For two, three tense seconds there was no sound, then one of the men to his right raised his rifle to his shoulder and Rollie dropped down on his racked knee, shot twice, and kept rolling onto his shoulder. If he lived through the day, he would pay hell in the morning for all the tumbling about those spiny hills.
His first shot punched into the gut of the rifle toter and he doubled over. The second shot tore a furrow into the meat of the second man’s left arm. He howled, dropped his gun, and clutched at his bloody wing.
The shooter to his left, the one Rollie was most concerned with, had fired at Rollie but missed. Before Rollie could finish his return swing, the man shot again, and Rollie felt a hard punch up high on his left arm and knew he’d been shot. How badly, he would soon learn. But first he had to finish the job he’d begun.
He shot once, twice, a third time. He managed to use his torso to give him quick momentum, enough to get his feet under him once more. Had he hit the man?
Maybe it would all end with somebody he’d never before seen laying him low. The relief of not caring emboldened him and he heard a loud, growling shout as he bolted forward, his left arm numb and wet but useful.
The growl came from his own mouth and he realized he was on the man who’d shot him before he expected. The stranger was unarmed and sagged against a tree. His revolver lay at his feet, his eyes shut tight against the pain given him by two smoking, bloodied holes in his blue shirtfront.
Rollie stood before the man, breathing hard, his growl tapering to a grumble. What a waste it all was. The shot man’s eyes flickered open. He tried to speak, but couldn’t. Rollie shoved him to the ground where he piled up and groaned his last. He glanced around but saw neither the man he’d winged nor fat Cuthbert.
As he checked his gun, a voice from downslope shouted up at him. “Got you dead to rights, Stoneface Finnegan! Give up your foolishness and raise ’em high.”
“Cleve Danziger.” Rollie barked the name without turning.
“Now, how did you know that? Oh, let me guess—one of my men. Yes, near useless they are.”
As the man spoke, Rollie looked around. One long step would get him behind the tree the shot man had been leaning against. His own revolver was empty, but he had the other two riding across his chest, the barrels nesting awkwardly under his armpits. That left arm had begun to throb, each pulse like a smithy’s hammer blow. Risk the lunge to the tree?
“Come on, now, Stoneface. I have other business to attend to, and you have already wasted enough of my precious time.”
“Who hired you?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know!”
“Yep. That’s why I asked.”
“Well, I am not going to tell you. But I will say this individual has more money than sense. Good taste in who he hires, but no brains otherwise.”
“Have you hurt anyone in town?”
“None that didn’t require it.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Find out for yourself. Raise those hands . . . Stoneface.”
Rollie ducked low and leapt to his left, collapsing behind the wide pine, hoping he was worth more alive to Cleve than dead. He was rewarded with a distinct lack of gunfire. Instead he heard Danziger laughing.
Rollie struggled to stand, his left arm aching. He inspected the wound for the first time and saw a bloody, blackened tear. A deep graze. He’d had worse.
He used the tree to slide upright, pulled Cuthbert’s revolver free and checked it, then stuffed in two shells. “How do I know I can trust you? You are a hired killer, after all.”
“All those years as a Pink made you loopy in the head!”
Rollie sighed then shouted, “Insulting me won’t bend matters in your favor.”
“You are a bold one. But I tell you plain: You can trust me. I give you my word, or I am not Cleve Danziger.”
“Coming from you, that means less than nothing.”
Again, his response was met with a guffaw.
Rollie chewed the inside of his cheek. It had come down to this—either give up or expose himself and shoot it out with the man. No other choices. He was pinned and tired of this foolishness. End it now and a lot of innocents could go about their lives.
He raised the pistol, cocked it, and was about to step out from behind the tree, ready for come what may, when movement to his right caught his eye. He saw an arm waving at him from behind another sizable pine upslope and ten yards away. He saw Pops’ smiling face.
Pops raised his thumb, nodded, and kept on smiling.
Rollie hoped what his partner meant was that the town was secure, but he had no way of asking it. Pops kept up the goofy grin and wagging of his big thumb. Rollie nodded and smiled back. He knew what he was going to do.
“You want me so bad, Cleve, come and get me!”
“I thought you might be belligerent about it,” shouted Cleve. “I held off all day in doing this, as it means more explaining on my end, but you’ve given me no choice. If you don’t come peaceable, I am going to kill off one fresh-faced member of this dandy little community for every minute that passes. I’ll give you . . . two minutes to decide. Your choice, Finnegan!”
Rollie didn’t need two minutes. He didn’t need one minute. He barked his reply. “Go to hell, Danziger!”
“Fine, then.”
Rollie heard boots on rocks, and he assumed the man was turning, looking for one of his men. Then Danziger shouted and confirmed it.
“Wesson! Pigg! Doyle?”
The shouts were met with silence.
“Cuthbert! Where in the hell are you?” Danziger’s voice had grown louder and more bellowing, his obvious rage pushing out the words, words that were greeted with silence.
“Give it up, Danziger! They’re all dead and done!” That was met with a long pause.
“I don’t buy it, Finnegan. You are bluffing me!”
“Suit yourself. I have all day.”
From the hill above, Rollie heard voices to his left. He pulled the second pistol, checked it, and hoisted it in his weakened hand. If the rest of Danziger’s men were on their way for him, he was going to make it uncomfortable for them. But what he saw confused him.
Topping the far rise, he saw not the swagger of seasoned gunmen descending on him, but a handful of men in worn clothes and slouch hats, proceeding forward with caution. They carried long guns and revolvers and what looked like shovels and picks, and all walked forward in a ragged line.
Rollie looked about him and saw dozens of strange men in all directions, close by, down along the main street, and on the slope across, as if the town were being invaded anew. How big was Danziger’s army?
He was ready to groan in ultimate frustration then recognized one face as the man drew closer. Then another and another. They were the miners who lived outside of town, the men who showed up at his saloon on a regular basis.
One man offered a quick wave and a nod, then gripped his rifle once more.
Far below, through tree trunks and boulders and branches, what patches of Main Street he saw were pocked with similar advancing shapes. Then shouts, low and hoarse, came from some of them, followed by gunshots. The ragtag brigade advanced on what Rollie saw was a handful of retreating forms. Cleve’s men? But which ones?
Rollie heard boots on rocks behind him and stepped out from behind the tree at the same time a large man in a tall hat and long hair stepped forward from behind a jumble of large boulders where he’d been completely hidden. He held a thick rifle that looked to be a Sharps.
“Danziger,” Rollie said, nodding.
The man returned the slight nod. “Finnegan.” He breathed deep through his long, bent nose. “Looks to me like you have hoodwinked a pile of folks hereabouts. From the sounds of it, my men have the town locked up tighter than a bull’s backside. They’ll gladly corral this ragged lot and make a massacre of it should I pass the word.”
“I think not, you heathen!”
Rollie looked quickly to the right and saw Chauncey
Wheeler among a cluster of the newcomers. His clothes and face were filthy and his hair stood up straight. The men flanking him were Nosey Parker and Wolfbait. They, too, were begrimed, though to a lesser degree. And they appeared to want to step away from the Chauncey.
“Well, Mister Mayor, I see you clawed your way out of the outhouse!”
That made little sense to Rollie but he didn’t dare look away from Danziger again. Both men faced each other, Rollie with two revolvers leveled on Cleve and the mercenary with his Sharps held belly height, leveled on Rollie.
“If you’re waiting for your men, you might want to make yourself cozy. Gonna be there a while!”
Rollie didn’t have to look to know it was his pard, Pops.
The wide, disgusted smile on Danziger’s face twitched, nearly faltered. “I think not!”
“Then tell me why you’re standing here alone on a hill surrounded by the good people of Boar Gulch.” Rollie could see his words were like a slap to Cleve’s big face.
“Cuthbert! Where’d you go?”
No response.
“Doyle! Wesson! Damn you, Pigg, where you at?”
Nothing.
“I’d say they’re either smarter than I’d give anyone who’d work for you credit for, and have cut bait and run, or they’ve been cheered by my townsmen. And by townsmen, I mean all these folks surrounding you with guns.”
The last of the mercenary’s sneer slipped away, replaced with bared teeth and flexed nostrils. Heavy-lidded eyes directed a withering gaze at Rollie.
“Who hired you?”
“Go to hell.” Danziger’s forearms flexed and his big hands tightened their grip on the rifle, the finger on the trigger bunching as it squeezed back.
“You shuffle the cards.” Rollie squeezed both revolvers’ triggers a blink before the Sharps boomed. “And I’ll be there.”
Rollie’s twin shots drove straight and hard into the middle of Cleve Danziger’s broad chest, forcing the Sharps’s load to scream above Rollie’s head and shatter branches a few yards beyond.
It seemed to take a full minute for the man to fall. It didn’t happen all at once, but began with a tremor in the arms. They finally dropped and unhanded the Sharps, which clattered on the rocks and roots.
One eyelid twitched, and his eyes widened as if he were witnessing a monumental surprise. His lips parted, and he made as if to utter a word of wonder. But all that leaked out was a long, slow, wheezing breath.
Finally his right leg bent, followed by his left and he collapsed, dropping hard on the knees, one with a solid smack on a rock. He wavered like that, his large hands looking soft, the fingers curling in on themselves. His eyes closed and he flopped forward, his face smacking the ground flat on.
His hat brim hit at the same time, and his hat popped off his head and rolled to one side. The man’s long combed hair hung about his neck and shoulders like a fan of grasses. The entire top of the man’s head was a pink shiny surface, bereft of hair.
“I had no idea the boss was bald-headed,” said Cuthbert.
Rollie looked up. He’d not heard the fat man approach. “Shut up, Cuthbert.”
The fat man complied.
As he looked down at the dead, infamous mercenary, Rollie suspected that if there was such a spot as the innermost bubbling heart of hell, ol’ Cleve was there, holding down the position of chief tine sharpener at the pitchfork foundry.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
In the hours after Cleve Danziger yipped his last, some of the good people of Boar Gulch tended to their own. Others rounded up the living—Cuthbert and two more—and the many dead of Cleve’s crew. While the riled Gulchers argued out in the middle of Main Street over boots and horses and firearms, Pops and Rollie watched them from the front of the tent that served as The Last Drop saloon.
Rollie saw Camp Sal fluttering about Pieder Tomsen. She’d ripped off the sleeve of his shirt, exposing his injured shoulder, and was bathing the wound with gentle pats of a wet cloth. Though Rollie didn’t know the man well, he though the burly blacksmith looked quite pleased with the situation.
Pops shook his head and limped over to the woodstove for more coffee, his leg thick with bandages. He sat down on a keg and hefted Lil’ Miss Mess Maker. It had been retrieved by Nosey, along with the wounded horse, which had been tended to and was now resting in a corral out back.
“You honestly believe if you leave all this trouble will magically follow you and not land here like stink on dung? Think, man. The next batch of crazies is coming and you know they will ride into little ol’ Boar Gulch and they won’t hear a thing these good folks say. They will tear this place apart, plank by plank, person by person. Only thing to do is—”
“Give myself up,” said Rollie.
“No, that’s foolishness, too.”
Rollie sighed. “What do you suggest I do, then, Pops?”
Pops lit his pipe, billowed up big, blue clouds.
Those are his thinking puffs, thought Rollie.
A smile split Pops’ face, and he pulled the pipe from his mouth. “It’s simple, Rollie. I don’t say it’s something you want to hear, not if I know you as I think I do, and I do.”
“You’re sounding like Wolfbait again,” said Rollie.
“That’s ’cause we spend so much time palaverin’ on our weekly supply runs down the mountain.”
The familiar voice caused Rollie to turn. Here came Wolfbait, limping worse than ever and with his arm in a sling, and a thick dollop of gauze wrapped on his head. Nosey was right behind him, not looking wounded so much as begrimed and giving off a ripe odor.
He hadn’t opened his mouth yet so Rollie wondered if Nosey wasn’t able to speak. A treat for the rest of them, but a likely brutal punishment for Nosey. It might be funny if Nosey didn’t look so mired in despondency.
Wolfbait winked at Rollie. “Get on with it, Pops. We’re all dying to know this great plan of yours.”
Pops nodded and then looked past Wolfbait toward the doorway. Yet another figure stood there.
It was the mayor. “Gentlemen. I come here as representative of the city council of Boar Gulch.”
“Since when did we have a city council?” said Rollie.
“Since now. And stop interrupting me. That’s likely an offense. I haven’t finished writing down the bylaws and codes and whatnots, but I will. Now . . .” He thumbed the lapels of his filthy black frock coat, spatters stained his once-white dress shirt. He also exuded a pungency that was beginning to water the eyes of everyone in the room.
“I’ll need you all to accompany me out to the main street. We have an official town-wide meeting called to order and your presence is demanded.” He stopped and stared at them. Nobody moved.
“Now!” barked the pudgy little mayor.
They all flinched and followed him out the door like ducklings after their mama.
Sure enough, gathered outside in a ragged half circle facing the bar, stood much of the populace of Boar Gulch, looking haggard. Some were wearing bandages, most stood with arms folded, staring at them without smiles. Rollie wasn’t much for feeling self conscious, but he felt it now and wished he could walk back inside.
“As you are all well aware,” began the mayor, “we are in need of law. Not merely justice, as you both have so doggedly put it. And so, the town council, which means everybody you see assembled here, has taken a vote. You, Mr. Rollie Stoneface Finnegan and you Mr., um, Pops, have been chosen to be our law. Divide up the duties as you see fit, but let it be known that you are hereby appointed as Boar Gulch’s first town marshal and deputy.” He gave his lapels an extra tug and rocked back on his heels, a smug smile on his fleshy face.
“Nope,” said Rollie.
Pops said nothing, but smiled and stared at the ground, his hands in his pockets, light smoke rising from his pipe.
“I don’t think you understand me”—the mayor looked about him and spread his arms wide—“us, I mean. This is not a job offer, sir. Oh no, this is not even an ultim
atum. No, this, Mr. Rollie ‘Stoneface’ Finnegan, former Pinkerton Detective, is your only option. You will serve as a lawman for Boar Gulch or . . . well, that is it.”
Rollie felt his face heat up, saw red clouding the horizon. “How dare you tell me what I can and can’t do with my life?”
He was used to seeing people back up when he barked. But his fellow Gulchers barely flinched.
“Mr. Finnegan,” said the mayor, “only a heartless cretin in your position would move on and leave us to that fate, a fate none of us asked for.”
Rollie folded his arms and sighed. “I’m not wearing a badge.”
“Why not?” said the mayor.
“Because,” said Pops, stepping forward, “a man doesn’t need to call attention to the fact that he’s the law in a place. Besides, it’s not law that Boar Gulch needs. We have enough laws already. The mayor sees to that.” He winked at the pudgy, scowling man. “What the Gulch needs is justice. I say we take care of things right here in Boar Gulch as we have been doing.”
“This is too complicated,” said Geoff, holding a bloody bandage to the side of his head. “Wear a badge or not. I don’t care, but if somebody comes to town and hurts someone, they get treated in kind by you and Pops. And if you need help, you know you’ll get it.” He received nods. “Especially after today’s raid. That nearly broke us, Rollie.”
Rollie regarded them all a moment, then nodded. “We may need to hire on a couple of deputies now and again.” He cast his gaze to Nosey and Wolfbait.
The old man winked and Nosey nodded, then pulled out his notebook and began writing.
Murmured assent rippled through the crowd.
Yep, thought Rollie, as he looked around at his neighbors and friends. Right back where I began—a lawman who isn’t one. He smiled. It felt right.
“Come on everybody!” He turned and headed for the door of the tent that was The Last Drop. “Drinks are on the house!”
In a low voice, Pops said to him, “Enjoy it now, because I have a feeling deep in my bones those men today were the tip of a mountain about to come down on us.”
“Then we best get busy,” said Rollie. “Tomorrow.”
By the Neck Page 27