Keech tracked the orb’s journey to the ground, then glanced back to gauge Nat’s position, but he had already returned to the shadows.
Big Ben swiveled toward the shrieking sound. “You’ve brought allies! Good. I’ll kill them, too.”
Keech crouched lower to the ground. “Better stay down,” he told Duck.
When the blast came, the night itself quivered. A giant blossom of flame erupted into the air. The fire shredded the clutch of dead men on the sidewalk and engulfed a stock wagon. The more fortunate thralls nearby scuttled away from the devouring heat.
The force of the explosion rocked the barrel that Keech and Duck were nestled behind and sent Big Ben tumbling backward on his rump. Keech felt a wave of heat attack the air. He saw Doyle spit his pipe onto the street, then stomp on it with a boot heel, cracking the wood. The Ranger rushed forward as spry as a fox.
“Take him down!” Big Ben thundered from the ground.
The remaining horde of thralls raised a chorus of anger and lifted their weapons. Muskets fired into the street. Multiple blasts filled the roadway with a thick cloud of smoke.
“They’re gonna kill him!” Duck cried.
“No,” Keech said. “Look.”
Doyle emerged from the haze, somehow unscathed. The Ranger became a whirlwind of brutality. As a pack of dead men shambled onto the street, he spun the knife in his hand, grabbing it by the tip. He flung the blade, and it sank into a thrall’s chest. His other fist opened to reveal yellow light glowing in the center of his palm, a shine that Keech recognized as a piece of the amulet. His hand slapped the cheek of a nearby creature, and the thrall convulsed and dropped at his feet.
“He’s got one of the five shards!” Duck said.
Keech looked at the luminous fragment with awe. Pa Abner had been very clear about what to do: Find the shards, and unite them. Duck held her father’s, and Keech’s own charm was in the possession of Coward. And there, in the Ranger’s grip, was a third piece.
“Maybe Doyle will work with us to find the other two,” Keech whispered. “Right now we have to help him.”
“But we don’t have weapons.”
Keech rummaged through his mind for possibilities. They could attack Big Ben directly, surprising him from behind, but Friendly would spot them from the porch and shoot them dead. A wilder option occurred to him. “I’m thinking about a pigpen.”
“What do you mean?” Duck asked.
On Main Street, Doyle tucked into a roll and landed beside another thrall. He stilled the figure with a simple tap to the dead man’s hand. In a fluid motion, the Enforcer yanked the monster’s musket from his limp fingers and used the rifle’s butt to smash the nose of yet another.
During this onslaught, Big Ben had been struggling to regain his feet. The outlaw grimaced as he pushed up from the snow-covered ground, one hand clutching the small of his back.
“You’ve gotten slow in your old age,” Doyle taunted as he destroyed the last thrall in his path. The Ranger was no more than thirty feet from the outlaw, but he stopped when Big Ben Loving pointed back to the Big Snake and exclaimed, “Shoot Horner!”
“Wait!” Doyle shouted.
Milos Horner smiled with busted teeth. “It was a noble attempt, Red, but I’m afraid you’ve gotten slow, too.” The prisoner’s face then pivoted back to Friendly Williams. As his eyes moved, he appeared to notice Keech looking from the shadowy corner. Horner’s grin widened.
To Keech, the look was oddly one of hope.
“The Enforcers live on,” Horner said to Friendly. “Death is coming for you all.” He raised his head high and laughed.
Friendly Williams pulled the trigger on his pistol.
The gunshot echoed from the porch, and Milos Horner dropped, limp as a rag doll. His body pitched over the edge of the deck and tumbled onto the street.
The scream that rattled from Doyle’s lungs was the loneliest of all sounds, full of anguish and loss.
“I warned you,” Big Ben said.
Standing amid a scatter of thrall bodies, Doyle raised one arm and muttered a few strange syllables. A shrieking twister kicked to life in the middle of the street, just as another batch of rotting monsters shambled from the side alleys. He pointed his finger at a nearby horse trough, and the twister went to work, sweeping the water-filled vessel off the ground. The trough tumbled end over end, sloshing water in chaotic sprays, and smashed into a snarling trio of thralls.
“At last, a real show of power!” Big Ben reached into a leather pouch on his hip, and a terrible song cascaded from his lips as he threw some sort of powder into the air. Grit accumulated in front of the outlaw, creating a wind of its own, then whipped into a violent funnel. The tornadoes collided into each other, tearing at the town, ripping boards off the faces of buildings.
Keech turned to Duck, who looked stunned by the display of dark magic. “I have an idea.” He raised his voice to be heard over the squalls. “But we’ll have to move fast.”
“I ain’t sure we ought to run into the middle of that.”
“We won’t have to. We’ll go around.”
“What are you planning, Keech?”
He looked at the pandemonium taking place on the street. “Doyle could use another distraction. We’re gonna fetch the last thing Big Ben will ever see coming. A mean, smelly pig.”
They hurried down the side wall of the Big Snake Saloon, away from Main Street, and cut a hard right at the building’s edge. Keech found himself looking at the hotel’s back alley. Down the way, a couple of dark figures dressed in uniforms scurried toward the battle on Main Street. After waiting in the shadows for the soldiers to pass, Keech and Duck shuffled down the alley till they arrived at a side road crowded with junk. He glanced at the buildings and cabins along the street. “This should make a fine shortcut,” he said, and led Duck onto the cluttered road.
“I hate leaving Nat alone,” Duck whispered. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I hope so, too.”
Soon they arrived at the same stable house and pigpen they had discovered earlier with Nat. The pair crouched low, and Keech studied the lodging of the skinny cowpoke who had the Devil’s mark. A small light burned inside, but the door was cracked open, the wind pushing snow over the threshold, as if the owner had left in a hurry. Probably to join all the ruckus on Main Street, if Keech had to guess. He gestured to Duck. “It’s clear.”
As they sprinted toward the stable-house door, a monstrous snort sounded from the pigpen. Henrietta the boar slammed his head into the wooden slats of the fence, making Keech jump.
“That beast truly hates you,” Duck said.
“That’s what I’m counting on. C’mon. Help me round up some tack.”
They slipped into the stable and found the horse equipment. There was only one saddle perched on a post, so Keech figured it had to belong to the white horse, Hector. Keech hauled the saddle to the back stall, where Hector stood in the shadows, unmoving. Duck arrived a second later with a bridle and blanket.
Keech slid one hand through the gate and fluttered his fingers. “Hey, big fella, remember me? I told you I’d come back.” The cremello steed woke up from his slumber and strolled over to the gate. Keech unlatched the stall, swung the door wide, and stepped in. He scratched Hector’s muzzle; the horse nudged him back. “Time to get you out of here.”
Duck helped him saddle the horse and secure the harness. All the tack was a perfect fit on Hector, and the stallion seemed to relish the feel of the old range saddle on his spiny back. As they worked, Keech noticed a set of initials burned into the leather of the saddle horn: MH.
“Holy smoke, look at this,” said Keech, running a finger over the initials.
When Duck read them, her eyes widened. “Do you think this horse belonged to Milos Horner?”
“I reckon so.” Keech teared up at the notion. They hadn’t been able to save the Enforcer, but they could still save his horse.
They moved together out of the stable
and back into the cold yard. In the shadows, Hector looked like part of the snow.
A strident whistle in the distance pierced the night, surprising both of them. Seconds later, a series of raging explosions thundered across Wisdom. Back toward the town center, a pair of roiling fireballs rose into the sky. Hector jerked back a little.
“Looks like Quinn and Cutter found the whistle-bomb stash,” Keech said.
“Let’s hurry back to Nat,” Duck said. “He’s probably looking for us.”
Suddenly, the door of the cabin pitched wide open, and the shack’s scrawny owner stepped out, holding his lantern in one hand, a fan of poker cards in the other. Three uniformed thralls appeared behind him, muttering.
“What in the name of Sam Hill was that racket?” the cowpoke asked.
Keech and Duck froze, but there could be no hiding. They stood in the open with Keech holding the reins of a giant white horse.
The skinny man raised his lantern to the yard. “Hey now,” he sputtered. The poker cards tumbled from his hand and landed in the snow. “They’re stealin’ my horse!”
The thrall soldiers gathered around him at the door to have a peek. “Interlopers!” one hollered. “Get the muskets!”
The lanky man dropped his lantern and swiveled back to run into his cabin, only to tangle up with the three dead men in his path. The four of them blundered into one another, elbows smashing guts, heads butting shoulders.
Keech seized the chaotic moment to mount up on Hector. Duck dived back into the stable house.
The lanky man appeared back at the door with his pistol. “Teach you to rustle my horse!”
Keech shifted sideways on the saddle the very moment the man squeezed off. The gunshot roared like a bear. The lead ball slammed into the stable wall behind Keech, tearing off a chunk of wood.
“He’s not your horse,” Keech said, straightening on the saddle. “He’s the horse of an Enforcer, and you’re gonna pay for what you’ve done.”
The soldiers stumbled around the man, this time grasping musket rifles. One of them took a knee and prepared to fire.
“Keech, get us out of here!” Duck called, pinned down in the stable.
“Hang on!” He kicked his boot heels into Hector’s sides. The steed burst forward as if a cannon had fired him and charged straight for the gunmen. Surprise washed over their ugly faces. Keech yanked the reins to the left, and Hector responded in kind, swiveling his heavy body and barreling his rump straight into the fiends, who crashed backward into the cabin’s wall.
Keech wheeled Hector toward the pigpen, where Henrietta squealed and grunted with furious passion. Reaching with the toe of his boot, Keech kicked the metal hook securing the pen’s gate. The latch fell free, and a second kick swung the gate wide open. The mad boar glanced at the opening, then shrieked.
Keech glanced at Duck, who had jumped to her feet. “Get on!”
Duck bolted from the stable just as Henrietta exploded from the pen. Instead of chasing her, the beast caught sight of its owner and the soldiers trying to gain their feet and charged toward them at full force.
“Get them, Henrietta!” Keech said, then turned back to Duck. “We best skedaddle.”
The girl vaulted off a nearby tree stump with one foot, leaped through the air, and landed nimbly on the back of Hector’s saddle. “Go!”
Hector galloped out of the yard as the skinny man and the thralls fled Henrietta. The boar, however, didn’t appear to be satisfied with his prey. Spinning back around, he looked straight at Keech, as if marking him.
“That’s right, I’m over here. Come get me, you disgusting pig!” Keech whipped the reins with a loud “Hyah!” and Hector shot down the muddy road. Henrietta trundled behind them, setting a furious pace behind the horse.
“That hog will tear us apart,” Duck said. “Hurry!”
After a few twists and turns, Main Street and the Big Snake Saloon materialized back into view. Burning buildings along the road illuminated thrall bodies that had been dispatched by whistle bombs. Farther ahead, fierce twisters continued to howl, and Keech caught a glimpse of Doyle and Big Ben on the avenue’s south end, squaring off in a swirl of smoke. A dozen more thralls had crowded the street, some armed with muskets, others with clubs. They struggled against the winds, advancing little by little toward the battle.
Through a flurry of rain and sleet, Keech pushed Hector onto Main and bolted up the center of the roadway. The focal point of the battle had shifted to the front of the blacksmith shop and the mercantile store.
Duck clenched his arms. “You’re gonna charge into the middle of that?”
“Pa Abner used to say, ‘When you have to attack, aim your arrow straight for the heart.’”
Somewhere to his right, Henrietta loosed another diabolical squeal. Keech glanced back. The boar careened onto the sidewalk and rammed headlong into a skinny wooden post, causing the entire overhang of a building to collapse into the street. Screeching, Henrietta rattled back onto the avenue and continued his pursuit.
“I ain’t never seen an animal with such hatred.” Duck laughed.
Five rotting soldiers suddenly emerged from an alleyway up ahead, blocking their path and raising muskets. “Take your aim!” one of the thralls ordered—but further commands were drowned out by a familiar, high-pitched trill that was louder than the roar of the winds. A screaming black orb soared from the shadows of the east-facing storefront and into the midst of the soldiers. Keech shifted his attention to a lamplit alleyway, where he saw Cutter and Quinn standing side by side at the mouth of the passage, waving him and Duck onward.
The whistler exploded in the center of Main, demolishing the pack of thralls and blackening the snow. The heat from the blast washed over Keech’s face. He leaned in the saddle, veering Hector out of the path of the carnage.
“Thanks!” Duck shouted to the boys as they rode past.
Keech looked around, searching for the boar. Henrietta was still behind them, his fur singed and smoking, his savage tusks slashing the air mere feet away. The explosion appeared to have angered the foul critter even more.
The supernatural winds picked up as they drove into the heart of the battle. Galloping into the tornadic wall, Keech couldn’t see a thing at first—he could feel needles of ice and rain pummeling his face, and somewhere in the commotion he felt his hat fly off his head—but then his vision cleared, and he saw Nat just up ahead, punching a thrall with Duck’s glowing amulet shard.
“Nathaniel!” Duck hollered.
The rancher turned to regard them, but only for a second. Another dead man scuttled toward the boy with a farmer’s billhook. Nat arched his back and dropped, letting the blade swoop over his face. He sprang back to his feet and slapped the amulet against the creature’s throat. The thrall staggered and collapsed.
As they galloped past, Keech heard Duck shout back to her brother, “Get out of the way, Nat!” The boy yelled a surprised curse as Henrietta sprang into view. Keech glanced back to see the rancher hurdle over a hitching post.
Just ahead, two figures wrestled at the sharp left turn of Main Street, locked in a tight grapple. They looked like brothers embracing after a long-awaited reunion.
Hector sped straight for them.
Duck yelled, “Ranger Doyle! Heads up!”
The Enforcer reared up to look, exposing a bloodied lesion on his right thigh. His buckskin trousers had been split, and Big Ben Loving hammered his fist into the wound.
Keech swerved past the tangled men, then hauled the stallion around.
Suddenly, Henrietta burst out of the swirling wall of rain. The boar lowered his tusks. Doyle leaped aside just as the rampaging critter charged into Big Ben’s back. The outlaw plunged headfirst into Main Street’s muck.
In a flash, Big Ben hopped back to his feet. Henrietta smashed into his legs with a loud snort. This time the outlaw didn’t budge, and the beast crumpled in the mud, as though he’d walloped a stone wall. Big Ben made a fist and slammed his knuckles down on
Henrietta. The boar shuddered a bit, then lay still.
Grimacing, Doyle took advantage of the distraction. He lifted his arms and flicked his fingers in a looping pattern. A new gust of wind surged to life, sweeping ice and mud up from the road, and blasted into Big Ben.
The outlaw tried to resist the gust, but like a sling pitching a pebble, the wind scooped him up, tossed him thirty feet into the air, and whipped him down the street. The twister pounded the fiend against a stone building, and a bone-crunching crack sounded above the gale. Keech watched as the brute’s limp body smashed against storefronts and bounced off rooftops down the street and beyond, till he disappeared from sight.
CHAPTER 22
THE WHISTLE BOMB
The tornado winds quieted; the whipping rains relaxed to a cold drizzle. As Keech gazed around the battle-torn settlement, he searched for impending danger, but no more thrall soldiers appeared on Main Street. He spotted the Reverend’s crows, flying just above Wisdom’s highest buildings—at least a dozen of them, circling the torchlit sky—but they didn’t swoop lower or try to attack.
Doyle muttered to himself, “You let your guard down, Ben, and now you’re finished.” The man wiped at the blood trickling from his nose. “Messing with a pig when you should’ve maintained your defenses against the real threat. Careless.”
Despite being thrilled at Big Ben’s defeat, Keech knew they weren’t safe. Not yet. Somewhere in the town lurked Coward and Friendly.
As Keech and Duck dismounted Hector, the Ranger reached into his coat and pulled loose a leather strap. He wrapped it around his shredded thigh, dark crimson instantly soaking the tie. His teeth clenched as he yanked the belt tight. Once he’d composed himself, he turned to Keech and Duck. “That was a mighty big hog.”
“We thought you could use another hand,” Keech said, caressing Hector’s neck as he and Duck shuffled closer. The explosions on Main Street had speckled the poor stallion’s white hair with grime and soot.
When Doyle noticed the horse, his battle-weary eyes lit up. “Say, that’s a face from the past! Hello, Hector. Long time no see.” With a shaking hand, he stroked the stallion’s muzzle. “Your master fell tonight, amigo. I’m sorry.”
The Fang of Bonfire Crossing Page 17