by John Benteen
The roar of a Big Fifty drowned his words. Lead screamed off of rock. MacLaurin howled, stared blankly at a bullet rake along his thigh. Sundance bawled: “You, up there! Shoot the big one first!”
Wolf whirled, uncertain where the shot had come from. Sundance was on his feet, lurching across the fire, seizing the Big Fifty in his battered hands. MacLaurin raised a dazed face: Sundance swung the gun. The barrel caught MacLaurin in the temple, and he fell back.
Wolf had dropped Sundance’s gear, was raking his eyes along the slope above, hand reaching for his Colt; he did not see MacLaurin fall. Sundance turned, hobbled toward the cover of the junipers at the bench’s edge, fifty feet away. Then Wolf turned. “Ron—?” His eyes widened as he saw MacLaurin sprawled. Then he caught sight of Sundance going awkwardly with the rifle in his hand, and he yelled something incoherent and lined the gun.
Sundance fell, rolling. Wolf’s first slug whacked through the air above his head. The second dug dirt by his cheek. The junipers were closer now, only a few yards away. Wolf yelled again, ran forward.
“Go, Jim!” Billy Mercer screamed. She flopped her bound body like a stranded fish. As Wolf ran across the bench, she kicked out her legs. She did not succeed in tripping him —but she almost did. He jumped aside to dodge her booted feet, and that gave Sundance the edge he needed. He made the junipers, holding tightly to the gun. Wolf fired again, then two more times. Lead slapped around the half-breed as he slithered through the evergreens like a snake, and then he was over the bench’s edge, rolling down the slope, and Wolf’s gun was empty.
Each time his body turned over, Sundance took new bruises, gouges, but that did not matter. In a small avalanche of rocks and gravel he hurtled down the slope toward a nest of boulders. Made it, hunched over into their substantial shelter. Behind the largest one, he fumbled in his jacket pocket, heartbeat seemingly suspended until ... Yes, they were still there. Both rounds. They had not fallen out.
Sundance panted hoarsely. He heard yells, confusion, up there on the bench. Wolf was still not sure what had happened, whether there might not be a marksman out there somewhere.
Sundance’s battered hands were awkward as they fished a cartridge from his pocket, maneuvered it into the breech of the Sharps. He could not have reloaded a Colt with those hands, or even a Winchester—but everything about a Big Fifty was oversized and the single-shot mechanism was supremely simple. The round snicked home and he brought up the bolt lever, which was also the trigger guard. The hammer was enormous, and even his raw, stiff thumb could manage that.
But the knots on his leg-hobbles were another matter. He cursed, sweated, as he fumbled with them. Wolf had jerked them tight, and his stiff fingers would not loosen them.
Finally Sundance kicked out, looped the hobble around a rock. Using all his strength, he drew his right leg back. The hobble had been tied around the soft, buckskin Cheyenne moccasin leggings. Skin went with it, but slowly the moccasin slipped free of ankle and foot. At last it came off, and Sundance snarled with relief. Quickly pulling the moccasin from the loop, he put it back on. Then he wrapped the rope trailing from his other ankle around his leg, stuffed it into the top of his left legging. Hands and feet both free, a gun to hand and two rounds of ammunition for it, he felt reborn.
Then voices came from up there on the bench. MacLaurin had come to. “You goddam fool, it wasn’t any sniper! He got a cartridge from somewhere and put it in the fire!”
“Where the hell would he get a cartridge?”
“I don’t know, but he got one and he may have more. Anyhow, he’s out there, and we got to get him. Wait’ll I wrap this leg. Nothin’ but a scratch … ”
Sundance had got his wind back now, and his mind was clear. Some of his relief vanished. So MacLaurin was in shape to fight. Two against one, and they had plenty of guns and ammo. And he had two rounds, exactly two, for the Big Fifty. Long odds. Damned near impossible. But a hundred per cent better than they’d been ten minutes ago.
Up there on the bench, the voices died. Minutes passed. Then, suddenly, from the junipers, a hail of lead raked the slope, two Winchesters firing. They were shooting in the blind, from behind the evergreens, trying to flush him out. He hunkered down as lead screamed off the rocks all around him. During that interval, his mind raced.
What he would have liked to do was to fade out through the badlands, get into position to dominate the bench, and then, come sunrise, take his chances on sniping them both. But he could not do that: they might ride out under cover of darkness. If they did, they would leave Billy Mercer behind—dead. No. No, this must be settled here and now, this afternoon, before the sun went down. Besides, he wanted it that way. His hatred for this pair was too strong to brook any waiting.
Now, again, they poured more lead down the slope. Sundance let that fusillade die. A long silence followed. Then Billy screamed: “Jim! They’re coming after you!” The words died in a strangled moan as someone hit her.
Sundance waited. Wolf and MacLaurin both were good fighting men. One would go out to each flank. That way they could cover each other, and if he shot at one, the other would know where he was. They would have Winchesters and Colts, a dozen rounds each to his pair.
As the mountain men had used to say, that was the way the stick floated. He hefted the Big Fifty in his hands. Despite its weight, its balance was still as sweet. He could understand now why Galax had named his gun for a woman and had likely loved it more than any woman. It had fitted him perfectly, as this gun fitted Jim Sundance. Man and weapon were a single, melded entity.
Sundance waited. The afternoon, scalding hot, edged on. Nothing happened. He did not expect anything to. MacLaurin and Wolf would take their time, feel their way. But, by now, they must be somewhere far down the slope, out on his flanks. Still, he could see no movement. They knew their business, too; they were not about to trade their lives for time.
While he waited, he flexed his swollen hands, restoring some life, some limberness, to their clumsy woodenness. Like a wounded bear, he licked the gouges and cuts free of grit and soothed the abrasions with his tongue. That helped.
Then a rock rolled, chunked, clattered, far down the slope behind him and to his right. Sundance tensed, then eased. An old trick and he’d used it often; they wanted to draw his fire with a thrown stone and thus locate him. But that meant that now they were close by. One out to the right, another to the left. But their stalking had been superb; he could see neither one.
So. It must be ended, and quickly.
Sundance deliberately stood up. Exposed himself in full view. But even as he did so, he was moving, weaving, dodging, his body shifting like a snake’s when it strikes.
Both men saw him, both men fired, and Sundance screamed, dropped back. He hit the rocks hard, bruised a shoulder blade. He made a strange gurgling sound, let it die out. A shoulder muscle burned from a bullet rip. Whoever was on the left was a damned good shot.
He gathered himself, gathered the sweet weight of the Big Fifty in his hands. He waited five minutes, ten. Then, facing left, he stood up again, and he saw Wolf Hargitt, face twisted in triumph, running toward him across the open.
Sundance did not aim. He let the gun do the work for him, firing from the hip.
Wolf, Colt in hand, ran squarely into the heavy slug. It slammed him backwards, catching him full in the chest. But at the same instant, as Wolf hurtled backwards, MacLaurin loosed a round from the right.
It slammed into the stock of the Big Fifty, shattering it. Otherwise, it would have gone through Sundance’s gut. The impact nearly jerked the gun from his hands, but he hung on to it and dropped back into the rocks. Back in his shelter, he worked bolt and hammer, found them still in working order. His clumsy fingers shoved in the last, final round. He loaded, cocked, the heavy Sharps.
Then he heard rock clattering. He stood up, quickly, saw MacLaurin scrambling up the slope, dodging from cover to cover. The mayor of Bootstrap had lost his nerve. MacLaurin plunged behind a boulder, lay t
here a moment, then dodged out again, climbing toward the bench.
Sundance’s voice echoed thunderously in the mountains.
“MacLaurin!”
Yards short of the bench, the man whirled around. His name echoed off the cliffs and spires of the badlands. MacLaurin’s eyes searched the slope, saw Sundance standing at full height. MacLaurin’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a grin. He threw up his Winchester, lined it.
Again, depending on the sweet balance of the rifle, Sundance fired from the hip, for there was no time to level the gun. But he knew the Big Fifty now, knew how to compensate for even that sort of snapshot.
MacLaurin’s first round whined off into space.
Because Sundance’s shot, even lined uphill, blew MacLaurin’s head apart. He had aimed for MacLaurin’s chest, but the gun seemed to have a will of its own. And when the great slug, powered by its enormous charge, struck MacLaurin in the mouth, ranging upward, his skull simply disintegrated in a bloody spray of brain and bone. One second, MacLaurin was there and alive, the next, he was dead and headless.
His almost decapitated corpse rolled slowly down the hill, came to rest against a rock.
Sundance let out a long breath, and his hand caressed the barrel of the Big Fifty. Then, as Billy called: “Jim? Jim? Did you kill them?”
Sundance leaned against a boulder. “Yeah,” he managed to yell. “Yeah, I killed ’em.” And then, slowly, a great weariness settling on him, he climbed the slope. Billy lay there, still bound, her eyes lighting as his weary figure emerged from the junipers.
Chapter Ten
The man’s name was Josh Middleton, and he was a rancher, with a lean, weather-bitten face. The Bit and Bridoon was the biggest ranch in this part of the basin, and that had made Middleton a selectman, vice-mayor, and now full mayor. “All right, Sundance,” he said. “The town contracted with you legally. And so you collect. Twenty thousand dollars.” He scrawled his name on the bank draft and shoved it across the desk in the marshal’s office. Sundance picked it up, examined it, waited until it was dry, then tucked it into his coat. “Much obliged,” he said.
“It’s cheap at that price,” Middleton said, and his hard face broke into a grin. “My God, now that the Lost Pistol has really been found and registered, this town will explode. I won’t have to drive my cattle to Las Vegas and the railhead, I can sell my whole increase right here. You’ve brought in the heads, Galax and Hargitt, we’ve had the testimony of Billy Mercer—I mean Belle Clayton—and the most important thing is, there’ve been no more snipings for a month. So your contract is fulfilled. The selectmen approved the payment unanimously.” He stood up. “Incidentally, there’s still a vacancy as town marshal, if you want to take it.”
“No thanks,” Sundance said. “I’ll be moving on. Again, thanks, Mr. Middleton,” and he put out his hand.
The main street of Bootstrap swarmed with people, as Sundance crossed over. Freighters, prospectors, mining engineers, cowboys, gamblers, whores—they all moved freely in broad daylight, no longer afraid of being shot down. Sundance entered the Bootstrap Bar, went up the stairs, knocked on the door of Kelly Lacey’s rooms.
But it was not the madam of the brothel who let him in: it was Billy Mercer—Belle Clayton—elegant in a ruffled gown that hugged her figure. Sundance had trouble connecting her with the hard-bitten, Levi-clad boy-girl he once had known. But, after all, she was a multi-millionairess. She had sold her claim in the Lost Pistol mine to an eastern syndicate for more than a million dollars. Or, rather, Sundance had.
“Jim,” she said, and raised her face for his kiss. His lips brushed hers briefly.
Across the room, Kelly Lacey stood there smiling. “Jim, don’t you think I’ve made a lady out of her?”
“A great lady,” Sundance said. “And now—?”
Kelly laughed. “I’m kicking this racket. Belle will need a companion and a social secretary. She’ll pay me more than I could earn here in Bootstrap, and ... Maybe I can become a lady again. But, Jim, we would both like to have you come to San Francisco with us. We would like—”
“Sorry,” Sundance said. “It wouldn’t work.”
“Jim, why not?” Still a little awkward in the flounced gown, Billy—Belle—came to him, seized his wrist.
“Because.” Sundance said.
“But Jim—I’ll pay what I promised for the Indians. That should buy the Indian Ring off.”
“Maybe yes and maybe no,” Sundance said. “It buys them off in Washington. But out in the backlands, out on the reservations, in all sorts of places where Washington doesn’t reach ... He touched the gun on his hip. “I’m still needed there, Belle.”
“No!” she said. “I’ve got enough money to buy your justice.”
“In some places,” Sundance said, “only a gun buys justice.”
The girl looked at him, met his eyes, and then she slowly nodded. “All right, Jim. It would be like trying to catch fog in your hands. You don’t want me that much.”
“No,” he said, thinking of Barbara Colfax, Two Roads Woman. “No, there is somebody else I want more.”
Belle Clayton backed away. “All right, Jim. The money’s in my account now. Do you want me to write a draft on it?”
“Billy,” Sundance said, “I’d appreciate it if you would.”
She looked at him, then turned away. Taking out a checkbook, dipping a pen in ink, she wrote something, blotted it, then passed it over. Sundance glanced at it, pocketed it. The sum was staggering, as much as he could earn with his gun in five more years.
He folded it and put it in his pocket. “Thanks, Billy,” he said. “Now ... I’ll be riding on.”
The great lady who had once been Billy Mercer looked up at him. “Not without a kiss,” she said.
Sundance bent, ground his mouth against hers. Her lips opened, parted, hungrily. Sundance let the kiss ride for a full minute. Then, gently, he shoved Billy away.
“Goodbye,” he said, and he went out into the hall. Kelly Lacey only looked at him with hungry eyes until the door closed.
Sundance went down the stairs, out onto the street. After a moment’s thought, he went to the livery, checked on Eagle. The big horse, with a bullet rake across its withers, had stampeded, but then had come back to the last place it had seen its master. When Sundance and Billy had returned to the spring, Eagle had been waiting.
Sundance rubbed the stallion’s topknot. Eagle, satisfied, whinnied only once as Sundance went out onto the street.
He stood outside the livery for a moment. He felt strangely dislocated, outside himself. He touched the bulge inside his shirt—his medicine bag, which Wolf had desecrated. It needed renewal, re-dedication. His medicine had been hurt, and though everything else had gone well, he had collected his reward, Billy Mercer was owner of the Lost Pistol and he had negotiated its sale for a fabulous sum, there was still an emptiness in him.
Then he heard the drums.
They came from far away, past the edge of town. And, out there on the flats, fires blazed. The Paiutes, free of the threat of sniper and sudden death, were celebrating with a feast and dance.
And suddenly Sundance knew what he yearned for and where he belonged.
And, like a lean, gray wolf, he loped through the town and across the flats, toward the Indian fires burning in the distance.
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