Bullets Don't Argue

by William W. Johnstone

  Rooster took off with Tom right behind him. Perley moved Buck around behind one of the walls still standing on the old cabin where he might be protected from gunfire. Then he turned his full attention to the excited group of men some fifty yards away at the campfire. He wasn’t sure how best to delay them but decided it best not to let them know he was there until he was forced to stop them when they went after Rachael and the baby. While he watched, his rifle and pistol ready, they appeared to be arguing still but the two men who had actually kidnapped Rachael were shouting for her to come back to the fire. The name they continued to call her by was Emma.

  After a few minutes of this, with no results, Ballenger had had enough. “She can’t be far, carrying that baby. Get some limbs off that fire and use them as torches. She’s probably hiding somewhere close by.” He then grabbed one, himself, and started walking in the direction he thought he had heard the baby’s cry. Holding the torch close to him, it cast a light on his face, and even at that distance, Perley thought he had seen the man before. He would have to be closer to be sure where it was, however.

  With no desire to kill anyone unless he was given no choice, he brought his rifle up to his shoulder and aimed very carefully before slowly squeezing the trigger. Ballenger was stunned for a moment when the flaming portion of his torch was clipped off. Thinking it a near miss, he immediately dropped to the ground. Huh, Perley thought when he saw the broken piece of the torch fly off, I didn’t know I was that good a shot.

  The shot caused a riotous scramble for safety among the four conspirators as they sought cover from the attack. Hoping to make them think he was not acting alone, Perley ran a dozen yards to his left and fired another shot. He couldn’t clearly see any of them now, since they plunged into the safety outside the firelight. His second shot was aimed at the coffeepot sitting beside the fire, sending it up in the air about a foot. Without hesitating, he got up and ran back to his right, about a dozen yards past the spot where he had taken the first shot. Alert to the fact they were under attack, there were four return shots fired at the spot of his second shot, this time, having seen his muzzle flash. As he ran to his next location, he saw their muzzle flashes and that’s where he aimed his third shot, again moving as soon as he pulled the trigger.

  He stared hard into the darkness to make sure none of the four had slipped out of whatever cover they had found against his attack. He was sure that, so far, no one had tried to counterattack. When the full moon of the night suddenly popped up over the horizon, he knew that his siege wouldn’t last much longer. At least he was confident that he had bought a little time for Rooster and Tom. It was time to make his own departure. From now on, there would be no more harassment shots, if he had to shoot again, it would be to stop them.

  * * *

  “You see anything, Joe?” Logan asked, as they hugged the ground behind the log they had taken for cover.

  “Not a damn thing,” Cutter replied. He looked over at the other two behind the log. “How ’bout you?”

  “Nothing,” Ballenger answered. “I think they got what they came for and now they’re gone.” It had been fully a half hour since any shots had been fired in their direction. With the moon now fairly high over the prairie, the dark outline of the burned-out cabin was clearly distinguished from the trees around it. After giving it more thought, Ballenger suddenly got to his feet.

  “You damn fool,” Cutter barked. “You lookin’ to get shot?”

  “No, I’m not,” Ballenger stated calmly. “There’s nobody here and we’ve been played for a bunch of fools.” He walked out to the remains of the fire, stood there, and looked around him. “It was just one man. He ran back and forth between shots to make us think we were surrounded. Think about it. If there were more than one, why didn’t any of them shoot at the same time?” He reached down, picked up the coffeepot, and looked at the hole in it. “He’s a helluva shot, too.”

  “Because he hit the damn coffeepot?” Logan scoffed. “Hell, he hit the coffeepot when he was tryin’ to shoot at us.”

  “He hit the coffeepot because he was aiming at the coffeepot,” Ballenger insisted. “His first shot was that stick of wood I was using as a torch. He clipped it right in two. That wasn’t a miss. He wasn’t trying to kill me.” He paused before he continued. “And that tells me he’s weak. He hasn’t got the guts to kill a man.”

  “All that may be true,” Brent Slocum spoke up then. “But the fact of the matter is the woman and child you were paid to deliver got away.”

  “Who was paid?” Logan demanded. “We ain’t been paid! It’s your damn fault she got away. Me and Joe did what we was hired to do, we got the woman and the baby and brought ’em here, just like you said. It was you two, doin’ all that arguin’ about her bein’ the right woman or not, that gave her the chance to run. Our deal was to bring her and that baby here and you was to pay us our money.”

  “Well, we’re just wasting time right now,” Ballenger said. “We’ve got one man to kill before we get the baby back, and we need to catch him before he gets them back to Bison Gap. If you want your money, we’ll have to get that baby, and to hell with the woman. With four of us, there shouldn’t be any trouble taking that one man down.”

  “Three of you,” Brent was quick to correct him. “I’ll not be a part of it. When you get the baby back, bring him to the Lazy-S.”

  “Very well,” Ballenger said. “I still like the odds.” He looked at Cutter and Logan. “You still want to earn that money?”

  “Oh, we’re goin’, whether you pay us or not,” Cutter answered. “That son of a bitch ain’t gettin’ away with takin’ potshots at us.”

  “Good,” Ballenger said, “let’s get going then.” They hurriedly threw their saddles on their horses and left Brent Slocum to watch them disappear into the night.

  CHAPTER 19

  With the light of a full moon shining down on the trail along the creek, Perley held Buck to a comfortable lope, one the big bay could maintain for a good while. It was questionable whether or not he could catch up with Rooster and the others. From Comanche Run, it was a two-day ride back to Rooster’s cabin under normal conditions. They were going to have to stop somewhere to rest the horses, just as he was. If Rooster found a good place to stop, where they would not be easily seen, there was a good possibility he might not see them. A lot of good he would be to them if he rode past them in the middle of the night. With that in mind, he decided he’d best not ride too far before he picked a spot to stop the pursuit. But that would not be critical for a little while yet, so he urged Buck on.

  When he thought it was time, he reined Buck back to a slower pace and began to look closely at the patches of trees and bushes along the creek, trying to judge each spot for its potential for a defensive stand. None stood out until he came to a place where the creek split to go on both sides of a small island, only big enough to contain three trees, one of which had fallen. With a thick growth of laurel bushes on two sides of it, it looked to be an ideal ambush site, as well as a good choice to stand off an assault. “That might do just fine,” he told the bay gelding and pulled him up while he surveyed the surroundings. Once he made up his mind, he moved quickly then to prepare for the pursuit he knew was sure to follow him. Guiding Buck into the water, he crossed over the little island and dismounted between the two trees still standing. Then he gathered dead limbs and leaves from the fallen tree and built a fire behind it. When he was satisfied his fire would burn for some time yet, he climbed back on Buck and crossed the other fork of the creek to the opposite bank. Riding back in the direction from which he had just come, he picked his spot. About forty yards from the little island, he came to a low mound of laurel bushes. The mound was high enough to hide Buck from the trail across the creek and gave him a good platform to fire from. Satisfied, he let Buck drink from the creek until he had slaked his thirst, then he led him around the mound and tied him there.

  * * *

  With the same thoughts in his mind that Perley
had when he loped along the creek trail, Ballenger scanned the banks of the creek as he and his two partners hurried to catch up with him. He knew that Perley would eventually have to rest his horse, just as the three of them would. At best, he felt Perley had no more than a thirty-minute head start, and they pushed their horses hard to try to make up that time. There had been some thoughts back there at Comanche Run of leaving the responsibility for catching up with the fleeing woman and child with Cutter and Logan. But he felt quite a bit of fascination for the cocky sniper who had danced back and forth to pin them down while the woman fled. He seemed worthy of his challenge. A crack shot, no doubt about that, but why did he hesitate when he could have killed two or more of them had he so chosen? It took a conscienceless killer to do that, a professional killer like himself. Ballenger prided himself in his reputation as the fastest and the best, and he felt bound to test the mettle of this man. In spite of his eagerness to catch him, however, he was not willing to take unnecessary chances, so he let Logan and Cutter ride ahead of him. His thoughts were interrupted then by an alert from Waylon Logan.

  “Yonder,” Logan said, and when Ballenger pulled up beside him, he pointed to a thin line of smoke drifting up from what appeared to be an island in the middle of the creek. “Looks like a log layin’ across there. Wonder if he’s got the woman with him?”

  “The damn fool built a fire,” Cutter remarked. “I reckon we can thank him for that.”

  Ballenger was not sure, almost disappointed that the man he had become so fascinated with would build a fire to give away his hiding place. Maybe, he thought, the woman is with him and she had to do something for the baby that required a fire. “We’d best be careful,” he warned.

  “We can get a little closer and see if we can’t smoke him outta there,” Logan said. That seemed to make sense, so they followed him to a stand of little pines about fifty yards from the island. There they left their horses and split up, each one making his way to a position to fire on the island. Ballenger’s last remark to them before they split was to remind them that, if the baby was hit, there would be no payday for anybody. “With all the squawlin’ that young’un done, it’d give me some satisfaction to put a bullet in him,” Logan saw fit to remark.

  * * *

  From his position behind the mound, Perley watched the three men scatter in the moonlight and move in closer to the island. As soon as the first one was set behind a tree, he opened up on the log, sending pieces of bark flying. Perley waited until the other two got set and they started shooting as well. Now after moving in closer, all three were actually between him and the island. He brought his rifle to his shoulder, laid the front sight on the one closest to him, and squeezed off one round. Joe Cutter cried out in pain when the .44 slug caught him behind the right shoulder and he dropped to the ground. Seeing one of the other two get up from his position in a clump of berry bushes and run into the trees on the bank, Perley figured he was trying to get a shot behind the log. So he left his position on the mound and ran down the opposite bank until he was even with the log on the island. He got there at the same time Waylon Logan reached a point on the opposite side of the creek. Able to see behind the log then, Logan saw that there was no one there at the fire. “Hey! There ain’t no . . .” was as far as he got before the bullet from Perley’s rifle impacted with his chest and dropped him to the ground.

  By moving to intercept Logan, Perley was now in a position where he wasn’t sure where the third party was. He moved back to the mound, his main concern to make sure Buck was all right. When he looked toward the spot where he had seen the third man position himself, he was no longer there. He considered his choices—try to work his way through the trees on the other bank, looking for the third man, or call it a day and go after Rooster and the others. He had shot two of the three and the other one was either hiding or stalking him now. As he thought that, he unconsciously looked all around him. There was one more place to look for him, so he untied Buck from the tree limb and led him to the little clump of pines where the three men had left their horses.

  The horses were still there, three of them, tied to the pine limbs. He made a quick decision. He wasn’t sure where the third man was, but at least he could leave him on foot, so he gathered up the horses’ reins and climbed up into the saddle. It was an awkward situation, but the horses didn’t resist as he held a handful of reins and nudged Buck forward. It was a good decision not to take the time to rig up a lead rope, for he heard the snap of a bullet as it passed close to his head. He was gone before he heard the report of the rifle that shot it. Asking Buck for speed, he galloped down the creek trail, lying low on Buck’s neck as a second shot passed overhead. Too far for accuracy, he thought. My luck’s holding up. He figured he had galloped for over a mile when he felt some of the reins slipping from his hand. He reined Buck back to a lope, but one of the horses was now free. Perley didn’t stop to try to catch him again. The horse followed him for another quarter of a mile before pulling up to a stop. Perley pushed on for what he guessed to be about ten miles before stopping for the night, his horses tired as well as his hand.

  Fully a dozen miles behind him, Ballenger stood, perplexed as he returned to the place he had first taken cover. He was feeling the sting of his second defeat at the hands of the unknown gunman, when he saw him galloping away, leading their horses, leaving him on foot. He was even more determined to face him now on an even playing field where no one held any advantage over the other. That was the real test. He was not as sure of his opinion before, that the man was too weak to kill. That would only be determined when he was staring death in the face, instead of shooting at someone who couldn’t see him.

  Standing out in the middle of the trail, he looked to his right to see the body of Waylon Logan on the creek bank, lined up with the log lying between the two trees on the island. Beyond Logan’s body, he could see the small fire dying out. There was no reason to check on Logan. He could tell he was dead from where he stood. Disgusted with the way the chase had gone, he decided to go back and see how badly Cutter was hurt. He found him a few feet from where he had been hit. He was alive, but in considerable pain, although the wound was not life-threatening.

  Cutter looked up at Ballenger and groaned. “Did you get him?”

  “No, he got away and he took our horses with him,” Ballenger said.

  “What about Waylon?” Cutter asked.

  “Dead,” Ballenger answered. “How bad are you hurt?”

  “Pretty bad, I think,” Cutter replied and groaned when he tried to prop himself up against a tree. “I gotta get to a doctor. I’m bleedin’ a helluva lot.”

  “Well, unless you think you can walk about eighty miles, you’re not gonna see one. We don’t have a horse. And not only that, we don’t have any food or anything else.”

  “That don’t sound too good,” Cutter groaned.

  “No, it doesn’t.” He started to say more about the hopelessness of their situation but stopped short when something moving in the dark shadows caught his eye. Without having to think about it, he whipped his handgun out, ready to fire. “Well, I’ll be . . . ,” he started and returned his pistol to its holster. “Salvation,” he announced dramatically. “The horses got loose. Come here, boy,” he coaxed.

  “Come here.” The horse did not come to him, but it remained standing in the shadows. Slowly, so as not to spook the horse, Ballenger walked up to it, speaking calmly to it as he approached. He took hold of the reins and stroked the horse’s neck for a few minutes, looking for the others, but there was only the one horse. He led it back to Cutter.

  “Glory be,” Cutter exclaimed. “That’s ol’ Sam! That’s my horse. Did you find your’n?”

  “No, this was the only one. I don’t know what happened to the others, whether he turned them loose or not, but I think if your horse came back, the others probably would have, too. So what I think happened is your horse just happened to pull away.”

  “We ain’t got but one horse? We’re
gonna have to ride double.”

  “No, I don’t think we’ll have to do that,” Ballenger said. In a fraction of a second, his six-gun was in his hand and looking at Cutter’s chest.

  “What the hell?” Cutter gasped.

  “No hard feelings, I just don’t like to ride double,” Ballenger said. He squeezed the trigger when Cutter tried to come up from the ground, his shot slamming the terrified man in the chest. He cocked the hammer and aimed the pistol at Cutter’s head, but there was no need for another shot.

  * * *

  A few miles south of the bend in the creek where Perley had stopped for the night, Rooster stood at the edge of the trail staring back in the darkness as if expecting Perley to show up at any minute. “You want some more of this coffee?” Tom called out to him from the small fire they had thought it safe to build.

  “A bit,” Rooster replied and walked back to join Tom and Rachael by the campfire. He seemed more concerned about the safety of Perley than either of them did. Had he ridden with the unassuming young man as they had, he might have understood their feeling that whatever Perley got into, he would always land on his feet. “I figured he might catch up with us by now,” Rooster said as Rachael drained the last of the pot into his cup.

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Perley Gates,” Tom said. “He knows how to take care of himself. Ain’t that right, Rachael?” She said that it was. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t ride right on by us,” Tom continued. “We’re hid pretty good here.”

  “Maybe so,” Rooster said, “but I think I’ll stay awake tonight, just in case they got by him and they’re still comin’ after us.”

  “I’ll split it up with you,” Tom said. “Ain’t no use in you havin’ to stay awake all night.”

  * * *