Coot was not. Using his right hand, he shucked his short-barreled carbine out of the saddle scabbard. The reins were wrapped around his left hand and wrist.
Coot leaned forward and down along the right-hand side of the pinto’s magnificently muscled neck to shield himself behind the body of his horse, clutching the saddle horn for support with his left hand. It was a classic maneuver of the kind used by mounted Comanche warriors. He thrust the carbine under the horse’s head and around its massive neck. Not making a fuss about aiming, he simply pointed the weapon at its target—Troy Madison.
Wielding the piece one-handedly, Coot squeezed off a shot, the carbine barking.
A black dot blossomed in the middle of Madison’s forehead where the round drilled it neatly. He died instantly, like a frog pierced through the brain by a hatpin. Blood so dark it seemed almost black jetted from the bullet hole.
Madison flew backward off his saddle and horse so violently and abruptly it was as if he’d been lassoed by an invisible rope and yanked to the ground.
Of the five Hog Ranch riders, only two were gunfighters—Troy Madison and Brat Sisely. They were both stone dead before the others went for their guns.
The other three were gunmen, killers, but not gunfighters. They lacked the keen eye and razor-sharp instincts of the professional gun. The veteran scout and sometime Indian fighter Buck Thornton was quickest of them, his six-gun leaping into his hand and swinging toward Johnny Cross. He glimpsed the gun in Johnny’s hand pointing at him.
Gunfire flared from Johnny’s Colt, three quick rounds tearing Buck’s chest to pieces.
Buck jerked and twisted in the saddle under the impact. The gun in his hand suddenly felt like it was a million miles away. Unfired, it dropped from his nerveless fingers. He didn’t care. He was beyond caring. He pitched out of the saddle and a black abyss opened to swallow him up.
He knew it was the blackness of death and then he ceased to know anything.
Titus Gow had a gun in each hand, and he was shooting at Coot. Shouting, and roaring, his voice seemed louder than the gunfire. If it was words, they were in a language no mortal man could understand, an unintelligible primal shriek.
The pinto’s forelegs came down, dropping all four hooves on the ground.
Coot worked the reins wrapped around his hand and wrist, turning the pinto to the left, wheeling it around to bring the carbine in line with Gow. It spat, making a sharp, flat cracking sound. The bullet tagged Gow in the belly, a puff of dust springing up from his incredibly filthy shirt. He spasmed, then collapsed, jackknifing.
Coot’s next shot took the top of Gow’s head off.
It all happened so fast that Kinney Scopes was in a dilemma. He didn’t know whether to pull his gun or turn tail and run, so he tried to do both. One hand tugged out his gun while the other tried to turn the horse to flee in the opposite direction.
Johnny Cross had always disliked Scopes, with his face seemingly frozen in a permanent expression of sneering contempt. He wiped off Scopes’s smirk . . . with bullets.
“You okay, Coot?” Johnny asked, not even breathing hard.
“Fit as a fiddle.” Coot put his carbine back into the sheath. Catching sight of Johnny, he frowned. “Looks like you got tagged, though, son.”
Johnny lifted an eyebrow in question. Coot motioned, touching a hand to the right side of his neck. Johnny put a hand to the same place on his own neck, surprised to see his fingers come away bloody. He quickly became aware of a burning, stinging sensation in the affected area. Blood droplets stained the right shoulder of his lightweight denim jacket. His fingertips traced out the path of a shallow groove a half inch wide and several inches long running diagonally along the side of his neck.
A flesh wound—one of Brat Sisely’s bullets had creased him. “Well I’ll be a son of a—!”
“Told you Brat was fast,” Coot said, not smugly but righteously, a man justified.
“Fast but not accurate,” Johnny countered.
“Lucky for you!”
It was lucky, Johnny knew. But as the saying goes, A miss is as good as a mile. He wasn’t going to get upset about what could have happened. That was no way to go through life. Not his kind of life.
Johnny unknotted his bandanna, folding it and pressing it against the wound. It was still bleeding but not much. No veins or arteries severed, else he’d be spurting a stream of blood three feet long with every heartbeat.
Uncapping his canteen, he wet the bandanna and used it to mop up the blood, wiping it clean.
In the intense physical excitement of the kill, he’d been unaware of the wound. Now that he was aware, it discomforted him. Nothing he couldn’t handle, though. Hell, he’d been shot for real, not once but a few times during his wild youth. This wound was only a scratch by comparison.
Coot rode up so that he was alongside Johnny and turned in the saddle to face him. Lifting the flap of a saddlebag, Coot took out a quart bottle of whiskey. “Here, try some of this. It’s good for what ails you.”
“Thank you kindly,” Johnny said, uncorking the bottle “It’s a little early for me—”
“Since when?” Coot scoffed, snorting.
“Considering the circumstances, I’ll join the jubilee.” Johnny took a long pull, liquid heat trickling down his throat into his belly, only to shoot back up to the top of his head to deliver a much-needed blast. “Ahhhhh . . .”
He wet a corner of the bandanna with the whiskey and swabbed it against the grooved crease in his neck, cleansing it. It burned wicked good, throwing a wave of delicious weakness through him that passed as quickly as it came.
“Drink it. Don’t take a bath in it,” Coot said impatiently.
“No worry about that. It ain’t even Saturday night.” Johnny started to hand the bottle back, thought better of it, and took another pull before returning it.
Coot raised the bottle in a kind of toast. “Seeing as how I do hate to see a man drink alone, I believe I’ll join you.” He drank deep, corked the bottle, and dropped it into the saddlebag.
Johnny eyed the body of Brat Sisely sprawled on the ground, a skinny galoot under five feet tall with pipe stem limbs. “I felt kind of bad about burning down that punk kid, but since he almost got me, I don’t feel so bad.”
“Kid, eh?” Coot said, a corner of his mouth twisted cynically upward. “How old you reckon he was anyway, Johnny?”
“Fourteen . . . fifteen, maybe.”
Coot’s laughter was mocking. “Fourteen? Not hardly! Brat Sisely is—he was—bout as old as you.”
“The hell you say,” Johnny scoffed.
“It’s the gospel truth,” Coot maintained. “He was raised in an orphanage where they fed the kids hardly ever and never. Brat wasn’t able to get his growth after that, though he could pack away the grub like a lumberjack.
“He was just naturally born lightning fast with a gun, but that baby face and undersized stick-figure body was his real ace in the hole. Brat fooled a lot of bad hombres into underestimating him as a punk kid so that he could get close enough to kill them. I seed him at End of Track railroad camp in Kansas last year. That’s how I knowed who he was. Brat was working for a ring of tinhorn gamblers, wiping out the competition one kill at a time. Killed twelve men in all, like I said.
“Reckon you was the unlucky thirteenth . . . unlucky for him.”
Johnny pushed back his hat, scratching his head. “If that don’t beat all! Kid looks like he barely got out of knee pants.”
“You’d change your tune if you ever seed the way he could soak up the redeye. He was pure hell on the saloon gals, too.”
“Now you’re just joshing me, Coot.” Johnny said, putting his foot down.
“Like hell! He used to take ’em on—two, three a night. Some of the ladies told me he worked ’em almighty hard, too,” the elder man insisted.
“It’s a wonderment,” Johnny said, shaking his head. “Just goes to show that sometimes things ain’t what they seem. . . .”
“Sometimes? More often than not, I’d say,” Coot crowed, cackling with glee.
“You really are a crazy old bast—”
Coot’s laughter drowned out the tail end of Johnny’s remark. Mirth subsiding, he looked around at the bodies littering the sandy soil of the pass. “What to do with the bodies, son?”
“Leave them where they fell. I don’t give a good damn who finds them and I ain’t minded to go to the time and trouble of hauling them to the sinkhole to hide them,” Johnny said.
“Maybe we should go make ourselves scarce, instead,” Coot said.
“Now I know you ain’t that drunk, old-timer,” Johnny said, eyeing the other doubtfully, “so where’d that loco notion come from? The law don’t care about a bunch of dead Hog Ranchers. Ol’ Barton’ll be so tickled that a sizeable vacancy has opened up in the gang that he’ll probably make us special deputies.”
“T’ain’t the law I’m worried about, Johnny.”
“You can’t be talking about the Hog Ranch. Not that bunch of pimps, chicken thieves, and six-snake whiskey vendors!”
“No, no,” Coot said, making warding gestures as if trying to shoo away Johnny’s mistaken notions.
Johnny wondered, not for the first time, whether the wizened but still spry oldster might not be a bit cracked upstairs.
“Let you in on a little secret, son,” Coot began. “Back before the war, and I mean way back, Titus Gow was partnered up in a slave-stealing ring with Jimbo Turlock.”
“I know Jimbo was a slave stealer back in the day. He was a lot of things . . . all bad.” Johnny was interested despite his misgivings that Coot was going off on a wild tear. “Titus Gow is new to me. Never heard of him.”
“That was before your time up in the border states,” Coot said.
“Things being what they are, I don’t reckon I’ll be getting to know him any better,” Johnny noted dryly, indicating Gow’s corpse with a tilt of his head.
“Think so? You might be surprised. Anyhow, Titus and Jimbo was thick as thieves in the early days—hell, they was thieves. Worse—they posed as abolitionists in Missouri, feeding slaves a line to run away from their masters so’s they could smuggle them across the river to freedom in Kansas. Instead they took them into Arkansas and sold them to new masters.”
“I’ve heard how it works,” Johnny said, “and it’s no surprise to me that you know how it works. Such devilments! I reckon there ain’t no scoundrels on the frontier you don’t know, old-timer.”
“I been around,” Coot Dooley said, self-satisfied. “And I mean to be around a whole lot longer. So listen to me when I tell you this and listen good. There’s an old saw about big fleas having little fleas that live off’n them, and so on and so forth. Think of Jimbo Turlock as the big flea and Titus Gow as the little flea. Titus surely did admire Jimbo and fastened on to him whenever he could. He followed him down into the Nations in Oklahoma and rode with the Free Company, savvy?”
“What’re you trying to say, Coot?” Johnny asked. “Spit it out.”
“Titus Gow wasn’t no Hog Rancher. He ran with the big dogs. I suspicion that with Titus here in the Breaks, Jimbo Turlock can’t be too far off.”
TWENTY
The Mallory family and friends ate dinner in a private room off the dining room of the Cattleman Hotel. Present were Gordon Mallory, the gray-bearded patriarch; his lovely daughter Ashley; family advisor Kale Dancer, and the senior Mallory’s manservant and confidant, Sgt. Quarles.
The private room had ornate red-and-gold wallpaper and its own fireplace, where a crackling blaze shed light. The table was set with a shining white linen tablecloth, fine china, and glittering silverware.
The Cattleman Hotel was the best hotel in Hangtree town—best in the county, not that that was saying much. It featured a good chef, offered a varied bill of fare, featuring many courses, and received a fair amount of trade from the businessmen of the district, the promoters, cattle buyers, and speculators, and the handful of well-to-do ranchers and farmers.
The Mallory group was served by a long-faced, tight-lipped waiter in a white jacket and dark slacks. He served the various courses off a wheeled cart, periodically perambulating back and forth to the kitchen as needed.
Gordon Mallory and Kale Dancer began with a big drink of whiskey or three. Quarles declined, being an abstainer. Miss Ashley sipped sherry from a delicately thin, dainty glass, which saw more than a few refills.
Gordon Mallory sat in a chair at the head of the table, his wheelchair set off to one side out of the way. The diners consumed various courses of chicken, veal, ham, and beef—lots of beef. Ribs, roasts, cutlets, chops. Baked potatoes, corn fritters, hush puppies, biscuits with gravy, and dinner rolls with butter were part of the meal.
Each course was washed down with a bottle of wine, each bottle being of a different vintage. The Cattleman boasted a pretty fair wine cellar, considering its location on the hundredth meridian, which marked the westernmost advance of civilization.
Miss Ashley kept up the wine-bibbing pace with her father and Kale Dancer. Her eyes sparkled and her cheeks were red. As the wine kept coming, Mallory cast ever more anxious glances at the bubbly, vivacious Ashley, who had begun to laugh and chatter a bit more animatedly and louder than might be thought entirely proper for a young lady of refinement and breeding, even on the rim of civilization.
“I do believe you’ve had enough, dear,” he said after a bit of throat-clearing and ah-hemming.
“I’m fine, Father,” Ashley said, not without sighing and raising her eyes to heaven as if calling on the Divine to mark her long-suffering forbearance in the face of such gauche and unwarranted parental tyranny.
The meal continued to unroll, course by course, bottle by bottle. After Mallory refreshed and refilled his own glass of wine, he positioned the bottle so it was out of Ashley’s reach.
She chattered on about some pleasant triviality or another between swallows, soon draining the last. Noticing her empty crystal goblet, she proffered it to Kale Dancer, seated within ready reach of the wine bottle. “If you would be so kind, Kale,” she said, smiling.
Dancer reached for the bottle, ready to oblige.
“Er, I think not,” Mallory said gently, with more throat-clearing.
Dancer’s face fell for an instant, but he recovered his blandly assured self-confidence in a heartbeat and withdrew his hand from the wine bottle. A gentle smile was accompanied by a shrug which said, I know it’s ridiculous, but what can I do?
“Father, please! I’m not a child,” Ashley said, downcast and pouting.
“How much more do you need, Ashley? Haven’t you had enough?” Mallory softly chided.
“What do you expect me to do, Father, drink the water?”
“That would be a lot to ask,” Kale Dancer said lightly in a sortie to forestall the darkening mood. He showed a mouthful of splendid white teeth in a shiny smile.
“Have some coffee,” Mallory suggested
“I don’t want coffee. It keeps me awake,” Ashley snapped.
“Not with all the wine you’ve been drinking.”
“How often do I get to eat a decent meal in a real restaurant? Why do you have to spoil it for me?”
“Oh, all right,” Mallory said, breaking first. He sighed, his face troubled. “Kale, if you’ll do the honors . . .”
“My pleasure, sir,” Dancer said cheerfully, pouring fresh wine into Ashley’s glass, filling it halfway.
“Don’t be a piker, Mr. Dancer,” Ashley said. “Fill it.”
Dancer looked at Mallory, who shrugged, a tiny nervous tic twitching away at a corner of his mouth. Dancer resumed pouring, filling the glass nearly to the brim.
“Thank you!” Ashley said pettishly. She drank deeply, her face reddening. After that first long thirsty swallow, she slowed down, making a show of taking small, delicate sips.
The meal continued without further incident. The waiter returned as needed, clearing away dirty dishes and setting out clean ones
for subsequent courses. Empty bottles were replaced by full ones, those soon emptied.
Finally came dessert and coffee. Mallory and Dancer had an after-dinner drink, a brandy. Ashley had a brandy, too, though not without displaying a flash of temper when her father initially made a foredoomed attempt to deny her request.
The meal was done.
“Thank you for dinner, sir,” Quarles said quietly.
“Quite all right, Quarles,” Mallory said. He suggested Dancer join him outside for a cigar.
“Shall I get Piney?” Quarles asked.
“That won’t be necessary. You and Kale can put me in my chair.”
“Yes, sir.”
Quarles positioned the wheelchair nearer Mallory, then pulled back the chair with Mallory in it, away from the table. Dancer and Quarles stood on each side of him and reached under one of Mallory’s arms, lifting him out of the chair to a standing position. A blanket slid off Mallory’s legs, falling to the floor. Supporting Mallory’s weight, they hefted him to the wheelchair, easing him into it.
Quarles picked up the blanket, brushed it off, and unfolded it, covering Mallory’s legs.
Kale Dancer stood behind the wheelchair, pushing it slowly across the floor with Mallory in it, while Quarles crossed quickly to the connecting door between the private room and the public dining room, the latter unoccupied save for a table or two of late diners.
Dancer wheeled Mallory through the dining room into a hallway. Ashley traipsed alongside, with Quarles bringing up the rear a few paces behind.
Through the lobby and out the front entrance to the veranda fronting Trail Street they went. The men lit up cigars. Ashley Mallory sat a few paces away in a porch swing, fanning herself, looking unutterably bored and making no attempt to hide it.
When he finished smoking his cigar, Quarles went off to fetch Piney, returning with him a few minutes later. They found Mallory in his wheelchair at the foot of the stairs leading to the second floor where the group had their rooms.
Piney leaned over Mallory, scooping him up in his arms. The hulking manservant held him like a child, showing no sign of strain or muscular exertion. With equal facility, he carried Mallory upstairs, Quarles hurrying on ahead to open the hotel room door.
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