The Shootout Solution

by Michael R. Underwood

  She would think about that, wouldn’t she? “I imagine the horses appreciate that.”

  “They would if you could tear them away from their feed. Dumb things.”

  “Aw, I like horses.”

  “How much time you spent on ’em, Lee?”

  “I like looking at horses,” Leah said.

  “Well, try living—”

  Maribel was cut off by Shirin’s voice in Leah’s ear. “Five riders on the horizon. It’s time.”

  Roman knocked three times on the horse post, the signal that the Williamsons were coming.

  “Here they come. Good luck.” Leah looked back at the empty room, the terrified staff. There was still money in the vault, if not much. But the Williamson gang didn’t know that. All they’d know was that there was a new posse between them and the silver.

  Leah wanted to be able to help, but even with an afternoon’s worth of training, she wasn’t going to stare down a band of killers, gig or no gig. King hadn’t asked her to put her life on the line, and she hadn’t offered. She just hoped she wasn’t going to stand by and watch them gunned down the way Mallery had watched her posse lose.

  “Smoke ’em,” Leah said as the posse squared off in the street.

  * * *

  Roman stood at the ready as the Williamsons advanced.

  King called the fight. “Roman, you take the woman on the right, I’ll take the big guy on the left. Leave the ones in the middle for last. Shirin will cover us.

  “Talk to them first,” King added, “but if they draw, all bets are off.”

  Maribel snapped her holster open, ready to draw. “I’m no Marshal, and I don’t need no excuse to put down the men what shot Juan.”

  A short man with a several-times broken nose and an unkempt beard climbed down from his horse. Four others joined him.

  The first was a tall woman with a rifle. The short guy’s taller brother held a shotgun, but the others had six-shooters on their belts. Roman trusted that Shirin could drop the shotgunner or rifleman as an opener, make things easier for the crew on the ground.

  “Well lookey here. What do we have today?” the short man said with a Tennessee accent. That would be Matt Williamson. “A little girl playing dress-up in her brother’s clothes. And she’s found herself a posse.”

  King addressed the bandits. “You can lay down your arms and go to jail, or we can let our irons do the talking.”

  “Who the hell are you? The Governor actually waste another lawman on this piss-hole of a town?” Matt said.

  “I’m Maribel Lucia Mendoza.” Her hand hovered over her holster. She took a step forward, breaking ranks and not stopping.

  “Maribel, wait,” Roman said.

  “Mendoza?” said Matt. “I killed a Mendoza a couple days ago. The one went down before he could fire, then his kin dropped his gun and ran to hide behind Miss Sarah’s skirts. That don’t make me inclined to be afraid of their kid sister, dress-up or no.” He grinned wide, teeth stained and rotted.

  “I ain’t my brothers.” Maribel drew so fast Roman only saw a blur. She fired, and the big guy to Matt’s right dropped on his ass. Western Genre rules applied, with bullets causing knockback impossible outside a story world.

  Maribel kept Matt and Tom Williamson in her sights as she spoke to the rest. “You best get back on your horse and keep riding if you don’t want to end up being dragged out of the town in a pine box.”

  In response, the Williamson gang scattered, drawing to fire. Roman drew and the street was swallowed in clouds of dust and the thunder-crack of gunfire.

  Tom Williamson fell facedown in the dirt. That’d be Shirin. Roman took a spot behind a watering trough, shooting at the woman with the rifle while Maribel charged Matt Williamson. Maribel winged Matt and put another round in the big guy.

  The riflewoman bolted for the alley between the general store and the blacksmith.

  “Keep them from getting away!” King shouted, firing after her.

  Williamson fired on Maribel, who dashed right, heading across the street, firing suppressing but not dangerous shots back toward the bank.

  “Aaah!” came Leah’s voice on the comms.

  “Stay down, Kid. We’ve got this,” Roman said.

  Shirin’s voice crackled through the earpiece. “I’ve lost eyes on the riflewoman.”

  Roman took another shot, catching a bandit in the off-arm. This was nothing like shooting at the range. The guns were lower-quality, and the rising dust kicked up by the fight was obscuring everything.

  “I’ll get her,” Roman said. “Drop masquerade protocols and end this?”

  “Just keep on them!” King shouted over the din. Another shot rang out, clipping his gun arm. The team lead dropped to a knee, then crawled for cover.

  With King down, Matt Williamson took the free path for the saloon. Maribel fired after him, but Williamson was a fast bugger. He was inside before she could fire a second time, and once he was off the street, she stopped. She wouldn’t risk another bystander, not with the ghost of Sue-Anne haunting her.

  Roman launched to his feet, sprinting down the street toward the general store. “I’m on the riflewoman. Someone go help Maribel with Matt.”

  “King’s wounded,” Shirin said. “He needs first aid.”

  “I’ll do it! I can go around back,” Leah said.

  “Negative. Do not engage.” King’s voice was strained, but resolute.

  “Gotta start pulling my weight some time, right? Don’t worry, I don’t intend on getting myself killed for a lousy stand-up gig.”

  As he turned into the alley after the riflewoman, Roman saw Leah hightailing it across the street, holding her hat down with one hand, the other shaking by the holster.

  “Go get ’em, Kid,” Roman said.

  Six: Improvisation

  Leah kept her head low, running with her torso bent over her legs, the dust kicked up by bullets and shuffling proving enough concealment to make it across the street as the gunfire continued. She’d seen Maribel head into the saloon through the front door, following Williamson, so instead, she ran for the back door to cut him off from the kitchen.

  “Pulling some daft heroics is not going to impress me, Ms. Tang,” King said.

  “I got this. I’m not going to try to take him on alone. All I need to do is find a way to help Maribel. She’s the hero, right?” Leah grabbed the back corner of the building and caught herself to turn, not as gracefully as she’d like. She slowed as she reached the door, then tried to move as quietly as she could.

  The door creaked as she stepped into the kitchen, where one of Ms. Sarah’s girls sat drinking lemonade. She yelped when she saw “Lee.” Leah put a finger to her mouth in the hopefully inter-dimensional sign for “Shush.”

  “Where?” she mouthed, pointing toward the main room. The working girl gave an exaggerated shrug.

  Leah pressed herself up against the wall, inching toward the swinging door that led between the kitchen and the bar. She looked through the narrow band of glass into the main room. People cowered behind overturned tables, with Ollie the bartender hiding behind the bar, apparently not the type to keep a shotgun next to the rail liquor. More’s the pity.

  Maribel stood a step inside the swinging front doors, her gun out. Opposite her, Matt Williamson stood at the base of the stairs, holding his gun to Frank’s head.

  Dammit, Leah thought to herself, wishing Frank had stayed out of the way. But of course he’d have been watching as close as he could, with his sister putting her life on the line.

  “Put down that gun, or you’ll be fresh out of brothers,” Matt said. Mirabel had tipped her hat, owned up to being a Mendoza, so what did Matt do, he went straight for Frank. The situation was as trope-y as they got. Family hostage, hero has to choose between getting the bad guy and saving their loved one.

  Maribel spun her gun around, slowly, holding it by the sight and cylinder, no position to fire. “Just hold on, now. Don’t nobody else need to get hurt today. My brothe
r ain’t even shot none of your crew, unlike me. Why don’t we step outside and settle this, like I said.”

  “Little girl playing cowboy. You had enough yet? Put that gun down and I let your yeller brother leave town. You’re fast, but not that fast,” he said, pressing the barrel of his gun into Frank’s temple. The chef shook from head to toe, wet eyes closed like he was shutting out the world with the hope that it’d go away.

  Leah tried to work out a plan.

  If she made noise to distract Matt, would Maribel have the time to fire?

  Would she be able to hit without hurting Frank? Or would the noise just make Williamson shoot Frank?

  Could she hit Williamson through the glass?

  If she opened the door for a clear shot, would he notice?

  There were too many variables, too many possibilities. They slammed at her from all sides like hail on a corrugated metal roof, her heart pounding in time.

  She wasn’t a hero, not yet. She was the Kid, the helper. And the helper usually ended up kidnapped and/or killed.

  “Think, Leah, think.”

  But what if I’m not the Kid? she thought. What if I’m the Rookie Sidekick? She’d been the one to get Maribel to open up, to step up to join the cause. That could be the Kid or the Sidekick.

  And in a finale, the Rookie Sidekick fought with whatever they could get their hands on. Their role was to give the hero the chance they needed to make the shot.

  The back stairs. That was it. She turned and pointed to the girl, trying to use completely incorrect sign language to tell her to keep Williamson from coming into the kitchen. The girl shrugged again, apparently nonchalant about the gunfight in the room next door.

  Leah grabbed the pitcher of lemonade right off the table and made for the work stairs beyond the kitchen, the set Frank had used to come and go out of sight. She walked the line between speed and stealth, making her way up, over, and then to the top of the L-shaped stairs that led down from the second floor to the main room.

  Which put her above and behind Matt Williamson. Upstairs, all the doors were closed, unsurprisingly. Anyone who was getting busy had better things to do, or were at least smart enough to put a closed door between them and people with guns.

  Leah stood at the top of the stairs and yelled, in her best Tough Miner voice. “I ain’t paying!” She set the lemonade down, soft, at the top of the stairs.

  In an exaggerated feminine voice—with a strong thread of Betty Boop—Leah shouted, “You rat! After two hours! Ms. Sarah, Ms. Sarah!”

  Leah fired her gun at the thick side wall, no chance of hitting anyone or anything on a ricochet. And at the same time, she kicked the lemonade. The carafe shattered on the stairs, spilling and sloshing and making a marvelously distracting racket. Directly behind Matt Williamson.

  Looking down to the first floor, she saw that her trick had done what it needed to. Williamson, confused, looked up and back. Leah waved a taunt, but before he could move, Frank dropped to the floor as a gunshot rang out.

  Matt Williamson fell back onto the stairs, his revolver clattering to the ground beside him.

  Lemonade spilled down the stairs, soaking the bandit’s back as he went limp, red blooming on his chest.

  Frank dashed away, and Maribel walked up on Williamson, kicking the gun out of the dying man’s hands.

  “That’s a nice trick, there,” Maribel said.

  Leah stared at the body, her hand still shaking. He was dead. Because of her. He deserved it, but that was a dead body in front of her and he wasn’t coming back. She sat, steadying herself on the railing to the stairs, the world closing in and zooming out at the same time.

  “Status!” came King’s voice, impatient and strained.

  Leah breathed, words not yet coming. She took her eyes off of the body and turned away from Maribel. “Williamson’s . . . dead,” Leah said.

  “What about the tall one?”

  “She got away,” Roman said. “She’s got some serious hand-to-hand chops. Caught me by surprise.”

  Silence for a moment. That woman must have been something serious to give Roman the slip.

  “The other bogies all down?” King asked.

  “Nothing going outside,” said Shirin.

  “That’s what I like to hear. Meet up in the saloon so we can debrief and denouement.”

  Leah wobbled to her feet and walked the other way, doing everything she could to put the image of Matt Williamson’s body out of her mind. She knew it was coming, but to see death up close, to watch it . . . she wouldn’t get that image out of her mind, probably ever.

  And that’s why Western heroes were defined by their grit.

  Seven: Ritual and Reward

  With the bandits dead, tied up, or gone, the Genrenauts returned to the dinner table in the kitchen. Maribel had removed her hat, hair down but braided behind her back. Frank was cooking once again. The smell of beans and rice filled the kitchen, as well as the crackle of tortillas frying.

  Leah tried to help tend to King’s wounds, help preserve life to cancel out helping to end life just minutes ago, but the team leader waved her off. Roman bandaged the man’s arm and put it in a sling, but he looked about as good as you could expect for a guy who had been shot.

  Leah poured herself a drink and downed it in one peaty gulp. Her hand stopped shaking after a few minutes.

  “So you always lose control of things like that?” Maribel asked with a smile. “I don’t recall anything about distracting Williamson by enacting a stage show up on the second floor.”

  “No, that was all on the fly,” King said. “And none too shabby, either. ’Cept for the fact that he was told not to go off and do something stupid like that.”

  “I’m just glad I came up with the idea between the back stairs and the second-floor landing.”

  “You made that up on the spot?” Frank asked, aghast.

  “I was on the stage back home. I’m used to thinking on my feet.”

  “Looks like you picked your posse well, Marshal,” Maribel said.

  “I like to think so,” King said. He leaned over, wincing, and pulled a bottle of far nicer liquor out of a bag. “Lee, get me three glasses.”

  Leah rose and retrieved glasses.

  “Not those,” Frank said as she pulled down the tin cups. “They have nice glass.” The chef opened another cupboard and passed her three fine wine goblets.

  Leah set the glasses down in front of the Genrenauts.

  “Now get one for yourself,” King said.

  Frank grinned as he handed Leah another glass.

  “Newbie or no, you’re in our outfit, now,” Roman said.

  King poured a finger of amber-colored liquor into each glass. “We have a ritual on this team, whenever we complete a job. Victory without a celebration, well, that’s like a story without a proper ending. Every story has its shape, and in this one, we found a hero, set things right, and broke in a new member of the posse.” King raised his glass to Maribel, and to Leah, respectively.

  “Should you be drinking if you got shot?” Leah asked.

  “Hell, that just means he should drink more,” Roman said.

  King cleared his throat, taking control of the conversation again. “To another happy ending,” King said, toasting. Leah raised her glass, and they clinked together in a happy mess of sound. Shirin gave Leah an affectionate squeeze on the shoulder, and Roman winked, leaning back as he drank.

  Leah tossed back the drink as a shot before she realized that everyone else was sipping.

  But as a testament to the alcoholic rigor of her college days, she did not do a spit-take when the peaty-as-a-barrow-wight’s-butt liquor hit her tongue and nose.

  She set the glass down hard, only gasping a bit.

  “Did I forget to mention this was a sipping scotch?” King said.

  “Tarnation!” Leah said, half-coughing, half-chuckling.

  King leaned forward and poured another half shot into Leah’s glass. “And to Maribel, the hero of the
day. May the word of her deeds spread from the Mississippi straight to the coast. And may her brother’s restaurant become the toast of the town.”

  Maribel toasted with her own cup, filled with a heavy portion of what Ollie had declared “the best whiskey in the house.”

  “What do you think the town will do now for a sheriff?” Frank asked.

  King said, “Once we report back to the Governor, he’ll send someone along soon enough. We heard a larger response was needed, and we were closer than any of the folks available.”

  “We’ll be long gone by then,” Frank said. “There was some . . . I mean, now that the Williamsons are gone . . .”

  Maribel took over for Frank. “What my brother’s trying to say is that I’m asking for the bounty we were promised. Matt, Tom, plus two more. Even those what your team brought down, like you offered.”

  “And as the Governor’s representative, I’ll make good on that promise.” King reached into his bag again, pulling out a pouch the size of his fist. “You put your life on the line, so you ought to be able to ride out of this place and make a better life for yourselves.” King tossed the bag onto the table, landing with a lucrative thunk. “We’ll go over to the bank to settle up the rest.”

  “Assuming they have enough left,” Frank said.

  “If’n they don’t, I’ll see to it that you get a promissory note from the Governor.”

  Maribel tested the bag’s weight, opened, and poured out a small waterfall of Western-world cousins to gold doubloons.

  “We can get a coffin for Juan, a proper burial,” Frank said.

  “With enough left over to get us ahead on the restaurant,” Maribel said. Looking up from the coin, she asked, “So, where you headed next?”

  Leah watched King as the team leader formulated their extraction plan. She still had a zillion questions about how everything worked, and couldn’t wait until they were on their own so she could break cover and get some answers.

  “We’ll head on to the next town that needs us. Don’t like to stick around and put down roots. Doesn’t sit well with me.”

  “King here gets antsy if he sleeps in the same bed twice,” Roman said. “That’s why we always trade out bedrolls.”