by Bill Crider
The pounding stopped.
“Hell,” Hoot said, “I thought we were the outlaws.”
Angel drew his Peacemaker and leveled it at Hoot. “You’ll be a dead son of a bitch if she hears you say anything like that.”
“I forgot,” Hoot said.
“Don’t forget again. What’s going on outside?”
“I don’t know. There’s still someone ridin’ around out there, though.”
“Why don’t they try to come in, then?”
“Don’t ask me. Maybe they know we’re in here.”
“There’s no way they could know that,” Angel said. He looked over at Jephson. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” Jephson said. “Except that we should’ve kept on going.”
Angel smiled. “Too late for that now.”
Ellie sat on her horse and looked at the old church building. It was dark inside and out. It seemed to her that it might fall down at any moment under the weight of the rain or topple over to one side, pushed by the wind.
Ellie wiped water out of her eyes and said to Sue, “Not much of a shelter.”
“It’s better than nothing,” Sue said. “Let’s get inside.”
“Not yet,” Ellie said.
She had a bad feeling about the place, and she knew better than to go into a place she hadn’t studied for a while. You never knew what you might run into, especially when you were on the trail of a man like Angel Ware.
“Do you know much about using that pistol of Lane’s you brought with you?” Ellie asked.
“Lane taught me,” Sue said. “I know enough.”
Ellie hoped she was right. “Let’s ride around to the back,” she said. “Look the place over.”
Hoot was looking out the window, his eyes just above the level of the sill.
“They’re goin’ around back,” he said. “They’ll see the mules.”
Angel didn’t want that to happen, not before he knew who it was. It might be Lane. Hell, it might even be Brady. He would have liked for things to have worked out a little differently. He wanted them to know he had Laurie. He wanted them to know it was him that was killing them. But it didn’t seem as if things were going to work out that way. It was too bad, but there was nothing to be done about it.
“Stop ’em,” he said.
Hoot stood up and started firing his pistol. Flame streaked from the barrel, and smoke swirled around Hoot’s head. The sound of the shots was deafening in the small confines of the old building.
Ellie’s horse was picking its way through the cemetery. The first shot missed Ellie by inches, and her horse bolted forward through the rain. Sue’s horse reared up, throwing Sue to the ground. Her head struck one of the tombstones, and she lay there without moving, the rain streaming over her face.
“Did you hear that noise?” Harry Moon said. “Sounded like gunshots to me.”
Brady wasn’t sure. The rain muffled sound, and it could have been just distant thunder. On the other hand, it might have been gunshots.
“Where’s it coming from?” he asked.
“Sounds like it might be comin’ from that church I was tellin’ you about,” Shag said. “Maybe we oughta stay away from there. No tellin’ what we might be ridin’ into.”
“Might be those killers we’re after,” Fred Willis said, always looking on the dark side. “Might be they’re shootin’ at Miss Ellie.”
“If I know Miss Ellie, more likely she’s shootin’ at them,” Moon said.
It didn’t matter to Brady who was doing the shooting. One thing was for sure, Laurie wasn’t doing any shooting, and if she was anywhere around, she was in danger. So were Ellie Taine and Sue.
“We’d better get ourselves over there,” he said. “See what’s happening. Maybe we’ll get this over with right now.”
“Best idea I’ve heard all day,” Moon said. He mashed his dilapidated hat down on his head. “Lead the way, Shag.”
Tillman reluctantly took the lead, and the others followed close behind.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When Laurie heard the shots, she knew what she was going to do. She was going to get out of there.
There was a little window with no glass in it, but it was up higher than she could reach. If only she had a chair to stand on, she might be able to get her hands on the sill and climb out, but there was no chair in the room. There was nothing at all.
Laurie walked over and stood directly under the window. She stretched out on tiptoe and reached up. The sill was still several inches away.
More shots were fired, but Laurie hardly heard them. She was concentrating on the window. A gust of rain came through and wet her face. She wiped her eyes, crouched down, and jumped straight up.
Her fingers gripped the sill for a second, but the sill was wet, and her fingers slipped off. Laurie dropped back to the floor.
She didn’t waste time feeling sorry that she’d failed. She jumped again. This time, she got hold. She hung still for a moment, then began pulling herself up, kicking her bare feet against the wall.
In seconds, she was balanced on the window sill. She knew that it was a long way to the ground, and she couldn’t see much at all. It was too dark, and the rain got in her eyes. But she wasn’t going to stay in the church, not with all the shooting going on.
She was about to jump when Angel came crashing into the room, throwing the door hard against the wall behind him.
“You hold on a minute there,” he said.
Laurie didn’t listen to him. She jumped.
She hit the ground hard, but the ground itself was soft mud, and she splattered water and mud everywhere.
I’ve ruined my gown, she thought. The rain plastered her hair to her face, and she pushed it back out of the way. It didn’t help much. She could see hardly anything.
Now what do I do? she wondered.
Ellie owned a Navy Colt that had belonged to her husband, but she’d brought Jonathan Crossland’s Peacemaker instead. As soon as she managed to get her horse stopped, she drew the pistol. She didn’t fire it, however. She was afraid that Laurie might be in the church.
She looked around for Sue, but she couldn’t see her. Then she saw Sue’s horse, with its empty saddle.
First Lane, now Sue, she thought. The hollow feeling she’d had for so long began to be replaced by a burning sensation that Ellie remembered all to well. It was easy enough to tell yourself that you’d changed, that you’d learned the uselessness of revenge, but when you were faced with people who were trying to kill folks you cared about, telling yourself didn’t count for much.
Ellie made sure to keep some of the big trees between herself and the church. She kept a watch on the window that the shots had come from. Laurie wouldn’t be near the window. No matter how bad her uncle was, he wouldn’t put her in the way of a bullet. No one would do that. Or at least Ellie hoped no one would.
She steadied her arm and squeezed off two shots through the window.
For a second there was no reaction. Then there were two answering shots, and a bullet thwacked into the tree in front of Ellie.
She fired again, and someone inside the church yelled. Good. Maybe she got one of them. That would leave two. They’d probably stay away from the window for a while.
She calmly replaced the three cartridges that she’d fired and tried to think of what to do next.
Laurie heard the shots from the trees. She didn’t know who was doing the shooting, but she knew that whoever it was must not be a friend of Angel’s. She decided to find out who it was before Angel came after her. She started to walk as fast as she could toward the trees.
The mud sucked at her feet, and the rain was very cold.
“The kid got away,” Angel said. “I’m goin’ after her.”
Hoot was sitting on the floor by the window. There was blood all over his shirt, and blood was still dripping from what remained of his left earlobe.
“Somebody shot off my ear,” he said. “I’m gon
na bleed to death.”
“You’ve still got most of your ear,” Angel said. “It’s nothing to worry about. Ears just bleed a lot. Stay clear of the window, and you’ll be all right.”
“What if you don’t come back?”
“Then you’re on your own,” Angel told him, heading for the back door.
When Angel had left the building, Jephson said, “We don’t have to stay here either. We can just get on those mules and leave.”
Hoot looked thoughtful. “Where would we go?”
Jephson couldn’t answer that one. He didn’t know the country, and the weather wasn’t improving any.
“Well?” Hoot said.
“I don’t know.”
“What I thought. So we might’s well stay in here where it’s dry.”
Jephson didn’t think that was such a good idea. He thought that getting out of that church would be the smart thing to do, wet or not, even if they didn’t know where they were. But he wasn’t going alone.
He shrugged. “I guess we stay, then.”
Hoot touched his earlobe, looked at his bloody fingertips, and said, “Yeah. Besides, we got more company comin’.”
“How can you tell?”
“I still got enough of an ear left to hear with,” Hoot said.
Brady Tolbert looked at the dilapidated building and wondered if there was really anyone inside. After the first few gunshots, if that’s what they were, there hadn’t been any further commotion.
“What do you think?” Shag Tillman asked.
“I think we wait here for a little bit,” Brady said. Like Ellie, he knew better than to hurry into any place that might prove to be dangerous. “I don’t like to rush things.”
“Can’t blame you for that,” Moon said. “But it’s mighty wet out here.”
“Better to be a little wet than a whole lot dead,” Willis said. “We don’t know, but what if those killers are in there waitin’ for us.”
“If they are, why ain’t they shootin’?” Moon said. “Maybe our ears was playin’ tricks on us.”
Brady caught movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked toward the trees and saw a dark smudge of motion. Someone yelled, “Miss Ellie! Miss Ellie!”
And then the shooting started again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Angel saw Laurie running toward someone on horseback in the trees. When Laurie began shouting “Miss Ellie,” Angel fired three rapid shots at the rider.
He missed, and Ellie fired back. But being taken by surprise as she was, and not being an expert marksman in the first place, she didn’t hit her mark.
Nor did Angel. He was running through the dark in the rain while he fired, and he would have been extremely lucky to hit anything under those conditions.
Laurie, frightened by the shooting, tripped over a fallen limb and fell into the mud. She lay still, hoping that none of the bullets would come her way.
When the shooting broke out, Brady Tolbert drew his pistol and turned his horse’s head in the direction of the muzzle flashes. Just then the front door of the church burst open. A man stood just inside the doorway, blasting away with his revolver.
Brady heard Fred Willis grunt and saw him slip sideways out of the saddle. Harry Moon turned toward Fred as if to catch him before he fell, and a bullet gouged a chunk of flesh out of Harry’s side, splattering Brady with Moon’s blood.
Harry moaned loud but stayed in the saddle, bent over the horn. Willis lay on the ground and didn’t move.
Brady began firing into the open doorway, but the door slammed shut. The bullets ripped through the wood, but Brady knew no one was standing in their way. He stopped shooting and looked around for the marshal. Tillman was nowhere to be seen. Brady was disappointed, though he wasn’t surprised.
The Ranger thumbed cartridges into the chambers of his revolver as he tried to decide what to do next.
Charge the church and try to get inside?
Find out what the shooting was about out there in the trees?
He thought the shouts he’d heard might have come from a young girl, which meant that Laurie could be there in the darkness. He headed in that direction.
Ellie dismounted and started toward where she thought she’d heard Laurie’s voice. She had to be careful because someone besides Laurie, probably Angel, was also out there. She wished the clouds would part and let some moonlight through, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen.
She went cautiously from tree to tree, not wanting to give Angel another shot at her if she could help it, although she knew he could see no better than she could.
She wanted to call Laurie’s name, to let her know that someone was there looking for her, but she didn’t dare. If she said a word, she’d give away her location and give Angel a direction in which to shoot. Besides, Laurie knew Ellie was there. Her young eyes were better in the darkness than Ellie’s were, and she’d seen Ellie on her horse.
“Miss Ellie! Where are you?”
Laurie was calling her from somewhere just ahead. Ellie stopped to listen. She could hear the rain rattling through the leaves and the wind whipping the branches over her head, but that was all.
Then shooting broke out from inside the church and from in front of it. Gunshots thundered so fast that Ellie couldn’t count them. Hoping that Angel was as distracted as she was, she risked calling out Laurie’s name.
“I’m here, Miss Ellie!” came the response. “I’m over here!”
Ellie turned slightly to her right and started forward. She had taken only one step when she heard Laurie again.
“No! I don’t want to go with you! No! No!”
Laurie’s voice was cut off after the final “No!” Ellie stopped being cautious and ran forward.
Brady was in the middle of the little cemetery when someone started shooting at him from the church again. He fired back at the open window, but he was pretty sure he wasn’t hitting anyone.
He slid off his horse and took cover behind one of the upright tombstones. The men in the church couldn’t see him any better than he could see them, so he felt relatively safe. He’d wait until they risked another shot, then fire at the flash.
It was a good plan, except that there wasn’t another flash. He waited for several minutes, then stood up. He heard nothing other than the wind and the rain. He started to lead his horse among the tombstones and almost stepped on someone lying on the ground in front of him.
Hoot and Jephson saddled the mules as best they could in the circumstances. Jephson had convinced Hoot that it was time to vacate the premises and leave Angel behind. After all, Angel had told them that if he didn’t come back, they were on their own.
Jephson didn’t like the idea of leaving Angel much better than Hoot did. He wasn’t at all sure they could manage without Angel, but he couldn’t think of any alternatives other than staying in the church and getting killed.
Hoot probably would’ve enjoyed that, Jephson thought. When he’d thrown open that door and started shooting, he was laughing like a drunk man, and if Jephson hadn’t pulled him back and slammed the door, he would probably have just stood there until someone shot him to pieces. He’d started shooting out the window again, but Jephson had stopped him and finally persuaded him that it was time to take off.
They had the mules almost ready when Angel showed up. He was carrying the girl under one arm.
“Runnin’ out on me, are you?” Angel said.
“You told us we were on our own,” Jephson said. “Remember?”
“I killed two of the bastards, Angel,” Hoot said. He was holding the sawed-off shotgun by his side. “Maybe three.” He looked at Laurie. “Is the girl dead?”
He sounded disappointed to Jephson, who figured the girl was better off dead than in Hoot’s charge.
“She’s not dead,” Angel said. “I had to hit her, as much as I hated it. She was tryin’ to get away.”
“Imagine that,” Jephson said. “She must not like our company.”
“I don
’t like a smart mouth,” Angel said. “Saddle one of those mules for me.”
Hoot handed the shotgun to Jephson and dashed back into the church and brought out a saddle and bridle. He tossed the saddle to Jephson, who caught it by the horn with his free hand. Jephson handed the shotgun back to Hoot and threw the saddle on the mule’s back.
“Cinch ’er up tight,” Angel said.
“Don’t bother,” Ellie said, stepping out from behind a tree.
She was holding her Peacemaker level with both hands, pointing it straight at Angel.
Brady knelt down and looked into the face of his sister-in-law, who wasn’t looking back.
“Sue,” he said, reaching down a hand to touch her.
Her face was cold and wet with rain. His hand touched her neck. He could feel a pulse, faint but definite, and he began looking for a wound. There was none that he could see, but he could feel a stickiness in the hair on back of her head where it had hit the tombstone. He needed to get her inside, out of the rain, where she could get warm and dry.
He picked her up. She was a substantial woman, but he could carry her. He didn’t know what he would do when he got to the church, however. He was certain that whoever was inside wasn’t going to welcome him.
He didn’t care. He’d worry about that when he got there.
Shag Tillman was thoroughly ashamed of himself. He’d run off when the shooting started, just wheeled his horse around and turned tail. He’d always known he wasn’t the bravest man in Blanco, but he’d never really thought he’d show himself to be a flat-footed coward when it came right down to it.
He had, though, and he might as well admit it, hard as that was for him to do. When the shooting started, he’d proved out to be yellow as snot.
The question was, what could he do about it?
He supposed he could ride on back to town. If everyone was dead back at the church, there wouldn’t be anyone to say what he’d done.