Johnny and George climbed down the rope into the pirogue, which bobbed on the waves churned up by the gator onslaught farther riverward.
Wyler Hemphill’s derby was perched jauntily atop Roe Brand’s head.
“How do you like my new hat?” he asked proudly. “Found it floating in the water, one of them newfangled big city jobs . . . sharp, huh?”
“You look like a danged fool,” George said sourly.
“You’re just jealous ’cause you didn’t find it first,” Roe Brand sassed him back. He piloted the pirogue to the shore, where Johnny and George St. George set foot on land.
A burlap croker sack was secured to one of the boat’s thwarts, suspended by it to keep it clear of water sloshing in the bottom of the hull. Roe Brand untied it, handing it to Johnny. It had heavy, metallic rattlings sounding from its contents.
Johnny set the bag down on dry ground and reached inside. It was full of loaded revolvers. He was already wearing twin Colt .45s holstered to his hips. He now stuck two more guns in the top of his pants, one on the left, the other on the right. A third gun was jammed into his waistband at the small of his back.
Standard practice for a veteran pistol-fighter. Reloading takes time, which could spell the difference between life and death when the action is hot.
George St. George helped himself to a couple of extras, sticking them in his belt and covering their butts with his shirt.
“Loaded for bear,” Johnny Cross said, smiling thinly. “Let’s go.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Johnny Cross and George St. George lurked in the shadows of a line of trees on a low knoll on the embankment a stone’s throw west of the Dead Drunk’s pier.
They surveyed the scene. The Gun Dogs now numbered not their original nine but rather seven men.
“Reckon they miss Custis and Hemphill yet?” Johnny wondered.
“If they don’t, they surely will when the shooting starts,” George said. He looked east along River Street, a ribbon picked out by moonlight. “No sign of our folks yet,” he said, frowning.
“Nor of the rest of the Gun Dogs,” Johnny pointed out. “I like our odds.”
“Just as long as our friends come out of the saloon before enemy reinforcements show.”
“Roe Brand should be at the float by now.”
“Even if he is, we couldn’t see him from here.”
“We’ll see him once he’s on the pier,” Johnny said.
“Can’t miss him in that damn-fool hat of his,” said George.
River Street lived by night, and even here at its westernmost end there was a steady flow of traffic on horse and foot, made up of the players of the half-world of bars, dives, gambling hells, and sporting houses.
With the uncanny instinct that folks have for smelling out a fight, a fair-sized crowd was building along the riverbank at the eastern sidelines of the pier, close enough to see the coming action but far enough away from the Gun Dogs to be out of the line of fire, hopefully.
“Battle always pulls them in,” George observed.
“Hell, I’m that way myself—I’d go a far piece just to watch two dogs fight,” Johnny said.
“Me, too.”
“Folks always like to watch a fight . . . as long as they’re safely out of it.”
Johnny caught sight of two figures at the edge of the crowd who struck a note of familiarity—and more. “See those two duded-up hombres standing off to one side, George?”
“The ones surrounded by a passel of fancy gals? Can’t miss them.”
“I know them.”
“You do?”
“One I know personally, the other I know by sight. The one I know by sight is a dangerous man: the one with the preacher’s hat on.”
“That parson-looking fellow? Dangerous?” George St. George snickered. “What’s he gonna do, bore you to death with a sermon?”
“That’s Sexton Clarke,” Johnny said flatly.
“Huh!” George’s smile fell. “You sure?”
“I saw him fight a duel a few years back in Fayetteville. Killed two men with two shots. He’s lightning fast.”
“So that’s Clarke! I heard of him, sure. Barbaroux sent for him to handle your pal Cullen Baker, but the Combine was lucky enough to take Cullen alive before Clarke reached town. I heard he was living on the Big White Boat . . .
“This change anything, Johnny?”
“It might,” Johnny said thoughtfully. “Sexton Clarke’s an odd duck. He has whims, fancies. Holds a mighty high opinion of himself, thinks he’s the best—the fastest on the draw.”
“What do you think?”
“He’s good—damned good—a quick gun. But that don’t mean somebody else can’t do better. I’ll say this for him, he’s no back shooter. When Clarke comes at you, he comes straight on and he makes sure you know he’s coming.
“I misdoubt me that he’d mix into a brawl to help out the Gun Dogs, thinks he’s too good for that. Like I said, he ranks himself almighty high. But you never know,” said George.
“If he does get in, leave him to me.”
“Be my guest, Johnny. You’re our specialist in trig-gernometry,” George St. George said. “What about the other fellow, the one with Clarke?”
“That’s Valentine. No, really, that’s his name,” Johnny said. “He’s harmless. Well, not exactly, but he’d draw only to save his own life. He’s an artist fellow, paints pictures. Pretty good, too.”
“He makes a living doing that?!” George asked, incredulous.
“Sometimes. He’s also a card shark, thief, and confidence trickster. Lives off women’s earnings, too, when he can get it. A decent enough fellow.”
“Friend of yours?”
“We had some laughs together. I wouldn’t trust him any farther than I could throw him. One thing’s sure, though: Whatever jumps, Valentine will keep out of it.”
“He’s a handsome son, I’ll give him that. Look at them fancy gals hanging all over him.”
“Val’s a ladies’ man, sure enough.”
Roe Brand appeared on the pier.
“There’s Roe,” George St. George said.
Roe Brand flitted across the front of the building and went inside.
“The storm’ll break when our friends come outside,” Johnny said. “Best we get set for the kill.”
“Yes,” said George.
Johnny and George came off the knoll, keeping to the shadows out of the circle of flickering light created by the torches Sharkey had posted at the hitching posts where his patrons tied up their horses.
The two guards on site stood off to one side from the Gun Dogs, pointedly not interfering with them, making a show of neutrality.
Should the Gun Dogs move directly against the Dead Drunk, the guards’ reaction would be decidedly different. But for now they were sticking to Sharkey’s hands-off policy where private fights were concerned.
Johnny and George came off the knoll behind the long row of hitched horses. They were at the east end of the row, a few paces from the foot of the long pier. George St. George stood on Johnny’s left to screen him as much as possible from Sexton Clarke and Valentine.
The two from the Big White Boat, like the rest of the gathered onlookers, were focused on the Gun Dogs and the saloon on the pier.
“Sexton Clarke being here changes things, George,” Johnny said. “We can’t count on him staying out. I think he will but let’s not risk both our skins having him at our backs when the shooting starts. Clarke was no back shooter when I saw him last, but folks change.”
“So?” George asked.
“I’ll go ahead like we planned and brace the Dogs. You hang back and keep an eye on Clarke. If he reaches, kill him.”
“That’s a hell of a plan! The two of us going up against them is how it’s supposed to be, how it should be—”
“Like I said, Clarke changes everything. I’d rather go up against all the Dogs alone than have Clarke at my back with a gun. Anyhow I won’t be alone. Our thre
e from inside plus Roe and me makes five against seven.”
“As long as the rest of the Dogs don’t show too soon. I don’t like it, Johnny—”
“You said I was the expert so trust my judgment. This is how it has to be. I’ve got one advantage going in: I know about Clarke but he doesn’t know me, not by sight.”
“Valentine does, you said.”
“If Val puts me on the spot, I’ll know I have you covering my back, George.”
“All right, I’ll do it, but—hell!”
“Don’t try to beat Clarke’s draw—you won’t. Have your gun out and ready and if he shows fight, kill him. No warning, shoot him in the back if you have to.”
“That sticks in my craw.”
“Hell, George, you was in the war, right?”
“You know I was!”
“You still are. It don’t matter which way the enemy is facing when the shooting starts, you drop him. We ain’t playing here, this is for high stakes. Don’t get squeamish on me,” Johnny said.
The stubborn look left George’s face, the set of his jaw relaxing. He sighed.
“You’re right, of course. It’s a go. I’ll cover Clarke and your artist friend. In case he turns out to be not such a friend after all.”
“Good man,” Johnny said, clapping the other on the shoulder. “By the way . . . how attached are you to your cousin?”
“Not so’s you’d notice, not at all. Blue’s throwing in with the Dogs, he takes his chances same as everybody else,” George said. “Don’t think twice if it comes to burning him down . . . it’s nothing to me.”
“Good to know.”
“Something else you should know, Johnny. That snotty-looking son standing next to Crabshaw is Viper Teed, the gang’s fastest gun. Take him first.”
“I will.”
Motion at the saloon front caught Johnny’s eye. “Here we go,” he said.
Gator Al Hutchins, Belle Nyad, and Wake Spindrift came out of the saloon, their attitude one of seeming naturalness.
The Gun Dogs stiffened at sight of them, hands hovering over gun butts. They started to spread out, forming up in a rough semicircular arc facing the newcomers.
The crowd stirred, instinctively moving herdlike farther off to the side to get out of the line of fire.
Seemingly uncaring as to what was happening at the landward end of the pier, Gator Al drank from a bottle held up-tilted to his guzzling mouth by a hand that was not his gunhand.
He, Belle, and Spindrift started forward, walking three abreast.
Gator Al was a giant standing a head taller than Belle and a head and a half taller than Spindrift, and that was without the extra height added by his rakish top hat. A sidearm was worn holstered on one hip and a tomahawk hung down on his other side by a rawhide loop connecting pommel to belt.
Belle Nyad’s trim middle was cinched by a thin, wide black leather belt. A Blacksnake bullwhip hung coiled by a clasp on the cincher hanging down along the curve of her hip. She never went about without it. She was expert with the bullwhip, having been schooled in its use by the acknowledged master Skinner Kondo, once overseer on her family’s now-lost plantation and before that a leading regional slave-driver.
A machete-sized saber hung from the cincher on Belle’s opposite hip.
Tucked into the top of the cincher was an unusual double-barreled over-under pistol featuring a wide-mouthed snub-nosed barrel on top and a regulation-sized pistol barrel below. The top barrel was loaded with a shotgun shell, the lower barrel was sized for the six cap-and-ball rounds loaded in the cylinder. The piece had two triggers, one for the shotgun attachment and the other for the six-gun.
Wake Spindrift wore a pair of .44s in twin shoulder holsters somewhat concealed by a baggy tropical-weight linen jacket. The guns were fitted butt out. A short-barreled pistol lay in a jacket pocket and a six-gun in a hip pocket of his baggy pants.
The trio came on, advancing along the pier at a deliberate pace.
Behind them, Roe Brand eased out of the saloon’s entrance, fading off to the downstream side of the pier and taking up a post there. His job was twofold: to back up the trio but more importantly to guard against any other back shooters who might emerge from the saloon or pier.
Gun Dog ramrod Pigfeet Crabshaw, huge and gross, showed a head shaped like a smoked ham. The grizzled hairs of his short salt-and-pepper beard stuck out like bristles on a boar’s hide. He hitched up his gunbelt.
Tully “Miracle” Marston, lesser of the two copartners, had longish auburn hair and a same-colored handlebar mustache with the tips upturned. He was something of a dandy with a bottle-green swallow-tail coat with a black spiderweb pattern, white shirt with ruffled front, loud plaid pants, and custom-made cordovan boots.
He held a high-crowned hat in front of him, one hand inside the high top, the other holding the brim. “I don’t see Custis and Hemphill,” he fretted.
“If you could see ’em somebody else could, too, and that’s not what we want,” Crabshaw reminded the other. “They’re there . . . they’ll show when the shooting starts.”
“I’d feel better if they showed before the shooting,” Marston said.
Crabshaw cursed disgustedly under his breath, Marston choosing to ignore it.
Viper Teed laughed. He was the outfit’s top gun, a gangly youth with a permanent sneer curling his upper lip.
Marston glared at him. Viper smirked back. Marston looked away first. Viper laughed again.
“Spindrift’s the fastest,” Crabshaw said out of the side of his mouth. “Take him, Vipe—when I give the go and not before.”
“That shoulder harness of his is too slow, I’ll drill him before his guns clear leather,” Viper Jones said, thumbing the rawhide safety loops clear of the hammers of his low-slung holstered guns, palms resting on their butts.
“That goes for the rest of you, no shooting till I say so,” Crabshaw said.
Murmurs of assent and nodding heads signaled the Dogs’ obedience to their master’s voice.
A Dog to one side of Viper unconsciously squared his shoulders in anticipation of the coming clash. Another widened a bent-knees stance, hand hovering over his gun.
The Gun Dogs numbered not seven but eight, their number having been augmented by Blue Fane, George St. George’s cousin.
“I still say we should wait for the others,” Marston said apprehensively.
“They must have got held up . . . they’ll be here directly,” said Crabshaw. “And even if they don’t, so what? We here can take ’em. Hell, Vipe alone could probably take all three.”
“I surely would enjoy that.” Viper Teed smirked.
“I don’t like it,” Marston insisted.
“Here they be, coming at us. What’re we supposed to do, step aside and let ’em go by because the rest of the bunch ain’t here?” Crabshaw said.
“Well, no—”
“You want to tell Barbaroux they got away because you didn’t like odds of three-to-one? That’d really put us in solid with the Commander.”
“You made your point, Pigfeet,” Marston said coldly.
“We muff this and there’s nothing for us but to clear off the river fast! Barbaroux ain’t one to forgive failure or have you forgot?” Crabshaw pressed.
“I said you made your point!”
“Good.”
The trio of Gator Al, Belle, and Spindrift reached the midpoint of the pier between them and the Gun Dogs and halted. Gripping the empty bottle by the neck, Gator Al pegged it at the Gun Dogs.
It landed at their feet, shattering into pieces. A Dog nicked on the shin by a glass shard cursed.
“Call that friendly? I don’t,” Crabshaw called out, taunting.
“That’s ’cause we ain’t friends,” Gator Al said.
“No . . . we ain’t.”
Marston’s anxious expression was offset by the lewd gleam in his eyes as he looked Belle Nyad up and down. “Evening, Miss Belle, you’re looking fine tonight. Glad to see you recovered fr
om that little dunking in the river we gave you when we sank your boat,” he said.
“You’ll be joining it soon at the bottom of the river,” she said evenly.
“Those swivel-mounted guns we had sure ’nuff made all the difference. Too bad you didn’t have any or things might have come out different.”
“After tonight I’ll take yours.”
Pigfeet Crabshaw spat. “You got a mean mouth, Belle. You’re carrying a gun. Don’t expect special treatment because you’re a woman, not when you go around insulting folks.”
“Why don’t you shut up?” Wake Spindrift asked quietly, a gentle smile on his face.
“Make me,” Crabshaw said.
* * *
Johnny Cross started forward, walking easy, hands down by his sides, near his gun. He left St. George standing off by himself, alone in the shadows on the west side of the pier entry, with Sexton Clarke and Dean Valentine on the east side.
George was opposite Clarke and slightly behind him. His gun was in hand and held along his side pointing down, screened by his body from Clarke in case of the unlikely event of Clarke’s taking a chance glance in his direction.
Or maybe not so unlikely. These ace gunfighters sometimes seemed to have a kind of sixth sense or animal instinct for menace in their vicinity.
Johnny walked on, drawing abreast of Sexton Clarke and Valentine standing at the edge of the crowd. They were watching the faceoff on the pier and Johnny passed them without any eye contact. An electric thrill tingled along his spine at having Clarke at his back.
He went to the foot of the pier and kept on riverward along its center, pulled by an inexorable trajectory toward the Gun Dogs.
Through spaces in the Dogs’ line, Gator Al, Belle, and Spindrift saw Johnny coming on.
“You’re in our way, Crabshaw,” Gator Al said.
“Funny, we was thinking the same about you,” said Crabshaw, venting a low, mean, dirty laugh.
“Now—stand aside!” Gator Al demanded.
“Or else what?” Crabshaw returned.
The confrontation was at the trigger point. That’s when Johnny Cross came to a halt about a dozen feet away from the Gun Dog arc and said, “Hey!”
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