With a bull-like bellow, Cordoba let go of Bo and lurched to his feet. The pickax went with him, buried as it was in his skull. The bandit staggered, turned around in a circle, and then collapsed into a grisly heap. The fall dislodged the pickax. Blood and gray matter oozed thickly from the hole in his head as he spasmed and died.
Gasping as he dragged air through his bruised throat, Bo rolled onto his side and pushed himself to his hands and knees, then to his feet. He realized that the machine gun was silent again, but this time, so were all the other guns. A breeze had sprung up with the dawn, and it eddied the clouds of smoke around the huts in the village.
Bodies lay scattered everywhere. Most of them belonged to Cordoba’s men, but Bo saw quite a few of the men from the village as well. He grimaced as he spotted Douglas lying on the ground with half a dozen dead bandits around him. The kid’s eyes were open, and he had a single bullet hole in the middle of his forehead. What a damned waste, Bo thought. Douglas might have amounted to something one of these days, if he had lived long enough. But he had made his choice to live by the gun, and he had died by it as well. Chances were, he would have wanted it that way.
“Señor Bo!”
That was Evangelina’s voice. Bo turned toward it and saw the young woman hurrying toward him, a pistol in her hand. Teresa was with her, and so was Luz. None of them seemed to be hurt, and he was relieved to see that.
“Are you all right, Señor Bo?” Evangelina asked as she came up to him.
He nodded wearily, then looked down at his left leg. The calf was bloody, but as he had thought, the bullet had just plowed a furrow across the outside of it. “I’ll be limping for a while,” he said, “but at my age, that’s nothing unusual.”
He tucked the extra gun behind his belt and began reloading the other gun. As he thumbed the fresh cartridges into the cylinder, he looked toward the bell tower, which was visible again now that the smoke and dust had thinned somewhat. He didn’t see anybody moving around up there, and felt a pang of worry. If Cordoba’s men had noticed during the battle that someone was firing at them from the tower—
“Still in one piece, I see.”
The familiar voice brought a grin to Bo’s face. Scratch came out of the smoke as well, Winchester canted over his shoulder. Bo gave him a nod and said, “You hit?”
“Nope. I don’t think those varmints ever figured out I was up there. I downed damn near a dozen of ’em before the smoke got too thick for me to see anything. Figured I might as well climb down.”
Bo turned to Teresa and said, “Alfred’s hurt over there. You might see if you can give your sister a hand with him.”
Teresa hurried toward Rosalinda and Alfred, and Evangelina and Luz trailed along behind. The men from the village who had survived the battle began to gather in the plaza.
There were no survivors among Cordoba’s men.
“Seen Davidson?” Scratch asked.
Bo shook his head. “Not since the fighting started. I don’t know if he made it or not.”
That question was answered the next moment, though, when Davidson’s voice called out clearly in the early morning air, “They’re all together now! Mow them down!”
CHAPTER 31
Bo wasn’t surprised by the order. From the start, he had expected Davidson to go back on his word. As he and Scratch turned toward the edge of the village, he knew that everything now depended on Lancaster.
Would the Englishman follow the order—or, as Douglas had told Bo earlier, had he had enough of doing Davidson’s killing for him?
Bo and Scratch found themselves facing Davidson, Skinner, Wallace, and two more of Davidson’s men. They stood next to the machine gun, behind which Lancaster still crouched, gripping the weapon’s handles.
Bo heard movement behind him and glanced back to see the four women coming forward to join the Texans, along with Alfred. Rosalinda was next to him, her arm around his waist to help him. All the women held guns.
Behind them were the villagers, the ones who had been laboring in the mine as well as the women and children and old men who had been trying to eke out a living from the farms that their menfolk could no longer work because Davidson had enslaved them.
Bo lifted his voice and called, “You’re outnumbered for a change, Davidson. You can still take that deal I offered you.”
A harsh laugh came from Davidson. “And leave all the gold that’s still in the ground? The hell with that! It’s all mine, Creel, and nobody’s going to take it away from me. Certainly not a couple of broken-down old men and a bunch of greasers.” He looked past Bo. “Alfred, get clear of them while you’ve got the chance.”
“No, sir,” Alfred answered. His voice was weak, but he didn’t hesitate. “I quit. I should have quit a long time ago, when I saw what a monster you were turning into.”
Davidson’s face darkened with anger. “All right then. Have it your own way, you damned fool. You can die along with that whore of yours.”
“She’s not a whore! And nothing you did can turn her into one, you bastard!”
“That’s enough.” Davidson turned his head. “I told you to shoot them, Lancaster!”
Slowly, the Englishman straightened up, let go of the machine gun’s handles, and stepped back. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied coolly. “Creel, did the kid tell you what I said?”
Bo nodded. “He did.”
“It still goes. My honor has been sullied enough. I’m done here.”
Davidson wheeled toward him. “You damned traitor! You took my money!”
“Yes, well, we all make mistakes from time to time, old boy,” Lancaster said with a smile.
Davidson jerked his gun up and fired at the Englishman. At the same time, Skinner’s hand flashed toward his Colt as he yelled, “Time to start the ball, Creel!”
Everything else went away. Bo didn’t see anything except Jim Skinner. His hand moved.
When people talked about fast draws, now that Wild Bill Hickok was dead, they mentioned Smoke Jensen, John Wesley Hardin, Falcon McCallister, Ben Thompson, Matt Bodine, and the other famous shootists and pistoleers. Nobody ever said, That Bo Creel, he’s really slick on the draw.
Because he wasn’t. Faster than most maybe, but not in the same league as those others—or as Jim Skinner.
But every man has those moments, those split seconds of shaved time, when he reaches inside himself and finds things that normally aren’t there. The courage to stand and fight when he wants to run away, the compassion to reach out to a friend, the strength to lift something that no man should even be able to budge.
The speed and coordination and keenness of eye to outdraw a man who, on any other day, was faster.
This was one of those moments for Bo Creel.
He palmed out the Colt and killed Jim Skinner, putting two bullets in Skinner’s chest before the skull-faced gunman could even get off a shot. Skinner rocked back, his eyes filling with pain and surprise in the second before they went glassy in death.
What had seemed like an eternity was really less than the blink of an eye. Davidson’s gun roared and Lancaster went down. Wallace and the other men began firing toward Bo, Scratch, and their allies. Shots slammed out from Scratch’s rifle and the women’s pistols as they returned the fire. Davidson’s men tried to scatter, but slugs ripped into them, knocking them off their feet.
Evangelina screamed as she stalked forward, the gun in her hand erupting with flame and smoke as she emptied it into Wallace. He stumbled backward, his own gun sagging as the bullets pounded into him. He collapsed, and Evangelina stood over him and planted her last bullet in the middle of his face. With her chest heaving, she slowly lowered the gun.
That left Davidson as the only enemy still on his feet. He dropped his Colt and lunged toward the machine gun. Bo knew that if Davidson got his hands on the Gardner, he could still wipe them all out. He snapped a shot at Davidson, the revolver bucking in his hand.
Davidson staggered, but stayed on his feet. He reache
d the machine gun, lunged for the trigger—
Bo and Scratch fired at the same instant. The .45 slug and the .44-40 round from the Winchester smashed into Davidson’s chest simultaneously and drove him backward off his feet. He lay there gasping and twitching as blood welled from the holes in his body.
Bo and Scratch approached him cautiously. Davidson stared up at them, his mouth working. “You…you damned…” he managed to say.
“You should have taken the deal,” Bo told him.
Davidson’s head fell to the side. He stopped moving.
Scratch looked at Skinner, who lay a few yards away. He nodded toward the skull-faced gunman and said, “That varmint was right about one thing anyway.”
“What’s that?” Bo asked.
“Today, at least, justice belonged to the man with the fastest gun.”
“I don’t reckon I ever saw you slap leather like that in all your borned days,” Scratch was saying later as he grinned across a table at Bo. The villagers had dragged out the table, along with others, into the plaza, where a fiesta of sorts was now going on. The celebration was tempered by the fact that earlier in the day, in the aftermath of the two battles, they had buried a number of friends and loved ones.
Bo took a sip of tequila and grinned. “Nothing focuses a fella’s attention quite so much as some hombre trying to kill him.”
“Yeah, well, wait’ll folks hear that you outdrew Jim Skinner.”
Bo shuddered. “Let’s just keep that to ourselves. The last thing I need at my age is a rep as a fast gun.”
“Suit yourself,” Scratch said with a shrug. “We live such a damn peaceful life anyway, I can see why you wouldn’t want to mess it up.”
Bo laughed. His wounded leg was stretched out and propped up on a stool. Bandages swathed his bullet-creased calf.
Luz came out of the hut behind them and sat down at the table. She regarded the dancing and laughing and guitar-playing going on in the plaza and then said, “There will be many babies born in this village nine months from now.”
“You reckon so?” Scratch asked with a grin.
“Nothing flies in the face of death so much as life,” Luz said. “And speaking of life, it appears that Alfred and the Englishman will both pull through. They will need to be nursed back to health, though. Luckily for them, there will be no shortage of volunteers. Rosalinda will take care of Alfred, and Teresa seems taken with the Englishman.”
Quietly, Bo said, “I wish Pepe had pulled through, too.”
For a moment, a shadow passed over Luz’s face. “Some things are not meant to be,” she said. “I have a gold mine—well, part of one anyway—but I think I might trade it if only I could…”
She didn’t finish, but Bo knew what she meant.
They sat in silence for a few moments; then Scratch said, “I reckon I’ll ride out to the canyon tomorrow and see if I can find our horses or any of our gear. I’d sure like to get those Remingtons of mine back.”
“You can buy whatever you want,” Luz pointed out. “Everyone wants to give you and Bo shares in the gold mine, too.”
“We might take some of the profits to get ourselves outfitted again,” Bo said, “but after that, I’d just as soon see the money go to the folks here in the village.”
“Yeah,” Scratch agreed. “I’ve done thought it over, and bein’ a rich man is a blight and a curse. I don’t think I ever knew a rich man who was plumb happy. Not that I’ve knowed all that many rich men, you understand.”
Luz put her hands on the table and pushed herself to her feet. “Do what you wish about the gold,” she said. “Right now, I think I will go out there in the plaza and dance like the others who are simply glad to be alive.”
Scratch stood up and offered her his arm. “I sort of feel the same way myself.”
Luz linked her arm with his, and smiling, they went off to join the fiesta.
Bo leaned back in his chair and sighed. The past couple of weeks had been pretty hellacious, but now he and Scratch had the chance to rest up a mite before they drifted on again. He figured it would be a couple more weeks before they started feeling too restless again…
Someone sat down beside him. He looked over and saw Evangelina. She smiled at him, and once again he noticed that when she did that, the scars on her face didn’t seem to matter near as much.
Bo nodded toward the fiesta going on in the plaza. “Don’t you feel like celebrating?” he asked her. “I don’t reckon you’d have much trouble finding some young fella to dance with you.”
With that serene smile still on her face, she looked out at the plaza and said, “I am where I want to be.”
Then she reached over and took hold of his hand.
Bo started to pull away from her. For some reason, he didn’t. But he did say, “Dadgum it, Evangelina, I’m old enough to be your grandfather!”
“Perhaps. But you are not my grandfather.”
“Well…no. I reckon I’m not. But if you think you’ve got to associate with some leathery old coot like me out of gratitude or because…because of what happened to you…”
He stopped as she shook her head.
“As I told you, I am where I want to be.” Her hand tightened on his. “Exactly where I want to be.” She turned to look at him again, and he felt the power of her smile even more strongly than before. “What about you, Bo?”
He swallowed. “I don’t reckon I can dance with this shot-up leg of mine.”
“Then we shall have to find some other way to celebrate the return of freedom to my people.”
Scratch was never going to let him hear the end of this, he thought, but then he nodded and returned Evangelina’s smile and told her, “I reckon we can do that.”
PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
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Copyright © 2009 William W. Johnstone
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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Following the death of William W. Johnstone, the Johnstone family is working with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Mr. Johnstone’s outlines and many unfinished manuscripts to create additional novels in all of his series like The Last Gunfighter, Mountain Man, and Eagles, among others. The novel was inspired by Mr. Johnstone’s superb storytelling.
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Sidewinders:#3: Cutthroat Canyon Page 24