Valley of the Gun (9781101607480)

by Cotton, Ralph W.

  “You rotten, smirking bastard!” he shouted, trying to raise and aim the shotgun while the chair rolled on its own. “I’ll show you return policy!” The sheriff’s elevated casted foot led his charge.

  Seeing the sheriff’s foot coming at him, the shotgun pointed and the sheriff struggling to cock the hammers, Hornady grabbed the plaster cast between both hands and banged it up and down mercilessly on the wooden leg support. The sheriff’s agonizing scream only encouraged Hornady. He twisted Hall’s broken foot back and forth with one hand and clamped his other hand down over the purple toes, bending them viciously. Hall screamed louder, but he held on to the shotgun.

  Hornady glanced around in desperation for something, anything, to use as a weapon. Eyeing a rug beater leaning against the hall beside his bed, he yanked it up. Holding the broken foot with one hand, he began beating Hall’s swollen toes savagely.

  From the other room, Dr. Lanahan heard the rhythm of the pounding rug beater and the tortured screams of the sheriff. What the hell? He ran toward the door.

  “Turn it loose! Turn it loose! I’ll keep beating these toes till you do!” Lanahan heard Hornady shouting on the other side of the door.

  The sheriff, unable to bear the pain and unable to cock the shotgun because of it, turned the gun loose. Hornady jumped at the opportunity, grabbing the gun barrel and yanking it from the sheriff’s hands.

  The doctor heard the gun blast just as he threw open the door and saw the wheelchair shooting backward across the room in a streak of smoke and blue-orange fire. The wheelchair crashed against the window ledge, flipped backward and hurled the bloody sheriff through the wavy glass panes and into the side yard.

  “My, but didn’t he leave in a hurry?” Hornady said.

  “Oh Lord!” said the doctor, seeing the smoking double-barrel cocked and aimed at him.

  “I hope you don’t have to leave the same way,” Hornady said with a grin.

  “Don’t shoot!” Lanahan said. Of all days to be sober, he chastised himself. “You don’t have to kill me,” he said.

  “I know,” Hornady said in a light, almost playful voice, “but I sort of want to, the way you’ve treated me, the callous remarks you made.”

  “That’s just my style,” Lanahan said. “Call it gaining my patients’ confidence—getting their attention.”

  “Oh, right. Sort of like this shotgun does for me,” Hornady said. He grinned and added, “Reach back and shut the door. Then get over here and get this blasted chain off me. I feel like a damn yard dog.”

  “If you’re thinking about leaving, I’ve got to caution against it,” the doctor said even as he did as he was told. “You’re in no condition.”

  “Is that a fact?” said Hornady. “I’ve got to caution against you opening your mouth again, else your condition will be worse than mine.”

  Hornady watched as the big doctor stooped beside the bed and opened the ankle cuff with a key from his vest pocket.

  “Hurry it up, Doc,” he said, “before folks start to notice there’s a dead sheriff lying in your yard.”

  “Oh my, oh my,” the doctor said in a shaky voice, trying to hurry.

  “Buck up, Doctor,” said Hornady. “What’s become of that bold cavalier rascal that was you, making all the carefree jokes about cutting off the wrong leg and such?” His countenance turned dark as he added, “Jokes at my expense, that is.”

  The cuff opened and fell to the floor.

  “Please give thought to what will happen to the sick in this town if you kill me,” Dr. Lanahan said, his voice trembling in fear.

  “I will, I promise,” said Hornady. “Whilst I do, you can be putting on my socks and boots for me.” He gestured down toward the boots standing under the edge of the bed. “I never could think barefooted.”

  While the doctor kneeled and put on the outlaw’s socks and boots, Hornady heard worried voices calling back and forth to one another outside on the dirt street.

  “They’re starting to form up, you know,” the doctor said. “It’s going to be hard for you to leave town.”

  Hornady ignored him and shrugged.

  “Where’d DeShay put my guns? I’m not leaving here without them,” he said.

  “I—I expect he’s wearing them,” the frightened doctor said, pulling Hornady’s boot up onto his foot. “Either that or he’s left them hanging in his office.”

  “We’ll just have to go there first thing and see, Doc,” Hornady said.

  “Listen out there. The townsmen are arming themselves. They’ll shoot you to pieces,” the doctor said in a weak and fearful voice.

  “Oh yes, I know,” Hornady said with a cruel grin, “and you too if I’m holding you in front of me.” He laughed at the sick look on the big doctor’s face. “Looks like we’re going to see just how much they really think of you.”

  Holding the shotgun on the doctor, Hornady picked up his shirt hanging from the bedpost and threw it on, leaving it unbuttoned as he gestured Lananan ahead of him out of the room and toward the front door.

  “After you, good Doctor,” he said. He took a firm hold on the doctor’s shirt collar, the tip of the shotgun barrel jammed into the doctor’s broad, soft back. “If you think of something snappy and fun to say, by all means, feel free.”

  “Pl-please!” was all the scared doctor could muster.

  Hornady stopped at the front door long enough to grab a wide-brimmed straw hat from a coatrack and put it on.

  As the two stepped onto the front porch, a townsman held up a stopping hand to the other townsmen stationed behind cover along the dirt street.

  “Don’t anybody shoot!” he said. “He’s got the doctor.”

  “Hear that, Doc?” Hornady said as if surprised. “They must like you after all.” He jammed the tip of the shotgun barrel against him and said, “Now tell them we’re headed to the sheriff’s office. Tell them to have a horse waiting when I come out.”

  The doctor did as he was told.

  “Listen up, all of you,” he called out along the street. “Let us through to the sheriff’s office. The man wants his guns. And bring around a horse for him, please. He has me at an extreme disadvantage here.”

  “Turn the doctor loose,” a voice called out.

  Hornady shouted in loud reply, “Are you deaf, you son of a bitch? Do what he said or I’m going to kill him right here, blow his bloody brains all over—”

  “Damn it, man!” the doctor screamed at the townsmen, cutting Wade Hornady short. “Do what he says . . . He’ll kill me!”

  “All right, Lightning,” a man called out. “Come on, then. Nobody’s going to shoot at you. Don’t hurt our doctor.”

  Hornady chuckled as he nudged the doctor across the porch and down the wooden steps to the street.

  “I have to say, Dr. Lanahan, I’m just a little bit disappointed,” he said, nudging the big doctor forward. “It might have been worth getting shot just to see them splatter you all over the street.”

  Townsmen moved along warily, eyeing the wounded gunman and the town doctor until the two stepped inside the sheriff’s office and Hornady closed the thick wooden door behind them.

  “This is a fine mess you’ve brought us, Stone,” one of the townsmen said to the banker from Goble, who had ventured into the street and stood looking back and forth in bewilderment, a big Remington pistol hanging useless in his soft hand. “We’ve got your sheriff lying dead in our street, and our sheriff off searching for the men who robbed your bank.”

  Another man cut in, saying, “And our doctor held hostage by one of your bank robbers.”

  “Robbing my bank doesn’t make him my bank robber,” Kerwin Stone shouted. He looked at Dave Chapel and Wylin Jessup, the two men from Goble who had escorted him and Sheriff Hall back to Whiskey Bend for help.

  “Gentlem
en,” he called out to the townsmen, “I don’t think you’d appreciate me trying to tell you how to run your town.” He turned to Chapel and Jessup as he shoved the big Remington down behind his waistband against his huge belly.

  “Dave, Wylin, both of you. Let’s get mounted pronto, and proceed forthwith back to Goble. We’ve been here far too long as it is.”

  “What about our doctor?” a townsman shouted, watching the three men hurry to a hitch rail and mount their horses.

  “I’m confident you’ll work it out,” said Stone over his shoulder. “As you say, he’s your doctor.”

  But as the three backed their horses and turned them hastily in the middle of the street, a rifle shot exploded from a window in the sheriff’s office, lifted Kerwin Stone from his saddle and flung him down to the dirt.

  “Whoa!” Dave Chapel shouted, seeing the banker fall. He and Jessup spurred their horses forward and veered into a nearby alley for cover.

  “Nobody leaves here until after I leave here,” Hornady called out through the window.

  —

  Inside the sheriff’s office, Hornady levered a fresh round into the Winchester, backed away and laid the smoking rifle on a battered desk beside the double-barreled shotgun.

  “You shot him!” the doctor said in surprise, even though he’d already seen what Hornady was capable of. “You shot the banker for no reason!”

  “Any outlaw who needs a reason for shooting a banker is in the wrong business,” Hornady said absently, searching the office until he spotted his small custom pistol hanging on a gun rack. He checked it and shoved it down into his belt. He looked all around for his larger revolver, but didn’t see it.

  “DeShay, you son of a bitch,” he said gruffly, as if Clayton DeShay were standing there beside him. He jerked down a bandolier of rifle ammunition from the rack and slung it over his shoulder.

  Leaving the shotgun where it lay, Hornady picked up the rifle, cocked it and stuck it in Lanahan’s big belly.

  “Turn around . . . out the door,” he commanded. “Tell them all to get back. You better pray somebody brought me a horse.”

  Dr. Lanahan shoved the creaking door open and stepped out slowly onto the boardwalk. A hard nudge from behind sent him across the planks and down to the street.

  “All of you get back and give us some room here,” he called out. “Where’s the horse he asked for?”

  “Here it is,” a man said, hurrying forward, leading a big bay, the horse all saddled and ready to ride.

  “You get up on the saddle, Doc—remember, I’m right behind you,” said Hornady.

  As the townsmen watched in tense silence, the big doctor stepped up into the saddle. Hornady, feeling the pain in his wounded chest start to throb, swung up behind him, the pistol jammed into the doctor’s pudgy back.

  “Everybody stay put here until I reach the end of town, and the doctor lives,” Hornady said, the rifle across his thighs. He moved the pistol up from the doctor’s back and stuck it against the base of Lanahan’s skull.

  From the middle of the street where two men kneeled over, tending to the badly wounded banker, Stone cried, “For God’s sake, please don’t let him hurt the doctor.”

  “I like his attitude,” Hornady said, batting his boots to the horse’s sides and sending it galloping along the dirt street. The townsmen stood staring, guns in hand.

  At the far edge of town, Hornady slowed the horse to a halt and turned it quarterwise in the street.

  “Here’s where you get off, Doctor,” he said. He scooted back far enough for the big man to climb down. Then he smiled as he slid forward into the saddle and said, “Adios, now.”

  The doctor hurried along the street, still badly shaken by the whole experience. But before he’d gone twenty feet, three shots rang out from Hornady’s small custom revolver, each bullet hitting Lanahan squarely in the back.

  “I was only joking about not killing you, you big tub of guts,” Hornady said as the horse circled in the street, stirring up a rise of dust. He looked back at the doctor and grinned. He spun the revolver expertly on his trigger finger, righted the restless horse and galloped away.

  Chapter 10

  Perched on a high, rocky ledge overlooking a narrow gully winding between two steep hillsides, a rifleman named Dallas Burns levered a round into his rifle chamber. He watched closely as a single rider moved into sight on the trail a thousand feet below him.

  “Rider coming,” he said over his shoulder to another rifleman, this one resting on one knee beside a small fire.

  The other rifleman, Stan Liles, stood up in a crouch with a cup of coffee in his gloved hand and eased over closer to the edge, beside Burns. He set his coffee down, stretched out a battered artillery telescope and raised it to his right eye.

  After a moment of waiting in silence, Burns grew impatient.

  “Well? Is it one of us or not?” he asked.

  “Yep, it’s Morton Kerr,” said Liles, still staring through the telescope. “His horse looks like it’s ready to fall over and give up the ghost any minute.” He grinned and added, “Morton will be lucky if that cayuse makes it all the way up.”

  Dallas Burns chuffed and shook his head.

  “Kerr never had any luck with horses,” he said. “All I ever saw him ride was rags and buzzard bait.”

  Searching back farther along the trail, Liles spotted another rider coming into sight.

  “We got another one straggling in,” he said. He stared through the scope for a moment longer, then said, “Looks like Deacon Jamison.”

  “Is Young Ezekiel with him?” Burns asked, laying his rifle across his knees now that he knew it was their own men.

  “Nope, don’t see him,” said Liles.

  “That’s not good,” said Burns. “This old bull and the kid always stick closer than grass in a pig turd.”

  “Not this time,” said Liles. He lowered the telescope and rubbed both eyes.

  “They must have had to split up for a while,” Burns said, scooting back from the edge, getting up onto his feet and dusting the seat of his trousers. “We best go say who’s coming.”

  “Dad ain’t going to like the deacon showing up without the kid at his side,” said Liles.

  “He might not like it,” said Burns, “but that’s no skin off our butts, is it?”

  “No, not at all,” said Liles, collapsing the telescope, putting it away. “Truth be told, the kid and the deacon both make my skin crawl.”

  “Yeah, them and their cockeyed religion,” Burns chuckled, staring out and down at the riders.

  “It’ll be a good half hour before Kerr gets up here—even longer if he has to carry his horse,” Liles said.

  The two outlaws turned to a rope hanging down the hillside. Each in turn used the rope to help pull himself up a steep, dangerous path leading to where their horses stood waiting.

  Untying his horse’s reins, Liles stepped up into his saddle beside Burns, and the two turned their horses to a thin trail leading down to a narrow valley below.

  “More truth to be told,” he said. “I don’t like the way Dad’s been acting these past few months. Every time I’m around him, he’s got the deacon or one of his top flunkies talking for him. I’m starting to wonder if he’s lost his voice.”

  “I know why,” said Burns. “He’s doing it to remind us where our place is. He thinks of us outlaws like we’re his damned servants. He doesn’t like us, but he knows he needs us to keep his game afloat.”

  “Sort of like a mighty king and his underlings?” said Liles.

  “Yep, that’s how I take it,” Burns said as their horses moved along at an easy gait.

  “Religious folks always think they’re better than us poor sinners,” Liles said with a thin smile, “no matter how much they try to deny it.”

 
; “I know they can’t help thinking it,” said Burns. “But it sort of frosts my kernels to have a man turn his face away when I come into the room to report to him.”

  “Can I say something?” Liles asked, lowering his voice as if someone might hear him.

  “I expect you can if your jaws are working,” said Burns.

  “I’ve noticed lately, lots of Dad’s wives have been disappearing,” said Liles.

  Burns stared at him.

  “I mean it,” said Liles. “I’ve noticed the older ones are being weeded out up here and new ones are showing up over in Gun Valley.”

  Burns nodded and said, “All right, I’ve noticed that myself of late—just haven’t mentioned it.”

  “What does it mean?” Liles asked.

  “Hell, who knows?” said Burns. “The way Dad treats his women, I could see him using them up like laying hens and trading them off for some younger ones.”

  Liles appeared to consider it for a moment.

  “There’s a practice that could take hold and spread like wildfire,” he said with a mindless grin.

  “You’re the one brought it up,” said Burns. “I thought you were making serious conversation.”

  “I am serious,” said Liles. His grin went away. “Trading them off, huh?”

  Burns shrugged and said, “I’m just speculating. But don’t think Dad wouldn’t do it if it suited him. If we treated our horses like he treats women, we’d have to walk every place we go.”

  “You watch when we go to talk to him,” said Liles, “see if he don’t pass us right off to Cinders first thing.”

  “I don’t have to watch,” said Burns. “I already know he will. I can’t recall the last time the man has looked me in the eye.”

  They rode on toward a tall, pointed black crevice at the bottom of a stone hillside. Out in front of the crevice stood a rifleman walking back and forth, watching them ride closer. To one side of the crevice, three horses were poised at a long wooden hitch rail.

  “What’s out there?” the rifleman asked as they rode in, slid their horses to a halt and swung down from their saddles.