by Adam Brady
“Joe’s dead,” Finn said doggedly. “That means I gotta kill you, no matter what you say.”
“You won’t do it,” Halliday quietly warned him.
A glint of uncertainty worked across Finn’s face, but then his mouth tightened and his lips curled back. Suddenly, his right shoulder lifted and his left hand went down. Halliday’s gun hand moved so fast that no one could honestly say later that they saw it.
The heavy slug knocked Luden Finn back from the bar. He hit the wall and pitched forward on his face.
One of the cowhands let out an admiring whistle, and then the whole saloon fell into a respectful silence.
Halliday kept his gun on Finn until it was clear that the cowhand had lost consciousness. Blood was pouring from the wound in Finn’s shoulder.
“Get him to the doctor, somebody,” Nathan Dean said.
As men obeyed, he turned to Halliday and said stiffly;
“You proved your point, mister. Now kindly get on your horse and go someplace else.”
Halliday shrugged and holstered his gun. He caught a look of pure malice from Red Barrett, but none of the cowhands spoke or made a move. He was on his way to the batwings when he heard the commotion at the back of the saloon.
It was Kip Heller, and he came in shooting. His first bullet took Ben Wright in the throat, and the second nicked big Red Barrett’s wrist and spun him around.
Halliday saw the madness in Kip Heller’s eyes just as the kid started to back away, taking one wild shot at Nathan Dean before he ducked out the back way.
Dean hit the floor and went into a roll. He came up with a stubby little gambler’s gun in his hand, and immediately fired at Halliday.
“Tricked us good, didn’t you?” Dean bellowed, and then every cowhand in the room turned his gun on Halliday.
The big man dived through the batwings with lead screaming all around him. Behind him in the saloon, Dean was shouting orders.
“Get him, damn you!”
There was nothing for Halliday to do now but run, and his long legs stretched to full stride as he sprinted toward the stables.
He saw Kip Heller riding hard for the open prairie, and then he was shouldering the stableman aside.
“It’s gonna be a short stay,” he yelled as he raced down the center aisle and grabbed his saddle.
Halliday could hear men outside in the yard as he tightened the cinch, and then he was in the saddle and spurring straight at the open back doors with his head ducked low over the sorrel’s neck.
He went after Kip Heller, knowing that nothing he could say to Nathan Dean would help him now. A dozen riders were thundering after him, and any one of them would shoot him down without a moment’s hesitation.
His only way out, as he saw it, was to get Kip Heller and drag him back to town by the scruff of his neck.
Nathan Dean stopped in the saloon yard, straining his eyes to see the chase in the dying light—two horsemen pursued by a small army.
“That does it,” Dean said grimly. “Get the rest of the men together, Red. We’re goin’ out to the Heller place tonight, and we’re gonna finish this once and for all.”
Barrett’s hand held his bloodied wrist and his face was grim as he said, “Halliday’s mine.”
Dean took a quick glance at him.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “But I want to be rid of those goddamn Hellers once and for all. You hear me, Red?”
“I sure do,” the big man said gravely.
Then he went back into the saloon and looked thoughtfully at the dead body of Ben Wright. They had come together to work for Nathan Dean, and Dean had kept his word to them in every way that counted. But now Wright was dead.
While he watched, two cowhands picked up Ben Wright’s body and carried it out the door.
Barrett then wrapped his bandanna around his wrist, drew his six-gun and carefully checked the cylinders.
“Get him, Red,” Luden Finn said suddenly, and his voice seemed loud in the silence of the big room. “Get that damn sneak for all of us.”
He had just returned from the sawbones, and his arm was in a fresh, white sling.
Barrett nodded, turned on his heel and strode through the batwings. Someone had brought his mount from the stable, and he went straight to it. When he was in the saddle, he settled himself to wait. It took only a few minutes for five other hands and Nathan Dean to join him.
There was nothing that needed to be said, so they simply rode out of the shocked and silent town.
Five – Boxed In
The whining bullet went just a little wide of Buck Halliday’s right shoulder. He flattened himself along the sorrel’s neck and guided it into the thicket above the lightning-struck tree.
Once he quit Millerston, everything had been too quiet.
He had picked up Kip Heller’s trail just outside town, and the youngster’s trail was heading straight for home.
It was hard to believe anyone could be that loony. It made no sense to think that Heller was intentionally stirring up a hornets’ nest and leading the swarm right to his own front door.
Halliday did not doubt for one minute that the kid’s latest exploit would bring the whole Dean outfit down on the Hellers. Kip would probably end up dead, and Donna with him, if she tried to defend herself. Before the night was out, it was likely that the Heller house would be burned to the ground.
It also seemed likely that Nathan Dean would not rest until he had Buck Halliday swinging from a tree, too.
Halliday worked the sorrel cautiously up the slope, moving slowly and warily.
He had seen the gun flash and felt the burn of the bullet, and he was certain that the unseen gunman was Kip Heller. It certainly was the young man’s style ...
When he came to a clump of trees, Halliday came out of the saddle and looped the sorrel’s reins loosely over a low-growing branch.
Then he began to edge across the ridge with his gun in his hand and his ears pricked for any sound which might reveal the whereabouts of a young gun punk who took pleasure in killing any way he could.
A jumble of thoughts churned through Halliday’s brain, most of them starting and ending with the actions of a gun-toting nuisance named Kip Heller.
Why in hell didn’t Donna take a firm hold on the boy before it got to this?
The second shot tore a strip of bark from a tree as Halliday trotted across open ground. He threw himself to the ground and rolled until he fetched up against a rotting deadfall, where he came to his knees. Two slugs hammered into the spongy tree trunk, and he ducked his head quickly. He had to admit that Heller had the upper hand and was out to kill him.
The night wind was gaining strength, and now it was rattling the leaves and the brush enough to mask the sound of a footfall.
Halliday knew that his best chance was to spot Heller coming, and he strained his eyes to take in any movement caused by something other than the wind.
Halliday was accustomed to playing the waiting game, and he held himself still and silent as the seconds ticked away to minutes.
He finally decided that he had out-lasted the fool kid. Despite that certainty, he stood up slowly, waited again, and then carefully picked his way forward.
It took several minutes to reach the trees that had been Kip Heller’s ambush site. He circled slowly and then stepped into the trees, edging from one to the next until he knew he had covered the spot thoroughly without finding any trace of the youngster.
Then he heard the sound his ears had been straining for, the click of a hoof on rock, coming from the top of the ridge. Halliday turned in that direction, but the ridge line was bare.
He hurried back to the sorrel, pulling the reins free and swinging into the saddle.
The sound of hoof beats drifted up to him from the valley, and the one thing that was visible from a distance down there was the Heller house, with a lamp glowing in the window.
No doubt Donna had left the lamp burning to guide her brother home. Halliday wondered if
she understood that she was making herself and her home an easy target for the men and guns that Nathan Dean could muster.
Halliday’s eyes gleamed like polished steel in the darkness, and his heart seemed to be pumping a righteous rage through his veins.
This was not his fight, but a brother and sister had used every trick they could to drag him into it. The brother had tried deception; the sister naked lust.
He was fifty yards from the house when he slid out of the saddle and left his horse in the cover of trees. He kept to that ragged edge of the clearing all the way to the back of the house.
Suddenly the lamps went out, and then the back door swung open.
Halliday could just make out the silhouette of Kip Heller, and he threw himself to the side and rolled. He guessed that Heller had been watching him all the while.
Heller’s gun roared once, and a slug plowed into the spot where Halliday should have been.
Without hesitation, Halliday fired twice in return, and saw that one bullet caught Heller in the side and spun him around. Halliday charged forward, grasped Heller’s scrawny arm and forced him into the darkened kitchen.
Heller still managed to lift his gun, but Halliday had been expecting the move, and he was only waiting for the gun flash to locate the kid. As soon as it came, he launched a kick that put Heller back on the floor, and then he dropped on top of him.
There was a short tussle for Heller’s gun, and when Halliday grabbed it, he found that it was wet with the kid’s blood.
He heard a tiny sound behind him and turned, knowing it had to be Donna.
“Dean’s men are gonna be here any minute,” Halliday said.
He saw the dull glint of her rifle as she lifted it to her shoulder.
“Don’t talk to me about Dean,” Donna hissed. “You’re the one that shot my brother!”
“Through no fault of mine,” Halliday said bitterly. “Now put down that gun unless you’re goin’ to use it against Dean. I can tell you, he’s all through with tryin’ to be friendly to you poor little orphans. He wants to see Kip dead, and he doesn’t give a damn what happens to you.”
Halliday saw her body stiffen, and then she slowly lowered the rifle. In the faint light, her face looked as smooth as polished ivory.
He lifted Kip Heller in his arms and carried him into the parlor.
Halliday and Donna heard the horsemen coming at the same time, and Donna gasped as she realized what Halliday had been telling her.
“Dean’s got an army of gunman out there,” Halliday said flatly, “and he’s out for blood. This halfwit brother of yours sneaked into the saloon by the back door and killed a feller name of Ben Wright. Dean figures I was in on it, so he’s after me, too.”
“Serves you right for running out on us,” Donna said fiercely, but Halliday noticed the trembling in her voice. “Anyway, Kip’s too smart to do a thing like that.”
“Is he now?” Halliday snapped. “I was there, and I saw what he did. Until this happened, Dean was acting and talking like a fair and reasonable man. It sounded to me like he gave you two every chance to get on your feet before you’d have to pull out. And I believed him when he said this place belongs to him—he sounded a whole lot more convincing on that score than you ever did.”
The hoof beats sounded louder now, and she looked anxiously out the window.
“Nathan Dean is a liar!” Donna said over her shoulder. “He killed my father, shot him down cold. Would you expect Kip to forget that and just leave our home without doing anything about that?”
“Dean never mentioned that,” Halliday frowned.
“Of course he didn’t! I suppose he also told you that he has the deed to this place.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, he’s right about that,” Donna said, “but only because he got it away from us on a legal technicality. My father was never one for attorneys, Mr. Halliday, but that’s one hell of a poor reason to lose the only thing you’ve ever owned to a man who’s already got more land than he knows what to do with. Nathan Dean used the law to steal this ranch from us, and when my father fronted him, Dean shot him dead. Kip wasn’t always the way he is now. It was Nathan Dean that made him like he is ... so now what do you think? Does it still make you proud to know you’ve added to our grief?”
Halliday didn’t know what to say or think, and then it didn’t matter because the time for doing anything was over.
A bullet splintered the front door, another shattered the lintel above it.
Halliday reached for Donna to pull her down to the floor, but she backed away from him.
“Don’t touch me,” she said hoarsely. “We don’t need you!”
“You’ve got me, like it or not,” Halliday said. “If we can hold them off now, there’ll be time to have this argument out later.”
Donna did not respond. Gunfire shook the walls of the little house. The bowl on the table shattered in a gritty shower of crockery and sugar.
Halliday darted to the back door and dropped the bar into place. Then he began to barricade both doors with furniture, using the heavy kitchen table for the back door and a sturdy cabinet for the front.
Donna was standing at a broken window in the parlor, returning fire as quickly as she could trigger the rifle. Halliday knocked the glass from the other window with the butt of his six-gun and emptied it at an advancing line of riders, firing just above their heads.
He was reloading when he spotted Nathan Dean and Red Barrett just behind the first row of attackers. He had a clean shot at Dean as the rancher turned his mount away from the house, but he used it to nick Dean’s saddle horn. The rancher’s curse was clearly heard above the sporadic gunfire.
On the other side of the room, Donna kept up a steady response of gunfire. She seemed to have forgotten her fear. It was almost as if she was enjoying herself.
Halliday resumed firing, carefully placing his shots to keep the Dean outfit at a safe distance. As yet, no one had ventured too close to the house. If anything, the cowhands seemed to be retreating, firing only occasionally.
Halliday stepped back from the window and found Donna tending her brother, who was still stretched out on the couch.
“Kip, can you hear me?” Donna asked as she bent over him, but the kid only groaned.
Halliday glanced out at the yard again, and was moving away from the window when a volley of gunshots slammed into the front wall. It looked like Dean was more interested in keeping them boxed up in the house than in wiping them out—at least until daylight.
Donna went to the kitchen, and through the doorway, Halliday saw her stoking up the fire. Halliday figured it was foolish to give the men outside something to shoot at in the glow of that fire, but he held his tongue.
Stepping around her, he went to the back door and dragged away the makeshift barricade.
Donna put her hands on her hips and stared at him when she felt the cool night air rush into the room.
“What did you do that for? Do you mean to invite them in for a late supper?”
“No, ma’am,” Halliday said softly. “I’m letting myself out. I reckon I’ve done what I aimed to do, and now I’m going. Best of luck to you.”
“You’re ... quitting?”
Halliday shrugged weary shoulders.
“I think they’ll keep their distance till sunup. By then I should be long gone.”
Halliday saw the fear in her eyes as she said slowly;
“I have to stay. No matter what happens, I have to stay.”
“On account of Sam?”
Her eyebrows arched in surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Bosker mentioned a man named Sam. So did Kip. Is he some relation of yours?”
Donna shook her head.
“No. Sam is a lot more than that.”
“Figured so,” Halliday said. “Well, I hope for your sake that he gets here in time. As for the rest, this ain’t my fight now, and if I stayed around, I’d have to kill your brother sooner
or later. He’d force me into it.”
Donna lifted her chin defiantly.
“Or maybe he would kill you. Anyway, you can tell yourself whatever you like. I just think you’re a coward, and that’s why you’re running away ... and you’re nothing special between the sheets, either.”
Halliday smiled and closed the kitchen door softly behind him.
As he stepped into the back yard, he heard the bar drop into place and a faint scraping that meant Donna was dragging the table back to brace the door.
He stood there for several minutes, letting his eyes adjust to his surroundings. When he was satisfied, he started quietly for the trees where he had left the sorrel.
He was still reluctant to go, not because of Donna and certainly not because of her loco brother, but because of unfinished business with Nathan Dean and his men. The Finn brothers would be gunning for him anywhere they could find him. Dean was out to get him, too. Halliday knew that if he left without settling these troubles, his name would be remembered and hated around Millerston for a long time to come.
Then he noticed that the sorrel was not where he had left it!
He made a careful circle, but it was clear that the horse had not just wandered away.
His only chance now was to wait until sunup so that he could see where Dean had assembled his men.
He sat down with his back against a tree. It was a fine night, the kind that made it a pleasure to be on a horse and heading for a better place.
Red Barrett put a fresh bandage on his wrist and said;
“We can take ’em with no trouble, Mr. Dean. They never even come close to hittin’ anything after all that shootin’.”
“That was on purpose,” Nathan Dean said flatly.
“Huh?”
“We both know Halliday’s a sure shot, Red. If he wanted to hit us, he’d do it.”
“I’ll admit he’s fair to middlin’,” Barrett grumbled.
“He could have killed Luden Finn if he’d wanted to,” Dean pointed out. “I’ve been thinkin’ about that jasper, Red. More and more, it’s beginnin’ to look like he was tellin’ us the truth all along. All the time he’s been here, he’s only fought back to defend himself.”