.45-Caliber Deathtrap

by Peter Brandvold

  The armored side door swung open and two men bolted out—one a handsome, dark-haired cuss in a black frock and black hat. The other was a mean-looking hombre with a scruffy beard, milky eye, and a hummingbird tattooed on his cheek. Behind them Cuno saw Glory crouched in a corner, head in her arms, body wracked with sobs.

  Seeing Cuno, the handsome gent crouched and raised his well-oiled revolver. The slug plinked into a window behind Cuno.

  Cuno brought the Winchester to bear and fired three quick rounds, one taking the handsome gent through his chest, the other burning across the temple of the bearded, one-eyed man. As both men went down screaming, Cuno ejected the smoking shell and looked beyond the Murphy.

  The two lead riders galloped toward him, triggering pistols at Serenity crouched in the box with his shotgun. The slugs chewed the wood in the seat and barked off the steel rail above the dashboard.

  Cuno fired three quick shots over Serenity’s head. One of the riders flew off his horse while the other reined up, trying to get a bead on Cuno.

  The freighter ran around the four braying mules hitched to the Murphy. Serenity was muttering curses under his breath as he thumbed fresh wads into the Greener, oblivious to the gunshots.

  “Old man, I’m not gonna tell you again!”

  Cuno dove behind a stock trough as two slugs kicked up dust before him and another shattered the window of the tonsorial parlor to his left. He snaked his own rifle around the stock trough, planted a bead on the horseback rider, and fired.

  The slug punched through the man’s right thigh near the hip. He was a half-breed with light-red skin and long, dark-brown hair under a shabby bowler hat decorated with a single silver concho. Wearing two shoulder holsters over a beaded vest, he grimaced, showing a few tobacco-brown teeth, then jerked his reins taut as the horse skitter-stepped and nickered.

  Cuno strode into the street. He triggered the Winchester.

  It clicked empty.

  The half-breed turned toward him on his agitated horse. Smiling and whooping, he loosed a shot. It ground into an awning post. Cuno threw away the rifle, palmed his .45, crouched, and fired.

  Pop, pop, pop!

  Three bloody welts appeared in the half-breed’s shoulder, neck, and right cheek.

  The horse screamed and reared.

  The half-breed turned a somersault and hit the ground on his head, his neck snapping audibly.

  The horse raced away.

  To Cuno’s right, a pistol spoke and a shotgun boomed twice. He ignored it as he peered through the horse’s dust, toward the other side of the street. The first lead rider he’d shot was climbing to his feet, hatless, lips stretched back from his teeth. He glanced at Cuno, then bolted toward a stock trough.

  Cuno’s Colt leapt and barked three times, wafting smoke.

  The man groaned as he fell behind the stock trough.

  Quickly reloading, Cuno strode toward the other side of the street, replacing the .45 cartridges by rote, staring at the stock trough. He thumbed in the sixth cartridge, flipped the loading gate closed, and peered over the trough.

  Behind it, the man lay with his head resting against the boardwalk. He appeared the oldest man of the bunch, with a pitted, deep-lined face and sandy hair streaked with gray. His upper lip was knife-scarred. His chest rose and fell sharply. Blood puddled his belly and both shoulders.

  He winced and gazed sharply up at Cuno. “I’m Ned Crockett. Who the fuck’re you?”

  “Cuno Massey.”

  Crockett spat a stream of blood to one side.

  “You’re right handy with a .45.” His chin dropped. He rolled to his right shoulder and lay still.

  Cuno saw someone move to his right. He turned to see the man he’d wounded stumbling into an alley, disappearing between two unpainted buildings.

  Farther down the street, several shots cracked.

  A man stumbled toward Cuno, fifty yards away. A big black man with a black beard and clad all in black. He was breathing hard, wheezing. Kong strode after him, limping slightly, blood showing on his right thigh.

  The Chinaman raised his Winchester and fired, quickly ejected the spent shell.

  The black man jerked with a start, fell to a knee. He lowered his head. Wincing, he looked behind, snaked a revolver across his body to shoot at Kong.

  Kong fired the Winchester. The black man’s head jerked sharply, blood and brains spraying out the hole above his right ear. The black man sagged to the street, legs kicking wildly.

  “That’s Cannady!”

  Cuno turned sharply right. Serenity Parker lay beneath the Murphy wagon, staring out between the two rear wheels, holding his smoking shotgun in both hands. His face was crimson behind his tangled, gray beard. He nodded as he gazed into the alley.

  “Get the son of a bitch! I done gave him about twelve buckshot in his right shoulder!”

  Cuno turned toward the alley mouth.

  Cannady.

  He remembered Serenity mentioning the man had a hummingbird tattoo on his cheek.

  “I’ll fetch him.”

  Holding his .45 down by his right thigh, Cuno strode into the alley. Walking like a drunk, dragging his toes, Cannady stumbled off into the rocks and brush beyond town. The top of his right shoulder was peppered with a dozen bloody welts.

  Twenty feet behind Cannady, Cuno called the man’s name. Cannady swung heavily, bringing his Remington up. Cuno’s slug punched through Cannady’s upper right arm.

  Cannady dropped the gun and grabbed the arm, thick red blood seeping through his fingers. He cursed loudly and continued stumbling forward. He took three steps, dropped to a knee, and peered over his left shoulder, squinting his white eye.

  “Fuck you, ye goddamn, copper-riveted bastard!”

  Cannady rolled onto his butt and pushed himself backward with his heels, carving a broad furrow in the dust. His good eye stared, bright with rage and terror, at Cuno. The hummingbird on his cheek had turned spruce green against the crimson of his sweaty dirt-streaked face.

  He’d only slid a few feet before he stopped, exhausted, chest heaving.

  Cuno stopped before him, stared down at him. He held his pistol down by his thigh. “I’m Wade Scanlon’s partner.”

  Cannady’s voice rose with defiance. “That name don’t mean shit to me!”

  Cuno raised the revolver, canted the barrel toward Cannady’s right knee. He fired. The bullet cracked through the knob of the knee, the smoking hole in his denims filling with blood.

  Cannady clutched the ruined bone, throwing his head back and scrunching up his face. He howled.

  “Does that refresh your memory?”

  Cannady howled again.

  Cuno drilled a round through Cannady’s other knee.

  Cannady threw his head back and set both hands on the ground, the cords and tendons standing out in his neck as he arched his back and screamed like a wounded coyote.

  Cuno watched the man writhe on the ground.

  Cannady’s eyes shunted to Cuno’s—filled with misery and beseeching. Tears streaked his beard. “You…you the reason my brother and the others”—he winced, panting—“ain’t caught up to us?”

  “I killed your brother and the others deader’n hell.”

  Cannady winced again and swallowed hard, his good eye acquiring a dark, hopeless cast. “Well, what’re ya waiting fer? Finish me, you bastard!”

  Cuno holstered the .45. “I’m gonna sleep well nights, thinkin’ about you workin’ the prison rock quarries with those two ruined knees and that shattered arm.”

  Cannady’s grunts and snarls turned to sobs as he glanced at his two bloody knees.

  Cuno smiled, turned, and walked back toward Serenity standing in the middle of the street, holding his broken-open shotgun under one arm, like a bird hunter. Serenity was grinning broadly through his thick, gray beard, pale-gray eyes glistening in the climbing morning sun.

  Cuno glanced at the big Murphy freighter sitting before the Hell Wagon. “Nice timing, old-timer.”
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  “Told ye I was good fer somethin’.” Serenity nodded at Cannady. “You really just gonna leave him like that?”

  “Why not?”

  Serenity cackled and shook his head as Cuno brushed past him, heading toward where Kong lay in the street near the dead black man. Li Mei, dressed in a black robe, was kneeling beside her father. Cuno knelt near Kong’s right elbow, peered at the blood dappling the man’s blue wool shirt just above his left hip.

  “It’s just a graze,” the girl told Cuno.

  Kong’s almond-shaped eyes slitted devilishly as he glanced at the black man lying nearby with his brains blown out. “Good shooting, huh?”

  Cuno allowed himself a smile. “Not bad.” Peering down the street, he saw several shop owners and the doctor moving amongst the dead men before the bank, inspecting each body for life.

  Cuno whistled to catch the sawbones’s attention, then pointed down at Kong.

  “It’s just a scratch,” Kong said. “Li Mei can tend…” His voice trailed off as his gaze strayed to something behind Cuno.

  Cuno turned a glance over his right shoulder. Glory stood near the Hell Wagon. She wore a green wool traveling skirt, a frilly white blouse, and a broad-brimmed, green felt hat. A pearl-gripped, .36-caliber pistol jutted from the soft leather holster on her right hip.

  She regarded him shame-faced, blond hair sifting about her cheeks. Tears glistened in her blue eyes.

  Cuno straightened, facing her. “The outlaw girl.”

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she pouted. “Case offered me four thousand dollars and safe passage to Mexico City.”

  “For what?”

  She brushed her cheek with her hand. “Findin’ out when the Hell Wagon was due.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  Glory lifted a shoulder. A tear rolled down her cheek. “The mine manager…”

  Cuno nodded and chuckled. “A customer.”

  Glory scrunched her eyes with halfhearted defiance. “I didn’t do anything any other girl wouldn’t have done in the same position. I’m tired of spreadin’ my legs for a livin’.”

  “You prefer breakin’ rock in the federal pen like Cannady?” Cuno grabbed her arm, pulled her along as he moved to one of the dead renegade’s horses standing with its reins dangling.

  “What’re you doin’?” Taking quick, mincing steps along beside him, Glory tried to pry his thick fingers off her arm. “That hurts!”

  “Be grateful I don’t spank your bare bottom with a saddle quirt. Or throw you to the law.”

  He threw her onto the saddle, her skirt flying awry, then flipped the reins at her. “Get outta here!”

  “I don’t have nowhere to go!”

  “Knowing you, you’ll find a place.”

  “I didn’t wanna do it, Cuno. I didn’t have a choice.”

  He glared up at her. “None of us does anything we don’t wanna do, Glory. We all have a choice.” He slapped the horse’s rump. The buckskin reared, lunged off its hind hooves, and galloped west. After nearly falling off, the girl slumped forward, clutching the saddle horn, her hair bouncing on her shoulders.

  The horse streaked past an oncoming ore wagon, the driver craning his neck to follow the horse and its pretty, sobbing rider with his eyes. The buckskin crested a distant grade and disappeared down the other side.

  Cuno cursed and climbed into the Murphy’s driver’s box.

  “Hey, where you goin’?” Serenity called.

  Cuno released the brake and whipped the horses around the Hell Wagon, heading east along Main.

  “I’m gonna off-load these supplies. Then I’m headin’ for a saloon.” Glancing over his left shoulder, Cuno added, “I’ll be there awhile!”

  Serenity stared after him, squinting into the dust. The old man snorted and bit off a hunk from the tobacco braid in his right hand. “Now you’re talkin’!”

  Peter Brandvold was born and raised in North Dakota. He currently resides in Colorado. His website is www.peterbrandvold.com. You can drop him an e-mail at pgbrandvold@msn.com.