Riding north from Sonora to hire out his gun, Carmody didn’t quite know what the trouble was about—and didn’t give a damn. The money was good and it looked like it was going to be a nice dirty old-fashioned range war. That’s what Carmody thought, but that was before he saved the runty kid’s life. After that things began to get complicated—and murderous. Tex McCarty was the little killer’s name, and he was a whole mess of trouble in one small man. He brought death to everything he touched, and the more Carmody thought about it, the more he knew there was only one cure for a man like that.
SCREAMING ON THE WIRE
CARMODY 6
By Peter McCurtin
First Published by Belmont Tower Books in 1972
Copyright © 1972, 2016 by Peter McCurtin
First Smashword Edition: May 2016
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
Cover image © 2015 by Edward Martin
Series Editor: Ben Bridges ~*~Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Estate.
Chapter One
Now it was none of my damn business why those three fellers were trading bullets out there in the New Mexico desert. The two rifle shooters were waiting out the other feller, counting on the white glare of the sun to fry his brains, figuring he’d try something desperate when he was down to his last few shells.
A long way back, I heard a scatter of shots, then nothing after that. Maybe an hour later, taking it easy in the early afternoon heat, I topped a ridge and saw the little man lying behind the dead cow pony, the sun flashing on the nickeled revolver in his left hand.
Trouble is my business when I get paid for it, or have some pressing and personal interest, and if those two rifle shooters out there in the rocks had any sense they might have given me the opportunity to turn my animal and ride away from there. Of course, I could see their point: I could be a friend of the little man with the shiny gun. That was how they saw it, because both rifles cut loose from cover, and for one or two seconds I thought I’d never get to know who killed me.
They should have cut me down with the first bullets, since it’s no weighty thing for two riflemen to drill a rider outlined against the top of a ridge. But they were in too much of a hurry—all that waiting in the sun had made them edgy—and by the time they took more care with their shooting I was afoot and pushing my animal down the safe side of the ridge.
Then I was on my belly, sliding the Winchester over the rim, looking for something to shoot at. From behind the dead pony the little man was returning the fire. You could tell by the sound that he was using a small caliber pistol; no matter, a .45 Colt with a Buntline barrel wouldn’t have worked any better at that distance. I pegged a shot at a face under a hat, but if I hit him, he didn’t holler. A bullet from the other shooter kicked sand in my face.
I yelled and pulled back out of sight. Even so, there was nothing to keep me there—and I wasn’t even mad—but you can’t let people shoot at you and think they can get away with it. They had better cover than I did, and my head was likely to get a third eye if I showed it often enough. Pulling back, keeping low, I ran along the safe side of the slope. There was more shooting—the crack-crack of the pistol, the heavier crash of the rifles.
About fifty yards along the back of the ridge, I shucked my hat and came up easy, holding the Winchester short, the butt against my hip. That part of the ridge was studded with small rocks, and from where I was I could see the rifleman on the right; not all of him—just the top of his high-crowned Texas hat, a wedge of shoulder behind a rock.
The little man they were trying so hard to kill was more a kid than a man. I saw that when he fired the last bullet in the cylinder and rolled over on his back to reload. Even from that distance I swear the little runt was grinning.
The two rifle shooters were yelling again, trying to decide how it was with me. The one in the Texas hat sounded confident, and having his shooting eye doubted by his partner made him mad. That—and the kid opening up with another hail of bullets, none of which did a God damned bit of good. I had to make it quick. The dangerous side of the ridge was as bare as Monday breakfast on the poor farm—not a bit of cover. It ran down bare and hard to where the kid was, and if not for that dead pony he would have been long dead himself.
That wild, grinning kid had the dirtiest mouth I ever heard on a man. The voice was a high-pitched snarling yell, and some of the things he said about those fellers’ mothers, sisters, wives, daughters, were new even to me. He had a way of doing it. First, a bullet, then some dirty-mouth stuff. And so on. A man with sense doesn’t yell like that; in the desert when he’s pinned down and short of water he doesn’t yell at all. And what in hell was this runt doing without a rifle in hard country? A double-barreled sawed-off was propped against the dead pony’s belly. But he made no move to use it, and I guess he thought the scattergun was his ace in the hole.
The chances wouldn’t come in bundles; shooting at a wedge of shoulder wasn’t sure enough. If I fired and missed, the mully-grubbing stand-off could drag on till it got dark. Long before that, a bunch of their friends could ride up, and I’d find myself dying for nothing at all.
I guess Texas Hat convinced the other feller I was dead or done-for. They got brave and fired together, throwing bullets but staying low, waiting to see if they got any answering fire from the ridge. They didn’t—not right away. Blazing away like a fool, the kid took a bullet in the arm and rolled behind the mound of dead horseflesh. “Move—finish him!” Texas Hat was yelling.
He broke cover first, running at the wounded kid in a fast zigzag Apache scramble. His partner was older, bulkier, not so light on his feet. He ran like he’d rather be running the other way. He could wait; his fast-moving partner was the one to get.
The fast one saw the flash of the Winchester as I jerked it to my shoulder and fired. That first bullet winged him but didn’t bring him down. I swung the Winchester, following his run, and then he dived away from where he thought the next bullet would hit. He was wrong. It was like shooting a bird on the wing. The .44-40 slug ripped through his side and knocked him over in a tangle of arms and legs, and when he got through waving he hit the ground and lay still.
The other runner wasn’t graceful at all, but he did what I would have done; and he was down on one knee firing back at me when I swung the Winchester and put two bullets through his chest. He was a heavy man and the bullets didn’t knock him back. All he did was sag, then sag some more, and he was good and dead before his bulk settled to the ground like a sack of spuds.
Damn it, that kid was full of surprises. Both men were dead, but he was still cursing, still trying to raise the sawed-off. From the way it flopped, his right arm was broken or wrenched, and the other was shot through. Thinking he meant to use the sawed-off on me for reasons of his own, I levered a shell and told him the war was over. Though I had just saved his life, he’d get a bullet in the head if he even pointed that thing my way. But you’d think I wasn’t even there. Wobbling on runty legs, he struggled to his feet, yelled in pain or rage or both—and loosed one barrel of buckshot at the dead man closer than the other. The blast tore off the dead man’s right arm and made mulligan stew of his head. Then the kid fired the second cartridge.
I got up and told him to let the shotgun slide. He turned, the mean toothy grin ge
tting tighter, and for a minute he looked like a bad kid coming out of the woodshed with a sore behind. A closer look said this kid would cut his Daddy’s throat once the old man went to sleep. The rifle in my hand, I came down the slope, and before I made it to the bottom a small cloud of dust showed a long way off. The kid, facing the other way, hadn’t seen it yet.
One sure thing, he was no Western man from the way he talked. It was a rasping Yankee voice, probably big city, and it could be Chicago or New York. No way to tell, because the city stamps out these hard-eyed little bastards with the same machine. All he said was, “Why’d you have to mix into this?”
The fast moving ball of dust would get there in about fifteen minutes. “Next time I won’t,” I said.
He was a fancy little feller in striped pants, uncreased gray Stetson, red shirt, Mexican vest. An ordinary gunbelt would have gone around him twice; the one he wore, a fancy rig with silver studs, had been worked on to make it fit better. His handgun was a short-barreled double-action .38 Colt Lightning, and, come to think of it, the kid and the stubby revolver had some things in common.
He said, “I could have handled them.”
“Here’s your chance to try again,” I said, pointing with the Winchester. “A whole new set of targets. Make it quick—do you stay or go?”
“You mean you’d let me ride double?” Suspicion and surprise showed in his dull eyes. I didn’t know where this kid was dragged up, but it sure as hell wasn’t Colonel Pettingill’s Academy for Junior Gentlemen.
“It’s been heard of,” I said.
“I don’t owe you a thing—remember that.”
I scooped up his weapons, then dragged him up and over the ridge. Seen from the top, the cloud of dust was beginning to take shape. I didn’t know how many riders. A lot. I put him up first, then climbed up myself. “Hang on best you can, kid. You fall off, you stay off.”
He was short on everything but gall. “Don’t call me kid,” he said.
I’d been heading north when the shooting started and, the best I knew, Sam Blatchford’s boundary line was about five miles from where we were. A five day ride from Fronteras, in Sonora, had taken some of the ginger out of my horse, and it took spurs to set the big chestnut running. If the kid had been a normal sized man, we wouldn’t have a chance of making it to Sam Blatchford’s wire. Just the same, together we made one three hundred pound man—too much weight for a tired horse.
“Hey, where we going?” the kid had to know.
That’s how he was—peculiar. Now me, if a stranger picked me up half dead in the desert, he could head for Cuba and I wouldn’t argue. I told the kid to shut up or fall off.
A second ridge stuck up about half a mile away, and the chestnut ran easier after we crossed it. Down from the top the country ran flat all the way to Blatchford’s wire. First, I figured, the bunch of riders would stop to check the bodies. Maybe they wouldn’t, not all of them. More likely, one man would stop to check the bodies while the others rode on through. They wouldn’t spot our dust till they topped the second ridge. Then they’d ride like hell.
I had to ease up on my horse. For an animal better than some I’ve saddled, the chestnut was acting kind of spooky. Some horses act that way when they’re tired. This time, though, it seemed there was something about the kid that made the animal nervous, because when I touched him with the spurs, he took off on a wild, half bucking run that would have taken us right into the gut ripping spikes of a big yucca. There was nothing for it but let that fool horse have his head. If I reined in too hard the son of a bitch would go down like the guest of honor at a lynching. The yucca came at us like Judgment Day, and I don’t know how I managed to turn that god blasted horse, but I did. Then we were past, with weight and tiredness putting the chestnut in a more sensible frame of mind. The wind came out of him like a broken bellows, but he kept running.
Twisting in the saddle, I saw them coming less than a mile away. If the chestnut went down, then the hell with it. Everything I had learned in thirty-eight years told me to shuck the kid. Doing that might not put me in the clear; it was a better chance than the one I had now. Don’t ask me why I didn’t do it. I just didn’t.
I guess they were good and mad about their dead friends, because they started shooting long before the range was good. By then we were still about three miles from Blatchford’s ranch, and the chestnut was beginning to falter. When he began to stumble it would be time to make a stand, for what it was worth.
I coaxed most of another mile from the chestnut, all the time looking for cover and hoping I’d find it. Up ahead there was a shallow gully, but the way into it was littered with rocks and the chestnut would never get through without breaking a leg. I jumped down while the horse was still moving and pulled the kid after me. Having me put him back on his feet with one hand made him swear like a bullwhacker. The bullets were still coming, the hail of lead moving closer as the range improved. They were still a ways back, but with all the shooting and yelling you’d think they were close enough to burn our backsides.
Pretty soon they were close enough to do just that. A push sent the kid rolling over the edge of the gully, and I dived after him like the champion show-off at the swimming hole. Plenty of broken rock was mixed into the sand at the bottom, and I came up cursing worse than the kid.
The rocks slowed them down, not much though, and they were coming in hard when I shot the first man out of the saddle. I shot another man without killing him, then a spooked horse broke a leg and went down screaming. The rider joined in when the horse fell on his legs. I shot the horse before I shot the man.
The fire weakened as they moved back to any cover they could find. I kept my head down and let them shoot. They spread out, some keeping me pinned down while the others took up their positions, and I knew that was just the start of it. Had I a couple of good men on my side I could have made them sorry they got out of bed that morning. The gully was fine cover, but not for just one man, and pretty soon some of that bunch would circle out wide and come in behind me.
The sun had moved past the hottest part of the day; in the gully it was still hot enough to fry an egg on a flat rock. I heard them moving out there, the clink of metal against rock, the jingling of spurs. I had done for two men, wounded a third, and that left nine or ten—more than enough to finish me and the kid. Below and behind me the kid was trying to reload the .38 Colt and not getting very far. He spat when he saw me looking at him.
Four or five rifles opened up, laying down heavy fire; that meant the others were running. I swung the Winchester and a bullet touched my scalp like a hot feather. I squeezed the trigger and one of the runners took a giant step and died on his feet. The others went flat in the dust, and I was glad they weren’t any braver than they were.
Lying on my back under the rim of the gully I was reloading the Winchester. Out there they were moving again, crawling, not running this time. I told the kid to crawl up the other side the best he could. None of it would help a whole lot. The rush, when it came, would be from two sides. No matter which way I shot my rifle somebody else would be shooting at my back. I thought of the cool dark cantinas in Fronteras and doing that made me wish to hell I’d stayed there. Most of the women were many moons more aged than the firewater they sold, but once a man learns to face facts as they are he can have a rip-roaring old time …
Suddenly those shooters out there had their plans for me and the kid all blown to hell. It got absolutely quiet, a sure sign they were about to attack. I hefted the rifle and waited; I was still waiting when from the direction of Sam Blatchford’s ranch came the rumble of bunched-up horses moving fast. One of the attackers gave a wild hooraw, and when I pushed out the rifle and started shooting they were making a run for the horses.
Firing fast, I stopped one gent by putting a .44-40 through his back. That one died without a sound, and I guess I could have done better if the killing mood had been on me that day. It wasn’t. Besides, I had used a lot of my own bought-and-paid-for lead ki
lling men I didn’t know. So I settled for the last man I killed—and let the others go.
Odd thing was, so did Sam Blatchford’s riders when they got there. I’d be new to all but Sam himself, and to keep his boys from getting caught up in their work I put down the rifle and raised my hands. Dust boiled up as they rode in; more than twenty horses lined up along the north side of the gully; the same number of rifles were pointed my way. A tough looking hombre with squinty blue eyes and a face the color and shape of a smoked ham skidded his horse down the sandy incline. He gave the kid a quick look, but most of his interest was in me. That wasn’t enough to get me swell headed because he didn’t move a Remington rifle an inch from my left lung.
The big man, Sam’s foreman I didn’t have to guess, looked serious about his job, though not too bright. Right then, with that Remington, he didn’t have to be. It was time to answer some questions, he said. First we could start with our names, our reason for being there. Then he’d decide about whether or not to believe our story.
I was too fed up for stories. “Ask your boss,” I told the ramrod. And, by God, there he was in the quaking flesh—big Sam Blatchford. The line of riflemen opened to let him ride to the rim of the gully. That line of men had to open wide because Sam was fat and his horse was about as big as horses grow. They say fat men can’t get any fatter than they are at a certain age. That’s not true. Sam Blatchford was born fat and kept gaining every year of his life. One of those days it was likely to kill him, but he took that as one of life’s gambles. I felt sorry for the horse.
Sam stopped wheezing and laughed when he saw me standing with my hands raised at the bottom of the gully. “What are you doing down there, you skinny son of a bitch? Don’t tell me—you came and you brought a friend.”
I looked at the kid. “No friend of mine,” I said.
Chapter Two
One of Sam’s three fat Mexican women was washing the kid’s wound with hot water. Don’t ask me why Sam always kept three fat ladies on the premises at all times. They kept changing every few years, but three was the number and they were always fat. Sam recruited his ladies around the age of thirty-five—younger than that women were too flighty, in Sam’s opinion—and set them out to pasture when they reached the forty mark. Sam gave them a hearty thank you, a hundred dollars in gold, and sent them home to Mexico.
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