Street was still coughing as Monroe McGuire came riding down the steep slope of the pass with his field glasses slung around his neck. Shacklock had sent him up to survey the way ahead while they waited for Street to die.
“Looks like they’re headin’ direct for Taloga, Kain,” McGuire reported, drawing rein.
“Makin’ for the railroad,” guessed gaunt-faced Link Callaway, Shacklock’s top lieutenant. “Only there ain’t no train due through there until day after tomorrow, Kain.”
Shacklock rubbed his chin. The outlaw leader still hadn’t fully recovered from the ease with which Brazos and Benedict had undermined the biggest operation of his outlaw life, wasn’t at all sure that the situation could be retrieved. He still hoped to recapture the governor’s wife alive, but failing to do that, the least he intended to be satisfied with was the death of everybody involved. Which brought him to the mysterious fifth rider ...
“Did you get a look at that other jasper, Monroe?” he asked.
Monroe McGuire shook his head. “No chance, Kain. He’s still leadin’ the others by that long stretch.”
Shacklock shrugged. The identity of the fifth rider had intrigued him ever since the chase began, but the man had kept too far ahead of the main party to be seen clearly. Not that his identity was of any real importance, Shacklock told himself. He’d die along with Fallon and Brazos and Benedict when they finally ran them down.
He lifted his gaze to the plains beyond the pass again. How long before they achieved that objective? It was possible now that Fallon’s party just might make Taloga ahead of them. This prospect didn’t unduly disturb Kain Shacklock at first, for with a few notable exceptions like Dixie Troop, Taloga was a town which would take his side.
Yet considering all the factors, Shacklock decided it would be preferable to run them down before they gained the town. Certainly he still had overwhelming odds on his side, but Tom Fallon was a tremendous fighter of proven ability, while the dude Benedict had revealed himself to be the equal, if not the better of any gunfighter Shacklock had ever encountered.
It would have to be decided in the open if possible. And that meant they couldn’t afford another minute’s delay.
Street was still coughing when Shacklock walked back to him. Again he proffered the gun, but again Gene Street pleaded for help, for mercy. Kain Shacklock’s patience expired.
“Do it slow then, Street,” he barked, and spinning on his heel, gave the signal to mount.
“No!” Street choked. “Don’t leave me to die alone!”
Too late. Suddenly the pass was reverberating to the drumbeat of hoofs and the loyal and brave companions of Gene Street’s outlaw days went thundering away without a backward glance.
Soon it was still in the pass with the rays of the sun slanting down over the weathered stones, bloating the dead, washing the wounded gunfighter with a sickly, clammy heat. Objects began to blur and spin in his vision, yet Gene Street’s brain still felt clear. He could survive, he assured himself soberly. The bullet wound in the chest wasn’t as bad as they thought. All he had to do was rest up some, and he would be fine.
He drifted off into sleep, awoke suddenly.
Then he heard the beating of wings and the beaked face of a buzzard loomed over him and he screamed in horror and went on screaming until death, showing him the mercy he’d never shown any man, reached out and gathered him in.
The buzzards feasted that day.
Holly checked his horse to keep it off the heels of Brady Kilrone’s lathered bay, then pushed on ahead. Above, the bright stars burned and the cold badlands wind that had risen with darkness hissed through the mouth slit of his silver mask, feathered his scarred lips.
They weren’t going to run them down before Taloga. Holly had realized this several miles back and reckoned that Shacklock was beginning to accept the fact himself now. The trip wire slung across the trail between two trees five miles back had accounted for seven Drum horses, plus a broken arm for Paulo Segura. Ever since then, the gun packers had been forced to ride cautiously—which was exactly what their quarry wanted. Staring ahead through the thin film of hoof-kicked alkali dust, Holly could see the moving dots on the face of the plains that was Fallon’s party, and beyond, seeming to float in the chill night sky, the lofty yellow butte that marked the railroad and Taloga.
His eyes dropped to Shacklock’s broad back directly ahead. Shacklock rode as always with his shoulders pulled well back, his head cocked to one side, six-guns jutting from their holsters. Holly’s blue eyes glittered with a chill fire, with the bitter hatred he had nursed for this barrel-chested gunman for two long years.
Before the Dodge City debacle, Caleb Flint’s disappearance, and the election of a new leader in Drum, Holly had never had any cause to dislike Shacklock. He’d always respected the man’s gun speed and strength, and on the occasions on which they had worked together, they had formed a good team. But of course, until Flint’s disappearance, Holly had always regarded himself as Number Two in Drum, the logical successor should anything happen to Caleb Flint. Well, something had happened to Flint all right, he had turned Judas in Dodge and tried to murder his own lieutenant before vanishing into nowhere. But when the question of a leader to succeed the Iron Man had come up, it had not been Holly, but Shacklock who had been voted to wear the crown.
Holly’s hatred for Shacklock, and indeed for every man in Drum, had had its roots in that day. He’d never forgiven one of them, yet had successfully hidden his anger and wounded pride behind his beaten silver mask for two years until Fallon offered the opportunity to pay them out and earn a pardon, all in one treacherous stroke. The kidnapping of the governor’s wife had caused him and Fallon to alter their plans, though Holly still refused to regret the way things had gone. For unless Rachel Arnell had been kidnapped, five men including Notch Mallone wouldn’t have quit, and Holly wouldn’t have got his long-awaited chance at Flint.
The day Mallone had told Shacklock he was all through, Holly had quietly saddled up and tracked him out. He’d believed for two long years that the Iron Man was still alive, and that his partner from the pre-war days, Mallone, was the only person who knew his whereabouts.
His hunch had proved right. Mallone had unwittingly led him to the hidden valley in the Altar Mountains, and as a reward, Holly had bestowed upon him a quick, impersonal bullet in the back.
Shooting Flint had been richly satisfying, so much so that Holly had been briefly tempted to leave it go at that, to keep riding for Mexico and forget about Drum, the marshal and his chance for a pardon. Yet his taste for death, and his need to properly pay out all those who had slighted him, had drawn him back, to Taloga, to the meeting with Benedict and Brazos, to the daring infiltration of Drum—and ultimately, the rescue of the governor’s wife.
Looking back on the events at Drum, Holly accepted the fact that Benedict had had no opportunity to contact him before he fled the town with Rachel Arnell. The killer would have preferred to have been given the chance to put one between Shacklock’s eyes and make good his run-out also, but that was water under the bridge. He still regarded himself as working in with Marshal Fallon, and first opportunity he got, he meant to shake off the gunfighters and rejoin him.
As he turned this over in his mind, he became slowly aware that Monroe McGuire was riding on his right, as he had been all the way from the pass. And Link Callaway on his left.
McGuire and Callaway were both top flight gun hands, both unswervingly loyal to Shacklock.
Frowning, Holly let his horse drop back several lengths. Casually, McGuire and Callaway also dropped back. They covered another half mile in this fashion before Holly touched his horse with steel and urged it to a faster gait. A minute later, when Callaway and McGuire had ranged up on his flanks again, there was no longer any doubt in Holly’s mind. The two Shacklock lieutenants had been assigned the job of watching him.
Though conscious of the sudden, kicking twist of anger in his guts, Holly stared ahead at Shacklock’s
wide back and big head with renewed respect. Shacklock wasn’t as dumb as he looked. Shacklock suspected him, and until Holly allayed those suspicions, he knew he could look forward to the very close company of Callaway and McGuire.
Of course they couldn’t watch him all the time, the killer assured himself. They would slip up and he would get his chance eventually. Even so, it wouldn’t be easy. Monroe McGuire had the reputation as the slowest draw but deadliest shot in Drum. Holly told himself to remember that when it came time to make the break to rejoin his real allies.
Chapter Ten – Written in the Sky …
IN THE GRAY time after first light and before the sun rose, the cluster of unpainted buildings that comprised Taloga seemed to drift in a mirage. Slowly the glow of the night lights faded and the twin strips of steel that stretched north and south took on the color of pewter against the deep dun of the plains.
Taloga seemed asleep, but appearances were deceptive. Behind tightly shuttered windows and locked doors, people crouched and whispered in fearful voices, waiting again for the thunder of hoofs and the crash of guns such as had jerked them violently from their beds an hour earlier.
In the whispering hush, the depot clerk’s ginger cat slunk away from the plank-walled house where its master crouched hugging his Bible, to go scouting around Jimson’s skin store, the single-storied hotel, then down the rutted street past Dixie Troop’s Last Hope Saloon where hidden eyes followed its padding progress.
As had everything and everybody else in Taloga that violent morning, the ginger cat had earlier been disturbed by the shouting and shooting that had heralded the false dawn. But reassured by the silence, and spurred on by early morning hunger, the cat was on its way to the gulch that twisted away from the untidy straggle of shacks and lean-tos on the town’s southern side, and angled away towards the cemetery hill.
The gulch was a favorite hunting ground for the cat, but he stopped abruptly, small flat nose crinkling at the smell of death. Immediately below, sprawled carelessly across the cold stones, lay the bodies of three men, eyes staring, jaws locked in the final grimace of violent death.
Slowly the animal backed away, then hungry no longer, sped back for the sanctuary of the depot clerk’s house, leaving the streets of Taloga empty again ...
In the Last Hope Saloon, Hank Brazos removed his big hand from Bullpup’s collar as the ginger cat sped down the street. Brazos could rely on his battle-scarred trail hound for complete obedience any time except where cats were concerned. No amount of cussing or coaxing could dissuade the dog from taking off after a visible cat, and such a course of action could well have proven fatal for one overgrown hound this morning.
Brazos had no doubt that, given the chance, the hidden gunmen would have plugged Bullpup, just because he belonged to him.
“Got a bone some place, Miss Dixie?” Brazos asked over his shoulder. “Else I’ll have to shove him back in his travel bag.” He indicated the canvas sack in which Bullpup rode when his master was in a hurry.
“I’ll ... I’ll see,” replied Dixie, plainly finding it difficult to switch her thoughts from the very real possibility of violent death, to the subject of keeping a hound placid. But then Duke Benedict smiled at her as he came in through the archway from the back room and the woman’s eyes lit up and she went off to find sustenance for Bullpup with a light, purposeful step.
“How’s the arm, Yank?” Brazos asked, darting his partner a quick glance before returning his attention to the window shutters that offered a narrow view of the street.
“Fine now, since Rachel applied a bandage,” Benedict replied, lowering himself to his haunches to peer out. “How’s the head?”
Brazos grinned as he touched the weal along the left side of his head just above the ear. “My old man used to lick me harder than that.”
They weren’t indulging in mere bravado, for being veterans of the gun smoke trails, Hank Brazos and Duke Benedict were both very much aware that they had gotten out of it lightly despite a creased shoulder and a bullet-furrowed skull. They rated themselves lucky to be hunkered down here together and able to smile about it—more than could be said for the three Drum men lying dead in the gulch.
The dead men in the gulch, like the ambush at the pass and the success of the trip wire on the trail, had resulted in the main from the gunfighters’ impetuosity and their continuing refusal to take their quarry’s meagre numbers seriously enough. Upon reaching the town after a punishing, night-long ride that had come close to exhausting even the tireless Brazos, it had been Benedict who had suggested setting up another ambush in the gulch in the event of Shacklock trying once again to run them down. Backed by Brazos and Caleb Flint, Benedict had been in the shadow-filled gulch waiting with his Winchester when the six gunfighters came down on foot to take up vantage points close to the saloon. The resulting gunfight had been short, fierce, and costly to the Drum faction, with Benedict, Brazos and Flint making it back to Fallon at the saloon with nothing worse to show than a brace of bullet creases.
The original thirty gunmen who had set out from Drum had been reduced to under two dozen with no loss to Fallon’s bunch so far. But the odds were still six-to-one and the defenders were aware that they were unlikely to be given a chance to make any more heavy inroads in the enemy ranks. With their horses run to a standstill on their arrival at Taloga, they had reached the sanctuary of the Last Hope very much aware that their only chance of survival lay in the arrival of the Militiamen from Capital City.
“Where are they?” Benedict asked after a moment.
Brazos pointed.
“There’s two in the store, another three upstairs at the hotel, and maybe four or five in them shacks, Yank.”
Benedict frowned. “Are you sure? I can’t see anything.”
“They’re there right enough. Playin’ the old Apache game, I guess. Just sittin’ tight and lettin’ everybody’s nerves unravel before they make their play.”
Benedict nodded, his eyes playing slowly along the street. The stillness, the strengthening dawn light, and the awareness that the next hour could be the last of his life, reminded him powerfully of the days when he had ridden with Sherman in the war. He knew that Kain Shacklock would show no more quarter than had the wild Rebel boys of Robert E. Lee’s legions, nor they them. For this was war. This was the battle of the Last Hope Saloon in the making, a battle to be fought as fiercely and as bloodily as Gettysburg or Shiloh.
The Last Hope Saloon looked a better defensive proposition than it really was. Commanding the center of the so-called main street, it stood separate from the neighboring buildings, which was of major importance to the defenders. Also, there were no windows in the long back wall which meant that with the rear door bolted and barred, the defenders were free to concentrate on the remaining three walls when the onslaught came. Narrow, high-walled and two storied, Dixie’s saloon would also offer Fallon’s party the opportunity to fire down on the attackers from above—but it was about there that the building’s assets gave way to its liabilities.
The major drawback was the number of windows. Originally, the Last Hope had been a fortress-like construction with narrow little windows that served as gunports when the plains Indians came in on one of their frequent raids. However, it was ten years since a feathered head-dress had been seen within fifty miles of Taloga, and during that time Dixie Troop had arrived to take over and decided that what America needed even more than a good ten cent cigar, was a saloon with big plate glass windows to admit daylight, and let out the aroma of unwashed bodies, which in rugged Taloga could get fairly powerful at times.
As a consequence of Dixie’s structural alterations, Brazos, Flint, Fallon, Benedict and Dixie’s three loyal helpers had spent some hasty minutes stacking furnishings against the windows as a barricade against flying lead. Unfortunately there were still plenty of gaps where any amount of flying lead could come howling through unimpeded. The most secure positions, if things got really rough, would be behind the long, timbered
bar, or down in the stone-flagged cellar, which gave onto the old tunnel.
The tunnel, a crooked, narrow construction that stretched away beneath the clapboard hotel, and came out at the livery stables, was, like the Last Hope’s thick walls, a relic of the Indian wars. According to old Blakey Cole who had worked in the Last Hope since its construction, the ‘Injun Tunnel’ had saved many a life in the good old days of torture wheels and scalping axes. But the tunnel offered the defenders no advantage this grim morning.
Certainly the tunnel led to Hinkel’s Livery, but apart from two broken-down saddlers and a clutch of donkeys, the only animals at the livery were their own exhausted horses. They weren’t even sure that Shacklock wouldn’t discover the tunnel, which could make it a deadly liability instead of any kind of an asset if the killers attempted to break in by the tunnel.
Even so, they weren’t about to complain about the Last Hope as a fortress. On heading for Taloga, Benedict, Brazos and Fallon had decided that the railroad depot would prove the best place to make a stand while waiting for the arrival of the militia. They’d certainly had no thought of imposing themselves on anybody in Taloga—not with the sort of trouble they had breathing down their necks. Yet the word of their arrival had barely had the chance to get around the township before Dixie Troop had arrived at the depot with her helpers, insisting that ‘Dear Duke’ and his friends take advantage, of her hospitality. In Dixie’s own words, she was ready and willing to ‘give a year’s takings to see those Drum butchers trimmed to size.’ But of course if things went bad, pretty Dixie could wind up giving a lot more than that.
The silence continued, fraying nerves. Benedict sensed the attack was imminent. Turning away to take a final check of the defenses, he nodded in approval when he saw the saloon hands Judd Storey and Billy Tobin positioned up on the staircase landing with their rifles. From there, the two men could see and shoot over the partly barricaded west windows directly into the street, which would be of great advantage should the gun packers rush them.
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