Day of Rage

by William W. Johnstone

  Another of the outlaws, Ben Morton, spoke up.

  “So what do we do now, Billy Ray? You talked to that bastard Sixkiller. What’s he like?”

  “Cool,” Gilmore said. “So cool butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. And a good hand with a gun, too, although we already knew that. Sam’s feet are pretty good-sized, but as a target for a gunshot, they’re on the small side. Duke’s are even smaller. Sixkiller didn’t hit ’em where he did by accident, though.”

  “We can’t let him get away with what he done,” Junior declared. “If he does, folks won’t be a-scared of us no more. Not scared enough, anyway.”

  “What do you suggest, then, Junior?” Gilmore wanted to know.

  “Let me kill him. I’ll take care of the son of a bitch.”

  “I want in on it, too,” Bayne said. “And when he’s dead, we’ll hang his body up by its feet from that tree down by the well and leave it to rot. If folks have to see that every time they go to get water, they’ll damn sure know they better not step out of line with us.”

  Gilmore thought about it for a moment and then nodded.

  “You boys think you’ll need any help?” he asked.

  “Hell, no,” Junior said. “We can take care of him, can’t we, Jack?”

  “Count on it,” Bayne said.

  Gilmore said, “Go to it.”

  It would be interesting to see how this turned out, too.

  * * *

  John Henry decided to eat in the hotel dining room. By doing that he could find out right away if the food was any good. Since he was going to be here in Purgatory for several days, maybe as long as a week, it wouldn’t hurt to settle on several places to eat.

  An attractive young woman with red hair came to his table to take his order. She wore a blue dress and a crisply starched white apron and gave him a friendly smile as she asked, “What can I get for you, sir?”

  “What’s the best thing you have on the menu?” John Henry asked.

  “The roast beef and potatoes, I’d say.”

  He nodded and told her, “That’s what I’ll have, then. And coffee.”

  “I’ll see to it right away.”

  She brought the coffee first, then a basket of rolls, then a plate full of thick slices of roast beef, along with chunks of potatoes and carrots swimming in gravy. John Henry dug in eagerly. It had been a long day on the trail, and he had an appetite.

  The food was as good as he’d hoped it would be, but not all of his attention was focused on it. Without being too obvious about it, he had a look at his fellow diners, too. Most of them were hotel guests, he suspected, although some might be townspeople who had chosen to dine here. The ones who interested him the most were three middle-aged men who sat at a table in the rear of the room, talking among themselves as they ate.

  Back in Fort Smith, Judge Parker had given him the names of the three men who owned the big mines in the area. John Henry wondered now if he was looking at Jason True, Arnold Goodman, and Dan Lacey. True was the only one of the three Judge Parker knew personally; the man with the iron-gray hair and neatly clipped mustache might be him, John Henry reflected. But there could be a dozen men in Purgatory who would match that same general description, so he couldn’t be sure.

  His instincts told him he was right, though. All three men were well-dressed, and when the stocky one with a face like a bulldog spoke to the waitress, he had the curt tone of someone used to giving orders. They just looked like captains of industry, John Henry thought dryly.

  He could stand up right now, walk over there, make sure who they were, and introduce himself. That would certainly be the simplest course of action.

  But would it be the most effective? Or should he remain unknown to them for the time being, unknown to everyone in Purgatory except as the man who had ridden into town and plugged two of Billy Ray Gilmore’s henchmen?

  He would play things along a little further and see what happened, he decided.

  After he finished eating, he complimented the redheaded waitress on the food. She smiled a little more warmly than was absolutely necessary and said, “You come on back any time you want to, sir.”

  “I’ll do that,” John Henry said. He picked up his hat from the table, settled it on his head, and strolled out of the hotel.

  Royal Bouchard had invited him to return to the Silver Spur and have a few more drinks. That sounded like a decent way to pass the evening. Besides, the saloon was probably the busiest place in town once the sun went down. By spending more time there, John Henry might be able to get an even better feel for what the situation was in Purgatory. He started in that direction.

  His route took him beside a parked wagon with an arching canvas cover over its back, a Conestoga wagon like immigrants used to travel west. He had just walked past the apparently empty vehicle when the smell of recently-smoked tobacco drifted to his nose. There was nothing unusual in that—somebody could have walked along here a minute earlier puffing on a quirly—but John Henry’s keen mind asked what if somebody sitting inside that wagon had been smoking instead? Why would somebody just sit there inside a darkened wagon?

  There could be a number of different reasons, but at least one of them wasn’t good. Following his instincts, John Henry started to turn around. His hand moved toward the butt of his Colt.

  Muzzle flame lanced through the darkness and split the night as shots roared from inside the wagon.

  Chapter Sixteen

  John Henry kept turning, twisting out of the way as slugs sizzled through the air near his head. His gun came up and he triggered a pair of return shots at the wagon, then left his feet in a dive that carried him behind a water trough. He heard bullets thudding into the trough’s thick wooden side.

  His hat had flown off when he hit the dirt, but it had landed within reach. John Henry snaked his left arm out and snagged it. He waited for a brief lull in the firing, then popped up long enough to send the hat sailing through the air toward the arched opening at the rear of the Conestoga.

  The gunmen inside the vehicle reacted instinctively, as John Henry expected they would. They started shooting at the hat, which was just a vague, light-colored shape as it spun through the darkness. At the same time, John Henry surged to his feet and ran alongside the wagon, firing three more shots through its canvas cover. He heard a man scream in pain.

  Those shots emptied John Henry’s revolver, because he always carried the hammer on an empty chamber. He bounded to his right, onto the boardwalk, and as he did, he heard another shot from the wagon. The hot breath of the bullet fanned his cheek. He darted into an alcove where the entrance of a store that was closed down for the night was located. That gave him a little cover.

  He knew he had scored at least one hit; the scream from inside the wagon told him that much. But at least one of the bushwhackers was still in the fight. Lead-chewed splinters from the building wall near John Henry’s head as he thumbed fresh cartridges from his shell belt into the Colt. Under the circumstances, he filled all six chambers this time.

  Along the street, people were yelling, wanting to know what all the shooting was about, but everybody who had been outside had scurried for cover when the bullets began to fly and they weren’t venturing back out into the street. That much was good, anyway, John Henry thought. He didn’t have to worry as much about hitting an innocent bystander.

  He went down on one knee, thrust the barrel of his gun around the corner of the alcove, and fired two shots at the wagon. That canvas cover was full of holes by now. The wagon’s thick sideboards would probably stop most bullets, but the canvas might as well not have been there.

  A dark shape leaped down from the rear of the wagon. One of the bushwhackers was fleeing. John Henry snapped a shot at him, but the man broke into a run and didn’t slow down.

  Maybe that was a trick. Maybe the second ambusher, even though wounded, was waiting in the shadows inside the wagon for John Henry to step out and give chase.

  Or maybe the second bushwhacker was
dead, and the other one was just cutting his losses and trying to get away before he caught a bullet, too.

  John Henry didn’t believe in being foolhardy, but he wasn’t the sort to sit back and wait when somebody tried to kill him, either. He left the cover of the alcove in a rolling dive that carried him into the street. As he used his momentum to come back up on his feet, he swung the Colt toward the wagon.

  No shots came from the vehicle. John Henry’s gut told him there was no longer a threat lurking inside it.

  He set off in pursuit of the other bushwhacker, his long legs carrying him swiftly along the street.

  He caught a glimpse of the man ducking around a corner and pounded after him. As John Henry approached the corner he slowed, knowing that the bushwhacker might have doubled back in an attempt to take him by surprise. He turned into the cross street moving low and fast, but no shots rang out. John Henry pressed himself against the building wall to his left and listened intently.

  Shuffling footsteps and the rasp of someone breathing hard sounded ahead of him. The gunman was still on the move, even though John Henry couldn’t see him. He moved along the boardwalk, moving now with the lethal grace of a big cat stalking its prey.

  Every few steps, John Henry stopped to listen again. When he didn’t hear the unsteady footsteps and the labored breathing anymore, two possibilities occurred to him. One was that the man he sought was wounded and had succumbed to his injuries, either passing out or dying.

  The other was that the would-be killer was waiting for him.

  As John Henry paused to consider his next move, thoughts raced through his head. He was convinced that the men who’d come after him were members of Billy Ray Gilmore’s gang. Gilmore had set the marshal on him, and when that hadn’t done any good, he had allowed a couple of his men to seek revenge for what had happened to Rudd and Logan.

  The two bushwhackers weren’t Rudd and Logan themselves, though. With bullet holes in their feet, neither of them would have been able to move as spryly as the man John Henry had seen jump down from the wagon and run off along the street.

  None of that really mattered right now, John Henry told himself. The only important thing was that somewhere in the darkness lurked a man who wanted to kill him. John Henry supposed he could turn and walk away, but it wasn’t like him to leave such a threat on his back trail.

  He stepped out to the edge of the boardwalk where he’d be nice and visible and advanced steadily, well aware he might as well have painted a target on his chest. That was the quickest way to draw out the second bushwhacker. His every sense was on highest alert.

  He heard the rustle of cloth at the same instant he spotted a flicker of movement in the shadows along the wall about a dozen feet in front of him. He threw himself forward onto his belly as a pair of muzzle flashes lit up the night. The gun in John Henry’s hand roared and bucked as he thrust it in front of him. In the flickering glare from its explosions, he caught a glimpse of a man standing behind a barrel that sat next to the wall. The bushwhacker rocked back against the boards as John Henry’s slugs smashed into his chest.

  The man’s gun clattered on the planks. He rebounded from the wall and pitched forward to lie sprawled across the boardwalk, one hand hanging limply over the edge.

  Two rounds were left in John Henry’s gun. He kept it trained on the fallen man as he climbed to his feet. He approached the man carefully and used his left hand to fish a match from his pocket. He snapped the lucifer to life with his thumbnail and held it high so the flickering glow from its flame washed over the boardwalk.

  The man lay facedown in a spreading pool of blood. John Henry kicked the dropped gun into the street, then got a boot toe under the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. Just before the match flickered out, he saw the lifeless eyes staring up at him.

  John Henry dropped the match and started reloading his gun again, this time leaving one of the chambers empty as he usually did. This fight seemed to be over. He hoped so, anyway.

  A door creaked open behind him. An old man’s voice asked nervously, “Who’s there? Don’t move, mister! I got a greener pointed right at you!”

  “Take it easy, old-timer,” John Henry said. “I’m not looking for any trouble with you.”

  “Gents go to shootin’ holes in each other right outside my door, I’d say it’s trouble, all right,” the man replied. “Is it over?”

  “It is,” John Henry confirmed. “Is this your store?”

  “My shop,” the old-timer said. “Leather goods. Saddles, bridles, holsters. I got a room in the back where I sleep. Which is mighty danged hard to do when all hell’s breakin’ loose right outside!”

  “I’m sorry,” John Henry said. “The other fella started it, though. He and a partner opened fire on me, around the corner on Main Street.”

  “And you done for both of ’em?” The old-timer sounded like he had a hard time believing that.”

  “Evidently,” John Henry said. “I’m not sure about the other one, but this hombre is dead.”

  “That’s pretty good shootin’.”

  “Good enough to keep me alive, anyway. Do you have an undertaker in this town?”

  The old man snorted.

  “Of course, we got a undertaker. What sort o’ uncivilized place do you take us for?”

  “How about going and fetching him for this varmint while I check on the other one?”

  The old man stepped closer. John Henry could see him now, skinny, bald, with a drooping white mustache, a long nightshirt flapping around his spindly shanks. The shotgun he carried appeared to weigh almost as much as he did. He had the weapon’s twin muzzles pointed down now.

  “Reckon I can do that,” he said. “You sure you don’t need help with the other rapscallion?”

  “I don’t think so,” John Henry told him.

  Keeping his gun in his hand instead of holstering it, he walked back to the corner and turned onto Main Street. He saw that several people were gathered around the wagon where the bushwhackers had hidden, and one of them was holding up a lantern.

  Several of the townsmen drew back skittishly as John Henry walked up.

  “It’s all right, fellas,” he said. “No need to worry, my problem’s not with you.”

  “You’re the one who shot the fella in the wagon?” one of the men asked.

  “I am. Is he dead?”

  “Dead as can be,” another man replied. “Got a bullet hole in his shoulder, but that’s not what killed him.”

  “No, it was the slug that blew half his head away did that,” the first man said. “It left enough for us to recognize him, though. Just barely. Mister, you killed Junior Clemons.”

  “And who would that be?” John Henry asked.

  “You don’t know? Hell, he’s one of Billy Ray Gilmore’s men!” The man squinted at John Henry in the lantern light. “Son of a—You’re the man who shot Rudd and Logan in the foot, too!”

  The townsmen began backing away, as if they were afraid to get too close to the stranger who had ridden into Purgatory and started attracting bullets right off the bat.

  John Henry couldn’t say as he blamed them for feeling that way.

  Chapter Seventeen

  More people came along, giving in to their curiosity now that the shooting seemed to be over. One of them was Royal Bouchard, who smiled and said, “When I heard guns going off, I had a hunch you might be in the vicinity, Sixkiller. It looks like Gilmore didn’t keep his promise about not coming after you.”

  “He said he wouldn’t let Rudd and Logan come after me,” John Henry pointed out. “Setting a couple of his other dogs on me isn’t exactly the same thing.”

  “I suppose not. Come on back to the Silver Spur with me,” Bouchard suggested. “After all the excitement, I’m sure you could use a drink.”

  “You don’t think I should wait for the marshal to show up and look into this shooting?”

  “I suppose you can if you want to stay out here all night,” Bouchard said
. “I wouldn’t expect Hinkle to get around to it before morning, if then.”

  “You have a point,” John Henry agreed. “If he wants to talk to me, I shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

  John Henry asked a couple of the townsmen to let the undertaker know he had another customer in the wagon. He retrieved his hat, which had landed near the back of the wagon after he threw it in the air as a distraction. Luckily, the shots fired at it by the bushwhackers had missed, so there were no bullet holes in it. Then John Henry and Bouchard walked toward the saloon.

  “You killed the other bushwhacker, too, I assume,” Bouchard said.

  “Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

  “Get a look at him?”

  “Not a good one. But since that hombre Clemons was one of Gilmore’s men, I think it’s a pretty safe bet his partner was, too.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so. You just keep making enemies, don’t you? On the other hand, you’ve done a good job of whittling down the opposition.”

  John Henry laughed and said, “I suppose you could look at it that way. They’re not really my opposition, though. I’m willing to leave them alone as long as they leave me alone.”

  “It may be too late for that now,” Bouchard said solemnly. “You’ve done more than spill a little blood. Two of Gilmore’s men are dead. He’s going to have to square accounts for them, or he’ll lose the respect of his gang.”

  “Well, if it comes down to that, I’ll deal with it.”

  “By yourself?”

  “Who else can I count on for help around here?”

  “You might be surprised,” Bouchard said. “There are plenty of folks in Purgatory who are sick and tired of being pushed around by outlaws.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” John Henry said as they reached the Silver Spur and went into the saloon.

  Della was standing at the bar talking to Meade, the bartender. When she saw John Henry and Bouchard come in, she hurried over to meet them.

  “You’re all right?” she asked John Henry.