The Phantom Gunman (A Neal Fargo Adventure. Book 11)

by John Benteen

  “I’m not so sure about this,” Antrim said, frowning. “To expose you to a fight—”

  “I’d rather be in a fight,” she said, “than sit here and wait for Trent to come and get me. At least right now we’ve got Fargo on our side. After he’s gone …”

  Again Antrim sighed. “I suppose there’s no help for it.”

  “None,” Fargo said. “Nita, where’s my bedroll?”

  “In the hospital room.”

  He went in there. When he reappeared, he was draped with the bandoliers that he’d packed inside it. The shells clicked with every movement as he strapped bedrolls and saddlebags on the horses. Antrim watched him. “You know your trade,” he murmured with a touch of admiration.

  “You used to know it, too, when you … rode with the Kid,” Fargo said. “Maybe you ought to put on a gun.”

  “No! No, by God, I vowed I’d never wear one again! I’ll take my chances.”

  “I didn’t make any vow,” Nita said. “And I can handle a gun. Dad, I want your old Winchester.”

  Antrim stared at her a moment, opened his mouth, closed it.

  “We may need all the help we can get, Antrim,” Fargo said.

  “Yeah.” Antrim went to a closet, opened it. When he turned around, he held a carbine, a belt of shells. “All right, honey. Here you are.”

  Fargo watched the expert way she loaded, jacked a round into the chamber. She would be worth plenty in a fight, he guessed. He went to the window, looked around the jamb, judging the progress of darkness. Across the street, the hills were beginning to be shrouded in purple. Not long now …

  Then he froze. There was enough light left for him to recognize Trent and Cannon crossing an alley, taking up station in the lee of an adobe house across the street. They must have already been on their way back to Lincoln when the messenger intercepted them.

  Then they were behind cover. Almost immediately, Trent’s voice rang out loud and clear in the silence of twilight. “Fargo!”

  Fargo cracked the window. “Yeah, Trent!”

  “What are you up to? That roan’s mine. I paid his feed bill and impounded it. You want to be arrested for horse stealing?”

  Fargo laughed. “I’ll send you a check, Trent! We’re riding out of Lincoln, me, Antrim, Nita.”

  “The hell you are!”

  “It’s a free country!”

  Trent laughed. “Not any more. Do you think I’m a fool? You’ll throw in with the McSween crowd against me.”

  “All right. Let Antrim and Nita go and I’ll stay.”

  Trent laughed again. “The doc can go, I don’t give a damn about him. But Nita stays, too. I’ve got plans for her.”

  Nita made a sound in her throat. “I’d rather die,” she whispered.

  Antrim brushed past Fargo. “Trent! This is the doctor!”

  “Yeah, Doc. What’s on your mind?”

  “Let us ride out, all three of us. You let us go, I’ll promise you, I won’t throw in with the McSweens, I’ll stay neutral.”

  “You?” Again Trent’s mocking laugh. “What difference does it make what you do? No bargain, Antrim. Fargo stays, Nita stays. Either one tries to leave, there’s gonna be some shooting. You might get hurt. You’re powerful afraid of gettin’ hurt, aren’t you? Even more afraid of her gettin’ hurt.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot a woman.”

  “You let her and Fargo try to leave, you’ll find out.”

  Antrim rubbed his face. “Trent, one last chance. I’ll stay here, doctor your men’s wounds, stay clear of the McSweens, you let my daughter and Fargo leave Lincoln.”

  “One last chance, huh? No deal, Antrim.”

  “That’s final, Trent?”

  “Pure gospel, yellowbelly.”

  Antrim was silent for a moment, his face in twilight shadow, unreadable. Then he called, almost wearily, “All right, Trent. You brought it on yourself.”

  Trent only laughed again. Antrim turned away from the window. He stood there in the dimness of the room, a small figure with slumped shoulders, his hands clenching and unclenching. Then he said, quietly: “Well, that’s the way it’s got to be, I reckon. I’ll be back in a minute.” He went out of the room.

  Fargo stared at Nita. “What... ?”

  “I don’t know.” Her eyes were fixed on the door through which her father had disappeared.

  Fargo made the rounds of the windows. There were plenty of men outside, in front, on every flank, and behind, in the brush between the rear of the house and the Rio Bonito, a few hundred yards away. They were penned up and penned up good, and it was going to take some doing for one man and a girl to fight their way out. He came back to the office, and when he entered it, he halted.

  Antrim stood there, dressed now in range clothes creased and wrinkled from having been long put away. He wore a sombrero, flannel shirt, neckerchief, shotgun chaps over Levis, and high-heeled boots with spurs, and the transformation in him was astounding. Something leaped into Fargo’s mind, some remembered image. Instinctively, his hand went to the shirt pocket which held the picture.

  Antrim looked at him strangely, those pale blue-gray eyes hard. “Buck teeth are a sure giveaway,” he said quietly. “But you’d be surprised what those Eastern dentists can do with a man’s mouth.” Then he turned, went to the closet from which he’d taken the Winchester. When he faced Fargo again, he held a pair of cartridge belts, and from each dangled a holstered, walnut-butted Colt.

  “I swore I wouldn’t put these things on again,” he said. “I tried everything I could to keep from having to. God knows, I never figured I’d have to wear ’em here in Lincoln again.”

  He strapped on the gunbelts, crisscrossing them, and deftly, with small clever fingers, tied the thongs that dangled from the holsters around his thighs. “I don’t know,” he murmured as Fargo and Nita watched in silence. “Maybe I ain’t still got it.” Then his hands seemed to blur slightly. Fargo gaped. It was as if they had not moved, as if the guns had appeared in them by magic. He had never seen a faster draw, and for some reason the short hair prickled on the back of his neck.

  “You’ve still got it, Bonney,” he said in an awed voice.

  “My name isn’t Bonney. It’s Antrim.” The doctor holstered one of the guns, began to cram rounds through the loading gate of the other. “I was born Henry McCarty. My mother married a man named Antrim, and I took my stepfather’s name as my rightful one. I wanted to keep it clean. That’s why I reached back in the family for the name of Bonney.” He whirled the loaded cylinder and it made a dry clicking sound as it spun. Then, again magically, that gun was in its holster and the other one was in his hand.

  “Dad,” Nita whispered. “It’s true then?”

  “It’s true. I did go under the name of Billy Bonney. They used to call me the Kid.” He looked at the Colt he held. “These damned things. They’re worse than whiskey. You get used to usin’ em, the only way to break the habit is never to touch them again. But if a man won’t fight for his own daughter, he ain’t much of a man.”

  A kind of chill touched Fargo’s spine. “You,” he said hoarsely. “You knew I had come here to kill you. And yet, when Savitts shot me, you saved my life. When you could have just let me die and …”

  “I’m a doctor,” Bonney said. “I don’t let men die. No matter who they are. But, now...”

  He went to the window, and even his step was different, younger, almost pantherish. Cautiously peering out, he said, “There was a kid with the gun-itch who had been using my name. Pat caught him at Maxwell’s and shot him and passed him off to the two deputies with him as me. Buried him mighty quick, the very next day. Then he got word to me that I was in the clear, and that he would never tell the truth if I’d pull out of Lincoln County.”

  His voice broke. “Christ! It was like being born again. Tunstall always told me that I had doctor’s hands, surgeon’s hands, that I should have used them for healing, not killing. I couldn’t get those words of his out of my mind.” He turned
to Nita. “I headed East, had some work done on my mouth; by the time I got my degree, I’d filled out, had my full growth. I figured that nobody but my best friends would recognize me and they’d keep their silence.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “After your mother died, I had the urge to come back here. It was risky, I knew. But I’d done so much damage here, I thought maybe I could do some good and ... I had hoped it was over, all over. But it ain’t.”

  “Sue Barber knows you’re here,” Fargo said.

  “Yeah. Selman was putting pressure on her. I thought maybe if he knew I was still alive, it would keep him out of Lincoln County. I owe Mrs. McSween a lot, a hell of a lot, and I took the risk of writing that note to Selman, but it backfired. He sent you in, then other gunmen.”

  “After seeing your draw,” Fargo said, “I’m glad I didn’t come up against you.”

  “I would have killed you, likely,” the man said simply. “If I had had to.” Then he turned away. “Well, All water over the dam, now. The thing is, we’ve got to fight our way out of here, now. If we can make it to Tres Rios, I—will have to come out of hiding. Spread the word around the county, get the old McSween crowd together again. Then we’ll come in here and wipe out this nest of snakes.” He broke off. “It’s getting dark. About time to make our play.”

  “Yeah,” said Fargo. “Listen, I’m gonna start shooting from the front. You and Nita go to the back and mount. That back door’s big enough for a rider to go out of if he bends low. I’ll keep as many pinned down out here as I can. Break across the Bonito and into the hills; I’ll meet you somewhere up there.”

  “That sounds okay,” Bonney said. “Except that I’m the man to do the covering.”

  “No. You ride with your daughter. She needs the best protection she can get.” Fargo laughed wryly. “Given a choice between me and Billy the Kid, I’d say the Kid’s the one who ought to ride with her. You take off, I’ll be right behind.”

  The man who had been Billy the Kid hesitated, then nodded. “Damn, I feel like time has turned backwards. Thirty years ago, right down the street, the same thing, us in the McSween house, the Dolan bunch burning us out. Okay, Fargo. Good luck.”

  “Same to you, Bonney,” Fargo said. He stepped to the window and, in the fading light, thought he saw a target. He smashed out the glass, poked the shotgun through and fired. Its roar was thunderous, almost drowning the scream of a man across the road. Instantly, a fusillade replied, and that was what Fargo had wanted. The jets of gun flame gave him targets, as lead whipped through the window from which he’d stepped aside. Bonney and Nita had already led the horses into the hospital room. Fargo sent another round of buckshot hurtling across the street, had already thumbed out two more shells. Instantly he crammed them into the breech, snapped the weapon closed, sprayed the street again. Behind him, Bonney’s voice called: “Now?”

  Above the thunder of guns, Fargo yelled: “Now!” He was firing, reloading, firing the shotgun without time to aim, raking the street with a withering sheet of lead. The return fire tapered off as men dived for better cover in the face of all that flying shot.

  “Here we go!” yelled Bonney, and there was the thud of hooves on the board floor of the back room. Then, to the roar of Fargo’s shotgun was added the pounding of sixguns. Behind the house, men yelled. Fargo heard a scream of agony. His mouth twisted in a grin; that cry had come neither from Bonney nor Nita. He whipped away from the window. At that instant, glass smashed in the hospital room. He ran through the door just as the head and shoulders of a man appeared in the frame, leveling a Colt. He fired the shotgun from the hip, and the figure seemed to dissolve.

  The roan was terrified, rearing and kicking in the corner of the room, knocking furniture about. Fargo reloaded the shotgun, caught the animal’s bridle, fought it down, bumped his head against the ceiling as he mounted. Bent low in the saddle, he wrestled the animal to the back door. Through it, he saw the flash of guns, down along the river bank. More of them from the space between, where the ground sloped sharply to the stream. He put the reins between his teeth, drew the Colt. With it in his left, the Fox in his right, he rammed the roan hard with spurs and thundered out the door and toward the river.

  Immediately he was in a crossfire. There were men all about the yard, and when they heard the horse, they whirled and opened up on him. Tongues of gun flame licked from darkness on either side; bullets snarled and rasped around his head. He pointed the Fox toward a clump of brush, as a Winchester spat at him from there, pulled the trigger. The lead whipped through leaves and branches. A man cried out, stood to full height, fell forward. Another rolled to one side, gun dropping from his hand. Fargo wasted no time on them; as the horse stretched itself, he punched one shot, two, from the .38 at other flashes, knew at least one had scored.

  Ahead, though, was the main danger point. Bonney and Nita must have made the river, but men had chased them to its banks. When they saw Fargo coming, they turned to confront him; and the whole river bank seemed to erupt in fire. Low over the horse’s neck, he rode into the teeth of that fusillade. The shotgun thundered, sweeping one flank of it; he emptied the Colt at the other. No time to reload, now, and he bent lower and raked the horse again. A figure loomed up in darkness before it. Fargo saw a gun coming up, starlight glinting on its barrel. Then the stampeding roan hit it, full, and the man grunted, cried out, as the big horse chopped over his body with iron shod hooves. Fargo clasped the roan’s girth with his knees; that streak of darkness ahead was the cut bank of the river, a full six foot drop.

  Then the roan soared out over it, and Fargo prayed the animal wouldn’t break a leg when it landed. It came down in the shallow water, grunted, lurched to its knees. But the river bottom here was sand. Unhurt, it staggered up.

  Now all of Trent’s men were running down the hill toward the river, firing as they came. Lead raked around Fargo in a deadly blast, and he had no time to return it. Somehow he had to find a way to get the horse up the sheer opposite bank before they killed him. The animal’s forelegs scrabbled and dirt fell away as it tried to climb out of the river bed, could gain no purchase. Fargo turned it away, headed downstream.

  Then, above him, on the bank he had to climb, he saw the silhouette of a small man on a rearing horse. “Lead him up!” Bonney roared. “I’ll cover you!” Each of his hands suddenly began to wink flame as he fired with left and right, pumping slugs from reloaded Colts at the gunmen running down the slope. Men yelled; abruptly the hail of lead around Fargo slackened.

  He was off the roan, clutching the bridle, scrambled up the bank, pulled. The animal gave a desperate, scrabbling lunge, came over the edge, gained level ground. Fargo sprang to the saddle without touching stirrup, slung the shotgun, yanked his Winchester from the saddle boot. He hit the roan with spurs, ruthlessly, and the animal rocketed forward, as Fargo twisted in the saddle and sluiced lead from the rifle toward the far bank, its continuous roar taking up where the hammering of Bonney’s emptied Colts slacked off.

  Then they were in the shelter of a draw, Bonney pounding along beside Fargo, cramming more rounds in his sixguns. “Nita,” Fargo snapped, sheathing the rifle, reloading the shotgun, then his own pistol. “She all right?”

  “She’s fine. Up ahead. Come on,” Bonney snapped. “We’re in the clear. Let’s ride!”

  Then his laugh rang out, brittle and wild in the sudden silence. “By God!” he cried. “Before I’m through, they’ll be sorry they wouldn’t let Billy the Kid stay dead!”

  Chapter Nine

  “Billy,” Sue McSween Barber said, eyes glowing, “it’s good to have you back.”

  “Maybe I should have come out in the open sooner. You know why I didn’t.” Billy Bonney stood there spraddle-legged, gun-hung, in the living room of the Tres Rios ranch house, while Sue Barber paced, tapping her high boot with a riding crop. She seemed younger, too, Fargo thought. She and the Kid. Like old fire horses scenting smoke. Well, there would be plenty of smoke in Lincoln County soon, he thou
ght.

  “Yes, I know why. I’m sorry you had to.”

  Bonney shrugged. “Maybe as well. Maybe I waited too long. If I’d showed myself sooner, Selman would never have dared push it this far.” His face was alert, showed no sign of trail-weariness, though they had ridden all night through back country, pushing their horses to the limit. “Anyhow, the fat’s in the fire, now. Let’s end this thing once and for all.”

  “Yes. If we can. I suppose they’ll hit us, now. Right away. They can’t afford to wait...”

  “No,” Bonney said. “They’re not going to hit us. We’re going to hit them.”

  Sue Barber looked at him. “How can we? I’ve only got my own riders, and Trent’s already organized; we’re outnumbered.”

  “You won’t be,” Bonney said. “We hurt the hell out of them last night. They’ll have to lick their wounds, reorganize. While they’re doing that, we hit them instead.”

  He turned to her two foremen, Whitfield and Brewer. “Tom, you and Sam get your men together. This outfit’s going to ride to Lincoln, and you’ll lead ’em.”

  Whitfield grinned and Brewer’s face lit up. “Damned right!” Whitfield snapped.

  “No! I can’t send a dozen riders in against twenty-five or more gunmen plus a lot of the Dolan bunch. Let’s wait for them here,” Sue Barber went on, “fort up and—”

  “And let ’em burn us out, like they did thirty years ago?”

  Her face clouded with bitter memories. Bonney went on: “Arm your men. Let ’em head for Lincoln hell-bent for election along the road; when they get there, they play it easy, tight, start the ball rolling, engage Trent’s bunch but don’t lock horns, just keep ’em busy. Give me and Fargo two horses each, one to ride, one to lead.”

  “What for?’

  Billy Bonney grinned, and in that moment the handsome face could have been that of a youth of twenty. “There are still a lot of friends of Billy the Kid in Lincoln County. Enough to make a damned good army. Fargo and I are gonna raise that army. And we’re gonna take it to Lincoln town and wipe out Trent’s bunch. But your men have to go ahead and buy us a little time, while we sweep this county and call the old McSween fighters out to war again.”