The Big 6 men, wondering how the hell a night’s fun had taken this turn, nevertheless obeyed with enthusiasm. They were wild boys who dearly loved a good ruckus, and defending a sporting house against a bunch of Bible-toting do-gooders somehow appealed to them.
Belle Shilleen and her girls were just as enthusiastic, and in those first hectic minutes of the attack, more attackers were driven off from their attempts to force their way through windows and doors by baton wielding girls in flimsy house costumes than by cowpunchers swinging their gun barrels.
But as that first attack intensified, with every ground level window and door under attack, it was Benedict and Brazos who bore the brunt of the mob’s fury. Speeding from one danger point to another through the darkened house, they wielded their six-gun barrels with deadly effectiveness wherever a head appeared through a window, or some burly towner tried to force himself through a doorway, and it was mainly their rock-like defense that finally took the sting out of that first attack.
Belle Shilleen’s girls broke into a triumphant cheer when the attack eased off, then ceased altogether. The mob re-formed out front, milled about a while, then went surging up Johnny Street towards the Carbrook house. But the cheers were premature. The attackers weren’t quitting, just retiring to get their breath, to fire their enthusiasm with a little liquid courage, listen to a few rabble-rousing speeches, then get ready to strike again.
Duke Benedict sensed this even if the girls didn’t, and as soon as the crowd had gone, he called Belle and Brazos upstairs for a confab. Belle had figured they’d carried the day and it was difficult to convince her the danger wasn’t over. Brazos however agreed with Benedict and together they considered the situation as it stood. There was obviously no point in trying to appeal to the mob; they were running hog wild. Sam Fink was out; he couldn’t stop a dust-up between a bunch of toddle-age kids. There was no chance of Belle quitting and neither man wanted her to, but if the next attack turned really dangerous, they might have to start shooting, and they wanted to avoid that at all costs. They wanted the towners stopped, not killed. But who could do it? Was there a solution? There might be... and it was Benedict who finally came up with it.
The posse.
“By Judas, that’s it!” applauded Brazos. “Carbrook and the rest would put the lid on this in no time flat.” Then his face fell. “But hell, we’re gettin’ ahead of ourselves a bit, ain’t we, Yank? The posse’s out to hell and gone doggin’ Sprod someplace.”
Benedict had already considered that. “Maybe they are,” he conceded. “But they’ve been gone a long time, Reb, longer than anybody figured. They should be on their way home now, only stands to reason.”
“Mebbe it does at that. But how—?”
“One of us will have to go look for Carbrook, while the other stays here to stand by Belle,” Benedict decided. “Maybe you’d better go and me stay, Reb. You’d likely make a better fist of tracking the posse down.”
“Do you really think it’s that serious that you have to go looking for the posse?” Belle Shilleen said, worried now.
“I do, Belle,” replied Benedict. “How about you, Reb?”
“Reckon so,” agreed Brazos. “That there mob’s got the wolf-pack feel now and they find they like it.”
“Oh all right,” the woman agreed. Then looking at them both in turn, “I won’t forget all you’ve done for me tonight. I’m sure I don’t know how I can repay you.”
Benedict had a good notion, but wasn’t about to divulge it yet. “All right, Reb,” he said quietly. “You’d better get going.”
Brazos got going. Quitting the bordello, he took to a back street and headed for the central block. Passing the Carbrook house, he caught sight of the mob milling about in the backyard shouting and drinking and boasting what they were going to do in the next attack. The sight was ugly and a little chilling and spurred Brazos on just that much faster.
He’d better find that posse, and find it quick.
Brazos loped into Johnny Street a block beyond the Carbrook house and found the main stem deserted. Everybody was either with the mob or else locked indoors and waiting for Daybreak’s storm of violence to burn itself out.
Brazos’ lips twisted with contempt when he saw the light still burning in the jailhouse. The whole damned town could be burning down and that undersized little badge-packer wouldn’t lift a finger. But maybe the deputy had some idea where the posse might be he guessed, and, heading for the livery to saddle up, he decided to call and see Fink before he headed out.
It proved to be the luckiest decision he could have made, for he found Fink all in a twitch. Two cowhands from the Big Horn Ranch five miles south of town had ridden in a short time back with the news that there was a gun battle going on at the old Star 40 Ranch in Cripple Canyon. The hands figured it might be the posse come to grips with Ben Sprod and his bunch.
So did Brazos.
He left town at a dead run, highballing south. A few miles out, he reined in briefly and heard the distant sound of the guns. He spurred on, and fifteen minutes later reined in atop the north rim of Cripple Canyon close to the Star 40 ranch house where wicked red flashes of six-guns were flickering like deadly fireflies in the night.
Caching his horse, he headed swiftly towards the ranch house afoot, keeping to the deep moon shadows that were flung wide across the canyon floor by the towering walls.
The shadows played out two hundred yards from the old house, but well before reaching that spot he’d realized that this wasn’t the posse doing battle with the Sprod bunch as he’d hoped, but what seemed like a solitary pilgrim holed up in an old barn having it out with two or three guns circled around him.
Right then, one of the outlaws leapt from the cover of a tree some fifty yards from the old barn and sprinted on long legs for the closer cover of a stack of old fence ties. The man was only visible for a matter of seconds, yet by the light of the brilliant moon, Brazos saw him just as clearly as he’d seen him yesterday morning when the lead had flown thick and hot around Morgan’s Rock.
An unholy smile creased Hank Brazos’ face then as he poked his hat back from his forehead with the barrel of his six-gun and breathed, “Well, I’ll be dogged! Sprod!”
A moment later he was snaking forward and counting on speed and surprise to get him up there before they spotted him.
Twelve – Battle of Cripple Canyon
Surprising Smith stroked the trigger and the six-gun bucked against the crotch of his hand. For a moment the stack of fence ties was obscured in smoke, but even before Sprod’s Colt started to snarl back from that position, Smith knew he’d missed.
They were closing in. There was no doubt about that now. For hours he’d been able to keep them at a distance with his pinpoint marksmanship, but he was running desperately low on slugs now and they knew it. The wolves could smell the blood of the kill.
Surprising Smith wasn’t all that surprised to realize that he wasn’t afraid of dying. Fear had never been one of his drawbacks. All that really bothered him was uncertainty about whether his little wife would suitably mourn his passing. Honey was nothing if not flirtatious, and you could bet that tinhorn gambling man would be around to comfort her in her tragic bereavement...
Smith’s thoughts were shattered as a slug ricocheted off a foundation stone and bit into his calf. The shot had come from behind the ruin of an old overturned buckboard less than thirty yards west of the barn. The little gunman smiled a cold smile. Throughout the long hours of the siege, he’d been hoping somebody would mistake weather-rotted old boards for sound cover.
He took his time aiming, resting his gun hand on a fallen crossbeam. The flare of the shot had come from the left end of the buckboard. He moved his sights two feet in from the edge, held the six-gun rock steady, then let loose three shots in one continuous, rolling roar.
The bullets ripped through the timbers of the old buckboard like they were paper. One caught Dick Grid in the chest, another in the throat, a third in the hea
d. The combined impact flung the badman six feet back, dead three times over without so much as a scream. Standing behind the tie stack, Ben Sprod ground his teeth in fury as Grid’s beefy corpse rolled out underneath the moon. Sprod then cut loose with a furious volley. Surprising Smith’s gun churned back twice and then clearly Sprod heard the sound of a hammer clicking on an empty chamber.
Hope glittering in his eyes, Sprod loosed three shots, then waited. No response. He fired again, emptying his gun. Swiftly reloading, he peered around the corner of the stack at the tumbledown barn. Had the bounty-hunter finally run out of bullets? He had to be damned close to it, Sprod figured, considering all the powder he’d burned over the past couple of hours keeping the three of them at bay.
A minute passed. Two... and still no shots from the barn.
Sprod cupped a hand to his mouth. “Frank!” he shouted across to the crouched figure behind the old stone well on the south-east side of the barn. “He’s out of slugs! Close in!”
Frank Piano didn’t think that was such a hell of a good idea and said so, but quickly his mind changed when a slug from Sprod slashed the earth a foot behind his boots.
“I said we’re closin’ in,” Sprod yelled. “Get goin’!”
Frank Piano rose warily and moved slowly towards the barn in a low crouch, ready to hurl himself back behind the well if Surprising Smith turned out to be just playing possum. Moonlight sheened on his pale, tense face as he shot a glance across at the tie stack to see if Ben was coming with him, but Ben was staying put. No sense in them both being caught out in the open if things went sour, was the way Sprod reasoned.
Frank Piano covered another tense ten paces. In the old barn, Surprising Smith watched him come and felt cold sweat run down his face. He only had two slugs left. He had to make dead certain of getting the bandy-legged badman with one and having one left for Sprod.
It was eerily still in Cripple Canyon, even the night birds and foraging animals seeming to fall still, waiting for the guns to erupt again. No breath of wind stirred, no blade of grass whispered, just the dusty creak of Frank Piano’s boots, and the tight sound of his breathing as he drew to within twenty yards of his objective, then fifteen...
And in that electric silence, the sudden sound of the big voice from behind Sprod sounded like so many gunshots.
“Drop your guns, outlaws!”
Ben Sprod spun about, sunken eyes twin points of total disbelief in the lizard head. His jaw fell open but no sound came out as he stared at the wide-shouldered figure in the purple shirt, with the gun in his big fist that looked the size of a cannon.
“I said drop ’em, outlaw,” Brazos’ voice was cartridge clear. “Drop ’em or use ’em!”
Ben Sprod tried to use them and Brazos’ gun spewed fire. Bullets tore into Ben Sprod with sledge-hammer force, smashing him back into the tie stack. White-hot pain ripped through him as the gun went on firing, flooding through every part of his body as he fell and darkness and oblivion reached out and drew him in.
Brazos flung himself low as shots sounded from the barn. But they weren’t meant for him. With Surprising Smith’s last two bullets in him, Frank Piano fell, twitched and threshed hideously on the ground for ten seconds that seemed like a full minute, then snapped taut, and died.
Brazos rose, and fingered fresh shells into his hot gun. “Howdy-do,” he said amiably as Surprising Smith picked his way out of the ruins with his empty six-gun pointing to the ground. “You okay, mister?”
Surprising Smith walked up, looked at Ben Sprod for a moment then spat on him. Then he nodded, “Yeah, I’m all right, just fresh out of shells, is all.”
Brazos waited for more, but there wasn’t any more. The little black-garbed bounty-hunter hunkered silently down beside Sprod’s corpse and calmly filled his gun from the outlaw’s shell belt and Brazos wondered if maybe the surprising thing about Surprising Smith was that he didn’t seem to have an ounce of gratitude in his runty little body.
His voice was gruff and short-tempered as he gave the bounty-hunter a brief rundown of what had happened in town and how he came to be out here.
Then he said, “You got any idea where I’ll find the posse now?”
Smith knew exactly where the posse was, but doubted if they’d be able to track it down in the badlands. Brazos said they’d just have to damn well try, and they went and fetched their horses and struck south.
Hank Brazos was in a sour mood as they left Cripple Canyon behind. If Surprising Smith was aware of the other’s mood he gave no sign but just sat his saddle smoking a cigarette and watching the way ahead. It didn’t make Brazos warm to him any when, just a few minutes after leaving the canyon, Smith was the first to see the plume of dust rising from the trail just a short distance ahead.
The flower vase was made of solid brass and weighed about ten pounds. Floralee was breathing heavily as she struggled to lift it to perch precariously on the railing of the upper gallery, but she made it, and grunted with satisfaction as she gave Benedict a “you watch this” look.
Moments later Hannibal Moore’s baldy skull appeared in the moonlight below. Moore, with a half-dozen others had been busily engaged for the past ten minutes in trying unsuccessfully to batter down the front door with a fence post.
The vase dropped dead on target and made contact with Hannibal’s skull with a noise like a Chinese gong. Angry shouts rose from below followed by a fusillade of stones that drove Benedict and the girl inside.
Floralee giggled as she scouted around to see if she could find another vase. “Ain’t this good, Duke? I swear I haven’t had so much fun since I don’t know when.”
Without response, Benedict headed down the stairs. This was another of those times when he saw himself objectively and with distaste. Duke Benedict, college graduate, ex-army officer and man of distinction, now in command of the defenses of a hick-town house of ill-fame under siege by a bunch of women and pot-bellied towners. How in hell had he gotten himself into a situation like this? Glimpsing Belle Shilleen as she patched up a Big 6 cowboy’s cracked head he immediately knew why. If he hadn’t stayed by Belle tonight, then he wouldn’t have a prayer in hell of her telling him anything about Bo Rangle. No, he mused, he didn’t have any choice. But by the tarnal, if Belle did tell him what he wanted to know, he’d have earned it.
The gambler’s nose wrinkled in disgust as he entered the parlor. It looked, for want of a better word, like a brothel. With eyes that had grown accustomed to the semi-darkness, he glimpsed smashed furniture, a carpet of broken glass, a clutch of battered cowpunchers standing guard at the windows and keeping themselves fortified with whisky from Belle’s bar. Baby Betty, Darling Jill and Kitty Kellick were wearily picking up the bricks that had been thrown in and throwing them back out at the mob. Belle was bandaging Jimmy Dolan who’d been hit with a flying bottle while, miraculously it seemed, the steam piano had so far avoided serious damage. The room stank of whisky, smoke and sweaty bodies and by the sound of it the mob was building up a fresh attack out back. No, this wasn’t Duke Benedict’s finest hour, by a country mile.
Belle finished with Jimmy Dolan and came across to him with her impressive undulating walk that remained unaffected by adversity. She chucked him under the chin and grinned. “Well, what news from the front, Captain?”
Benedict had to hand it to Belle. She was made of tough stuff. She came from Alabama, and he had a sneaking suspicion that if Robert E. Lee had tapped the South’s womanhood for his armies, then the result of the War of the States just might have been somewhat different.
“No sign of Brazos yet,” he growled, then whipped around at a squeal from the window. Two towners were making a determined bid to force their way in, and Gypsy was swatting at them with a steel-tipped walking cane.
Benedict drew both guns and made it across the room in three bad-tempered strides. He swung first with his right-hand gun, then with the left. Two solid thuds and the window was cleared again, with shouts of chagrin rising from outside.
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br /> “Oh, Duke, you’re so strong and brave!” Gypsy cooed.
“Keep a sharp lookout,” was all Benedict said in response, then, holstering his guns, went back to Belle. “I was just about to say,” he said as if there had been no interruption, “that Brazos has been long gone. Doesn’t look too hopeful I’m afraid.”
“He’ll bring help,” Belle said cheerfully. “I’ve got confidence in that boy.”
“I wish I had.”
“You have and you know it. And not only have you got confidence in him, Duke, you like him too, even if you go around sayin’ you don’t.”
Benedict snorted. “It’s hardly the time for character analysis, Belle. But you’re wrong as could be. He’s just a big dumb saddle tramp without enough brains to make his head ache.”
“Is that why you’re joinin’ up with him to look for that gold you’re interested in?”
Benedict swore. “He told you that?”
“Sure. During the party while you were showing us how you could play the piano.” She patted his hand. “But don’t be peeved, honey. It doesn’t matter that I know.”
Maybe it didn’t, but Benedict didn’t like the idea of Belle and Hank Brazos getting their heads together.
He said carefully, “About Bo Rangle—”
“Later, honey,” she cut in. “I appreciate if it wasn’t for you and Hank I’d be sittin’ outside watchin’ them burn my house to the ground by now.” She smiled in the gloom. “Sure I’ll help you, Duke. When it’s time.”
Again they were interrupted by fresh sounds of violence, this time from the rear of the house. Hurrying out and along the corridor together, they found Mexican Rita lying stunned on the floor from a brick and none other than Mrs. Carbrook herself thrusting through the window with a burning brand, trying to set the drapes alight.
“This one’s mine,” Belle said grimly and spitting on her hands and striding forward she reefed the blazing brand out of the woman’s hand, reversed it and jabbed it at her face. She was only feinting, but Matilda Carbrook didn’t know that. She squawked in terror, fell to the ground, then struggled to her feet and staggered out of harm’s way screaming that that scarlet woman had tried to set her on fire, her cries drawing cries of “shame” from the mob.
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