! I’m sorry I let you down! I’ve learned my lesson! Oh, purely I have! I’ll never kill again—honest!”
“No, you won’t, Billy.”
Billy stared up at Slash. Suddenly, his eyes hardened, and anger edged his voice as he said, “Now, dammit, I done told you I was sorry. Don’t you kill me! I’m like a son to you—remember?”
“You’re a lowdown dirty dog, Billy,” Slash said evenly. “You’re about to be put down like any other lowdown dirty dog.”
“Dammit, I done told you, you stubborn old . . . !” Billy let the sentence trail off as he reached for the second Remington holstered for the cross-draw on his right hip.
He didn’t get the gun even halfway out of its holster before Slash’s Colt bucked and roared, drilling a bullet through the kid’s chest, exactly over his heart.
“Ohhh!” the kid grunted in shock and horror, staring down, aghast, at the blood welling up from the ragged hole in his shirt, just above the V in his cracked leather vest. He looked slowly up at Slash, furling his brows as though deeply puzzled. “You . . . you done . . . kilt . . . me. . . .”
He flopped backward against the ground and lay quivering as his young life left him.
Running footsteps sounded to Slash’s right. He whipped around, cocking the Colt again.
“It’s me!” Pecos called. “You all right, Slash?”
Slash had whipped around too quickly. All the blood seemed to have rushed into his feet, leaving him light-headed and dizzy, the trees and brush and river swirling around him. He dropped the Colt. He staggered backward and to one side, raking a spur on a rock. He fell then, but he was out before he hit the ground.
He was only vaguely aware of time passing . . . of waking up briefly to find himself being towed on a travois that Pecos had apparently rigged for him and padded with spruce boughs and blankets. He saw his Appy following along behind him on the trail through a deep valley rimmed by high, craggy peaks. He vaguely recognized the valley as the one cut by the Animas.
Again, darkness closed over him.
The next thing he was aware of, after what had seemed a long, troubled time punctuated by intermittent agony, was warm, soft, female lips pressed against his own.
He opened his eyes to see the most beautiful pair of hazel eyes he’d ever seen gazing lovingly down at him. His heart lightened. His pain slithered away. He was in a comfortable bed, in a hotel most likely. In Silverton, no doubt.
Fairly mesmerized by those soft hazel eyes, Slash felt his own lips shape a smile, heard his raspy voice utter the single word: “Jay . . .”
She smiled again, kissed him again, and sunk her fingers into his hair.
“You’d best get back on your feet soon,” she said in her husky, feminine voice. “Don’t forget—you’re on Bledsoe’s payroll now.” Her smile broadened. “And you two old cutthroats finally have an honest job!”
Slash turned to see Pecos hold up the deed to the freighting business, grinning. But then the big blond cutthroat cut a frown at Jay. “There’s that word again! Doggone it, Jay, it ain’t a job. Why, we’re proper businessmen, Pecos an’ Slash is. Who would’ve thought?”
“Uh-uh,” Slash said, gently wagging his head on his pillow.
“What do you mean—‘uh-uh’?” Pecos asked.
“It’s Jimmy Braddock and Melvin Baker, an’ don’t you forget it!”
He nodded off again, the laughter of Melvin Baker and Jaycee Breckenridge echoing softly inside his head.
Cutthroats Page 30