If Fields was sending raiders out to drive the freedmen from their lawful homes, if more men had been slain that very night, the sheriff had to act right now. He had to speak with Fields, find out exactly what in hell was going on, and take whatever action might be necessary, based on what he learned.
But if what he had heard so far was true, Fields wasn't likely to be in a talking mood. Tonight would be the second time within as many days that he'd have been defeated in his moves against a small, poorly prepared group of outsiders he had made his mind up to eradicate. And if Fields hated blacks, as indicated by the incidents so far, he would be doubly galled at seeing white men die on his behalf, fallen in vain.
The first person who called him on it, even one who wore a county sheriff's badge, was likely walking into trouble of the killing kind.
To that end, Sheriff Kersey carried three guns with him. On his hip, a Colt six-shooter nestled in its holster, belt loops filled with extra cartridges. Immediately to his right, a Henry rifle jostled in its saddle boot, packed full with sixteen rounds. The third piece was a double-barreled Greener coach gun, fastened to his saddle's pommel with a rawhide thong that he could loosen in a jiffy, if required. Each cartridge held a dozen buckshot pellets, meant for bringing down two-legged game.
And would tonight be winding up with more blood on the ground?
Most probably.
Kersey had never learned to read the future, never put the smallest bit of stock in Gypsy lore, but now he had a deep-down, deadly feeling in his gut and in his bones. He thought more men would die tonight, himself perhaps among them, and that some would fall by his own hand.
And how would that console him, if he lay among the dead?
* * *
"So, what now, Boss?" asked Brent Bodine.
Fields answered with a question of his own. "You've heard the old line about falling off a horse?"
"Which line is that?"
Fields sighed. "The one that says you get back on, as soon as possible, before you lose your nerve for good."
"Oh, right! I heard that one." Bodine was frowning now. "But I ain't sure—"
"Try, try again. Jesus!" Fields shook his head. "This is the second time you've come back here with work that I assigned to you unfinished, telling me you couldn't get it done for this reason or that."
"Same reason both times, Boss. You didn't send me out to get my ass shot off."
"I sent you out to do a job. You get that, Brent?"
"Yessir, but—"
"There's that 'but' again. You need to wipe that out of your vocabulary. When I send a man to do a special job for me, he doesn't come back with excuses. Not one time, and abso-goddamn-lutely not a second time. You know why that is, Brent?"
A cautious frown, this time. "No, sir."
"Because a man who couldn't pull it off dies trying on the first attempt. He doesn't drag ass back here giving me a list of reasons why he failed, as if I'd asked too much of him."
"But sir—"
Fields raised a finger in the space between them, silencing Bodine. "You need to listen more and talk less," he advised. "I'm giving you one final chance to carry out my orders. If you take the job, I don't expect to see your face again, until you're telling me how it got done exactly right. And if you'd rather just give up, well..."
Fields had let his right hand come to rest on the curved grip of his Colt Peacemaker, slung low and tied down to his thigh. There was no further need for comment, but Bodine still had a question for his boss.
"How many riders should I take this time?" he asked.
"I'm running low, the way they keep on getting killed," Fields said. "If you can't get it done with six or eight, just take off by yourself. I'll give you a head start to make it sporting, then it's hunting time."
Those words were barely out when gunfire rang out through the rancher's stately home. Fields drew his pistol, making Bodine flinch and step away from him, but it was pointing toward the study's open door, not at the foreman who had disappointed him.
"Sounds like we've got some unexpected company," Fields said. "Before you do that other thing, go find out who it is and put them down. Bring me their heads. You understand?"
"Yessir!"
"Then go!"
* * *
They hadn't counted on their captive carrying a hideout gun. He had been slick about concealing it, no backup holster visible, no bulge that Kate or J.D. noticed, giving it away. But there it was, after he'd taken just a few steps through the kitchen to a corridor beyond it, stopping short and spinning back around to face them with a grim look on his face, a derringer in hand.
Kate shot him with her Winchester, a clean hit in the center of his chest, and he was sprawling over backwards when his trigger finger clenched and fired his stubby derringer into the ceiling overhead. It sounded like another .44, a solid killing round up close, but wasted now, except for warning his compadres in the house.
"That tears it," J.D. said, as he moved past the dead or dying shooter, pausing only long enough to kick his derringer well out of reach.
"Where would you be if you were Fields?" Kate asked.
"Most likely sitting with my money, counting it."
"You're used to having money, Mr. Fields," Kate chided him. "Where else?"
"This time of night, after what happened at the Hilliards', I'd be chewing someone out."
"And where would you be doing that? Come on!"
"Some kind of office, but we don't know where that is, and he'll be moving now, after the noise."
"We need to grab somebody else, and—"
Two men holding pistols barged in through the kitchen doorway from outside and saw their former buddy stretched out on the floor in his own blood, then spotted Kate and J.D. just about to move off down the corridor, still making up their minds which way to go.
One of the pistoleros shouted, "Hold up there!"
The other snarled and said, "Screw that," cocking his pistol as he lifted it to fire.
As if they'd practiced it a thousand times, J.D. and Kate dropped into crouching postures instantly, in unison, and edged apart to put more empty space between them as their twin Winchesters roared.
Chapter 14
Sandy Rice heard gunfire from a half mile out and spurred his red dun stallion on to greater speed, painfully conscious of the horse's panting breath and worried on his own behalf that he'd arrived too late to be of any use to Ellis Fields.
Christ, if he ruined that, on top of getting fired, Rice knew he might as well just pick a random compass point and set off on a ride to nowhere, working odd jobs as he went and giving up his hope of any settled, decent life.
Now that he had the big house of the Circle F in sight, Rice shoved that prospect out of mind and concentrated on the next few moments of the life he still had left, while it remained to him. Perhaps he still had time to make the most of it. And if it ended here...well, hell, at least no man could say he got it in the back, trying to run away.
Rice rode directly to the house, some of the ranch hands in the yard angling their guns his way until they recognized him from his prior visits to their boss. One of them ran up to his side as Rice dismounted, breathing hard and looking halfway scared to death.
"What's going on?" Rice asked him.
"Hell if I know," said the cowboy. Rice quickly gave up on trying to remember what he called himself. "Shootin' inside the house started a couple minutes back. We ain't seen no one goin' in or out since then."
"The big man?"
"Still inside, best I can tell. O' course, he coulda lit out through the back by now."
"We need to find him," Rice decreed. "Find out if he's all right."
"When you say 'we'—"
"I mean whoever wants to find the boss still smiling on him when the smoke clears, if he's still alive by then."
"Well, shit!" The gunman looked around, face twisted up by fear and seeming anger at himself, then said, "Okay. Wait here a second, and I'll see how many boys
I can round up."
"Just make it snappy," Rice commanded. "From the sound of things, there isn't much time left."
* * *
J.D. took the gunman on his right, Kate aiming at the taller of the two men, on their left as they faced toward the kitchen door. Their rifles fired together, no more than a heartbeat in between the double cracks that echoed from the kitchen, on into the rambling rich man's house.
J.D.'s mark took his slug an inch or so below the breastbone, doubling over as a gout of blood exploded from within him, probably from the aorta letting go. He kept on going downward, like a man who's tried to bow and lost control of it to gravity, collapsing on his face with more blood spewing, while his six-gun rattled off across the kitchen floor and left him trembling, helpless, while his life ran out in crimson waves.
Kate's man pitched over backwards with a dark hole in his forehead, just above his left eyebrow. The bullet's exit swept his hat off, sent it spinning through the open kitchen doorway, out into the night. He hit the floor stone dead, but even so, his boot heels spent a moment drumming on the tiles that helped with mopping up the kitchen if a mess were made.
Like now.
No one was coming with a mop to swab these spills, but J.D. did hear men advancing on the kitchen, both from the backyard and moving through the house, drawn by the sounds of gunfire in their sanctuary. He assumed that all of them were armed, or would be, by the time they got around to facing him and Kate.
"Decide on a direction yet?" he asked her, ears still ringing from the rifle fire.
"It's fifty-fifty," she replied. "Go left?"
"Suits me."
They had no layout for the rambling house, but it was still a single-story dwelling with a finite space for them to search for Ellis Fields. Call it a couple dozen rooms in all, and that was doable, provided that they didn't run into a mob that had them outgunned, first. And even though they'd never glimpsed the man they sought, J.D. supposed he wouldn't be that hard to spot among the hired hands, reeking as most rich men did of privilege and cash.
Somewhere behind them, entering the kitchen from outside, somebody fired a hasty shot that missed by feet and drilled a hole through the potbelly of a figure in a portrait hanging on the corridor's west wall. The painting didn't fall, but it was ruined, making J.D. think of how he'd look, if he sustained that kind of wound.
Best not to think about it, though. Keep moving, pushing forward, toward the sounds of other enemies approaching, hoping Ellis Fields would be among them.
Coming like a leader with his troops, to take his medicine.
* * *
Fields watched as Brent Bodine slipped through the study doorway, closing it behind him as directed, vanished from his sight. He wasn't certain that Bodine could do the job he'd been assigned, but Jesus, there were thirty hands roaming around the Circle F. They should be able to contain his enemies and put them down—but failing that, at least he thought they'd buy him time to slip away.
Which meant he had to reach the barn, saddle a horse, and ride like hell for Yankton if it looked like things were getting badly out of hand.
Fields had considered building secret passages into the house when he'd constructed it, but it had seemed too Old World European when he thought it through. And anyway, the passages would scarcely be a secret once his men constructed them—more like a point of common knowledge that would ultimately make its way into the Yankton gossip mills, so that he looked a childish fool among the people who depended on his influence and money to survive.
No, he would have to pick a normal exit from the house, slip out, and make a beeline for the barn, where he would saddle up his gray Arabian, a mighty stallion, and be ready for a gallop into town if it appeared his men were losing out.
And if he reckoned they were winning...well, they never had to know he planned on running out at all.
First, though, the rancher had to arm himself. He wore a pistol belt already. Next, he crossed the study to a man-sized cabinet and opened it, extracting one of half a dozen Winchesters. He chose one of the newest in the rack, fresh from the factory that very year, pumping its lever-action to be sure he had a live round in the chamber when he left the room. With no idea how many enemies might be inside his house, or lurking in the yard, he reached back in, retrieved a bandoleer of extra rounds, and wriggled into it, so that the cartridges were draped across his chest.
All set now. There was no time like the present to get out, prepare his animal for flight, and find out if he'd have to run away. In that case, Fields had friends in Yankton who would shelter him, granting him sanctuary from what he supposed would be a brief, if violent, squall.
As for the Circle F and any thought of losing it, losing the wealth and power he'd accumulated over time, the very notion struck him as ridiculous. By God, didn't the fools who'd trespassed into his domain know they were dealing with the one and only Ellis Fields?
If not, they were about to learn the hard way.
It would be the final lesson of their miserable lives.
* * *
When he heard the sounds of battle, Sheriff Kersey slipped the thong that held his Greener double-barrel to his saddle horn and pulled the shotgun up into his lap, leaving its hammers down but reachable within a second if he needed it.
Some kind of deadly trouble on the Circle F, and no mistake. Kersey had no idea exactly what the gunfire meant, but he could guess the hands weren't celebrating victory over the raid on Amos Hilliard's farm. The good news: Kersey had instructed the freedmen to stay in Yankton overnight, arranging rooms for them at a hotel despite the owners visible reluctance, and he trusted them to follow orders on that score, at least tonight.
But after that, if matters hadn't been resolved, he guessed all bets were off.
Kersey slowed just a little as he neared the main hub of the Circle F, counting at least a dozen cowboys on the move with guns in hand, all circling around the big house, several of them crouched outside its tall front door and peering inward, as if worried about entering. The shots he heard were somewhat muffled, emanating from inside the house and telling Kersey that he'd come too far to turn back now.
At least, that was, unless he threw his sheriff's badge away.
Gritting his teeth, holding the Greener shotgun close, he came down off the last low-lying hill and started for the house, calling ahead of him, "Sheriff! I order all of you to drop your guns and step away from them, right now!"
And in the next few seconds he would know whether they fell in line or blasted him into an early grave.
* * *
Brent Bodine had no idea what he should do to please his boss, or whether that was even possible right now. Fields took for granted that the shooting on the Circle F—inside his very house, no less—traced back to Bodine's failure at the Hilliard spread, and Bodine couldn't argue he was wrong. It was too much of a coincidence unless he played connect-the-dots, and since he obviously was to blame, Brent had to make it right.
But how?
His first instinct had been to run and hide somewhere, then that had faded into simply running off and leaving Fields to sort out his own mess. Whatever Bodine had done wrong in dealing with the freedmen, it all started with an order Fields had given him to run them off their land, regardless of the consequences.
Well, the consequences had come home to roost, and Brent was in a panic now, clutching his Colt and wishing he had some way to collect a group of men, repulse the threat and save the day. Unfortunately, from the way it sounded now, all workers on the Circle F were busy fighting for their lives.
All right. Step one was to locate whoever had slipped into Mr. Fields's house and get them out—or better, kill them stone cold dead. From there, if others had the place surrounded, Brent could move on to the next phase of his hopeless task.
If he survived that long.
Loud rifle shots drew Bodine toward the dining room, which naturally stood adjacent to the kitchen. It made sense that someone might have entered throug
h the kitchen, being tucked around in back and out of sight from the main yard. Reluctantly, Bodine picked up his pace, knowing it wasn't far until he reached the room that he was looking for.
And suddenly, before he knew it, there they were. Same goddamned bounty killers who had interrupted his original attempt to hang the Hilliards when he had them on their own. The tall man and his pretty wife, both holding rifles leveled at his chest.
Surrender? Not an option, even if they'd offered it, and nothing indicated a forgiving mood on their part.
What, then?
Shoot it out. What else?
Bodine lifted his pistol, cocking it, and almost had the time to fire before twin lever-action rifles blasted him to Kingdom Come.
Almost. Not quite.
* * *
"You recognize him?" J.D. asked.
"How would I?" Kate replied. "He hasn't got a face."
"Oh, well."
They moved on past the latest dead man, one passing to either side of his supine remains, still searching for the Circle F's owner and man in charge. Along the way, J.D. couldn't help thinking of the charges they might face, if it turned out that Yankton's law sided with Fields and marked them down as homicidal trespassers. J.D. had seen men hang before and didn't fancy joining them. As for his wife, the fleeting image conjured up by his imagination made him sick inside.
"You're worried," Kate observed.
"Aren't you?"
"I have a feeling this will all work out, somehow."
"Yeah. It's the somehow has me bothered, Darlin'. I'd prefer if we came out of it alive and not in shackles."
"Right now, focus on the part about staying alive. Okay?"
"Will do."
It seemed they had been walking for a long time, down a hallway rank with gunsmoke, checking doors to either side, but J.D. guessed only a few short moments had elapsed in fact. Gunfights were strange that way: sometimes they seemed to slow time down, so that you had an opportunity to weigh each move and twitch an adversary made, watching him tumble to the ground if you were quick and sure enough to drop him. Other times, it all became a blur, and J.D. had to wonder, when the smoke cleared, who exactly had done what to whom.
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