Granny Haxer was in a fix. She had found herself what seemed like the ideal spot to hole up and get the drop on these varmints. Not Johnny or Middenface, of course. That spoiled little rich bastard, Asdoel Zo, had let slip that Johnny and Middenface had rejected the deal, just like her. They despised this situation as much as she did. Just like her they were unwilling participants.
The other varmints, the ones who were willing to kill their partners, people who'd been their friends just a day before, but were now willing to sell them down the river, or worse, just for the sake of money... Granny Haxer didn't have any trouble putting paid to low-lifes like that. And she had just the tool for the job. A fine buffalo rifle, a Sharps breech loader with an octagon barrel for long distance shooting. It was a weapon that could reach far and hit hard. She caressed the blue steel barrel of the rifle now, careful not to touch the sights, which she had so painstakingly zeroed-in the previous morning, using some rounds of her precious ammunition.
Yes, she had a fine firearm. And she'd found an equally fine place to hole up. After she'd got the Sharps sighted in properly with her test shots, she'd known she had to get moving in a hurry. Those shots were bound to draw the human jackals who were hunting her, hungry to shed her blood and pocket her fee for themselves.
The small hill, on which Granny had awoken, had been an advantageous spot. It had allowed her to check for pursuit in all directions. She set off, carrying the small rucksack she'd found beside her, full of dried food and spare ammo, and the canteen full of water. There was a lightweight sleeping bag tucked into the small rucksack and the rifle, too, was surprisingly light. Granny realised that the sleeping bag and the rifle were both anachronisms. Neither could have existed in the real days of the cowboys. The rifle might have looked like an antique buffalo gun, but it was obviously made of some kind of special low-mass alloy.
It seemed that the rich fool, Asdoel Zo, wasn't such a stickler for authenticity after all. He must have realised that, because Granny was smaller and less physically strong than the others, a proper old-fashioned weapon and roll of bedding would have weighed her down so much she would hardly have been able to move. And it seemed that Zo wanted a fair competition, by his own lights.
"Very well," Granny had said, setting off with her lightweight pack and her lightweight rifle, "if it's a fair competition he wants it's a fair one he'll get." She didn't feel one ounce of gratitude towards Asdoel Zo, though. Or towards his whore-bitch of a wife, that treacherous she-dog, Hari Mata Karma. If they'd seen fit to allow Granny these small advantages, then fine. She'd use them. Hopefully to blow both Mr and Mrs Zo back to whatever hell had spawned them.
So Granny Haxer had set off from the hilltop where she'd awoken, moving quickly in the hours just after dawn, before the desert day became unendurably hot. She'd been looking for a spot where she might be able to get a good shot at any fool unfortunate enough to pass under the sights of her buffalo rifle. And she'd got lucky. Within three hours of swift marching she'd come upon the wreck of an old stagecoach, lying on its side and studded with arrows from an Indian attack.
Granny knew that the stagecoach, like the arrows, was a complete fake. But that didn't bother her. All that mattered was that it was a useful fake. She reasoned that she could hole up inside where she'd be both out of sight and protected from bullets - at least badly aimed or hasty bullets - and have the opportunity to watch for any wayfarers and get the drop on them.
Unfortunately, they'd got the drop on her.
And what had initially seemed like an ideal refuge was beginning to smell like a death trap.
The stagecoach was built of wood on a steel frame. It lay on its side with one set of wooden wheels in the air and the only way in was through a set of doors, which were now on the top of the wreck. The other set of doors were pinned against the ground and therefore impossible to use. Granny had clambered up onto the stage and opened the doors on top, lowering herself into the dusty interior. The stagecoach seats were covered with velvet and smelled spicily of mould. Even though everything had been turned on its side, it was quite a comfortable place to take refuge.
She was sitting on what had been the doors on the left side of the stagecoach, and which were now effectively the floor. The actual floor of the coach, tilted up at right angles from the ground, now formed a wall to her left. The ceiling was a wall to her right. And the ceiling was the set of doors, which had been on the right of the stage. If she poked her head up through the window above her, or opened the door, she had a nice little spot for spying or shooting.
The stagecoach was situated on a slight rise in the ground and although the terrain was strewn with boulders and cut with ravines, it provided a reasonable field of fire over three hundred and sixty degrees. Granny reckoned she could take down any adversary, coming from any direction.
What she hadn't reckoned on were two adversaries, coming from two directions.
A bullet ploughed through the topsy turvy roof of the stagecoach, directly behind Granny Haxer, buzzed through the air past her ear, and lodged in the up-ended floor directly in front of her. Granny cursed and moved hastily to one side, although this wasn't necessarily a good idea. Since she didn't know which direction the next bullet was coming from she might be moving directly into its path. Still, it was human nature to dodge gunfire, and dodge she did. The next bullet, as it happened, came through the floor of the stagecoach. The floor was wooden, but fitted on the underside with steel plates, so the bullet entered at a crazy angle and ricocheted around the interior of the coach, most of its energy already spent. It landed in Granny's lap.
She quickly brushed it away, like an unpleasant insect that had landed on her, feeling the heat of the metal slug on her hand as she touched it.
"You're going to have do better than that, you dumb bastards!" she yelled. Since her opponents already knew where she was, she wouldn't give her position away by shouting, and she might do some good. She might rattle them, although admittedly they hadn't showed any signs of getting rattled so far.
"Don't worry," called Ray from outside.
"We will," called Bel.
Granny thought she had a pretty fair idea where both the twins were, based on the directions the shots had come from and the sound of their voices. She considered popping up through the window and taking a shot at one of them. But that was the problem. She could only shoot at one of them at a time, and while she was taking aim and pulling the trigger, the other one had a pretty good shot at her.
Holing up in this stagecoach hadn't been such a good idea after all. Granny was beginning to wish she'd stayed on that nice hilltop where she'd woken up. It would have given her a better command of the terrain, allowed her more freedom of movement, and wouldn't have required her to risk her life every time she took a look around her. "No point fretting over broken eggs," murmured Granny, and she checked her Sharps. Outside the stagecoach, things were suspiciously quiet. She decided to take a chance on having a look outside. She stood up and cautiously thrust her head through the open window above her, twisting around to try and look in all directions. Immediately, two shots rang out and she dropped back into the coach, with a long scratch on the side of her neck for her troubles. She hadn't actually been hit, but one of the bullets had gouged long splinters of wood off the door and one of these cut her. The other bullet had damned near parted her hair.
But she'd managed to get a glimpse of what the twins were up to. The devils were almost upon her. Bel was lying flat on her stomach on the ground fifteen metres from the roof of the coach. Ray was about five metres further back, behind a rock that faced the underbelly of the coach.
There wasn't much Granny could do about Ray, what with him using that rock for cover. Plus the floor of the stagecoach being steel plated meant that Ray's bullets were unlikely to reach Granny, but also that her own bullets couldn't reach Ray. But the girl... Granny squirmed around on the velvet cushion where she was sitting until her back was to the floor of the coach and her rifle was poin
ting at the roof. She closed her eyes and tried to remember exactly where Bel had been laying. When she had a pretty clear picture in her mind, she gently squeezed the trigger...
The buffalo gun made an unholy noise in the confined space of the stagecoach, as she fired blindly through the wooden roof. Granny's ears rang with the aftermath of the blast. But she could still hear well enough to detect the gratifying cry of rage and pain from Bel, and the shocked, worried shout from her brother.
"I'm all right," called Bel, but her brother was already furiously pumping shots at the underside of the stagecoach. Granny could feel them hitting the steel plates at her back. She scooted around quickly, moving away from the floor of the coach, but none of the bullets were penetrating. The one that had got through earlier must have been a lucky fluke, slipping between the floor plates. "That's nice," yelled Granny. "It tickles a bit, but keep on shooting if you like, Ray. It gives me a nice back massage." In fact her back was still tingling from the vibration of the bullets on the steel plate behind her. Granny grinned with the fierce joy of being alive. A glint of bright sunlight caught her eye and she realised that her shot had blown a hole in the roof of the coach.
Granny slid across the dusty seat and examined it. The hole was about the size of her fist. Not big enough to render her visible, or vulnerable, to those jackals outside. But it was a useful size for spying on them. She squinted through it and saw that Bel had retreated a good twenty metres from her previous position and was now hiding in a dip in the ground. Excellent. Granny grinned. That would teach them. And with the hole to spy and shoot through, she'd be able to plug Bel if she so much as twitched a whisker.
The hole gave Granny an idea. She searched through her backpack and found the knife that had been provided for her. Then, she set about searching the floor of the stagecoach for the bullet hole that must be there. Finally she found it, a tiny speck of daylight that indicated where Ray's freak shot had come through. She'd been right. It had entered at a point between plates. To be more precise, at a point where the corners of four plates met. The steel plates weren't absolutely flush and the space between them was filled with wood. Using the point of her knife, Granny Haxer was able to enlarge the hole until it was big enough to get about three of her tiny fingers inside it. That was as big as she could possibly make the opening, because she was now up against steel plates on all sides. It was considerably smaller than the hole she'd blown in the ceiling, but it would suffice. She could peer out of it and, if necessary, poke the barrel of her gun into it and take a shot.
Making the hole had been a protracted, nerve-wracking business. She hadn't been able to work at it for more than a few seconds at a time. She constantly had to pause and squint through it to try and get a glimpse of Ray, and then dart back across the coach to look through the ceiling hole and keep watch on his sister. At one point she'd seen Bel trying to slink out of the hollow she was lying in and move to a more advantageous position. Granny had aimed her buffalo rifle and taken a shot that dropped Bel back into her hole right smartly. Granny cackled and reloaded the Sharps and then resumed her work. By the time she finished the hole in the floor, she had a satisfactory means of keeping an eye on both the twins.
The problem, of course, was that she couldn't keep an eye on both of them at once. And, with their eerie ability to anticipate each other's behaviour, the twins could co-ordinate their moves in a perfectly orchestrated attack. That was what worried Granny. If they both made a move at the same time, she would be lucky to get even one of them. And the odds were that the surviving twin would get her. They were a sly pair, and she had a healthy respect for their abilities.
That was why, when she heard Bel shouting, she was sure it was a trap. "Come back!" shrieked Bel. "Ray! What are you doing?"
"I ain't stirring," murmured Granny. "You can't fool me. You're just trying to get me to poke my head out so you can blow it off." But Bel kept on screaming.
"Come back, Ray. Don't go to her!"
Her? Granny abruptly realised what was happening. The boy must have fallen under the sway of that Stella Dysh. Granny chuckled delightedly. "She's got him!" she shouted to Bel. "She's drawing him like a dumb hound to a bitch in heat!"
Bel's response was a wordless scream of rage, but Granny wasn't paying attention. She had her face pressed to the hole she'd fashioned in the floor boards. Sure enough, Ray had abandoned his position in the rocks and was walking away from the stagecoach, moving at moderate speed, but with an oddly somnolent stride. As if he wasn't in conscious control of his actions. "Which he ain't," chuckled Granny. "This is going to be like shooting turkeys in a tree." She scooped up her weapon, took one last look through the hole, then pressed the octagonal rifle barrel to it and braced herself.
It was difficult shooting through the tiny hole, because she couldn't look and fire at the same time. But she'd got a pretty good idea of Ray's position. She squeezed the trigger and once again the buffalo gun roared in the hot cramped space of the stagecoach. Granny quickly withdrew the rifle and peered through the hole. The bad news was that she'd missed. Ray was still marching mechanically off towards the distant blue hills.
The good news was that the boy hadn't reacted to the shot in any way at all. He wasn't taking cover, running or even changing direction. It looked like she was going to get plenty of chances to hit him.
There was a wordless cry of frenzied rage from Bel, who must have surmised what Granny was up to. Then there was a wild volley of shots from the girl. Granny ducked as half a dozen bullets tore through the ceiling of the coach behind her and ripped into the fat cushions of the seats, kicking up miniature clouds of dust. One bullet hit the stock of Granny's Sharps rifle and knocked it out of her hands. She cursed and groped for the weapon. The clouds of dust from the seat cushions danced in the golden shafts of sunlight that fell through the bullet holes in the roof.
"Leave him alone!" shrieked Bel from outside.
"Fat chance," murmured Granny in amusement. But she found she was having trouble picking up the rifle again. Her right arm felt numb, no doubt with the shock transmitted through the wooden stock of the rifle from the impact of the bullet.
She put her fingers on the rifle, but for some reason they wouldn't close on it. Then Granny felt something wet trickle down her wrist and she saw the blood. For a moment it puzzled her and then she realised what had happened. The bullet hadn't hit the rifle. It had hit her arm. That accounted for the numb feeling and the loss of strength in it. Granny cursed. What a time for this to happen. She tore a strip of fabric off her blouse, using her left hand and her knife and hastily tied it around her right arm just above the wound. "Won't do to lose any more blood," she murmured to herself as she worked. It was a difficult business tightening the makeshift bandage, but she managed by using her teeth.
When she completed the task, she took a quick look through the hole in the perpendicular floor boards and saw that Ray was still marching in the same direction as before, slowly but steadily receding into the distance. He still made a feasible target, though, if only she could lift her gun...
Then Granny realised that Bel had gone suspiciously silent. She quickly moved to the hole in the roof and peered out. Bel was nowhere in sight. "Shitfire," murmured Granny. The damned girl could be anywhere. "Where is she?"
Her question was answered a moment later, when the stagecoach gave a sudden ugly lurch, responding to the weight of someone climbing on top of it. Granny scrabbled frantically for her rifle, trying to grab it and lift it awkwardly with her left hand.
But it was too late. The door above her was flung open and Bel stood there, silhouetted in a square of blue sky. She had a Winchester rifle in her hands, aimed right at Granny's head.
Granny realised that it was all over. But she forced a smile onto her face. "Your brother's finished, dearie. That Stella Dysh has got her claws into him good and proper."
"I'll get to him and I'll save him," said Bel calmly, "as soon as I've put a bullet between your eyes and taken a
cutting of your hair as proof of the kill. That is, if I can find any hair on that bald head of yours."
"Burn in hell, honey," said Granny Haxer cordially. She crossed herself and closed her eyes. The last thing she saw was the evil smile on Bel's face. Then the darkness behind Granny Haxer's eyelids was full of stillness and silence for a moment, followed by the sharp crack of a rifle firing. Granny didn't feel a thing. She wondered if this was what death was like. If so, it wasn't too bad. She was still breathing. She opened her eyes and saw Bel standing above her, wavering slightly as if she'd had too much to drink. There was something wrong with Bel's head. It was misshapen and there was a spreading stain over one eye.
As Granny watched, Bel toppled off the stagecoach and fell to the ground. The rifle dropped from her fingers as she went, falling into the stagecoach. Granny Haxer immediately grabbed it and shoved her head up through the open door to see what the hell was going on.
There on the ground beside the stagecoach, Johnny Alpha was standing over Bel's dead body. He had a revolver in his hand, a thread of smoke drifting up from its muzzle. Bel, who had seemed such a fearsome apparition only a few seconds earlier, now looked sad and frail, and abandoned in death. Johnny glanced up at Granny. "Where's the brother?" he said.
Granny pointed with her chin. "Over yonder, heading towards them hills. Seems he got a sniff of our Stella."
Johnny put his gun back in its holster. "Pack your things and get ready to clear out. We'll go after Ray. With a bit of luck we'll be able to nail him and Stella together."
Granny Haxer cackled appreciatively. "Now that's a nice thought. I ain't going to be much use to you, though, Johnny. I took one in my old wing." She lifted her bandaged arm, and winced at the pain that was only now beginning to make itself felt.
"That's all right," said Johnny. "I'll do the shooting. You can pass me the ammunition."
Day of the Dogs Page 20