“So he’s sore. That’s better than being dead.”
Devon had no reply to that one.
“Where’s Fly?” Cort asked. “He was posted behind the back of the Spur to set up a holler if he saw Cross making a sneak.”
Devon peered through the window. “I don’t see him.”
“Reckon Cross got him.”
“We’d have heard the shooting, Cort.”
“Not if he used a knife. Let me see, Devon.”
“All right. I’ll cover them.” Devon turned to cover the assembled customers.
Cort shifted positions at the window. He’d had his rifle pointed at the Golden Spur entrance, but he had to swing it around toward Johnny at the far left of the trio.
“Got a clear shot?” Devon asked.
“I’ve got him right square in my gun sights,” Cort said.
Luke tensed, ready to make his move.
Devon had more to say. “Well, don’t shoot until Terry gives you the signal. He wants this to look like a fair draw.”
EIGHT
Standing in the street in front of the Golden Spur, Moran, Haycox, and Kern tried not to show their complete surprise.
Moran was the first to recover. “Johnny Cross?”
“That’s right,” Johnny said.
“So that’s Cross? He don’t look like much,” Haycox said low-voiced to Kern.
“He looks like a kid, wet behind the ears,” Kern said.
“Yeah, well, he ain’t gonna get any older after today,” Haycox said.
Johnny Cross looked like the young man he was, barely a shade past twenty-one years of age. He had gone to Missouri at the start of the war and had spent the four long years of the conflict as one of Quantrill’s guerrillas. The year after Appomattox was no picnic, either, but that’s a tale for another time.
Johnny handled himself with an assurance far beyond his years. He was medium-sized, trim, and compactly knit. He was black-haired and clean-shaven, adding to the impression of youth.
Lack of facial hair of some sort was a rarity for most men, but he had his reasons. Too many old-time foemen might remember the wild-haired, scruffily bearded pistol-fighter who had spread such death and destruction in the border states during the war years. He had a new life now and wanted to keep the door to the past firmly shut . . . but was that possible?
Johnny wore a flat-crowned black hat, lightweight brown jacket, gray shirt with black ribbon tie knotted in a bow, and black denims worn over custom-made leather boots. He looked prosperous, another rarity in that time and place. Twin walnut-handled Colt .45s were worn low on lean hips. Nobody was going to take anything of his without a fight.
His lips were curved in a sort of half smile.
The three gunmen changed their grouping. All turned to face Johnny, Haycox and Kern fanning out to bracket Moran on the sides.
Moran stood with fists on hips in a posture of dominance. “Cross!”
“That’s right.”
“You deaf or something? You must have heard me calling you out!”
Johnny nodded. “The way you were bawling, they must have heard you clear over to the next county.”
“You took your own sweet time showing your face,” Moran accused.
“I was finishing my drink.”
“Hope you enjoyed it, because it’s going to be your last!”
“So it’s like that, is it?” Johnny said after a pause, looking Moran up and down as though noticing him for the first time. “I didn’t catch your name, friend.”
“Terry Moran,” the other said smugly, relishing the sound of his own name.
“Who?” Johnny asked, trying to get Moran’s goat.
“Terry Moran,” the other repeated, nettled. “Don’t make out you didn’t hear me.”
“I heard you. I just never heard of you.”
Johnny had heard of Moran but said otherwise to rile him. It was a ploy to irritate the man, get under his skin, and make him lose his temper. An angry man was at a disadvantage in a fight.
Turned out it didn’t take much to get Moran mad. He was hot-tempered, with a short fuse. His face swelled with indignation. “Like hell!” he spat out, red-faced, eyes flashing dangerously. “Don’t give me that! You know who I am. Everybody does! I’m Terrible Terry Moran, the bull of the woods in these parts!”
“That so?” Johnny drawled mildly, underplaying. “What can I do you for, Moran?”
Finally, they were getting to the heart of it.
“They say you’re fast on the draw,” Moran said.
“They do say that,” Johnny allowed.
“I say I’m faster!” Moran said belligerently, putting some teeth in it.
“There’s one way to find out.”
Moran gave a short nod. “That’s what I’m fixing to do.”
“Ask him about Fly first, Boss,” Kern prompted Moran.
“Good point. What’d you do to my man Fly?”
“Fly? That the little fellow with the big pop eyes playing lookout in the alley?” Johnny asked.
“He’s the one. As if you didn’t know!”
Earlier, when Moran was calling him out, Johnny had slipped out the back door of the saloon. Peeking around a corner of the building, he’d spotted Fly planted in the alley. He gave quick thought to what had happened and what to tell Moran.
Fly was looking for him, but Johnny saw him first. He stepped into view, gun leveled on the gunman. Fly was a dead man and he knew it.
With his free hand—the one not holding a gun—Johnny held a finger upright against his lips, motioning for silence. Fly realized he might have a chance of coming out of it alive if he cooperated.
Johnny motioned to Fly to come to him. Fly started forward up the alley, walking stiff-legged like a man trying to make his way against gale-force winds.
Johnny waited patiently for Fly to reach him, then herded Fly behind the back of the building, out of sight of anyone looking into the alley. “You want to live?” Johnny asked soft-voiced.
“Y-yes!” Fly nodded so vigorously his hat almost fell off his head.
Johnny again motioned for silence. “Shh. Turn around, facing the wall.”
Fly did as he was told.
“Take off your hat.”
Fly obeyed. Johnny clipped him, laying the gun barrel across the back of his head, a short savage blow. Fly’s eyes rolled up and he went down, out cold.
Johnny holstered his gun and shucked Fly’s gun from its holster, breaking it, swinging out the cylinder, and spilling the rounds into his open palm. He threw them away and returned the gun to its holster.
Grabbing Fly by the collar, he dragged him to the back of the building, propping him up in a sitting position. He arranged him so he looked like he was taking a nap or, more likely in Hangtree, sleeping off a drunk.
Fly’s head was bowed, chin resting on his chest. Johnny put Fly’s hat on top of the little man’s head, pulling it down tight so it would stay in place.
“Have a nice siesta,” Johnny said, going down the alley. He peeked around the corner of the saloon to make sure no one else was laying for him.
No one besides Moran and the other two facing the front of the Golden Spur and watching for him. Satisfied, he stepped out into Trail Street to confront them.
“What’d you do to Fly?” Moran again demanded.
Johnny shrugged. He didn’t bother to go into the whole scenario. Moran wasn’t worth it. “He’s having a little siesta behind the saloon. You’ll have to get along without him.”
“I can take care of myself, mister, as you’ll soon find out.”
“What’re those two for, to hold your coat?” Johnny indicated Haycox and Kern.
“Insurance in case any of your pals tries to butt in.”
“You don’t know Hangtown very well. Here, a man fights his own battles.”
“That suits me fine.”
“Yeah, I can see that.”
“You got a big rep, Cross. I rode all the way from Weatherf
ord to try you out,” Moran said.
“You came a long way to die,” Johnny told him.
Ranchers Andy and Jed came out of the Feed and Grain store on the south side of Trail Street. They were arguing the merits of different types of oats and grains for feeding thoroughbred horses, not that they owned any. They’d been in the back room with the store’s owner and were unaware of the trouble brewing on the street.
They were halfway to the cross street before realizing that they’d walked right into the middle of a showdown. Cal grabbed Jed’s arm so hard that the other winced in pain.
Jed halted, face contorted. “Let go my arm Cal. You’re hurting me. What the hell’s the matter with you?” He caught sight of Johnny confronting three tough-looking hombres in the middle of Trail Street, and the implications sank in. “Let’s get out of here!” he said, low-voiced and urgent.
The two glanced around, looking for a hole to hide in. The nearest refuge was Mabel’s Café.
Cal ducked into a crouch, lunging for the café door with Jed close behind.
Cal grabbed the door handle, tearing at it. To his surprise and dismay it refused to open.
Jed crowded up against Cal in his eagerness to be off the street before the shooting started. “Get in there Cal, why don’t you—?”
“Can’t! Door’s stuck. Won’t open.”
Cal rattled the doorknob of the immovable door, alternating with quick glances over his shoulder at the gunmen squaring off in the street. “It’s locked!” he moaned.
“Blamed fools!” Jed agonized.
Cal made a fist, thumping it on the door, pounding away. “Open up, ya blasted idjits!”
“Who’s that on t’other side of the door?” Jed said, trying to see inside.
“Yuh got me. Don’t know him from Adam.”
It was Devon Randle peering out from behind the flap of a lifted shade. He wanted no attention attracted to the café for fear of tipping Johnny Cross’s notice to the planned ambuscade at Mabel’s.
“Open up. Unlock the door and let us in!” Cal demanded.
“We’re full up. Keep moving,” Devon growled.
Cal kept pounding away with the bottom of a ham-like fist, shaking the door, rattling it in its frame. “Quit your foolishness and open up that danged door before I bust it open!”
Frantic hammering knocked a square pane of glass clean out of the window frame. It fell to the café floor, shattering.
Cal was intent on reaching through the hole to unlock and open the door, but before he could do so Devon raised a gun to the open square where the glass had been. He pointed it at Cal, who froze.
The hombre meant business!
“My momma didn’t raise no damn fools!” Cal said, choking.
Looking over Cal’s shoulder, Jed could see the gun, too. “What’s going on here?”
“Get out of here before I put a bullet in you!” Devon said. “Go on, git!”
Cal and Jed didn’t need to be shot to convince them to move along. They got out of there, scurrying west to the next cross street, turning left around the corner, down the street, and out of sight.
“Opportunity knocks,” or so they say. In this case, literally.
Distraction and diversion. It was more than Luke had dared hope for. He planned to make a move no matter what—he had to—come what may at whatever cost to himself. Then Cal and Jed had blundered along, scared witless and thinking only of getting off the street before the shooting started. Their timely interruption broke the concentration of Cort and Devon Randle.
Standing at the far end of the three windows near where Luke was sitting on the edge of his seat, Cort’s attention was focused on the Trail Street face-off, waiting for the signal from Moran.
Moran wanted the showdown to look like a fair fight, but he was taking no chances. The plan was to signal Cort to shoot Johnny at the same time Moran drew and fired his gun. It would look like Moran outgunned Johnny fair and square, so long as nobody examined the corpse too closely and found the bullet from Cort’s rifle in Johnny’s back.
Moran and his crew would stage-manage the aftermath of the killing to make sure their secret was protected. They had worked the dirty dodge before in other gunfights, or so Luke understood from picking up on the veiled hints and references in the conversations of the Randle brothers.
“Wait till Terry pushes his hat back on his head. That’s the go-ahead to shoot,” Devon coached his brother.
“I know, I know,” Cort said, impatient and dismissive. “I’ll put the first one in Cross’s belly right above the gun belt. That’ll take the starch out of him!”
Such must not be, Luke told himself.
Devon stood at the front door watching Cal and Jed scuttle away. He chuckled. “That got them going. Put them on the hop like a couple frightened rabbits.”
Cort couldn’t help but glance away from the street to his brother. “Good! Can’t have them tipping Cross that something’s not right with the café.”
Luke grabbed his crutch, holding it in both hands, right hand uppermost, with its upper end (curved and padded) pointed at Cort’s middle. Using a crutch constantly had endowed Luke with tremendous upper-body strength. He struck suddenly, savagely, without warning, thrusting the crutch at Cort’s crotch, right square above where his legs forked. It was a wicked blow, vicious, and he didn’t spare the horses any.
He’d been a champion first-class bayonet fighter back in the war, wielding the bayonetted musket with authority to club, smash, and spear. He hadn’t lost his touch, he was happy to discover.
Luke slammed a wicked butt-stroke home into Cort’s middle, right where it hurt the most. No man born of woman can withstand that kind of punishment.
Cort folded up, imploding. The impact rocked him back on his heels. He pancaked, folding at the knees. Breath whooshed out in a shocked gasp.
His face deathly pale, eyes bulging, mouth a black sucking O, Cort let the rifle fall from nerveless fingers and grabbed himself between both legs as he folded up.
The rifle clattered to the floor but didn’t go off. Too bad. It would have tipped Johnny to the lay of the land.
It was all happening so fast there was no time for thought and to stall would be fatal.
Devon whipped around, guns in hand. He held death in each hand, but for a few fateful heartbeats he had no shot. Brother Cort was in the way.
Pushing off with his good right foot, Luke lurched forward and down, grabbing hold of the butt of his sawed-off shotgun where it sat fixed in the leather carrying strap across the back of the empty chair at the table. All came tumbling down with him. Luke, weapon, and chair crashed to the floor.
Luke flopped prone across the floorboards. He snatched at the sawed-off’s pistol grip handle, hauling away at it to get it clear of the fallen chair. For a heart-stopping instant, it fought him, the looped leather sling tangled in the top of the back of the chair, which lay on its side.
Gunfire exploded from Devon’s guns. He was firing wildly above and around Cort, who was down on his knees. “Get out the way, Cort. Get down!—”
Bullets tore the air above Luke’s head, scoring the wall behind him. Screams and shouts sounded from café patrons.
Luke heaved at the sawed-off shotgun, its sling coming free and clear from the fallen chair.
Bullets from Devon’s gun tore floor planking inches from Luke’s head, spraying his face with stinging needlelike splinters, his eyes slitted against them.
Cort Randle was temporarily neutralized, but for how long? He was a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. While blocking Devon from a clear shot at Luke, he blocked Luke from a clear shot at Devon.
Another instant and Devon could step to the side clear of Cort, bringing his guns to bear directly at Luke’s prone form sprawled across the planking. Easy then to nail him to the boards with a few well-placed shots.
Luke clutched the sawed-off shotgun with one hand on the pistol grip, the other cradling the underside of twin barrels. He thumbed ba
ck twin hammers, clicking them into readiness.
No clear shot at Devon. All Luke could see of him was the bottom of one booted leg, the rest blocked by the overturned table and white-faced Cort on his knees holding himself between the legs.
One good thing about a shotgun was a fellow didn’t have to be too careful about placing his shots.
Luke pointed the sawed-off at Devon’s leg and foot and squeezed one of the twin triggers. The sawed-off roared, belching smoke and fire. The blast was deafening but not so much as to drown out the gunman’s piercing shriek.
His foot exploded in a grisly blood burst. Cut off at one leg, he pitched sideways down to the floor.
Luke caught a quick glimpse of Devon’s face that was a mask of agony. He still held his guns and Luke was minded to do something quick before Devon remembered he was doubly armed.
Luke pulled the second trigger of the sawed-off, loosing a blast that caught Devon square in the middle, leaving a ghastly wet red crater blackened at the edges where his belly had been.
His corpse came crashing down.
Cort tried to call out his brother’s name, but he still lacked the breath. His horrified hating face was lead gray, misted with a sheen of cold sweat. He seemed a fraction of his former self, all collapsed and shriveled up, but he still had big hate to keep him going.
Holding himself down below with his left hand, he freed his right hand to reach for the gun holstered on his right hip. His claw-like hand scrabbled at the gun butt.
Luke’s sawed-off was spent, both barrels empty. He let it fall from his fingers, leaving him without a weapon. Or did it?
Luke grabbed at his crutch laying flat on the floor beside him, snatching it up and swinging it high, hard, and to the left. No thrust this time but rather a wicked right hook aimed at and closing fast on Cort’s head.
The gunman couldn’t draw his gun and block Luke’s strike at the same time. Too late, he tried to ward off the blow with his left arm.
Crack! The flailing crutch impacted his head and left arm at mid-center. It broke in two pieces, the upper half flying off somewhere into space. The remaining lower half with its jagged splintered spear-point tips was clutched in Luke’s white-knuckled hand.
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