The slug punched into the man from behind, making him stumble and arch his back as he tried to stay on his feet. The torch slipped from his fingers and fell beside him as he collapsed. It was still burning and landed close enough to the man’s outflung arm to set his sleeve on fire. The fact that the man didn’t move as his shirt went up in flames told Buckhorn that he was dead.
And the fact that he’d been shot down from behind told Yancy Madison that the Calverts had allies out here in the darkness. Madison wheeled around the corner of the cook shack with the gun in his hand spouting flame as he opened fire on Buckhorn, who was caught out in the open.
With no cover nearby, Buckhorn did the only thing he could. He threw himself forward and sprawled on his belly. The bowler hat flew off his head. He didn’t know if it had just come off, or if one of the slugs whipping through the air had caught it.
Lying prone, Buckhorn levered off three rounds from the rifle he had claimed from Jocko Flood. Madison ducked behind the cook shack as the bullets chewed splinters from the plank wall. Buckhorn scrambled up, grabbed his hat from the ground, and ran to the side to keep the shack between him and Madison. He raced out of the light cast by the burning corpse and started circling the shack to come up behind Madison.
Before he could get there, he heard Madison shouting, “Pull out! Pull out!”
Buckhorn grated a bitter curse and ran harder even though Madison’s shout might be a trick intended to lure him into an ambush. That didn’t seem to be the case, however, because as Buckhorn rounded the shack, he heard a swift rataplan of hoofbeats somewhere up ahead in the darkness.
Somebody was lighting a shuck away from the C Cross in a hurry.
Buckhorn clapped the hat on, brought the Winchester to his shoulder, and emptied the rifle in the direction of the hoofbeats as fast as he could work the rifle’s lever. The shots rolled out like a long peal of thunder.
As Buckhorn lowered the rifle and the echoes faded, he still heard the running horse. It didn’t sound like it had slowed down or broken stride.
“Buckhorn!” The shout came from Charlie Dowd. “Buckhorn, where are you?”
“Over here,” Buckhorn replied. He drew his Colt just in case anybody decided to take some more potshots at him.
Dowd came trotting up from the shadows.
“You hit?” he asked.
“No. How about you?”
“Fine as frog hair.” Dowd’s voice turned grim for a moment as he added, “Fleming’s dead, though.”
“What about the other two?”
“Haven’t seen them yet. You reckon all of Conroy’s men have pulled out?”
“I don’t know. The only one I’m pretty sure is gone is Madison. Once he figured out the odds might have turned against him, he got out of here in a hurry.”
“Yeah, I heard him yellin’,” Dowd said. “Let’s take a look around.”
It didn’t take them long to find McHaney and Weaver. McHaney had a bloody rag tied around his upper left arm, but other than that the two men had come through the fight unscathed.
“Sorry we don’t have any prisoners,” Weaver told Buckhorn. “The fellas we came up on didn’t give us any choice but to shoot it out with them, and there wasn’t time for anything fancy.”
“That’s all right,” Buckhorn assured him. “The most important thing was saving those folks in the house. Anyway, I managed to grab a couple of them.”
He led his three companions into the blacksmith shop, where Jocko Flood had regained consciousness and was making muffled, angry noises through the gag Buckhorn had shoved in his mouth.
“There’s another one tied up over by the barn,” Buckhorn said.
“Weaver and I will fetch him,” Dowd volunteered. “Mac, can you keep an eye on this varmint?”
“I sure can,” McHaney growled as he drew his gun.
“Don’t kill him unless you have to,” Buckhorn cautioned. “I’m going to see how they’re doing inside the house.”
He stepped to the door of the blacksmith shop. All the shooting had stopped now, but the nerves of the defenders inside the house were probably still stretched pretty thin. It wouldn’t take much to start them blasting away again.
Buckhorn called, “Tim Calvert! You hear me? This is Joe Buckhorn! Some friends and I came to help you!”
“Mr. Buckhorn!” That startled exclamation came from Lorna McChesney. Buckhorn recognized the girl’s voice. For a second, the harsh lines of his face eased. He stepped out into the open. The front door of the house swung back. Lorna ran out onto the porch and came down the steps to start toward Buckhorn.
A flicker of movement off to the right caught Buckhorn’s eye. His head jerked in that direction in time for him to see a man raise up from behind a water trough and kneel there as he pointed a rifle at the girl running toward Buckhorn. Buckhorn’s hand flashed to his Colt. The gun came up and roared just as flame spouted from the rifle’s muzzle. Lorna cried out and fell.
Buckhorn’s slug slammed into the man’s left shoulder and twisted him around. Buckhorn didn’t give him a chance to recover. He stalked toward the man, his face twisting in fury, and hammered two more bullets into him. The shots knocked the man over on his back, where he lay with arms and legs outflung as welling blood rapidly darkened the front of his shirt.
Seeing that the man was no longer a threat, Buckhorn swung around and ran to where Lorna had fallen. As he dropped to a knee beside her, the front door of the ranch house slammed open again and Jasper Calvert dashed out, yelling, “Lorna! Damn it, Lorna! No!”
Buckhorn pouched his iron and grasped Lorna’s shoulders to roll her over onto her back. As he did, she gasped and said, “Take it easy. I . . . I’m all right. Just got the breath knocked out of me when I fell down.”
Jasper pounded up wildly and fell to his knees. He grabbed Lorna and pulled her against him.
“Lorna, you gotta be all right! You just gotta be!”
“Dadblast it!” Lorna exclaimed raggedly. “Get your . . . stinkin’ meat hooks . . . offa me, Jasper!”
He pulled back, stared at her in amazement, and said, “You ain’t dead?”
“Do I look dead?” She gave him a swift poke in the chest with a little fist. “Leggo o’ me! I can’t breathe, damn it!”
“Better do what she says, son,” Buckhorn advised dryly. “And you might as well get used to it.”
“What the hell do you mean by that?” Lorna snapped at him.
Buckhorn didn’t answer the question. Instead he asked one of his own. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I told you, I just tripped and fell when that son of a bitch shot at me. Was he one of Conroy’s men?”
“I reckon he must’ve been.”
“Well, you didn’t do a very good job of cleanin’ ’em out, then. Jasper, back off and gimme a hand up.”
By the time they were all back on their feet, Jasper’s older brothers had emerged from the house, carrying rifles. Tim asked Buckhorn, “Are any of Conroy’s men still around?”
“I don’t think so, but it would probably be a good idea for all of you to get back in the house until my friends and I can take a better look.”
“Where did you come up with men to take on Conroy’s gunnies?”
“They work for Hugh Thornton,” Buckhorn explained.
“So what’s the C Cross?” Tim said. “A pawn in the war between those two?”
“Not exactly. More like the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Tim shrugged.
“I guess we can live with that. You know good and well that just because you ran off this bunch this time, it doesn’t mean Conroy’s through trying to steal our ranch from us.”
“Yeah, I know—but I’m not through trying to stop him, either,” Buckhorn said.
CHAPTER 24
Tim Calvert insisted on coming with Buckhorn as they searched the area around the ranch headquarters for any more of Conroy’s men. They found seven corpses in all, including the man who had been burned u
p by the torch he’d intended to throw on the house.
Counting the two prisoners Buckhorn had captured, that meant only one or two men had fled with Yancy Madison. Buckhorn wasn’t sure exactly how many men Madison had brought with him to the C Cross.
Both prisoners were in the blacksmith shop now. Buckhorn lit a lantern. Its yellow glow washed over the angry faces of Jocko Flood and Jimmy. Charlie Dowd nodded toward the second man and said, “I know this fella. Name’s Jimmy Kincaid. We were mixed up in the same fracas in Kansas about five years ago.”
“Were you on different sides then, too?” Buckhorn asked.
Dowd grinned and said, “No, we were both ridin’ for the same side. But that don’t make a lick of difference when it comes to this fight.”
That was the way of it, all right. A gunman’s loyalties and friendships were always shifting, depending on whose wages he was taking. In the end, nothing was real except the money—and Buckhorn had gotten tired of feeling like that.
He pulled the gags out of Jimmy’s and Flood’s mouths. Immediately, both men started cursing him. Jimmy’s normally affable nature had vanished when he was knocked out and taken prisoner.
The two men shut up when Buckhorn drew his Colt and eared back the hammer. They must have been able to read the cold menace on his craggy bronze face.
“You were shooting at a house with a fourteen-year-old girl, a woman, and a couple of wounded men in it,” Buckhorn said. “You were going to burn it down around them.”
Jocko Flood’s mouth twisted in a sneer above his jutting beard.
“Don’t tell me you ain’t done just as bad or worse, when you was ordered to,” he said.
“That’s what I want you to tell me about. The orders you were given. Who told you to kill the Calverts?”
Jimmy said, “Don’t talk to him, Jocko. He’s just trying to trip you up and get you in worse trouble.”
Buckhorn smiled thinly and said, “Mister, there’s not any more trouble you could be in, this side of the grave.”
Then he smashed the Colt in his hand against Jimmy’s head, jolting it to the side and leaving a trail of blood trickling down his forehead from the cut the gunsight had opened up. Jimmy’s eyes went vacant for a second before awareness and fresh outrage came back into them.
“Good Lord, Buckhorn!” Flood exclaimed. “You’re gonna stove in his head and kill him!”
“Who told you to kill the Calverts?” Buckhorn asked again.
“What’s wrong with you?” Flood said. “You took Conroy’s money, damn you. How can you just turn on him like this?”
“Did Conroy give the order for you to murder those people?”
“Damn it,” Jimmy rasped thickly. “Nobody ever said anything about murder. Yance said that in the eyes of the law, the Calverts weren’t nothin’ but squatters now, and we had a right to put ’em off the boss’s land. And if they fought back, we could do whatever we had to to protect ourselves and it’d be self-defense!”
“Conroy didn’t give you any orders?”
Jocko Flood turned his head and spat disgustedly.
“You think Dennis Conroy has anything to do with the likes of us, more than he has to? Hell, I ain’t even talked to the man since the day I rode into Crater City and he give me a fifty-dollar bonus for showin’ up. Since then, Madison’s handled everything.”
“Same here,” Jimmy added tensely.
Buckhorn lowered the hammer on his revolver and slid the weapon back in its holster. Charlie Dowd said, “Sounds like Conroy’s a pretty cagey fella. He lets Madison run all the risks and give all the orders, so if the law ever comes pokin’ around, he can claim he don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”
“Thornton doesn’t do the same with Ernie Gratton?” Buckhorn asked.
“Shoot, no. Ernie ramrods the crew Thornton leaves in town to watch over his business interests there, but everybody knows who the real boss is. Hugh Thornton’s not in the habit of hidin’ behind anybody.”
“Maybe that’s one reason I have a little higher opinion of Thornton than I do of Conroy,” Buckhorn muttered.
Jocko Flood said, “Listen, you got to let us go. You got no legal right to hold us.” He looked over at the body of the little man lying a few yards away. “And you sure as hell didn’t have no right to kill some of us, like poor little Walter. He was my friend.”
“He tried to blow me in half with a shotgun,” Buckhorn pointed out.
“Because you come sneakin’ in here to murder us!”
Buckhorn turned to Tim Calvert, who had watched the exchange in grim silence, and asked, “Did Madison say anything when he and his men got here, or did they just ride in shooting?”
“We never knew they were anywhere around until we heard some shots outside,” Tim answered. “We’d left a couple of our ranch hands on guard, because we didn’t figure Conroy would give up easy. All the rest of us were in the house. Madison’s bunch cut the guards down without any warning. Shot one of them in the back and wounded the other. He barely made it into the house before bullets busted just about every window in the place. We all had to hit the floor and fight back as best we could.”
Buckhorn looked at Flood and Jimmy and asked, “Is that the way it happened?”
Sullen silence was their only answer. As far as Buckhorn was concerned, that reaction was enough to confirm that Tim was telling the truth.
“An attack like that isn’t going to stand up in a court of law,” Buckhorn went on. “The only ones acting in self-defense tonight were the folks in that ranch house, since they couldn’t be sure who was attacking them, or why. And that means we had a legal right to come to their aid.”
“You ain’t a damned lawyer,” Flood muttered. “You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“I’ve been around enough law to know who’s in the right here.”
“It’s the boss’s land!” Jocko Flood yelled. “He foreclosed on these bastards fair and square!”
Tim Calvert growled and stepped closer, holding his rifle as if he were about to smash the stock into Flood’s bearded face. Buckhorn lifted a hand and said, “Hold on.”
“What, you can pistol-whip them but I can’t teach this animal to keep a civil tongue in his head?” Tim demanded hotly.
“I was trying to get answers from them,” Buckhorn said.
“So you didn’t enjoy walloping that son of a bitch?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Tim’s anger had subsided a little, however, so he stepped back, muttering curses under his breath. Buckhorn went on, “I’m going to leave these two here. You don’t mind holding them for a couple of days, do you?”
“Hate to waste perfectly good grub feeding the likes of them, but I reckon we can do that,” Tim agreed reluctantly. “We won’t even hang ’em from a tall tree with a short rope.”
“What are you gonna do, Buckhorn?” Charlie Dowd asked.
Buckhorn didn’t answer right away. Instead he leaned his head toward the door, indicating that Dowd and Tim should follow him, and walked out of the blacksmith shop. McHaney and Weaver remained behind to keep an eye on the prisoners.
When the three men had walked out of earshot, Buckhorn stopped and said, “Conroy’s got himself covered too well. We can keep fighting Madison and the rest of his hired guns, but even if we wipe them all out, Conroy will just squat there in the Irish Rose like an evil little toad and send for more.”
“What’s the answer, then?” Tim asked. “How do we actually stop him for good?”
“There’s got to be something tying him in with all the lawbreaking that’s been going on south of the Mesteños.” Buckhorn rubbed his chin as he frowned in thought. “It’s not enough to prove that Madison and the others rustled your stock and the McChesney herd, burned down barns, and shot anybody who got in their way. Conroy can always claim ignorance. We have to prove that he knew what they were doing and even gave the orders for it.”
“I don’t see how you’re gonna do th
at,” Dowd said.
“Supposedly Matthew Garrett had the proof.”
“The man who ran the newspaper in Crater City?” Tim asked.
“That’s right.”
“I heard something happened to him.”
“It did. Somebody attacked him, tore up the newspaper office, and tried to tear up the press. They must not have quite known what they were doing, though, because Garrett’s nephew was able to get the press going again and keep publishing the paper.”
Tim said, “I don’t see how any of that helps us.”
“I’ve got to find the same proof Garrett did,” Buckhorn said. “If I can, they’ll have a little more trouble getting it away from me than they did with an old man.”
“How are you gonna do that?” Dowd asked.
“I’ll have to start with Garrett, I guess.”
“That’ll mean goin’ back into Crater City,” Dowd pointed out. “Where every gunhawk who works for Conroy will be on the lookout for you and will throw down on you the second they lay eyes on you.”
“That’s a risk I’ll have to take,” Buckhorn said.
* * *
Mrs. Calvert insisted on feeding the men who had come to her family’s aid. She had biscuits and beef stew and hot coffee, and the food was good. Buckhorn was still bone weary when he finished eating and had downed two cups of the strong black brew, but he felt a little stronger than when he sat down at the table.
“Charlie, I’d like for you and Weaver to stay here and keep an eye on the place,” he told Dowd. “You can give these folks a hand if more trouble crops up.”
“I dunno.” Dowd frowned dubiously. “The boss didn’t say anything about that.”
“He told you to come with me and do whatever I asked of you, and that’s what I’m asking now.”
Dowd shrugged.
“All right, I reckon you could look at it that way. What about Mac?”
“If he’s not hurt too bad, he can ride back to the Jim Dandy in the morning and let Thornton know what’s going on, after you’ve buried Fleming and Conroy’s men.”
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