“I agree.” Tucker inched backwards, now twenty yards away from Con. “ ’Cept it won’t give me much pleasure in killing a man sporting a woman’s name. Connie.”
Even in the dim light of the back of the Mud Puppy, Tucker saw Con’s lip twitch, saw his jaw muscles tighten. “No one calls me that.”
“Except your momma, who’s calling your name about now. Connie. Did I mention I had an aunt named Connie?”
Con began to shake. His hand snaked to the gun in the shoulder holster Tucker knew he packed. And Con drew.
Tucker crouched and grabbed for his own gun.
Before Tucker cleared his holster, Con got off his first shot. Anger and distance affected him, and his bullet kicked up dirt two feet in front of Tucker.
Tucker drew his gun. His motion smooth. His breathing controlled. Turning sideways and blading himself. Making himself a smaller target as Con’s second shot tore into Tucker’s shirt and grazed his shoulder.
All time slowed for Tucker. Con thumbed back his hammer. He bent his arm alongside his torso. He shot from the hip again. A window behind Tucker shattered with the miss.
Tucker brought both hands up locked around the big Remington. Found his front sight. Let the slack out of the trigger. And shot Con Leigh center chest.
Con sank to his knees, still holding his Colt. He grunted and struggled to raise his gun as Tucker fired again. His second .44 slug tore into Con’s heart, and the little man slumped forward, lifeless.
Tucker kept his gun on Con while he walked toward him. He rolled the dead man. Con starred back at Tucker with eyes reserved for the dead. Tucker breathed a heavy sigh. He shucked out the two empty cartridges and replaced them with fresh ones before he holstered his gun with trembling hands.
Tucker wiped the sweat-mixed blood from his eyes. He started for the livery when shots erupted from the direction of the mercantile. He ran toward the shots. He rounded the corner of the saloon as an old man staggered toward him. “He gut-shot me.” The man collapsed in Tucker’s arms. Blood seeped from a hole in his stomach, the stench of the wound tangy in Tucker’s nostrils.
Men poured out of the saloons, guns drawn, willing and ready to kill anything, anyone. They ran to where Tucker cradled the man’s head in his hands. “Who shot you?” Tucker asked.
“Big guy,” the man answered. He coughed once, and bloody froth splattered Tucker’s shirtfront, mixing with his own. “Broke into my store. Caught him.” The storekeeper coughed again, and Tucker wiped blood off his cheek. “Stole rifles. Ammunition. For God’s sake, he shot me when I tried to stop him.”
Tucker turned to the sounds of drunks running toward them, vengeful figures in the night, the taste of blood already with them from killing Philo Brown. “Who was he?”
The storekeeper gagged. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth, and he shook his head. “Big guy. Bigger than any here. Rode west toward the Badlands. Funny.” He spat up a chunk of lung. “He yelled something at me in Sioux.”
Tucker looked up. The crowd was nearly upon them. “How many guns . . . ,” but Tucker realized the shopkeeper had gone limp in his arms. He eased the man’s head to the ground and stood to face the crowd. “Storekeeper said five, six men stole guns and rode south toward where your herds are grazing.”
Tucker watched the cowboys fumble to untie their reins from the hitching post. One cowboy fell from his cayuse and hit his head on the hitching rail. None of the others lifted a finger to help but left him lying. They were on a killing mission as they rode out toward the south, opposite the direction Blue Boy had gone.
Tucker walked around the corner to where he’d tied his mule. Thick dust hung in the air as the cowboys rode away to avenge the storekeeper’s death. Away from Blue Boy’s tracks. Away from the Badlands and the Great Wall.
He caught a faint shuffling sound behind him. He drew his gun and shot in one smooth motion. An Indian, his knife poised over his head, buckled over. He clutched his chest and looked up at Tucker with eyes disbelieving before he fell to the street, dead.
Tucker crouched next to the body. One of Blue Boy’s men, then, sent after Tucker to avenge the others.
Tucker spotted an Indian pony hobbled between two saloons, and he bent and hoisted the Indian over his shoulder. He knew just what he had to do. After this night, Blue Boy would have to come after him. And he’d have Lorna with him.
CHAPTER 23
* * *
The morning sun shimmered off the prairie as Blue Boy rode into camp. He carried two new rifles and enough ammunition to continue his own private war with the whites. And the food. What little he managed to grab before the storekeeper staggered dreamily out of his room might keep them for half a day. Perhaps less. In that he had failed. They’d had little luck with game along the trail, and he cursed He Who Follows for that, forcing him to ride the most difficult route toward the Wall. And forcing him to go into the white man’s town.
His dun snorted an alarm a moment before Blue Boy, too, smelled the odor of putrid blood, and he reined up short. He squinted as he recognized two bodies lying on the ground—Wild Wind and Pawnee Killer, bloating black in the heat. Blue Boy jerked his rifle from the scabbard and racked a shell. Silence. He cocked an ear but heard no life in his camp.
He urged the horse ahead at a slow walk while he studied the ground. When he arrived at the place where the dead men lay, a shuffling sound reached his ears, and he pivoted with his rifle. Something fluttered just on the edge of the camp, and he walked the horse closer. A head popped up from behind some sagebrush, then dropped back down. A moment later Jimmy Swallow stood and looked at Blue Boy. There was no smile in his greeting; nothing to indicate the boy was glad his leader had returned. There was just a sad silence that was unusual for Swallow. He bent and helped Lorna stand.
Blue Boy dropped to the ground. “So there has been trouble while I was in the white man’s town?” He slung his rifle over his shoulder. “Was it He Who Follows?”
Swallow eyed the gunny sack, and Blue Boy dropped it at his feet. Swallow bent and rooted around the sack until he found a can of peaches. He ran his knife around the rim of the can to open it. He handed it to Lorna, who took a sip of the juice before handing it back. “Pawnee Killer came into camp draped over his pony,” Swallow said. “This was sticking in his back.” He handed Blue Boy the knife Wild Wind had taken from between Pawnee Killer’s shoulder blades.
“He Who Follows did not have to plant this”—Blue Boy turned the knife over to inspect it—“into Pawnee Killer. He has thrown down a challenge. I shall think about what to do next.” Blue Boy looked at the corpse. “He was such a gentle soul. I often thought . . .” Blue Boy stopped and thought of what he was about to say. Telling another that your fallen friend was not suited to be a warrior was a huge insult. “I often thought that he would have made a great chief one day,” he lied.
He nodded to Wild Wind. “And did He Who Follows kill him as well?”
Swallow looked away.
Blue Boy took Swallow’s chin in his hand and turned the boy’s face toward him. “What happened to Wild Wind?”
“I killed him.”
Blue Boy stepped back. For the first time since starting out with his men, Blue Boy was unsure how to take this. His band had fought amongst themselves over perceived injustices with one another. But it had never resulted in death.
“I shot two arrows into his back.”
Blue Boy’s pulse quickened. Black Dog hadn’t returned, and Blue Boy had lost three members of his band to his enemy. Now another one over an argument while he was gone. His hand shook from what he knew he must do. He drew his knife and stepped toward Swallow. Blue Boy drew his knife back. Swallow stood immobile, awaiting his fate, when Lorna jumped between them. “I don’t know what you two just said, but I was here when Swallow killed Wild Wind.” She faced Swallow. “Tell him.”
Swallow remained silent while he stared at the ground.
She looked up at Blue Boy. “If he won’t tell
you, I will. If Swallow hadn’t killed Wild Wind, he would have . . . had his way with me. I tried to fight him off, but he was too strong. Swallow protected me.”
Blue Boy turned Swallow’s chin up to him again. “Is this true? Did Wild Wind try to take her?”
“It is true,” Swallow said. “He had been watching her for days, waiting until he was alone with her. I would not have been able to fight him off; he was too strong. I could do nothing else to help the woman.”
Blue Boy felt the urge to kick Wild Wind. Had he been so preoccupied envisioning the life he would have with the woman that he’d been blind to Wild Wind’s lust for Lorna?
“Do we bury Wild Wind and Pawnee Killer?” Swallow said at last.
Blue Boy looked at his back trail. There would be some cowboys among all those drunks in town sober enough to work out his trail. And they would follow to avenge the death of the shopkeeper. “We ride,” Blue Boy said. “We cannot give them a proper burial along the Ghost Road. Wakan Tanka will understand. It is because we wish to survive and reach the Great Wall that we leave them.”
Blue Boy stood, eying the way he had come. Swallow said that Pawnee Killer’s pony had ridden into camp during the night, but where was Black Dog? He must have run into trouble with He Who Follows. As much as Blue Boy wanted to await his friend’s arrival before they struck camp, he knew Cowtown and those death-hungry cowboys would be on his trail. They had to leave. Black Dog could catch up with them.
He Who Follows had caused him more than a little sorrow. His warriors had all been loyal to Blue Boy, even Wild Wind, when his lust didn’t swell up within him. Each man had pledged his loyalty to Blue Boy, and in turn he vowed to always protect them. Yet the man tracking them had undermined his trust with his band. Three warriors dead by the hand of He Who Follows, and Wild Wind dead because of his own uncontrollable urges.
It stops here, Blue Boy said to himself. I will lead what is left of my people—and my woman—away from the cowboys who would avenge the storekeeper’s death. And when that danger has passed, I will hunt you and kill you, He Who Follows. And then I will seek the sanctuary of the Great Wall.
CHAPTER 24
* * *
Aurand rode into town expecting drinking cowboys and prostitutes working overtime. He expected bartenders with their pockets fat as they gathered up dead men from the street, stripping them of whatever they could find to sell. Instead, there were ghost towns livelier than Cowtown, and he wondered if he had the right place. “Where the hell is everyone?” Red asked.
The sun was just rising, and there should have been cowboys passed out all along the street. A red-boned hound trotted out of a saloon, and Aurand drew his gun before he saw it was a dog. “You ever knowed it to be this quiet here?”
“I’ve been coming here off and on for nine, ten years,” Red said. “Mostly to get my ashes hauled.” He nodded to the cribs over the saloons. “And every time it is so wild, so dangerous, even I second-guessed myself last time whether or not I ought to have come here. But never like this.”
They pulled up in front of Sadie’s Saloon and tied their horses to the railing. Empty whisky bottles and broken beer mugs littered the floor of the saloon. Black blood spilled from some recent fight stained the center of the floor. Two tables lay smashed, and a chair still stuck into the plaster wall above the bar where it had been thrown. Like the street, Sadie’s was as empty of living people as any cemetery.
Aurand walked around the bar and grabbed two mugs from under a broken mirror running the length of the room. He filled each with foamy beer and slid Red’s toward him when someone descended the stairs carrying a shotgun. Aurand whirled on his heels and drew. Red dove under a table for safety.
“Who the hell’s down here?” a raspy voice called out.
Aurand knelt behind the bar and aimed his gun in the direction of the stairs. An old woman descended the steps as she led with her shotgun. Her pink drawers were big enough to fit Philo, and her flannel shirt showed tobacco stains down the front. She spotted Red under the table and pointed her gun at him when Aurand called out, “Don’t do that.”
She jumped, and Red yelled at Aurand, “Don’t get her jittery. That shotgun’s pointed at my butt.”
Aurand held his gun on her. “Just point that thing at the floor,” he ordered.
“You first. I don’t trust you . . .”
“Territorial marshal,” Aurand announced.
“Now I really don’t trust you.”
Aurand cocked his gun, and the sound reverberated off the bullet-pocked walls beside the staircase. “I’ve got one with your name on it, old woman.”
“Oh, all right.” She tossed the shotgun on the floor, and Red jumped. “Tell your brave partner it’s not even loaded.”
She hobbled down the last few steps and waddled around the bar. Red stood and grabbed his beer while he eyed the woman cautiously. She nodded to their mugs and snickered. “Mostly foam,” she said and poured herself four fingers of whisky from a bottle under the bar. She downed breakfast and eyed the bottle for dessert. “Sadie.” She slammed the glass down. “My old man left me this dump when some cowboys strung him up for making fun of Texans.” She squinted at him. “You really the law?”
Aurand pulled his vest back and showed her his tin star.
“Where the hell was you last night?”
“Problems?”
“You ever see it this quiet here?” Sadie asked.
“Can’t say I have.” Red walked around back of the bar and warily took the bottle of whisky from her. When she didn’t object, he poured himself a shot and nursed it. “You’re good enough to be a bartender, old-timer.” She winked at Red. “And I need a bartender.”
“He quit?”
“Some fool made him quit,” Sadie said. “Killed him in a fight last night. Just before the mercantile was robbed and the owner murdered.” She squinted at Aurand. “If you’re the law, do some law business.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find the killers, for starters. Folks figured Clive at the mercantile got hisself killed by some big guy . . .”
“Big guy?” Aurand said, motioning several inches taller than he was. “That big?”
“Oh, honey, that wouldn’t even touch this man. He was a whole lot bigger than the man what murdered my bartender, even.” She nodded to the shotgun. “I put that on him. Tied him up while he was still passed out from that last fight. Some of the boys helped carry him to the meat locker out back. He’s all trussed up with that partner of his who damn near got killed. Some fat fool claiming to be a lawman. You gonna’ take him and string him up?”
“You are the law, after all,” Red said and winked at Sadie.
Aurand took Red by the elbow and led him off to the side. “I can’t be saddled with prisoners now that I’m this close to Tucker.”
“So maybe they die when they try to escape.” Red looked around Aurand and smiled at Sadie. She shoved in plug tobacco between gaps in her teeth. “Wouldn’t be the first time for that, now would it?”
Aurand turned back to Sadie. “All right, show us your prisoners.”
She led them out back where a meat house stood, sawdust packed tightly around the seams to keep things cool inside. She took off boards across the door and swung it wide. The two men inside shielded their eyes from the sun as Aurand stepped aside. “Come on out.”
Jess helped Philo stand, and they stumbled to the door. He started to speak when Aurand ordered him to shut up. “You got some food for these prisoners?” he asked Sadie. “Maybe some water we can clean them up with?”
“And maybe you got some money to pay for it?”
“The territorial auditor will reimburse you for your expenses,” he said and shoved the men toward Red. “And fifty dollars a head for capturing them.”
“In that case, honey, take them into the saloon, and I’ll bring some meat and wet towels.”
Jess had consumed his second bowl of buffalo stew, not even complaining
how hard it was to chew now that he had two less teeth to do so with. Philo, on the other hand, bitched about everything, from the way his neck hurt from the rope the cowboys had cinched around it, to the broken ribs he picked up when they jostled him toward the telegraph pole last night. “And you couldn’t even keep Tucker under wraps long enough for me to get here?” Aurand said.
Jess wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and blew bloody snot into a napkin. “I tried my best. But he didn’t fight fair.”
“As if you ever fight fair?” Aurand said. He tapped the table, and Philo stopped sopping up stew with his biscuit. “And what the hell’s your excuse?”
“Don’t have any. Like Jess said, if Tucker had fought fair, he would have been laid out waiting for you, and I’d have been a whole sight richer than I am now.”
“If anything’s happened to him . . .”
“Could have, for all we know. Con Leigh found Tucker last night in back of the livery.”
Aurand stood abruptly. “Why didn’t you tell me Con killed him?”
“Relax,” Philo said. “Tucker’s still alive. Way they tell it happened last night, Con got the short end of the stick.”
“You telling me Tucker outdrew Con?”
Philo nodded, his mouth full of soggy biscuit. “No one saw it, but it must have been one hell of an interesting gunfight. Someone drug Con’s body to the edge of town and left it.”
Aurand sat back in his chair, rubbing a headache. Con dead complicated things. He hadn’t wanted the kid to die so suddenly. But even less, he hadn’t wanted Con to find Tucker and kill him. “Where’s Tucker now?”
Philo looked at Jess, who called to Sadie for another bowl of stew. “He ain’t in Cowtown, that’s for certain.”
“You sure Tucker killed Con?”
“Just what we heard when Sadie kept us locked in that meat locker. Some men talking how they found Con Leigh dead with two .44 holes in his chicken chest.”
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