Remington 1894

by William W. Johnstone

  The man opened his mouth, trying to say something, but only managed short gasps for breath.

  Gut shot. Alamo Carter’s Winchester Yellow Boy had aimed true. The man before him would die in agony.

  Or not. A gunshot deafened McMasters and he saw the man slam to his side, the top of his head blown off by a shot from close range. A second later, Emory Logan stepped around the rock, smoke still seeping from the barrel of his repeating rifle as he eased the lever down and up, ejecting the spent cartridge and replacing it with another. The one-eyed killer turned toward McMasters and grinned.

  McMasters lowered the shotgun. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  The one-eyed killer spit. “It’s what we come fer, ain’t it?” He shifted the tobacco in his cheek, walked over to the dead man, toed him with his boot, then stepped thorough the doorway of the hidden shack. He came back out, looked at the empty corral, and then stared off toward Bloody Zeke and Patton. “C’mon! Ain’t nobody to kill here. Mount up and let’s catch ’em other vermin. Afore the law comes.”

  McMasters looked away from the bloody corpse and saw Bloody Zeke and the gambler coming up, holstering their weapons, and climbing into the stirrups.

  Emory Logan was walking back around the rocky wall. “Best hurry, McMasters. That bitch ain’t likely to wait fer us.” Before he got around the corner, he slammed against the tan rock. The Burgess repeater dropped from his hands, clattering on the ground and bounding toward McMasters.

  Only then did McMasters hear the gunshot as it echoed across the Superstition range. He turned, trying to find smoke, anything. Emory Logan staggered forward, spitting up blood, and McMasters saw the red stain against the rock face.

  Another bullet whined off the rock, spitting gravel and dirt into McMasters’s eyes. He sank quickly and moved into the shadows between the two massive boulders in front of the closed door to Moses Butcher’s cabin.

  Logan dropped to his knees, and a second later, fell forward, somehow stopping his fall with both arms.

  The gun roared again, but that shot had not been aimed at McMasters or the one-eyed bushwhacker.

  McMasters cursed as his eyes went up the mountain. Moses Butcher had left a lookout, a man with a high-powered rifle somewhere in those rocks above. That man had a clear shot at anyone crossing the desert.

  He was trapped. Pinned down. Like a rat.

  Logan spit out more blood. It wasn’t fair, he thought, and coughed savagely, but somehow managed not to fall onto the prickly pear near his face. He saw the blood, his blood, clinging to the cactus spines.

  He was in the Superstition Mountains with a bullet hole in his chest and back, bleeding like a stuck pig, dying . . . damn it all to hell, he was mortal wounded . . . and all he could think of was Lawrence, Kansas, and the great William Clark Quantrill.

  Valiant folks who’d supported the South, or at least Missouri, in that great war always swore up and down that Quantrill and his four hundred patriots never harmed no woman. No kids, neither. They just defended themselves against the abolitionists and slave-freein’ red legs who happened to be in Lawrence on that fine August morning back in 18 and 63.

  That wasn’t exactly how things had gone. Emory Logan knew that. Hell, he had always known that. He had killed five of Kansas’s finest that day. One he had shot down as he looked up while milking his cow. Three he had lined up front to back against the front door of a café, and then stepped off fifteen paces, turned around, and brought up his LeMatt revolver. Bevin Kent, a good ol’ boy from Clay County, had bet him that the .41-caliber pistol would not go through two bodies, but Emory Logan had said his would kill three.

  Hell, they were both wrong. The massive LeMatt had killed four.

  All those years later, Emory Logan could still feel the kick of that big pistol in his hand. As he closed his eyes, he remembered. He could picture the three gents.

  * * *

  One still in his nightshirt, slammed against the door to the café and collapsed on the boardwalk. The glass window in the door shattered from the last guy’s head as the force of the LeMatt’s bullet drove him forward before he fell into a heap at the doorway atop of the other two dead Kansans Jayhawking scum.

  He laughed and stepped toward Bevin Kent, waving the heavy gun in his hand. “How’s that, Kent?” He pointed at the bullet hole in the door. “Coulda kilt me even one more Yank. Maybe even two. You owe me ’em silver candlesticks you taken from that home we just burnt.”

  Kent shook his head, and he had stepped away from the three dead men lying atop of one another in front of the café door. “Yeah. I’ll go fetch ’em fer you. Then maybe we can eat in that place. I’m hungry.”

  “Sure, sure,” Logan said, stepping to the door. He saw a spot between the dead men where he could plant his left foot, and once he had, he lifted his leg and kicked at the café’s door. It crashed, shattering more glass shards, but only opened a few inches. So he kicked it again. It budged, but came back, and he realized something was blocking it on the floor inside.

  He leaned forward and looked over the busted glass. He saw the colored woman, probably a cook assigned to clean up the restaurant before they opened that morn. She must’ve been hiding behind the doorway, and the bullet, having gone through three Kansas Jayhawkers and the door itself, had gone through her back.

  He knew he had shot her. He saw the blood flowing across the fancy wood and knew the LeMatt would not have killed five men . . . or women . . . just four. There was no exit wound in her chest, but, well, she was a fat old hen.

  Her eyes stared up, not seeing, but haunting him. It sickened him, although he did not understand why. She just wouldn’t stop looking at him, even though she was deader than a turnip.

  He burned that café. Had seen the lantern on the counter, and aimed the LeMatt through the busted glass and squeezed off a shot. He saw two other lanterns on the wall, and blasted those apart, too, spraying the café with burning kerosene.

  “What in tarnation did you do that fer?” Bevin Kent complained as he stopped in the street with his hands full of stolen candlesticks. “I thought we was gonna eat.”

  “Let’s go to the hotel,” Logan said. “Where the rest of us is congregatin’. Ain’t nothin’ hot in this place anyhow.”

  Bevin Kent laughed. “Is now. It’s gonna burn like hell. Like your soul.”

  “Shut up, Kent.”

  * * *

  Blown all to hell and bleeding through mouth, nose, back, and chest, Logan looked down at the prickly pear waiting for his face to drop into those spines. It changed, and he wasn’t looking at cactus anymore but at that black colored woman’s eyes. Staring at him.

  Because of her, he had always told himself, he could never settle down. Couldn’t go back to farming up around St. Joseph no more, not after the war, even though some of Quantrill’s raiders had managed to go back and live peacefully. Like Logan, others had taken to the owlhoot trail. Whenever he thought he might do something honest, he’d always remember that dead colored woman on the floor of that café.

  He tried to raise his head, to look up at the mountain and into the rocks, to at least see the man who had killed him. But he couldn’t do it. That man had been a coward. Shooting him like that. Giving him no chance. Emory Logan wasn’t no snake in the grass. The folks he had killed, during the war and for all those years after, had at least been looking at him. Except for those three red legs he had back-shot with the LeMatt back in Lawrence that day. And that fat black gal.

  “Damned”—he coughed—“damned snake in the grass.”

  That black cleaning gal’s big eyes raced up to meet Emory Logan’s face as he fell.

  CHAPTER 32

  Snake in the grass.

  McMasters sucked in a breath, let it out, and peered just long enough to see Emory Logan lying facedown in the dirt. Dead.

  The rifle boomed again, echoing. McMasters heard the whine of a ricochet behind him and knew that one had been aimed at Mary Lovelace. He brought the shotgun up,
cursed, and set it aside. What good was a scattergun on a man high up in those rocks? As useless as the Colt .45 in his holster.

  McMasters thought about Alamo Carter. Would the big man hear the report of the rifle? And if he did, what would he do? Double-back and try to sneak up on and kill the man in the rocks, or keep following the rest of the bunch? Or, more than likely, figure he was finally free of John McMasters and just keep riding straight for old Mexico?

  The rifle boomed again. Hearing no ricochet, McMasters figured that shot had been aimed at Bloody Zeke and Patton.

  How long will he wait us out?

  From where McMasters squatted against the rocks, he could no longer see the cloud of dust whipped into a frenzy by the wind off in the desert.

  Eventually, that storm would blow itself out, and the town posse would come from Goldfield. Or some fool and his burro and supplies would make his way toward the mountains in search of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine. Either way, the sniper would not risk staying up there forever. He’d have to go.

  But when?

  McMasters swore again. Noticing the barrel of the Colt Burgess repeating rifle, he knew it was his best chance. He drew in a deep breath, and slowly brought his legs up, pressing himself against the hot, hard rock. Success or death would depend on where the man in the rocks was looking. At Mary Lovelace? At Bloody Zeke and the gambler? Or down at the rocks and the hideout’s shack . . . where McMasters was? The latter might get him killed, but he had to take the gamble.

  He jumped into the opening, his right hand shooting out and gripping the barrel of the rifle, and then he flung himself toward the far wall of rocks and brush. A bullet smacked into the sand where he had been, flinging dust and dirt and carving a small, narrow ditch in the earth. But it had not been close to McMasters, who brought the Burgess up and held it tightly in his arms.

  He looked at where the bullet had struck.

  Fifty caliber, he thought. Maybe a .45-70 Remington Rolling Block, but McMasters thought he’d recognized the sound of a Sharps .50 caliber. Hell, he had heard that gun enough thirty years ago.

  Hefting the Burgess in his arms, he felt its weight.

  Andrew Burgess had known what he was doing when he’d designed the weapon for Colt. It was a fine gun, on par with the Winchester. Why had Colt discontinued producing those weapons? The company could have rivaled Winchester, or at least made it an interesting race. McMaster knew the answer was holstered on his hip. Colt had become synonymous with short guns. Winchester, at least on the American frontier, had become the rifle and carbine of choice.

  He guessed the Burgess weighed eight or nine pounds, noticed the barrel was octagonal, not round, and judged it to be about two feet long, which meant the rifle would hold fourteen rounds. Slowly, he began working the lever, but just enough to see that Logan had chambered a fresh .44-40 cartridge.

  The unanswered question was how many shots had Logan fired before he had been killed.

  It didn’t matter. McMasters had what he had. He braced the barrel against the rock, found the sight, and aimed at the rocks high above him.

  He stopped, brought the Burgess back toward him, and leaned it against the rock. He removed his eyeglasses and began wiping the lenses with his bandanna. The spectacles went back on his head, he blinked, and picked up the rifle.

  “You’re a fifty-year-old man . . . with fifty-year-old eyes. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  He had not meant to speak the words aloud, but he had, and his own voice startled him. He steadied his arms, tightened the stock against his shoulder, and looked above the sight.

  “McMasters?”

  Mary Lovelace’s voice echoed.

  He wet his lips.

  “Logan?”

  “Stay put,” McMasters yelled, and the Sharps in the rocks roared again.

  Still looking at the rocks, he saw the puff of white smoke.

  “There you are,” he whispered, and leaned closer, trying to focus on the sight. The smoke erupted again, and he heard the shot moments later. He heard something else.

  “Son of a bitch. That was close!” the gambler shouted.

  McMasters aimed, and his finger curled around the trigger, but he stopped, releasing the tension and letting out a heavy sigh.

  Who the hell am I kidding? That son of a bitch is shooting a rifle with an effective range of at least five hundred yards. This lightweight Colt? What do I have? A hundred yards. Two hundred at the most. And I’m shooting uphill. With the wind. And I’m fifty damned years old.

  More white smoke drifted above the rocks. The bullet ricocheted again.

  And he remembered the stories about Billy Dixon.

  * * *

  Legend had it the fabled buffalo hunter down in Texas had killed an Indian with one shot from a Sharps rifle from a mile or more away. Someone who heard about McMasters’s Civil War experience asked him how anyone could see that far to even make a shot.

  “You don’t have to see,” he answered. “The bullet sees.” He said nothing else and left the saloon.

  * * *

  “McMasters!” Bloody Zeke The Younger was yelling. “Do something, damn it!”

  “McMasters!” Mary Lovelace screamed from the other side of the twin tall rocks. “Please!”

  He uttered a blasphemy. He also remembered.

  Do something.

  He swallowed down the bile. Most Colt rifles were furnished with a semi-buckhorn rear sight, but this one had a special tang sight. He thumbed it up, and adjusted it for distance. The front sight was an ivory bead combination, and he could see it clearly. His question was Even with my spectacles, can I spot that guy up there?

  He watched the creosote bush ahead of him, thinking about the wind. He leaned closer, drew a deep breath, slowly exhaled. And he waited.

  Smoke appeared suddenly. Then came the roar.

  “Damn!” coincided with the whine of ricochet down near Mary Lovelace.

  “Let the bullet see,” McMasters prayed softly. He aimed high, and slowly squeezed the trigger.

  Jacking a fresh .44-40 shell into the chamber while lowering the Burgess, he stared through the gun smoke before him and studied the rocks. He caught the movement, saw a thin outline weave, and then he saw it plummet, falling head over heels in silence, crashing off one rock, and then dropping silently and landing with a distant crunch beyond the rocks.

  Lowering the Burgess, McMasters thought he heard another shout. McMasters! In the name of God . . . do something . . . Please!

  And he remembered.

  * * *

  March 1864. Somewhere in northern Virginia, he leaned against the pecan tree, the one tree that had not been blown apart by cannon balls or grapeshot. Down below, he saw the men of a Michigan infantry unit . . . being cut to ribbons by the Rebels up on the hill.

  What struck him was the bravery of those Union soldiers. They did not scream. They did not panic. They did not fall or beg or cry. They kept right on running. Running but unable to touch the ground because dead soldiers carpeted the ground.

  And here he sat under a pecan tree, about to have his breakfast before the sudden attack had begun. Watching the war . . . the real war . . . going on off in the distance, up the hill and across the still smoking clearing, six hundred and sixty-seven yards away.

  The Rebs sat atop the far hill. He could see the puffs from the muskets as they fired. They were damned fine shots, but then again, they were Southerners. They were used to hunting. And this late in the war, they were used to killing Union soldiers.

  An infantry soldier staggered, the impact of an Enfield rifled-musket ball spinning him around and dropping him to his knees. He appeared to be staring right at McMasters. No, not at him. Right through him. McMasters could have sworn he heard the boy say, “McMasters! In the name of God . . . do something. . . Please!”

  But that couldn’t have been. No one, except Lieutenant McDonald, knew he was here . . . and McMasters wasn’t even certain the lieutenant knew he was here. McMast
ers didn’t know anybody from Michigan except the sharpshooters with Berdan’s men in green uniforms. And no one in that unit of brave young men knew him by name.

  Another Enfield shot snapped the boy’s spine. He collapsed and became just another piece of the hallowed blue-coated carpet.

  McMasters brought the Sharps up, pulled back the heavy hammer, and looked through the brass telescopic sight. He found a man about to fire, kneeling in front of an overturned canister. He did not remember touching the trigger, but felt the stock of the heavy rifle slam against his shoulder. He did not look to see if his shot had been true. He knew it had. He just busied himself reloading.

  The rifle came up, and he fired again. He saw the man in gray or butternut or maybe just in his long-handle underwear . . . at better than six hundred yards, across a field and up a hill in the early hours of morning.

  His shoulder throbbed. He did not care. He felt no pain. His ears rang from the roar of the Sharps. Yet he still heard that boy screaming, looking at him as death coated those young, innocent eyes.

  “McMasters! In the name of God . . . do something . . . Please!”

  The Sharps roared. A man flew backwards, knocked a good six feet by the impact of the heavy lead slug.

  He reloaded. Fired again. Saw another man stagger, sink, and topple to his left.

  By then, the Rebs had spotted him. He saw a flash of flame and smoke, and heard the massive volley. He saw the ground torn up all around him. All in front of him, maybe a hundred yards ahead in the dirt. The rifles those Rebs fired did not have the range of the Sharps. Or maybe they just weren’t as good as John McMasters was at killing men from a great distance.

  Two Rebs in tan hats charged down the hill toward him. Trying to close in on the distance. McMasters heard the screams and that blood-curdling Rebel yell. He did not care. He had another round in the Sharps, and he aimed—not at the two men in butternut who ran toward him, but at another Rebel still shooting at the Michigan boys. He didn’t care about those two men, even if they were trying to kill him. What he cared about was saving those men, those brave soldiers. . . those boys who saw Death every day . . . who charged into fortified positions through musket balls and grapeshot and brave Southern marksmen.