“I’ll be sure and do that, Marshal.”
Bob headed for the exit. He pinched his hat to Maudie on the way by, and gave a wave to Bullock, who was busy drawing a round of beers.
At the batwings he paused for a moment, standing off to one side and gazing out into the dimly lit street, letting his eyes adjust to the change in lighting from the well-illuminated interior of the saloon. Noting that the street seemed a little darker than usual, he guessed he’d find that a few of the lanterns posted at regular intervals along the way had burnt out. Old Ollie Sterbenz, who did handyman work around town and who took care of maintaining the lanterns and lighting them each evening, must be slipping, Bob thought. He’d have to remember to remind Ollie tomorrow to do an examination of all the street lamps and make sure their wicks and oil pots were in good order.
He was thinking this as he stepped out onto the boardwalk.
If the man positioned at the south corner of Bullock’s building, in a deepened pool of shadow caused by a nearby street lamp—being one of the ones unlit—hadn’t clumsily clunked his gun against something as he raised the weapon to fire, thoughts of wicks and oil pots likely would have been the last thing to ever cross Bob Hatfield’s mind. As it was, however, that single metallic tick was enough of a warning—just enough—for Bob to react and save his hide.
He was able to hurl himself backward, back through the batwings, a fraction of a second before the gun went off. The thunderous, window-rattling roar of a double-barreled shotgun—both loads being triggered simultaneously—ripped apart the night, the twelve-gauge charges raking across the front of Bullock’s and turning the batwings into shredded slivers of pulp hanging limp and ragged on their hinges.
CHAPTER 15
Bob scrambled back into the saloon so frantically that he nearly tangled his feet and fell. He struggled to remain upright even as the batwing doors were pulverized by the shotgun blast, buffeting him with a boiling cloud of dust and spinning wood shards.
Bob leaned into the cloud, sweeping the .44 from his hip as he shouted over his shoulder, “Everybody, get down and stay that way!”
Then, recognizing the shotgun roar had signaled the discharge of both barrels and calculating he had a few precious seconds before the shooter could eject and reload, Bob lunged forward and rushed out through what was left of the batwings. Cutting immediately and sharply to his left—the opposite direction from the double-barreled blast—the marshal made long, desperate strides for the north corner of the building while at the same time extending his right arm out behind him and blindly triggering three rounds. It was a matter of four urgent strides and less than two seconds, but it seemed more like two hours, and every inch of the way there was a puckering of nerves between his shoulder blades where he expected the next blast to slam into him.
He made the corner and pitched instantly to his left again, diving into the shadow-cut alley at that end of the building. This time he made no attempt to stay on his feet. He went into a roll and came up hugging the shadows pooled deep against the outer wall. Without conscious thought, his fingers automatically began replacing the spent cartridges in his Colt. But before his thumb could shove in the first fresh load, the shotgun went off again. The corner he had just rounded took the punishment from this discharge, more wood torn away, exploding into whirling slivers.
Bob’s mind did some whirling, too, as he snapped shut the Colt’s loading gate. He was momentarily torn between two courses of action he could take. He could once again take advantage of the seconds he had before the shotgunner was able to reload, and go tearing around the corner in a full-out charge with Colt blazing, hoping to score a hit before he was met by another blast from those twin barrels. Or he could play it safer and retreat back down the length of the alley he was in, circle around the rear of Bullock’s, and try to come up behind the shooter.
The decision got made for him, sort of, when one half of his options—the one that involved charging across the front way—was suddenly removed as being even the slightest bit viable. This removal came in the form of a second gunman opening up from across the street, from another mass of thick blackness where a street lamp was not burning. The realization hit Bob belatedly that these unlit lamps had been snuffed out so his ambushers had some added cover of darkness.
The second shooter wasn’t using a shotgun, but rather a repeating rifle. A Winchester, Bob judged from the sound of it. Whatever it was, it was pouring a hell of a lot of lead into his alley and making it plenty hot for him. Since the alley was fairly wide but offered nothing in the way of cover, he had little choice but to stick tight to the shadowy wall and keeping dropping back.
In fact, he decided, he’d better drop back all the way and be quick about it. If the rifleman across the way kept him pinned close at this end of the alley, it would give the shotgunner from the other side a chance to cross over and lean in with his gut-shredder. He wouldn’t have to aim with any great accuracy—all he’d have to do was let loose and the spread, if it didn’t kill Bob outright, would sure as hell cut him down.
But Bob was damned if he was going to fade back too easily. Targeting on the rifleman’s muzzle flashes, he triggered three more quick return rounds with his Colt. It would’ve been nice to have heard a yelp of pain, indicating he’d scored a lucky hit, but none came. Still, it gave the ambusher across the way a reason to duck and hold his own fire for a minute as Bob’s .44 slugs streaked in.
Trouble was, since he hadn’t scored a hit, Bob knew his muzzle flashes gave the rifleman something to target on in return. With this in mind, he dropped low and shifted to the opposite side of the alley. The shadows weren’t as dense there, but still murky enough to keep him from being clearly revealed. As he tensed for a return volley, the marshal began crabbing backward, where welcoming shadows grew deeper.
Surprisingly, the next shots to rip through the night came not from across the street but rather from the alley on the other side of Bullock’s building. Only it wasn’t another shotgun blast—it was the rapid-fire crack of a pistol. Bob slowed his retreat somewhat, puzzling at this. He had time to wonder for only a split second, though, before the shotgun did roar again.
Next came an unintelligible curse followed by a clearer shout of, “Cover me!” This was followed promptly by the rifle on the other side of the street opening up once more. Only this time it wasn’t sending more lead in Bob’s direction, it was aimed instead at the south side of the building.
What the hell!?
Taking full advantage of whatever was going on, Bob turned and ran the remaining distance to the far end of his alley. Rounding the corner, he saw a pale glow of light spilling out the back door of Bullock’s. He pulled up short and raised his Colt. A moment later, a shadow moved within the spill of illumination and the stocky shape of Mike Bullock leaned cautiously out of the open doorway.
“Damn it, Mike, that’s a good way to get your head blown off,” Bob rasped in a harsh whisper as he stepped forward.
“I might say the same for you,” Bullock replied as he edged out a little farther and revealed the sawed-off shotgun gripped in his meaty paws.
“I thought I told everybody to stay put.”
“When somebody is blasting the hell out of everything and threatening my saloon, I ain’t likely to duck down and hide.” Though muted somewhat by the mass of the building, a fresh burst of rifle fire from the street and responding pistol fire from the front of the south alley threatened to drown out his words.
“Who else is out here? Who’s doing the shooting in the alley?” Bob demanded.
“That gunslinger-looking fella you was talking to earlier. He jumped up and boiled out the back just seconds after you pulled that crazy stunt of charging out the front.”
“Damn! Don’t anybody listen?” muttered Bob under his breath as he used the illumination from the doorway to finish reloading his gun. Then, brushing past Bullock, he added over his shoulder, “Just stay the hell in there and don’t let anybody else come out.
Will you try to do that? If we get too many people fumbling around in the darkness we’ll only end up shooting each other!”
Bob edged around the corner of the building and into the south alley without waiting for an answer. As he picked his way forward, he could make out the shape of a man—identifiable by his wide-brimmed, flat-crowned Stetson—crouched behind a rain barrel near the mouth of the alley.
“Quirt! It’s me, Hatfield, coming up behind you,” he called ahead.
“Come on, then. But stay low,” Quirt said without turning.
A handful of seconds later, Bob pressed up beside him. “There were two of ’em,” he said. “You get either one?”
“No luck,” Quirt answered with a shake of his head. “I had the shotgunner in my sights, but then I stepped on a loose rock and lost my damn balance just as I was gettin’ ready to shoot. I hate to say it, but I missed him. He pinned me back with a wild-ass blast of his double-barrel long enough so’s he could make it across the street with the shooter over there coverin’ him.”
“Are they still there? Can you tell?”
“They were a minute ago. Leastways, I know the rifleman was ’cause he was pourin’ a lot of lead my way. But now they’ve gone quiet.”
“Seeing that their ambush is spoiled, they might be ready to give it up,” Bob said. “If they’ve got horses behind those buildings or anywhere close, they could make a getaway.”
“So what’ve you got in mind?”
“There’s one sure way to find out if they’ve hightailed it or are still wanting to finish what they started—you cover me, I’m going to make a break for the other side.”
Quirt nodded. “Yeah, that oughta do it. Then, after you make it over, you cover me.”
“No need for you to risk your hide any more than you already have,” Bob told him.
“The hell there ain’t. I don’t do half measure, Marshal. Besides, I missed a sure shot at that snake with the shotgun. I don’t intend to let it go at that.”
Bob could see it was pointless to argue. Number one, there wasn’t time. Number two, it was evident he wasn’t going to be able to talk Quirt out of it anyway. He hesitated a moment longer, scanning the opposite side of the street for sign of movement or any indication that the ambushers were still present. Seeing nothing, he sprang out of his crouch and into another long-striding sprint. He made it to the other side and pressed himself into the recessed doorway of a bootmaker’s shop. He was breathing hard and the smell of new leather filled his nostrils.
No shots had been fired at him.
He motioned Quirt to come ahead and then leaned out of the doorway, Colt raised and ready in case the cease-fire didn’t hold a second time. But it did. Quirt made it across and joined him in the doorway, his breathing only slightly quickened.
“Now what?”
“We spread out. I’ll go this way, up alongside the hotel”—Bob gestured with his Colt—“you go a couple doors down and then cut back between the buildings there. There’ll be trees and underbrush for a ways, then it opens up to grassy plains. Residences will be off to your right, but if these jaspers are making a run for it I doubt they’ll go that way. They’ll break for the open.”
“Got it.”
The two men separated and then plunged back between buildings as the marshal had indicated. Bob raced along the side of the Shirley House, where intermittent pools of light spilled from some of the windows. This helped him make his way but—as he was keenly aware—it also meant he was being revealed as a result. Skirting as far out to the edges of the light as he could, he continued on.
At the end of the Shirley House, the traces of light abruptly ended and a cluster of tall, leafy trees blotted out even what moon- and starlight there was. The sudden total blackness brought Bob to a halt. As he willed his eyes to adjust, he stood listening intently, trying to pick out any sound above his own breathing.
And then he heard a horse whinny, mixed with a man’s muffled curse.
Bob lunged toward the sound, making his way through the trees more by feel than by sight. He bumped and scraped against the rough trunks but somehow remained steady on his feet. And then he was emerging from the tree line, and the sky overhead, no longer blocked by a canopy of leaves, bathed everything before him in a bluish silver light.
Twenty feet ahead, two men were struggling to get mounted on a pair of horses that apparently had been tied to a stand of scrub brush. To be more exact, only one man—fighting an injured leg—was struggling to haul himself up. His cohort, already mounted, was leaning over and tugging, trying to help get him hoisted.
Bob aimed his Colt in the air and fired a booming shot. “Halt! Freeze or die!” he shouted.
The pair failed to heed the warning. The mounted man jerked up straight in his saddle and swung a Winchester rifle into view. The other man stumbled and dropped to his knees, reaching up to claw desperately at the rifleman’s stirrup. “Don’t leave me, Reeves. Don’t run out on me, damn you!” he wailed.
Reeves kicked the other clear of his stirrup and hollered back. “You worry about haulin’ yourself up into that saddle!”
Half a second later the Winchester was spitting yellow-orange flame and sending bullets ripping through the air where the muzzle flash of Bob’s warning shot had been seen. But by then Bob was three feet away and dropped down to one knee. He raised his Colt, took careful aim, and pumped two rounds into the man called Reeves. The rifleman flung his arms wide, throwing the Winchester clear, and tumbled backward off the rear of his horse.
The second man wallowed painfully on the ground, cursing, and tried to rise to his feet. Almost immediately he dropped back down, falling over onto one hip. From that position he flailed desperately. A long object thrust into view, moonlight glinting dully off its surface. The shotgun’s twin barrels roared once more, splitting apart the night and belching flame and sparks. But the shooter’s aim was reckless and low, doing nothing more than tearing a long gouge in the grass and disintegrating one of the scrub bushes.
With the shotgun blast still reverberating in the air, three rapid-fire pistol shots cut through. The shotgunner was knocked flat by the impact of the slugs and then hunched into a single lumpy rollover before becoming very still.
CHAPTER 16
Passing through hanging wisps of powder smoke, Bob and Quirt converged slowly, cautiously, on the fallen men. Only after they had nudged the prone shapes with the toes of their boots to make sure there were no signs of life did they holster their guns.
“Any idea who they are or what this was about?” asked Quirt.
“Pretty obvious they were out to gun me,” said Bob. “As far as who they are, I heard this one called Reeves. That matches the name of one of three men I had a run-in with just the other day. You got a match? Let’s have a closer look at the one you put down.”
Quirt thumbed a lucifer to flame and held it over the former shotgunner.
“Yeah, that’s Jax Verdeen,” Bob confirmed. “See the way his wrist and two fingers are taped up? I shot a gun out of his hand during that fracas I mentioned. Must have wrenched his paw pretty good.”
“Which explains why he was using a shotgun,” mused Quirt. “Don’t require the same dexterity it takes to work a handgun or rifle. With a scattergun, all you need to do is aim in the general direction and yank the triggers.”
“Yeah. And he was able to do that good enough—damn near too good,” Bob said bitterly.
Quirt blew out his match and said, “Which brings me to the question—meanin’ no offense, mind you—why, if you had him under your gun once, you left him still walkin’ around to come back for revenge?”
“No other word for it, I guess, but to call it a mistake on my part,” Bob had to admit. “They said they were headed up to the gold fields, so I took a chance and let ’em go. Figured they’d work out any leftover anger or aggression with a pick and shovel. But I was wrong.”
“Looks like I was wrong, too,” said Quirt. He pointed down, adding, “That
fresh wound on his leg shows that I didn’t miss him completely back in the alley, after all. Still, in a manner of speakin’, I guess we both had a turn at lettin’ him get away.”
“Thanks to that leg wound, though, he didn’t get away clean. Not tonight. It slowed him down and kept him from being able to mount his horse before we caught up with ’em.” Bob regarded the black gunman closely. “That makes me mighty beholden to you, Quirt, and those ain’t words I say lightly.”
Quirt looked somewhat uncomfortable under the intensity of Bob’s gaze, seemingly unable to form a quick reply.
Before the moment turned too awkward, other voices called out from the street, where people were starting to mill in the wake of the now-silenced gunfire. “Marshal Hatfield! Are you all right? Is everything okay?”
“Back here! Past the tree line,” Bob called in response. “Bring some lanterns!”
In a matter of minutes, a cluster of men emerged from the trees. Three of them were holding lanterns high. In the lead were Fred Ordway and Mike Bullock. A little farther back Bob saw Peter and Vern Macy.
“We heard the shooting and came running as fast as we could, boss,” said a breathless Fred. “What in blazes happened?”
“Couple of bushwhackers tried to gun me down,” Bob answered. “If you take a closer look with one of those lanterns you’ll see it’s two of the skunks I tangled with yesterday in Bullock’s Saloon—the ones I was foolish enough not to throw in the clink right then and there.”
“By God, you’re right,” said Bullock, leaning over the dead shotgunner. “This is that Jax hombre, sure enough.”
“The other is the one they called Reeves.”
“There were three of ’em that day,” said Fred. “What about the third, the Mexican?”
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