by Paul Bedford
As his words sank in, all eyes turned to the livery . . . except that of course no one had a hope of actually seeing the building. The bartender paled, as he recalled the disagreement over the quality of the house whiskey. ‘Oh shit,’ he mumbled.
The big lawman drew in a deep breath to steady himself. ‘Ain’t that the truth?’ he retorted. His composure was returning and yet with it came real fear. It was a long time since he’d had to face up to such an obviously capable man killer. Unfortunately, as he kept telling everyone, Roy was his town and it was no longer just worthless border trash who were in grave danger. He had a clear duty to protect young Nathan . . . if he still lived! There was also another consideration. He turned to the diminutive figure of Doc Curren.
‘Doc, I need you to get over to McLean’s. Tell Cathy that no matter how much gunfire she hears, she’s to stay put. She’ll recognize you from the livery, so she should listen.’
The medical man had the wit and good grace to do as he was asked without complaint. He was barely out of the door before Jared drew his Remington and followed on. Pausing at the threshold, the lawman suddenly turned to the two freighters. Of all those present, they were probably most used to handling firearms.
‘Get your scatterguns from the wagon and follow me to the stables.’
The brothers were aghast. ‘This ain’t our fight,’ Henry protested. ‘We’re just here bringing supplies.’
‘What you brought is that assassin into my town. If you want to carry on doing business here, you’ll do as I say. Now move!’ Then, without a backward glance, the part-time marshal stepped out of the building and disappeared into the swirling snowstorm.
As the heavy door swung open, Nathan lurched forward. His matted hair was coated with snow and he would normally have been relieved to return to his domain, but instead he was absolutely petrified.
‘For pity’s sake, don’t shoot,’ he wailed at anyone who might be listening, but it was already too late.
Up in the hayloft, two six-guns blasted out simultaneously. One bullet ripped into his right arm, whilst the other neatly broke his collarbone. The fact that neither projectile was immediately life threatening had nothing to do with any finer feelings, but rather because both Taw and Jed had been aiming at the man crouching behind Nathan. Before the poor lad even had time to crumble to his knees, Clemens barged past him and raced underneath the hayloft.
As he passed below the scavengers’ last location, he fired rapidly three times and then kept on moving to the rear of the stables. He well knew that all the gunfire would be likely to attract unwelcome attention and that he would probably need an ally, although that was highly unlikely to come in human form. Ears ringing, he dropped down inside a vacant stall and bellowed out, ‘You slack-jawed faggots can’t shoot worth a damn!’
Only one of his enemies was able to respond to that. Jed, sorely hampered by his broken leg, had been unable to shift position rapidly enough and now lay dead from a bullet through his heart. Cursing fluently, Taw darted over to him and grabbed Jed’s smoking revolver. With only his right arm functioning, he placed the spare Colt in the folds of his sling and yelled back, ‘Maybe so, but I managed to take your woman away from you, didn’t I?’
Clemens had more sense than to continue the fruitless exchange and so the only sound was Nathan’s shrill screaming, as the youngster lay helplessly on the floor near the entrance. That was how Jared found him when he cautiously pushed open one of the doors.
‘God damn,’ he muttered angrily. Although it was far from clear just who had actually shot the lad, John Clemens was now very definitely the town’s problem and the lawman would need all the help he could get. ‘You still alive in there, Johnson?’ he yelled.
‘Sure am,’ Taw replied, as he carefully prowled around the hayloft. A moving target was always harder to hit. ‘Jed’s shot to hell, though. Clemens is at the back somewhere, hiding in a stall.’
‘Then it seems like your enemy is now my enemy,’ the marshal countered. ‘But don’t think this is over when he’s dead, because you’re as much to blame for this bloodbath as anyone.’
At that moment and much to his surprise, the Timmons brothers arrived, dutifully carrying their sawn-off shotguns. Nathan’s wailing was audible even over the storm and they looked far from happy to be there. Jared gave them no time to reflect on their situation.
‘Give me one of those scatterguns and some shells,’ he demanded. ‘The stable hand has taken a couple of bullets. Once I get in there, you’ll have to follow on and grab him. Get him back to the saloon for Doc Curren to work on. And keep your heads down. He ain’t the only casualty in there and I don’t want any more.’
Henry and Kyle nodded reluctantly. They had no taste for any involvement in vicious gunplay, but they were coated in freezing snow and their role would at least allow them to return to some warmth.
After checking the loads on his borrowed weapon, Roy’s marshal pushed the heavy door further open. Taking in a deep breath to steady his nerves, he charged forward past Nathan’s squirming figure and then dropped to the ground. From near the rear of the building a gun crashed out and he felt a blast of pressure from a near miss. Cursing, Jared aimed his shotgun and squeezed one trigger. There was a tremendous roar and a blast of lead shot peppered the far stall.
With a cloud of smoke obscuring the immediate area, he yelled at the entrance, ‘Move, you slackers, or I’ll turn this big gun on you!’
The two freighters gulped in perfect unison. ‘Where’s he shot?’ Kyle replied.
‘Arm and shoulder looks like,’ Jared responded impatiently.
Henry glanced at his brother. ‘Grab a leg each and run, yeah?’
Kyle nodded. ‘I suppose.’ Then he called out, ‘Cover us, Marshal.’
As Jared unleashed the second barrel in Clemens’s general direction, the Timmons leapt into the building and seized hold of Nathan’s ankles. With scant regard for his condition, they turned and dragged him across the threshold and out into the street. The youngster’s screaming reached a new crescendo and then abruptly ceased. Mercifully, the increased pain had tipped him into unconsciousness, allowing the two men to carry him off through the blizzard without incident.
Although grateful for Nathan’s removal, Jared knew that he wouldn’t see the brothers again until, one way or another, it was all over. With the shotgun reloaded, he called up to the hayloft, ‘If we’re going to flush this bastard out, you need to get down here where you can do some good, savvy?’
Taw had been thinking along the same lines. With the loft stretching over the rear of the building, he was relatively safe from attack, but didn’t have a shot at Clemens. The problem was that he had to get down the wooden ladder one handed, without taking a bullet. He was just about to find out that that would be the least of his worries!
Chapter Thirteen
The town marshal obviously knew his business, Clemens reflected and a sawn-off shotgun in the right hands was a truly terrifying weapon. To settle both his opponents, he would have to play dirty, but that had never troubled him in the past. With the stable containing a lot of nervous horses and one of the men somewhere above him, fire seemed like a useful ally. And there were plenty of lit kerosene lamps conveniently dotted about the timber building.
Glancing around his refuge, the assassin spotted a pitchfork impaled in a bale of hay. If he was going to make a move, it had to be before the last outlaw dropped down from the loft and joined in. Holstering his revolver, Clemens scrabbled over to the vicious implement. He hefted it in his hand to test the balance and then hurled it with all his strength towards the lawman.
As the deadly prongs arced towards him, Jared reacted fast. After rolling twice, he fired once at the stall, but his target was already on the move. Clemens swiftly reached the nearest lamp. It was hanging from a hook next to a pile of leather tackle. Quickly removing the cap on the fuel reservoir, he pitched the whole thing over to the base of the wooden ladder with uncanny accuracy. Even as th
e glass shattered and the kerosene flared into life, the relentless assassin was already shifting position again . . . but this time he only just made it.
The shotgun crashed out once more and at last some of the pellets ripped through flesh and blood. The pain was such that he was quite unable to stifle a howl. With part of his left ear torn away and a piece of lead agonizingly lodged in the nape of his neck, Clemens again raced for the rear of the stables.
Transferring the empty ‘two shoot’ gun to his left hand, the marshal drew and fired his Remington. Knowing the quality of the opponent that he was up against, he only fired a couple of shots. To empty both weapons without a definite kill would be to leave himself at the other man’s mercy.
As the fugitive dived for cover in another empty stall, the frustrated lawman could see that everything had suddenly changed. The livery was on fire and there were at least twenty terrified horses kicking out at their wooden enclosures. Saving the animals had to be his priority. His personal attraction to Cathy could no longer count.
‘Why don’t you just take your wife and go?’ he bellowed. ‘There’s been more than enough killing!’
The answer, when it finally came, was far from encouraging. ‘Nobody takes what’s mine and lives to brag about it! Besides, you’ve made me bleed and now you’re going to pay!’
Jared sighed. It was just his luck to come up against someone who lived by the feud! He glanced up to find Johnson peering over the side of the loft. Flames, fed by the abundance of dry straw, were leaping up both the ladder and the wall at its side. The rope and pulley was available, but that came with its own dangers.
‘If you want to live, you’ll need to shimmy down that rope. Or better still, just jump, ’cause you can be sure that bastard’ll be waiting. When you hit the ground, roll and stay low. I’ll try to cover you, but make it quick.’
Taw stared nervously at the long drop for a moment. Swinging down a rope with only one good arm wasn’t an option, but he could at least sit on the edge to reduce the distance. Choking from the smoke, the outlaw got on to his backside and lowered his legs over the side.
‘Jump, god damn it,’ the marshal urged.
Even as he toppled forward, a gun crashed out and Taw felt a shocking pain in his left leg. He didn’t even hear the shotgun triggered in response, because rather than landing and rolling as intended, he hit the hard packed dirt with punishing force and immediately lost consciousness.
‘That’s just great,’ Jared muttered bleakly. Now he was all alone against a gun-crazed maniac in a burning building full of panicked horses.
Cathy remained immobile for one full minute after Doc Curren’s departure, as she considered his message. Then the young woman eased open the door and stepped out into the freezing tumult. Ignoring the buffeting, she listened in horror to the muffled gunfire. Like it or not, her future existence revolved around the fate of the three men across the street, because she had sense enough to realize that a woman alone on the frontier was easy pickings. Without money, the best that she could hope for was a gruelling and short life of prostitution. It was this depressing knowledge that meant she had to ignore the marshal’s instructions and force herself out into the raging blizzard.
The wooden steps were coated in snow and at the bottom the makings of a drift awaited her. Once through that the going became a little easier, because the power of the wind was literally blasting the fresh snow off the street and up against the buildings. Cathy knew the sound of thunder when she heard it, man-made or otherwise. Taking short, sharp steps she soon covered the distance. Before her loomed the massive stable doors, but there was something else as well. Deep inside the structure, a flickering glow was visible through the minute gaps in the timber planking. The building was on fire and there wasn’t a soul around to help.
The flames had the wooden structure in a death grip and no bucket chain on earth was going to douse them. All Jared could hope to do was save the animals without getting himself killed in the process. But how could he possibly open the double doors without being shot in the back? Then, as if heaven sent, he felt a blast of cold air and turned to see Cathy’s lovely but anxious features at the threshold. The wind fanned the fire, but it mattered not. The livery was doomed anyway.
‘Get those doors open,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got to get the horses out of here.’ He didn’t mention the fact that he would most probably have to kill her husband in the process.
Breaking the shotgun, Jared replaced the cartridges and then cautiously moved towards the terrified animals. As first one door and then the next opened, the flames intensified so that the heat on his face was almost intolerable. If Johnson didn’t wake up soon the outlaw would be toast, but it was John Clemens that concerned him most. The assassin had been strangely inactive for a while.
Reaching the first stall, the lawman kicked the thick pole from its mountings and was rewarded by the crazed beast lunging past him and off out into the night. Then he moved rapidly from stall to stall, all the time keeping the shotgun trained on his last sighting of the gunman. As more and more horses fled to safety, he began to think that he might just pull it off.
Bizarrely, in spite of the terrible danger, it suddenly occurred to him that when it was all over he really ought to hand in his badge and stick to blacksmithing, because carrying the law in such a spineless town was a completely thankless task. The thought brought a grim smile to his flushed and sweaty features.
Clemens could hear the released horses pounding away, so he knew that the marshal must be getting closer, but the pain in the back of his neck was so intense that he simply couldn’t focus. The piece of metal lodged there had to be touching a nerve, because it was all he could do not to cry out. Dropping to his knees, he knew that it was time to take drastic measures.
Withdrawing his knife from its sheath, he reached up and positioned the point next to the entry wound. Then, because he had no illusions about what was to come, he put the leather cover between his teeth and tightly clenched them. Next he placed his left forefinger over the entry wound, so as to guide the narrow blade in. Drawing in a stream of super-heated air through his nostrils, he abruptly held his breath and eased in the vicious probe.
A fresh wave of agony swept over him, but this wasn’t the first time that John Clemens had operated on himself. Fighting back the nausea and with sweat pouring off his face, he dug deeper until finally the knife point reached under the lead shot. His right hand was trembling, but there was far worse to come. Because the blade would not bend, he had to penetrate deeper before pivoting it upwards. As the existing wound was torn wider, the pain was indescribable. Suddenly overwhelmed by a peculiar sense of detachment, the gunman acknowledged that he was going to faint and most probably burn to d. . . !
With an unexpected surge, the blood-coated pellet burst out and was lost in the hay. Unable to control a muffled groan, Clemens fell forward and lay doubled over for a long moment. But then the frenzied movement of more animals signified Marshal Tunstall’s relentless approach and he spat out the sheath. That god damned law dog was going to pay!
The flames had nearly spread across one entire wall, but with only a couple of horses left to free, Jared had high hopes of being able to slip out of the small door at the rear. His skin felt like parchment in the intense heat and he longed to roll in the freezing snow. Unfortunately, the next fear-maddened beast was directly opposite an apparently empty stall and he was by no means certain that his deadly foe was incapacitated. Levelling his shotgun, the marshal momentarily averted his gaze as he kicked out sideways at the sliding pole. The trapped animal was in a frenzy of terror, with blood shot eyes and bleeding flanks. Suddenly liberated, the creature instinctively surged forward towards the open doors.
It was at that moment that John Clemens’s buckskin clad form leapt from the semi-darkness. His revolver fired what should have been the kill shot. The bullet struck the careering horse in its neck, but such was its momentum that it was past Jared in an instant. As the gun
man desperately cocked his weapon, his badly abused neck convulsed and he swayed slightly. That momentary respite allowed Jared to transfer his gaze and line up the shotgun.
Squeezing the first trigger, he felt the comforting recoil as the twelve-gauge cartridge detonated. The blast caught Clemens squarely in his chest and threw him back into the rear wall of the stall. Peering at his nemesis in stunned disbelief, the stricken assassin tried to raise his right hand by sheer strength of will. Without any hesitation, Jared fired again and watched with horrified relief as the other man’s disfigured, blood-spattered body absorbed the deadly projectiles and collapsed on to the hay.
The marshal was riveted to the spot for a long moment, before he suddenly blinked and came to his senses. The building was fast becoming a blazing inferno. Even the loft above him was ablaze. He could feel the skin on his face beginning to blister. Without even time to reload, he raced to the final stall. Slamming the solid pole to one side, Jared stepped back as the maddened creature charged past. A mere two yards further on was a water barrel and then the rear door. He had made it.
But then he recalled Taw Johnson, lying near the main entrance. Although the man was most probably dead, there was always the slim chance that he wasn’t. ‘God damn it,’ he cursed. Dashing over to the barrel, he thrust his head deep into the soothing liquid and then turned away to run the length of the doomed building. The fatally wounded horse had collapsed on its side. Unwilling to let the poor creature burn to death, he paused to shoot it in the head with his Remington before moving on.
Cathy Clemens had remained outside, trembling in splendid isolation as, one by one, the escaping horses had charged past into the night. Not one member of the community had come to investigate and assist their part-time marshal, which said a lot about Roy’s citizens. With the storm still raging, they were probably not even aware that the livery was on fire, but no one could have been oblivious to the confrontation taking place.