“We’re all sticking. Everybody sticks,” Loman Vard said. “If the twister changes course and starts this way, we can ride clear in plenty of time.”
And that was that, the command from their chief. Dick Stratton got a grip on himself, not without effort. “You know I’d never run out on you boys.”
“Damned right you won’t,” Rile Fenton said in that hateful taunting way of his, significantly slapping the side of his holstered gun to underline his point.
“None of that,” Vard said. “Strat’s sticking. We’ve got enough dead today without fighting among ourselves.”
“Yeah, and there’s the mangy cur responsible,” Rile Fenton said, indicating Bill Longley.
“When do we go to work on him?”
“Now,” Vard said. “Get him on his feet, Top.”
Duff Toplin reached down a meaty hand, grabbing a fistful of Bill’s shirtfront and hauling him upright. Cloth tore, buttons popped, but enough of the shirt held together to give Toplin a handhold propping Bill up.
Bill Longley had been tagged twice: creased on the right side, which wasn’t too bad, and hit around in the left shoulder. Blood darkly stained much of his shirt on the left side. He had little use of his left arm but he could still wriggle his fingers. Cold comfort that, since he could see his finish drawing near. All he could do was keep his sand and look for a break so he could make a move. If he could only get hold of a gun!
Loman Vard threw away a half-smoked long skinny cigar and lit up a fresh one.
Big Taw stepped away from a cloud of cigar smoke. “Phaugh! That smells like the devil’s hindquarters!”
“Tastes bad, too.”
“Then why do you smoke it?”
“To bother folks.”
“I believe it.” Big Taw chuckled. “It’s working.”
Loman Vard went to Bill Longley and blew smoke in his face. Bill was seized by a coughing fit. The cigar’s glowing dot tip was reflected as twin orange-red sparks in the pupils of Vard’s eyes. His eyeballs were yellow like ancient decaying ivory. Below each eye was a triangular wedge of flesh with the tip pointing downward: snake eyes.
“Bill Longley . . . I never heard of you,” Vard said, breaking a long silence. “You can shoot, I’ll give you that. But so what? Texas is filled with young red-hots who can shoot. More coming up every day to replace the ones who couldn’t shoot as good as they thought they could. What makes you so special that my good friend Commander Rufus Barbaroux wants you dead and will pay good money to get it done?”
“Try and find out,” Bill Longley challenged.
“I will,” Loman Vard said. “Have no doubts about that, and don’t think I won’t enjoy it. You cost me a lot of good men today. Barbaroux’s big money can’t make up for that. You’ll beg to tell me before long. When I’m done the men will have their fun. Then I’ll cut off your head and send it in a keg of whiskey to Barbaroux. He’ll like that. Hell, he’ll probably drink it.”
“I hope he chokes on it,” Bill said. He summoned up what he had—which wasn’t much—and tried to hang a hard right fist on Vard’s chin.
“None of that, you!” Toplin said, his big arm easily blocking the blow. He shook Bill till his bones rattled.
Vard laughed. “It’s good you’ve still got some fight left in you because you’ve got to last a while.”
He told Toplin, “Make it last, I don’t want the show over too soon. Soften him up first, Top. He makes out like he can take it, but it could be all front. Let’s find out. But make sure he’s able to talk because there’s a few questions I want to ask him.”
“I know what to do,” Toplin said.
Vard nodded. Rile Fenton had been standing off to the side waiting for Vard to finish talking. Vard didn’t like to be interrupted. Now he saw his opportunity.
“Let me take first crack at the kid, Vard. It’s only what’s right and proper. What the hell, he killed cousin Kurt.”
Vard shook his head. “You’ll get your turn later. Toplin’s got a sure hand in these sort of things. He’s cracked plenty of prisoners at Finn’s jail and made them open up and spill their guts.”
“He put plenty of them in the graveyard and more in the hospital. The mayor was complaining to Marshal Finn that Top busted up so many jailbirds that they can’t get a decent-sized convict work gang together to tend to repairs around town.”
Rile Fenton had little liking for anyone who was not Rile Fenton, and sometimes when he saw himself in the mirror he experienced a profound loathing for the man scowling back at him in the looking glass. But he disliked all others far more.
“Get to it, Top,” Vard said.
“Right, boss.”
Vard was done talking. He went to check on the horses.
Fenton seethed with the urge to lay into Longley, giving him a beating he’d remember for the rest of his life, which wouldn’t be much longer. Fenton burned at the way Vard had cut him off on the matter of who had the right to lay into Longley first.
Toplin got to work on Longley, frog-marching him off to one side where there was room enough to knock him around. The rest of the outfit gathered around to watch the fun.
Vard and Big Taw stood over by the horses. Big Taw’s quarter horse had a stone caught in its iron shoe. Vard removed the stone, using a picklike attachment on his pocketknife.
“That Longley kid sure turned out to be quite a handful,” Big Taw said.
Vard agreed. “If I’d known how much of a handful I’d have doubled the fee.”
“You still can . . . why don’t you?”
“Barbaroux warned that Longley was dangerous, authorized me to use how ever many men I needed. I thought the Twelve would be enough . . .”
“Half our men gone, burned down by one punk kid . . .”
“Nobody has to know the details. We can cover that up.”
“But there’s no hiding we’re six men short.”
“No. Our troubles are just beginning, Taw. Having twelve deadly guns on call all the time gave us the whip hand in our dealings with Barker, the marshal, the mayor, and all our other so-called friends. They won’t be so friendly now that our firepower is cut in half.”
“There’s plenty of guns for hire, if you’ve got the money,” Big Taw said.
“It may have to come to that,” Vard answered. He hadn’t missed the too-casual way Big Taw had mentioned money.
Vard had money, lots of it, hidden in a place that only he could find. The prospect of spending a good part of it to recruit new shooters was unappealing. There was a time factor involved, too. He needed those new men fast. When Vard’s enemies found out he was running a shortage of killers, they’d be tempted to strike, while the iron was hot. Vard had many enemies.
He wasn’t so sure about his friends, either.
Yes, he had plenty of money hidden away. Then there was the money from Barbaroux for the Longley job. Five thousand dollars, a tidy sum. He was carrying two thousand of it on him right now for emergency money, like buying his way out of an arrest, bribing a politician, or what have you. Not so tidy a sum if he paid the rest of the gang their share. According to the articles of the outfit, if any of the Twelve was killed on duty, his share would be divided among the surviving members.
Numbers: Six men dead meant six extra payout shares for the Longley job to be divided among the six surviving members. Plus him, Vard, made seven. Seven men in all. Six plus seven made thirteen. An ominous number. How many steps to the gallows? Thirteen?
Vard liked the number one better, much better. As, Looking Out for Number One himself, Loman Vard. No splitting the loot that way!
He wondered if Big Taw had come to the same conclusion. Taw might be as big as an ox but that didn’t mean he was as dumb as one. Vard had an advantage, though. He knew where the money was, the money Barbaroux had paid for Bill Longley’s murder plus the money Vard had squirreled away since coming to Weatherford.
Big Taw had to take Vard alive to get the money, but Vard labored under no such
compulsion where Big Taw was concerned. Another advantage for Vard. Vard’s best bet would be to team up with Big Taw, make a deal with him to kill the last six members of the Twelve.
He would have to act fast because the best time to kill the rest of the gang was when they were still well outside Weatherford. Nobody would miss the likes of Rile Fenton, Velez, and the others. There might be some fuss about Duff Toplin because he was a lawman, one of Finn’s deputies, but Vard would make it look like Toplin had been killed trying to arrest the gang members. Toplin would get a hero’s funeral.
Big Taw would get his when the others were safely dead. Loman Vard would clear out of Weatherford, clear out of Texas completely, if it came to that. Nothing was keeping him here. California seemed like the place to be, from all he’d had heard about it. He could live very well in San Francisco.
The sooner he finished his business here, the better.
NINE
Duff Toplin went to work on Longley while the others watched. Bill was already shaky from having been shot off his horse, knocked out by Big Taw, and being given a preliminary roughing up by Toplin as a kind of warm-up for the real beating that was coming.
Toplin had a fistful of Bill’s shirtfront by which he held him upright and at arm’s length. He and Bill stood face to face, though of course towering Top had to lean far forward to bring his face level with Longley’s. Bill was tall for a youngster his own age; he stood tall in the company of a group of full-grown adult males as he did now. Toplin was taller still, though, looming over him.
Toplin was laughing and joking with some of the others when Bill struck first, catching Toplin unawares with a looping right hook over Top’s brawny arm that was holding him up. Or maybe Bill hadn’t caught him unawares after all. Toplin shrugged off the blow unfazed, his head hardly recoiling more than a few inches from the hit.
“Was that a punch? Or was it a fly buzzing ’round my head?” Toplin smacked his lips, grinning hugely. “What I do to flies—I swat ’em. Here, try some of mine—”
Toplin held Bill up with his right hand. He cracked Bill across the side of his face with his left hand. This was no slap, it was an open-handed strike, a brutal blow. Toplin’s hand was cupped to amplify the impact.
Bill shuddered like a struck gong. A violent shock ripped through him from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, rebounding off the ground and rocketing upward to explode through the crown of his skull.
Bill’s aching bones were still vibrating when Toplin rocked him with another one, this time on the opposite side of his face, hitting him with a backhand.
A succession of such blows followed, coming hard and fast, slamming Bill’s head this way and that, a booming slap with a meaty cupped palm, followed by a blistering backhand; forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand—
Sweat ran off Toplin’s low brow into his eyes, stinging them. He pressed his forehead into the crook of an elbow, wiping the sweat off there, only to have it instantly replaced by a fresh layer of the stuff.
“Whew! Beating this boy is hard work, I’ll tell you,” he said, looking up, grinning loosely.
“I’ll spell you if you’re tired,” Rile Fenton said, rising from the rock on which he’d been sitting.
“Who’s tired?” Duff Toplin said quickly. “I’m just giving this pup the beating he deserves. He come a long way to git whomped by me and I aim to make sure he ain’t disappointed. Nothing wrong with a good healthy sweat,” he added.
“You must not be able to smell you.”
“You ain’t no lily of the valley yourself, Rile Fenton.”
Longley couldn’t breathe through his nose; it was stuffed full of blood. The taste of it was in his mouth, a coppery metallic tang.
Toplin moved toward Bill. Bill blew a mess of blood into Toplin’s face, splattering it with a misty spray of blood droplets.
Toplin used his bandana to wipe his face. “That don’t bother me one little bit, sonny. Reckon I’ll have plenty more of your blood on me before we’re done here.”
Toplin tore into Bill again, more savagely than ever. He switched hands, alternating from right to left and back again because he always needed to use one hand to keep Bill on his feet. Bill was too weak and dazed to stand by himself.
The beating was knocking the sense out of Bill’s head, making him unable to think straight.
Toplin lowered a burly shoulder, piledriving a hard left into Bill’s belly. Bill jackknifed, doubling up. His shirt tore loose from where Toplin was holding it, leaving the bruiser with a fistful of shredded cloth. The force of the blow knocked Bill backward a man’s length. His feet got tangled up and he fell but that was all right, he couldn’t have stayed on his feet anyway. Loman Vard moved in for a closer look, smoking one of his brown twig-looking cigars. Little lights that were reflections of the cigar’s orange tip danced in Vard’s dark pupils.
Cruel laughter and nasty remarks sounded from others in the band but Bill couldn’t make them out, overpowered as they were from the roaring swell of fading consciousness.
Bill struggled to his hands and knees, head hanging down, blood dripping from his nose and mouth.
Toplin stood over him, rubbing skinned knuckles. “Not so sassy now, are you, sonny boy?”
Bill hawked up a mouthful of blood and spat it on Toplin’s boots.
“No problem, I’ll just wipe it off,” Toplin said. He kicked Bill in the middle with the top of his boot, lifting Bill up in the air so he came crashing down on his side. Bill lay there, legs together, knees bent.
Rile Fenton pushed forward, crowding in on Toplin. “Let me have some of that while there’s still something left to have. I got it coming. That pup owes me a blood debt for killing Cousin Kurt.”
“Let him have a go, Top,” Vard said. Toplin shrugged, stepped aside.
Fenton pulled his belt knife from the sheath. It was a skinning knife, used for dressing and cleaning deer carcasses.
“Damn it, Fenton,” Vard said.
“I ain’t gonna cut him up too bad, boss, not on this go-round,” Fenton said quickly. “Just whittle on him some so he comes around and don’t pass out on us.”
“All right,” Vard said, “but walk soft, Rile. We don’t want this to end too soon and I know all of us, me and the boys, we’ll take it poorly if Longley gets his throat cut or bleeds out before he’s had a chance to hear from each and every one of us.”
In reality Loman Vard didn’t want the torture game to end too soon because he needed the time to think of a foolproof way to rope in Big Taw on his plan to kill off the gang. His brain was working furiously to come up with something.
Rile Fenton, knife in hand, stood over Bill. He leaned over, grabbed a handful of Bill’s sweat-soaked hair, and hauled upward on it, saying happily, “On your knees, boy!”
Dick Stratton and Narcisco Velez exchanged wary glances, as if saying to each other, What is Rile Fenton up to now?
Some of the others looked on uneasily. Torture and murder were fun and games, but there were some lines that shouldn’t be crossed, not even by outlaws and killers.
Bill Longley grimaced, neck cording from the painful pressure of Fenton pulling his hair by the roots to force him to rise up.
Breath hissing through clenched teeth, he somehow managed to get his legs under him and rose till he was indeed standing.
Rile Fenton lovingly brandished the knife in front of Bill’s face, making a few near-passes at Bill’s face and tautly straining neck.
“This here’s a skinning knife, boy,” Fenton said. “I’m gonna skin you alive.”
Bill’s right hand thrust upward, grabbing Rile Fenton between the legs and holding on tight. He pulled and twisted as hard as he could.
Rile Fenton shrieked madly in pain. Twisting and whooping like he was going to jump out of his skin, he raised the knife to stab Bill.
A shot sounded from somewhere in the near distance.
Rile Fenton was pierced by a high-velocity slug to the chest.
&
nbsp; Blood splattered Bill’s face, neck, and shoulders like stinging red hail.
Loman Vard and his band went into action, slapping leather and filling their fists with six-guns, crouching low and turning this way and that in an attempt to see where the shooter or shooters were.
Another shot sounded—
TEN
Sam Heller was up on the east rim, shooting down into the basin of Dead Lake. He had been dogging Loman Vard and his band for most of the day. He’d missed them on the road east of Weatherford town. He’d circled around from the south while they were on the north side of the trail racing west in pursuit of Bill Longley.
Looking beyond, Sam saw the whirling twister at the far side of the basin. That gave him pause. A tornedo was not to be taken lightly. Sam took some reassurance from the fact that the vortex column was tracking north.
Still a twister was anything but predictable. It could alter its course at the drop of a hat and come surging east toward the basin.
Sam had a more immediate problem at hand, though. Loman Vard was at the top of Sam’s personal Wanted list, and he wanted Vard alive. Vard had answers to mysteries that had been haunting Sam for months.
Sam planned to bag Vard by shooting his legs out from under him. That should slow him down! With Vard pinned, Sam would have a free hand to deal with the rest of the gang. Them, he didn’t need alive. Quite the contrary.
Down below Duff Toplin was batting around the captive while the others stood around watching and laughing.
So much the better; it would be easier to take them when they were preoccupied.
Now Toplin made way for Rile Fenton. Fenton loomed over Longley, menacing him with a knife. Things were fast getting out of hand, Sam thought.
Time to get to it.
Then Bill Longley thrust a clawlike hand into Rile Fenton’s crotch, clutching, twisting, and tearing.
Fenton’s agonized scream made some of the gang’s horses jump. And a few of the men, too.
Fenton’s knife hand was upraised to strike down Bill. Sam shot him.
That puts him out of his misery, Sam said to himself.
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