“You all right?”
Kate nodded, clinging to him, and he felt her shaking.
“Johnny?”
“He’s, fine, I guess. Dr. Boles was taking care of him when I left.”
Yancey’s bleak eyes sought Landon and the man looked away from that deadly stare hurriedly. The Enforcer moved his gaze to Burdin.
“Be no use askin’ you to let her go, I suppose?”
Burdin laughed shortly. “No use at all. Luke will be outside the door. I’ll stand here with the gal and she’ll have a gun-barrel against her head, Bannerman. So you shoot straight! Savvy?”
Kate paled even more and looked desperately at Yancey. He made his face go blank and squeezed her hand briefly as Burdin pulled her away and thrust her into a corner. He glanced at Landon.
“Get down in the crowd with the others, Jud, just in case anythin’ goes wrong. And stir up that crowd as soon as you see the governor’s hit. Whip ’em up into a frenzy, make sure they block that street long enough for us to get away.”
Burdin nodded and left the room.
“Stand guard outside, Luke,” Burdin told Meeker and the outlaw nodded, finished making his cigarette and lit it before moving out into the passage, closing the door behind him. Burdin’s gun was in his hand and he motioned with the barrel for Yancey to sit against the wall under the window beside the crate holding the rifle set-up. Then he stood in a position where he could cover both the Enforcer and the girl. But he kept the gun-barrel pointed mostly in Kate’s direction and Yancey knew he was hogtied as effectively as if he still had ropes on his wrists and ankles. One wrong move and Kate would be shot.
Yancey could see no way out. No matter what happened, he figured all three of them would be dead within the next few hours: Kate, Dukes and himself.
~*~
Cato moved about like an old man. He had defied Boles’ orders and gotten out of bed and insisted on accompanying the governor and his party by train to San Antonio for the parade. He had one advantage over the others—he knew Burdin’s men and what they looked like. He figured if he could get to a vantage point where he could watch the crowd through field glasses he might be able to pick out the outlaws and direct the Rangers or Enforcers to positions where they could be covered, and watched.
The new Enforcer Unit stayed close to Dukes: there was Cleve Shann, Mitch Denton, Ollie Shubridge, and Frank Parry. They were all aware of the seriousness of their first assignment and eager to pull it off successfully. Cato only hoped they wouldn’t be too eager and blow the deal, but they were experienced Rangers, and would be capable of assessing the situation and their actions. He hoped.
He was taken to the tower of the San Rosa Mission just back from the plaza and affording a high vantage point that covered not only the plaza itself, but the entrances to the streets that radiated from it. Other folk who had figured to use the tower to watch the parade were unceremoniously ousted and Cato was set up with large-magnification field glasses, a rifle and his Manstopper. A Ranger stood at the loft door, ready to relay any messages to the man who waited below. They would be passed on to a group of waiting Rangers and the Enforcers, directing them to their targets.
Dukes was in pretty bad shape; his nerves were shot because of the worry about Kate, and his angina was acting up again. Boles was dosing him with digitalis, insisting that he could not lead the parade. But it had been the tradition of Texas governors to lead the yearly parade to the Alamo and Dukes figured he couldn’t let his people down now. Cato reckoned it was suicide, too, but Dukes was insistent. He would not listen to suggestions about a closed coach with heavy panels and thick glass windows. Tradition called for him to don cowboy gear and ride his palomino at the head of the parade and that’s just what he was going to do.
In the bell tower, Cato moved his glasses slowly over the hundreds of people packing into the plaza below. There were kids all along the front, done up in their Sunday best. There were banners and streamers hung from the buildings, and the storefronts around the plaza had had a recent lick of bright paint. A brass band, the San Antonio Cowboy Band, struck up ‘Dixie’ and the crowd began to sing along with the music. Someone let off a string of firecrackers that had the Rangers reaching for their guns. The hot sun beat down on the festive scene and Cato, a little disoriented because of the drugs in him and the pain of his wound, wondered if he was only imagining that there could be deadly danger here.
It was a day that seemed to promise only happiness and gaiety and the threat of death seemed remote.
Then his glasses picked out Jud Landon below and the reality came flooding back with a rush. He called the Ranger, pointed to Landon’s position and the message was passed on. In a few minutes, when he looked at Landon again, he saw a big Ranger standing close behind the unsuspecting man, hand on gun butt.
Over the next half hour, Cato had pinpointed Matt Steed, and several more of Meeker’s men. He did not know where Meeker was and did not expect to see Burdin. The rebel leader would be with Yancey, setting up the attempted assassination. He raked the glasses around the buildings. There were several places that would be excellent ambush positions. Seemed to be a window over a feed store almost directly opposite Saber Road that could be used by a man with a steady hand and eye, a dead shot. There were also several false-fronts which would provide cover. A man only had to find a convenient knothole or make one for the rifle barrel to poke through. Around the plaza itself there were several other positions. They had all been checked out by the Rangers and local law.
Then he heard the drums strike up a rattling tattoo and the band began ‘The Yellow Rose of Texas’ and Cato knew it was too late for anything now. The parade had begun.
But that window over the feed store bothered him. It was the only one directly opposite Saber Road. It would take a dead shot to hit a target as small as a man from over there and kill him outright. A man would need to be an expert shot. A man like Yancey Bannerman.
~*~
The crate and the rifle set-up was set a few feet back into the room, in shadow, so that there was no danger of sunlight glinting on the barrel. Yancey was crouched over the rifle now, with Burdin standing behind him, his arm around the girl, a gun at her head. He had set down the cartridge on the floor beside Yancey but was making the man keep his hands on the rifle where he could see them.
The parade was coming down Saber Road from the old redbrick railroad depot which would still be operating a hundred years hence. The governor’s palomino was high stepping out in front and the rider waved his cowboy hat, gray hair shining in the bright sun. The crowds cheered. Dukes was followed by a troop of cavalry with foot soldiers coming on behind, rifles held across their chests. They wore the old-style uniforms of Santa Anna’s Mexican troops who had stormed the Alamo and put its defenders to the sword. These men would take part in the reenactment of the Alamo battle. Behind them, came the men dressed as the defenders, in old range clothes, mountain man outfits, even hessian, representing the men from all over America who had come to defend their liberty against the Mexican general.
There was a detachment of horsemen dressed like Santa Anna’s Lancers, drummers to give the beat of battle and old high-wheeled cannons dragged by sweating men bare to the waist.
The cheers were deafening as the governor stood in the stirrups and waved his hat high, saluting the crowd. Streamers fluttered and arced over the heads of the jostling folk in the street. The ones in the plaza pressed forward to see better.
In the room above the feed loft, Burdin nudged Yancey’s back. “Put that cartridge in the breech. Easy now.”
Kate was trembling, her face bone-white. She was breathing fast, leaning away from the pressure of the gun barrel against the side of her head.
“Yancey,” she whispered, her voice incapable of making any louder sound.
The Enforcer didn’t look at her. He picked up the cartridge, pushed it through the side-loading gate on the Winchester, then levered it into the breech.
“Now, tak
e your sight!” Burdin ordered, his own voice harsh with tension. “He’ll be comin’ out of Saber Road in a minute. You nail him just as he enters the plaza, Bannerman. You try to hesitate and I’ll blow the gal’s head all over this room.”
Still Yancey said nothing. He nestled his cheek against the rifle butt, moved the weapon a little in the clamp mechanism and lined up the sights on the governor, waiting for him to ride out of the shadows of Saber Road into the blazing sunlight of the Plaza de Sol.
“Yancey, for God’s sake!” Kate cried. “You can’t! He won’t let us live, even if you do it! Please ...!”
Yancey had never heard Kate go to pieces like this before. But it was understandable: she had never had such pressure on her before. He really didn’t know what he was doing. He was following Burdin’s orders as they came, but, between times, his brain seemed leaden, dead, incapable of rational thought. There was just no way out. All he could think of was that he didn’t have to kill the governor. He didn’t think it would save Dukes, his not squeezing the trigger, but he didn’t have to do it! As Kate had said, Burdin would kill them anyway, and there was a chance, a slim one, but a chance, that the governor just might survive if he refused to ...
By God! He felt the sweat prickle his skin and slide down his face as he lined up the sights on the palomino, lifted them slightly, up the body of the rider to settle them squarely on the chest. His mind was working rapidly now. There was a chance after all! If he handled it right, there was.
He snapped his head around suddenly and Burdin tensed.
“Back to them sights, damn you, Bannerman! I’ll kill her! I mean it!” His thumb notched back the hammer of the gun he held to Kate’s head.
Yancey deliberately made his voice loud and startling, counting on it to back up his words, which were calculated to shock. “That’s not the governor on the horse!”
Kate stiffened and Burdin blinked, momentarily thrown by the news. Yancey hammered home his slight advantage.
“It’s Frank Parry wearin’ a beard!” Yancey bawled. “They must’ve figured it was too dangerous for Dukes ...”
Burdin growled in his throat and heaved Yancey aside. He started to make animal-like sounds as he looked through the window, staring in disbelief. Then he swung back, his Colt coming up fast as Yancey lunged for the rifle, trying to pull the crate back so that he had enough room to shoot at Burdin. He would never make it, he knew, and he shoved Kate roughly so that she fell sprawling. Burdin’s teeth were bared and his finger tightened on the trigger. Then he stiffened and his mouth opened in a soundless scream, his back arching back as if his spine had been snapped in two—which it had, by Cato’s bullet from the mission tower. He had seen the outlaw leader suddenly appear in the window above the feed store and knew it had to be the ambush position. In an instant he had snatched up his rifle and fired.
Only after Burdin was smashed forward into the crate with the clamped rifle did Yancey and Kate hear the sound of Cato’s distant rifle shot.
Yancey lunged for Burdin’s six-gun as it exploded wildly. The door was kicked open and Luke Meeker charged in, his gun seeking a target. Kate flung a chair in his path and he tripped as he fired. By then Yancey had Burdin’s gun in his hand. He rolled away, came to a half-sitting position and blasted across his body. Meeker fell back with half his face blown away.
Yancey clambered to his feet and dragged Kate upright. They went out of the room with its two dead men, hearing gunfire and screams down in the plaza. Boots pounded on the stairs and he pushed Kate behind him as Matt Steed came charging up, gun in hand. He and Yancey fired together and Steed’s body catapulted backwards, clattering as it fell. Yancey helped Kate down with him. They stepped over Steed’s body, then went warily out into the store and into the plaza. By the time they reached the edge of the walk, the gunfire had ceased. There were five dead men sprawled in the plaza and two Rangers were nursing bullet wounds.
From the mission tower, Cato waved and Yancey threw him a brief salute as a coach thundered into the plaza and pulled up in a cloud of dust. The door opened before it had stopped rolling and Governor Dukes stepped down, moving towards Kate, who ran to him to throw her arms around his neck. Yancey turned as the four new Enforcers came running up, guns in hand, and formed a protective barrier around Dukes and Kate. Yancey smiled: they had learned well. Parry was still wearing his governor’s disguise.
The whole program had been worthwhile, it seemed. Today they had come through with flying colors and he figured Ironsite would be used again and again in the future to train more Enforcer Units. He turned as Dukes pushed through his new Enforcers and shook hands with Yancey, Kate on his other arm.
“You sure did a good job on those boys, Yance,” Dukes told him. “The stand-in was their idea. The training was worthwhile, wouldn’t you say?”
“Sure, Governor,” Yancey agreed. “But, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like an assignment with some real action in it next time.”
Kate looked startled at the request and Dukes pursed his lips.
“I guess it can be arranged,” he said quietly.
Then Yancey slipped an arm about Kate’s waist and smiled wearily as Cato came limping up, helped by Dr. Boles.
“But not for a few weeks,” he said and Kate smiled broadly.
The Bannerman Series by Kirk Hamilton
The Enforcer
Ride the Lawless Land
Guns of Texas
A Gun for the Governor
Rogue Gun
Trail Wolves
Dead Shot
… And more to come every month!
BANNERMAN 7: DEAD SHOT
By Kirk Hamilton
First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd
Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
First Smashwords Edition: June 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.
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