The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  * * *

  * * *

  BISHOP STOOD FOR a moment watching Rogers bleed out on the ground and waiting to draw hostile fire. When none came anywhere near him, he cleared the barn and kept on moving, ready to confront all comers, circling wide around the manor house.

  He wasn’t ready to try breaking in just yet. Out front, at least three men were firing from the mansion’s windows, two with rifles and the other with a handgun by the sound of it. Cut off from his companions from the Circle K, he wished them well, deciding he could do no better than to look out for himself and drop as many of Stark’s gunmen as he could.

  Meeting Cold Comfort’s mayor had come as a surprise, but if Rogers was there—or had been; he was permanently absent now from everywhere—it stood to reason that the town’s marshal and deputy would also likely be on hand, defending Stark.

  Or maybe, like the mayor, wishing that they could get to hell and gone away before their time ran out.

  Bishop wasn’t assuming victory, by any means. Not yet. He still counted a dozen guns firing, at least, and only four of them—if that—could be his friends. After dispatching two defenders on his own, or two defenders and one fleeing coward, he could not assume that all of those who’d ridden out from camp with him were still alive, uninjured, with so much lead in the air.

  And he was still focused on taking out the rifleman atop Stark’s house, if he could pull it off. No easy feat, that, when the eaves of Stark’s home were approximately ten feet over Bishop’s head.

  He could jump up and grip the tiles, if they’d support his weight without cascading down and braining him, but that would mean leaving his Winchester behind to free both hands. He didn’t like that plan a bit, but it was all that came to mind as he was circling the house, ducking below dark windows as he passed them, half expecting to be shot at any instant for his trouble.

  Rounding the southwest corner of the house, he almost ran into another one of Stark’s defenders, rushing headlong toward him. Bishop whipped his rifle’s butt around and struck the running man a blow that sat him down, dropping a six-gun as he fell.

  Before the guy could clear his head, Toby stepped in and kicked him in the face, then brought his rifle’s stock down once, twice, three times, till the head below it made a kind of ruptured-melon sound and the gunman began to shiver spastically.

  Enough.

  He grabbed the fallen piece—a Remington Model 1875, closely resembling Colt’s Peacemaker—and decided against tucking it under his belt. If he was forced to climb without his Yellow Boy, two pistols ought to be enough.

  And if they weren’t . . .

  He dumped the captured weapon’s .44-40 cartridges, then flung it overhand into the dark, useless to anyone. Off to the east, a faint hairline of gray was visible on the horizon, dawn approaching in its own good time.

  Bishop pressed on, circling behind the house, hoping to find something—a packing crate, whatever—he could stand on to reach the roof without having to leap and hang on for dear life. Another loud shot from above him signaled that the sniper planted there was still picking and choosing targets in the yard below.

  Was that one of his fellow drovers dying? And if so, which one?

  No time to waste now. Whatever it took . . .

  And there it was, in front of him. A ladder stood propped up against the roof.

  He guessed the sniper must have used it for his own climb. It seemed fitting, then, for Bishop to avail himself of that same access, which permitted him to take his Winchester along.

  But he would have to do it quietly. A sneak attack was pointless if he went up making a racket, giving his intended target time to turn and pick him off.

  “Here goes nothing,” he whispered to himself, and started on the climb.

  * * *

  * * *

  GAVIN DIXON TRACKED a running gunman in the yard between Stark’s barn and what appeared to be a shed for tools or maybe feed. He had nine rounds remaining in his Winchester, six spent so far, and two men dead to show for that.

  The others he had missed, or maybe winged one, and he couldn’t rightly say how many more defenders Stark had on the premises.

  A fight like this, you had to take enemies one at a time, as they appeared.

  He led the runner by a yard or so, mind calculating speed and distance for his shot. A bullet weighing thirteen grams and traveling around twelve hundred and fifty feet per second—just over a quarter mile—would strike his target with six hundred and ninety foot-pounds of explosive energy, but only if he got his calculation right.

  The target wasn’t standing still, but sprinting, so he had to think about where his intended mark would be, reach out to let the bullet greet him as he passed, and take him down.

  Three feet should do it. And if not . . .

  He fired and saw the runner stumble, reeling through an awkward turnaround, one hand rising to clutch his torso. Falling, Dixon’s target rolled, then struggled up on hands and knees, gasping from pain that wracked his body.

  But he wasn’t out. Not yet.

  Pumping his rifle’s lever action, eight rounds now remaining in the magazine, Dixon sighted upon the gunman’s face in profile, hatless now, and didn’t have to lead at all this time. Another crack, and this time, when the ranch hand slumped, Dixon was confident he wouldn’t rise again.

  He was no Lazarus, just more dead meat.

  And where in blazes was his boss?

  * * *

  * * *

  WHERE IN THE hell are you going?”

  Harley Tilton had separated from his deputy when the shooting started on the property outside Stark’s house, hoping to find a vantage point from which to fight without immediately being killed. That part was critical. He had a duty to his boss, at least in theory, but all Cold Comfort’s marshal really cared about was his own skin and keeping it intact by any means required.

  Now he was back with Hazlet, and from how it looked, he’d found Luke none too soon. His deputy had almost reached a side door on the west side of Stark’s ranch house—had one hand on the knob, in fact—when Harley spotted him, his question stopping Hazlet short.

  Luke turned to face him, color rising from his shirt collar to stain his face, as if he were a little boy caught with his hand in Mama’s cookie jar.

  “Just going out to have a look around, Harley,” he said. “Get in the thick of it, you know?”

  “Bullshit! You think I don’t know a deserter when I see one, boy?”

  “Deserter? Are you serious? This ain’t the army, Marshal, just in case you hadn’t noticed. And this ain’t my war.”

  “A goddamned coward’s what you are, Luke.”

  “Yeah? We was supposed to ride out here and warn Stark, nothing more. That’s done, in case you couldn’t tell. Our co-called mayor’s already out and gone. He didn’t feel like dying over something that has naught to do with him, and I don’t neither.”

  “If you think that I’m just gonna let you slink away—”

  “Let me? Let me, you say?”

  One second flat, and Hazlet had his pistol out. It startled Tilton. In their monthly practice sessions, he had never seen Luke try to draw and fire, presumably because Hazlet had never felt it was required of him.

  But now . . .

  “You lost your mind?” Tilton inquired.

  “Saving my ass,” Luke snapped at him. “My mind goes where it goes, and right now all of me is getting out of here.”

  Afraid to try drawing his own six-gun, Tilton mustered what dignity he could and told Hazlet, “In that case, you can leave your badge.”

  Luke fairly sneered at him as he replied. “No problem. Won’t be needing it wherever I end up.

  Hazlet removed the tin star with his left hand, leaving a small tear in his shirt where he’d pinned it on that morning. With a gesture of cont
empt, he flung the badge at Tilton’s feet.

  “Wear it yourself,” he said. “Go on and call yourself a double marshal. See how well that flies.”

  “Don’t let me see your face again, you yellow-bellied rat.”

  “A live one, anyhow,” Luke answered back. “If you had any sense, you’d get to hell and gone away from here yourself.”

  “I’ve got a job to do.” Surprised to hear the words emerging from his mouth.

  “I leave you to it, then,” said Hazlet. “When you’re gutshot, take a second to remember that I told you so.”

  And he was gone into the night.

  Without Luke’s pistol in his face, Harley drew his own piece and moved to shut the door his erstwhile deputy had left wide open to the night. That wouldn’t do. No telling who or what would pop in from the dark outside.

  Part of Tilton wished that he had gone with Hazlet, but he still felt that he owed something to Mr. Stark. As to exactly what that was, he couldn’t say.

  But if he planned to leave, the least that he could do was tell the Big Man first and thus absolve himself of any guilt.

  Assuming that Stark didn’t fly into a rage and drop him where he stood.

  Or maybe, Tilton thought, there was another way to go. If it appeared that Stark was losing, as unlikely as that sounded, wouldn’t people praise the officer who brought his despotism to an end?

  Something to think about while he was searching for his boss and making up his addled mind.

  * * *

  * * *

  LUKE HAZLET WAS still mouthing curses as he cleared the house and started for the barn. Echoes of gunfire all around him kept him moving, on alert for any threat that might come at him from the first pale light of dawn.

  Another day, and it was starting badly. Still might be his last, but if he died on Stark Acres, Hazlet vowed it wouldn’t be from lack of trying to escape.

  To hell with Harley Tilton, Hebron Stark, Creed Rogers, and the rest of them. Luke felt as if he’d shed a ton of weight just taking off his cheap badge, although he hadn’t been aware of the job troubling him before. In fact, he’d quite enjoyed it up to now, but that was done.

  Time to move on.

  He reached the barn, none of the airborne bullets coming close enough to worry him. Easing inside, he found the horse he’d ridden from Cold Comfort standing in one of a dozen stalls and munching hay. Luke had to find its tack and saddle, draw it from the stall, and get it ready for the road.

  Inside the barn, though sheltered from the gunfire going on outside, Hazlet felt more nervous than when he’d crossed the yard on foot. Out there, he’d known the shots weren’t coming close enough to harm him. Now he kept expecting someone to barge in and blaze away, either one of the raiders or a hand employed by Mr. Stark, unhappy with the former deputy trying to sneak away.

  There’d be no sneaking when he left the barn, though, riding out through its broad entryway onto a battleground.

  “Quit stalling!” Luke ordered himself, and climbed into the saddle. That belonged to him, at least, and if somebody from Cold Comfort’s livery waited around for him to bring the borrowed horse back home, they’d wait a damned long time.

  “Come on, boy!”

  Hazlet snapped the reins and hunched a little lower in the saddle as he left the barn behind. It was positioned so that riders exiting immediately faced the manor house, and so it was that he glimpsed movement on the tiled roof, someone crouching down as if to aim a weapon from on high.

  Before he’d covered fifteen feet, that rifle’s muzzle blossomed flame. The bullet reached him before any sound, slamming Luke over backward, rolling off the horse’s rump and sprawling on the ground.

  No pain at first. Between the shot and fall that followed it, he just felt numb.

  The large-bore rifle’s sound reached him a split second later, and he wheezed a bitter laugh.

  Whoever said you never hear the shot that kills you was a liar and a fool.

  * * *

  * * *

  NOW THAT’S MORE like it,” Cothran muttered to himself.

  A clean kill, one shot up and one man down.

  The horse, minus its rider, raced across the farmyard, weapons going off on every side, and disappeared toward the horizon showing pallid gray with just a tinge of rosy pink.

  Jay reckoned he’d allow himself one more shot with the Whitworth rifle, then swap it for the Winchester and clamber down to join the battle at ground level. Picking up the powder flask from where he’d laid it, by the weapon’s ramrod to his right, he poured a measured dose of gunpowder into the Whitworth’s muzzle, chased it with a hexagonal bullet, and topped it off with a small cotton swab, tamping it all down with three strokes of the rod.

  During the War Between the States, soldiers could recognize a Whitworth firing at them by the shrill whistling sound its six-sided bullets emitted in flight. That wouldn’t always help them duck, of course, but such was life.

  Or, more often, the end of it.

  When he was ready, Cothran scanned the killing ground below without using the rifle’s telescopic sight. Once he’d picked out a target, then and only then would he attempt to aim the Whitworth for another kill.

  And then a voice Jay didn’t recognize spoke up behind him. Said, “You’re done.”

  “Am I?” Jay inquired, still lying belly down, not making any moves.

  “You doubt my word, stand up and turn around. See for yourself.”

  * * *

  * * *

  MIGHT TAKE A minute,” said the rifleman. “Don’t wanna take a dive off here and break my damn-fool neck.”

  “You seem okay with heights,” Bishop replied.

  “All right for lying down, but I’m not gonna dance a jig for you.”

  “Nobody asked you to. Get up and turn around now, or I’ll have to shoot you in the ass.”

  “Tough customer, I guess, back-shoot an unarmed man.”

  “I count three guns from where I stand, and wouldn’t bet I’ve seen them all,” Toby replied. “Get up while you still can.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m getting up, boss. Keep a light touch on that trigger, if you please.”

  The ladder hadn’t been a problem, but Bishop had worried about making noise once he was on the roof, maybe dislodging barrel tiles to rattle off the roof and smash on impact with the ground. His luck had held, though, and he’d been in time to see the sniper blasting a familiar figure from his horse down in the yard.

  His adversary slowly rose, hands out to either side once he was on his feet, then shuffled through a turn until he wound up facing Bishop. The sniper was smiling in a way that sent a little chill down Toby’s spine.

  To wipe it off, Bishop said, “Gunning down a lawman likely qualifies you for a noose.”

  “Lawman?” The gunman snorted, not what you would call a laugh. “If he was any kind of lawman worth the name, I might pass for the pope of Rome.”

  “Is that a Whitworth rifle you’ve got there?”

  “Good eyes, friend. Some folks might mistake it for a Sharps.”

  “Not if they saw you muzzle-loading it.”

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “’Bout long enough to wonder if it was you who killed my friend Isaac.”

  “Can’t say I recognize the name. But, then again, I might’ve never learned it in the first place.”

  “Killed so many, have you?”

  Lazy shrug, the hands still raised to shoulder height. “Well, I don’t like to brag.”

  “Why do I feel like that’s a lie?”

  “We met before?” the sniper asked.

  “Not introduced,” said Bishop. “But I’ve seen your work.”

  “This Isaac fella, so you say.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where is
it I supposedly killed him, and when?”

  “Last night,” Toby replied, stone cold. “Out at the camp a few miles east of town.”

  “Dark fella, was he?” asked the rifleman. “That rings a bell.”

  “Orders from Stark, or did you do it on your own?”

  “Sometimes I get carried away.” Still smiling. “I confess that as a failing in myself.”

  “Next time you’re carried off, it should be by pallbearers.”

  “We gonna do this, then? Right here?”

  “It seems as good a place as any,” Bishop said.

  “Well, since you put it that way.”

  When the sniper moved, it came without warning. He hunched forward, his right hand streaking for the pistol on his hip. Bishop had time to raise his Yellow Boy a fraction of an inch before he fired without properly aiming, but it made no difference. His .44 slug drilled the gunman’s chest and punched him over backward, both arms flailing, boots sliding on barrel tiles.

  One moment he was there in front of Bishop, fanning air as if he hoped to fly away, then he was gone—not upward like a bird, but plummeting below, dragged down by gravity. No cry or any other sound as he dropped out of sight.

  Bishop approached the roof’s edge gingerly, checked out the yard for any weapons aimed his way, then peered straight down. His shot had likely killed the sniper outright, but the fall had snapped his neck on top of that, his head twisted at an angle never seen in living men.

  “If you run into Isaac, tell him Toby Bishop sent you,” he called down.

  The sniper wasn’t listening, or if he heard the comment on some other plane of being, he was stumped for a response.

  Turning his back, Bishop retreated toward the ladder and the fight still going on below.

  * * *