Moon looked at Kate. Kate looked at Moon.
Bren was saying, “What—”
The man from Beuhman & Hartwell and his assistant were setting up their camera, both of them glancing up at the sun. The news reporters were looking around at the scenery and down the slope toward the skirmishers standing in the scrub, judging the distance with keen gaze, beginning to make notes…the Mimbres, the Mexican farmers, the two black cavalrymen looking at the reporters and the bill-show man in the white hat and buckskins, staring at them. Where did they come from?
Bren was saying now, “Will you all kindly move out of the way? Go inside the house. Go on.” Shooing them, going over to the photographer who was beneath his black cloth now. “Mister, will you move out of the way—”
Kate kept looking at Moon. She said, “What are we doing here?”
Moon didn't say anything; but his eyes held hers until they heard the voice all out from the slope.
“What in the hell's going on!”
Sundeen stood with several of his men at the edge of a brush thicket, looking up at the wall, at the people they could see close beyond the wall and through the gate opening. Now he yelled, “Get those people out of there!” and waved his arm.
“Jesus Christ,” he said to the man in the derby hat next to him, who had been with Sundeen since the beginning of this company business, “you believe it?”
The man didn't say anything; he was squinting in the glare, frowning. The man didn't seem to know what to think.
“Goddman it,” Sundeen said, “give'em a round.”
When the man in the derby hat didn't move or raise his Winchester, Sundeen took the rifle from him, levered as he jerked it eye-level, fired, levered, fired…seeing them scatter now…levered and fired again, sending his shots singing off the adobe wall where some of them had been standing, then yelled, “We're coming up!”
He half turned and began waving to his men to come on. Not one of them moved. Sundeen pulled his hat off, stared, put his hat on again close over his eyes, pushed the rifle at the man in the derby hat, placed his hands on his hips and looked all around him at his mean Turks. They stood in the hot dusty scrub and shale watching him or looking up the slope.
Very slowly, Sundeen said, “What is going on?”
Before the man in the derby hat could answer—if he was going to—a voice from the yard yelled, “Hold your fire, I'm coming out!”
Sundeen watched the picture-taker and his assistant appear with their camera and heavy tripod, coming out of the yard and moving to a rise off to the side where they began to set up the equipment. Sundeen stared, pulling his funneled hat brim lower. As the picture-takers were getting ready, the man in the bill-show cowboy outfit appeared at the wall and called out, “Mr. Sundeen!—”
Sundeen let go, yelling now as loud as he could, “Get that fancy son of a bitch out of there!” Said, “Jesus,” in his breath and started up the slope by himself.
Kate saw him first. She had begun to feel a letdown, a tired after-feeling; but now the pressure of fear returned. Looking around, she said, “Dana?”
No one was facing this way.
Only the young newsman, Maurice. Moon was over by the others, moving them toward the house. Kate thought, You have to hurry. They have to hurry. This is what they were waiting for. Bren was walking Billy Washington across the yard, the wildwest show impresario holding onto Bren's arm with one hand, gesturing with the other as he spoke, waving his arm in a wide arc to take in the world.
“Dana!”
Moon came around, alert to his wife's tone. He looked out toward the wall, his gaze holding as he came back toward the gate opening. He stood there, as if to greet Sundeen coming across the open ground.
Kate said, “Dana?”
He didn't look at her now. Kate turned to the wall where the Henry rifle rested on the flat surface, pointing out. She stood some fifteen feet from her husband.
Maurice stood between them, but several feet back from the wall. He didn't know if he should stay here. No one had said anything to him. Sundeen had reached the flat piece of ground beyond the wall. He was about fifty feet away now. Beyond Moon—and the group of Apaches and Mexican farmers spaced farther down the wall—on the rise off to the side, the photographer was fooling with his camera, the assistant holding open the black cloth for him to duck underneath. From Beuhman & Hartwell, Tucson. Maurice remembered that. He wasn't sure of the spelling though. Or how to spell the colored man's name—the two colored soldiers in their army braces and boots, off beyond Moon's wife. Sundeen's belt buckles glinted in the direct sunlight. Sundeen with a revolver on each hip, bullet belts crossed in an old-time desperado style…My God, was Moon armed?…Yes, the shoulder rig. He was in his shirtsleeves and wore braces and there seemed to be all manner of straps over his shoulders and around his back. Moon with a shoulder holster. Sundeen with his gun butts almost touching his hands hanging at his sides.
Did he say something? Mention Sonora?
Maurice could see all the hired manhunters waiting down there at the edge of the scrub. There was sky behind Sundeen's head and shoulders.
He said, “Your first, Moon, then your friend. Where is he at?”
“He doesn't come right now,” Moon said, “you'll never see him again.”
This took place in moments, right before Maurice's eyes. Bren Early was somewhere behind him in the yard. Maurice wanted to turn around, but couldn't take his eyes off Sundeen…or Moon, he could see by shifting his eyes a little. He wanted to call out Bren Early's name, get him over here. But at this moment there was an awful silence. Two armed men facing each other. Was there a signal? Men shot each other from a distance or sneaked up or came into a place shooting if one wanted to kill another. Did this happen? Maybe it did, for it was certainly happening now, Maurice thinking: Before your very eyes.
Sundeen said, “Your move.”
Maurice saw Moon's right hand cross his body.
He saw Sundeen's right hand with a revolver in it. Like that. He saw the glint of sunlight on gun metal.
He heard an explosion, a heavy, hard report and a quick cocking lever action in the echo…to his left, where Kate Moon stood holding the big Henry rifle at her shoulder…and Sundeen was stumbling back, firing with a shocked look on his face, firing wildly again as Moon extended his revolver and fired and Kate fired the Henry, the two of them hammering Sundeen with .44's and that was the end of him. There was a silence. Sundeen lay on his back with his arms and legs spread out.
Maurice heard voices, someone in the yard calling out, running this way. He saw Kate lower the Henry and look at her husband, first with concern, then beginning to smile faintly. Moon looked over at his wife, not smiling but with a calm expression. Moon shook his head then. Maurice turned to see Bren Early coming with a matched .44 Russian in each hand.
Bren saying, “You got him?…You got him!” At the wall now, pointing a revolver down the slope and yelling at his men, his Apaches and Mexicans and pair of old cavalrymen, “Now! Pour it into'em, boys!”
Moon turned away. Bren looked at him, a dumb, bewildered expression.
“We got to finish it!” All excited.
Moon shook his head. “You're too late for your glory.” He looked at his wife. “When did it happen?”
Kate said, “I think it was over before it started.”
“I guess so.” Moon said then, “You shoot good for a little girl.”
She said, “I wasn't gonna see you die for no reason.”
Bren looked at them, from Moon to Kate and back. His gaze moved to Sundeen stretched face up on the bare ground and beyond him to the men standing in the scrub, Bren full of desperate energy brought to a halt.
“His people are still there…look.”
But with little conviction in his tone. A last, toolate call to battle.
Remember it, Maurice thought. All of it:
Bo Catlett sitting on the wall, lighting a cigar. The other cavalry veteran leaning against it, his
back to the scene of battle.
The Mimbre Apaches—gone. Where? Just gone. The Mexican farmers and the young one with the sword, moving away, walking off past the newsmen and the bill-show dude standing on the porch.
Moon gazing in that direction—
He said, “Well, we've paid up and lived to tell about it.”
The bill-show man in buckskins was coming out toward them now, getting important-looking papers out of his pocket.
Moon watched him. He said to Bren, “It wouldn't hurt to travel, see the sights, would it?”
Kate shook her head, resigned or admiring or both. She said to Moon, “You're the sights. You and your partner.”
Maurice Dumas got out his notebook and started writing it all down as fast as he could.
About the Author
ELMORE LEONARD has written more than three dozen books during his highly successful writing career, including the bestsellers Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Be Cool, Get Shorty, and Rum Punch. Many of his books have been made into movies, including Get Shorty and Out of Sight. He is the recipient of the Grand Master Award of the Mystery Writers of America. He lives with his wife, Christine, in Bloomfield Village, Michigan.
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Praise for the western fiction of
ELMORE LEONARD
"AS WELCOME AS A THUNDERSTORM
IN A DRY SPELL."
Dallas Morning News
"BEFORE LEONARD'S CONTEMPORARY
CADRE OF URBAN COWBOYS, THERE
WAS AN IMPRESSIVE LINEUP OF THE REAL
THING. BOUNTY HUNTERS, INDIANS,
STAGECOACH DRIVERS, BANK ROBBERS,
SHERIFFS, AND COWPUNCHERS PEOPLED
THE PAGES OF HIS NOVELS IN A GRITTY
MIX RICH IN THE FLAVOR AND
INDIVIDUALISM OF THE OLD WEST."
Florida Times-Union
"LEONARD BEGAN HIS CAREER TELLING
WESTERN STORIES....HE KNOWS HIS WAY
ONTO A HORSE AND OUT OF A GUNFIGHT
AS WELL AS HE KNOWS THE SPECIAL KING'S
ENGLISH SPOKEN BY HIS PATENTED,
NOT-SO-LOVABLE URBAN LOWLIFES."
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel
"ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL
WESTERN WRITERS OF HIS DAY."
London Independent
"LEONARD WROTE WESTERNS, VERY GOOD WESTERNS...THE WAY HE IMAGINED HEMINGWAY, HIS MENTOR, MIGHT WRITE WESTERNS."
Baton Rouge Sunday Advocate
Books by Elmore Leonard
Tishomingo Blues
Pagan Babies
Be Cool
The Tonto Woman & Other Western Stories
Cuba Libre
Out of Sight
Riding the Rap
Pronto
Rum Punch
Maximum Bob
Get Shorty
Killshot
Freaky Deaky
Touch
Bandits
Glitz
LaBrava
Stick
Cat Chaser
Split Images
City Primeval
Gold Coast
Gunsights
The Switch
The Hunted
Unknown Man No. 89
Swag
Fifty-two Pickup
Mr. Majestyk
Forty Lashes Less One
Valdez Is Coming
The Moonshine War
The Big Bounce
Hombre
Last Stand at Saber River
Escape from Five Shadows
The Law at Randado
The Bounty Hunters
A Coyote’s in the House
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
GUNSIGHTS. Copyright ©1979 by Elmore Leonard, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2004 ISBN: 9780061841019
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Elmore Leonard's Western Roundup #1 Page 19