The instant before he died, the tall man knew fear.
Even a third shot fired into Sammy’s belly at point-blank range didn’t halt the hurtling, lethal, downward arc of the club.
The gunman’s skull collapsed under the impact with a distinct popping sound. Like a pumpkin hit by a sledgehammer, his head burst apart, scattering, not seeds, but blood and bone.
Sammy hit the floor a moment after the dead gunman and the weight of his massive body seemed to shake the hotel to its foundations.
“Oh, my God, we’re all dead,” Sedley yelled. “There’s been too much shooting, so let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Damn it, Hamp, why didn’t you tell me you couldn’t shoot?” Shawn yelled, irritated and scowling.
“Sure I can shoot,” Sedley protested. “But I can’t shoot straight when I get nervous, and I was nervous. Now grab the girl and we’ll go.”
“What about Sammy?” Shawn said.
“Sammy’s dead,” Sedley said. He took a ragged breath. “And we’re pretty close to being dead.”
“Get dressed,” Shawn said to the girl.
“She doesn’t have time to get dressed,” Sedley said. He removed his frockcoat and hung it over the girl’s shoulders. “Pick up your duds and we’ll get out of here.”
“But I need to brush my hair,” the girl said.
Shawn interrupted the string of curses from Sedley.
“Get her out into the hallway,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”
“I told you he’s dead.”
“If he is, later I’ll say a rosary for his poor soul,” Shawn said. “But right now I want to make sure.”
Sedley hustled the girl through the ruined doorway. She held her clothes bundled in her arms and a purple bruise stained her left cheekbone.
Shawn kneeled beside Sammy, but all the life that had been in the man was gone.
“May God rest you, Sammy,” Shawn said, a strange, lost sadness in him.
Then he rose to his feet and followed Sedley and the girl out of the room.
A door opened to his left and a blowsy, middle-aged woman in a see-through nightgown stood framed in the doorway. She wore a black, lacy mask over her eyes and a seductive smile on her lips.
“What’s all the shooting?” she said.
“Just high spirits is all,” Shawn said.
“Then do you want to come in and join my masquerade, cowboy?” she said. She raised a white, blue-veined hand in an attempt to grab Shawn’s shoulder. “I’ve got whiskey and cigars,” she said. “And I’ll give you a mask of your very own.”
The woman put her forefingers against her temples like horns, made a grotesque face and her tongue darted in and out of her mouth.
“A devil mask,” she said. “Ssssssss . . .”
She sounded just like a snake.
CHAPTER TEN
Still shaken by his encounter with the woman, Shawn sprinted out of the hotel . . . and into a gunfight.
Hamp Sedley blasted shots into the moon-bladed street where a dozen shadowy figures scurried from cover to cover.
“Put the girl on your horse and get the hell out of here,” Shawn yelled.
Sedley’s head was bent to his Colt as he fed fresh rounds into the cylinder.
“I’ll stick,” he said.
A shot kicked up a startled exclamation point of dirt at Shawn’s feet and a second chipped splinters from the wooden hotel sign above his head.
“The hell with that!” Shawn yelled. “Get up on your horse.”
“What about you?” Sedley said.
“I’ll follow you. Now go.” He pointed into darkness. “That way.”
As bullets split the air around them, Sedley read the urgency in Shawn’s face. He grabbed the girl by the arm. “Come on, let’s get the hell out of here,” he said.
Shawn didn’t wait to see the gambler and the girl leave.
He dived behind a zinc horse trough that stood just outside the hotel—and was rewarded by a volley of fire that sent up vees of water and started half a dozen leaks in the side of the trough.
Shawn swallowed hard, a tight knot in his belly.
Damn, even in the dark those gunmen of Hank Cobb’s were good.
He rose up and thumbed off a shot at a crouched figure on the opposite boardwalk.
A clean miss.
The gunman faded into darkness and as shots buzzed around him like angry hornets, Shawn figured there were a dozen of Cobb’s men out there, stalking him.
He knew then that he was going to lose this street fight. It was only a matter of time.
A cloud passed across the face of the moon and, for a few moments at least, Shawn had a chance to move. He jumped to his feet and sprinted for a parked freight wagon outside a feed store.
A few bullets chased him, but he reached the wagon safely and crouched behind a wheel. Now he had a dark building behind him and wouldn’t be outlined against the lit hotel.
So long as he crouched behind the wagon, Shawn’s view of the street had narrowed to what was in front of him.
Now Cobb and his men would need to come at him in a rush instead of holding back to pick him off at a distance.
The big Studebaker protected his front and there was no boardwalk outside the feed store, so he had the door at his back.
The wind had grown turbulent and now it furiously gusted so much blown sand along the street and high above the buildings it obscured the face of the moon.
Shawn watched a wadded-up sheet of newspaper tumble past the wagon like a shotgunned jackrabbit and it seemed that every hanging sign in town creaked and banged on its chains.
It seemed like a dilly of a sandstorm was brewing and whether it would aid him or Cobb, Shawn as yet had no way of telling.
There was a lull in the firing as Cobb apparently considered his next move and Shawn took time to feed fresh shells into his Colt.
After that, all he could do was wait.
Hank Cobb held the cards in this game and right then he was standing pat.
But not for long . . .
They came at Shawn all at once, ten men wearing monks’ robes, their heads bent against the wind and stinging sand.
Shawn fired once through the spokes of the wagon wheel and he saw a man grab his knee and go down.
No time for thinking!
He made an instinctive decision and stepped away from the wagon.
He’d die standing like a man on his own two feet, gun in hand, and give up his life in one, glorious, hellfire moment.
It was what his father would expect of him. What his tutor, grim old Luther Ironside, the colonel’s segundo, would demand of him.
But it was not to be.
From Shawn’s left, a racketing roar of rifle fire ripped through the night and he saw a man spin and fall, and then another went down, hit hard and screaming.
Cobb’s gunmen scattered for cover as a man on a white horse drew rein beside Shawn, windblown sand driving into him. “Get the hell out of here!” he yelled above the savage roar of the storm.
No second invitation was needed.
Shawn sprinted to his horse, swung into the saddle and kneed his mount into a gallop, heading into the now sand-ripped darkness that had swallowed Sedley and the girl.
Behind him, he heard a man shout and guns fired.
Then there was a lull.
Shawn drew rein and looked behind him, his stinging eyes searching the gloom for a glimpse of the white horse.
He saw only the somber shroud of the night and the great, tumbling breakers of blown sand.
There was nothing in Shawn O’Brien’s character and breeding that would make him flee the field of battle while a man who’d saved his life was in mortal danger.
He slid the Winchester from the boot and headed back toward Holy Rood at a trot. On both sides of the trail, yellow skulls watched him and grinned.
The sandstorm grew in intensity, but as Shawn rode closer to the town he heard a man’s words carry above
the venomous scream of the wind.
It was Hank Cobb’s voice.
Angry, defiant, loud, roaring.
“Jasper Wolfden! You listen here to me!”
Shawn drew rein and all his senses reached into the cartwheeling night.
“Damn you, I’ll kill you, Jasper Wolfden!”
There was no answer.
“I killed you once. I can kill you again. You hear me, Jasper Wolfden?”
But there was no answering shout, only the bellow of the wind and the serpent hiss of the swiftly shifting sand.
Shawn’s mount, its head down, would go no farther. It rose up on its hind legs and turned, then stood stiff-kneed, refusing to face the bite of the sand.
For a moment, Shawn considered going ahead on foot, but then, from out of the darkness the white horse, riderless, its stirrups flying, passed him at a gallop.
From somewhere deep in the cavern of the night a wolf howled.
A moment later, Cobb called out again. This time his voice was edged with uncertainty and tinged with fear.
“Jasper Wolfden, I’ll kill you again! Damn you, I’ll bury you deep!”
The wolf’s answering howl was as white as ivory.
To Shawn, the long, eerie wail sounded like an act of defiance.
But he knew full well that wolves were incapable of such an emotion. In the darkness a man’s imagination can play tricks and lead him down shadowed pathways.
Brush rustled to Shawn’s right. He racked a round and slapped the forestock of the Winchester into his hand.
For a moment his eyes probed the gloom, wind and sand tearing at him, then he said, “Come out with your mitts in the air or I’ll drill you dead center.”
The darkness parted and took on the form of a man.
“Helluva way to greet a feller who just saved your life,” the man said. For a moment, his eyes glittered, then faded.
“Are you Jasper Wolfden?” Shawn said, wondering about those eyes.
“Who the hell else would I be?” the man said. “If you can hear anything above this storm, you heard Hank Cobb calling out to me.”
“Then I heard a wolf,” Shawn said.
“Me too. Damned lobo spooked my horse,” Wolfden said.
“I’m beholden to you for saving my life,” Shawn said. “Sorry about the horse.”
“He’ll find me,” Wolfden said.
People instinctively rebel against ordinariness, being thought average, but the man named Wolfden seemed to revel in it.
He was of average height, average build, his features ordinary in the extreme, his clothing ordinary as was his canvas gun belt and blue Colt.
Even his voice was ordinary, unaccented, unmemorable.
Only his eyes were unique, gathered points of light glowing in their depths like fireflies trapped in amber.
“I will take you to your friends,” Wolfden said.
“You met them?” Shawn said, surprised.
“I did not, but I know where they are.”
“But how—”
“I said I know where they are,” Wolfden repeated.
The man had made it clear that he wished to drop the matter, and Shawn didn’t press him.
“Will Cobb come after us?” he said.
“No. He has four dead and another will die soon. He’ll wait, lick his wounds for a spell.”
“It seems that he wants to kill you real bad,” Shawn said.
“And you too, my friend.”
“He’ll get his chance. I plan to take the town away from him.”
“Why? The people of Holy Rood are nothing to you.”
The wind tugging at him, Shawn said, “I’m doing it for a young cowboy.”
Wolfden nodded. But he said nothing.
Shawn waited, expecting a you-got-to-be-crazy comment, but when none was forthcoming, he said, “We can ride double on my horse until you find your own.”
“I’ll bring him,” Wolfden said.
He raised his head and made a strange huffing sound, barely audible above the shriek of the sandstorm. A few moments later, his horse appeared out of the murk like a gray ghost.
Shawn didn’t say it outright, but he thought it. . . .
Whatever else he might be, Jasper Wolfden was a real strange fellow.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sandstorm had not yet blown itself out and the hour was late, but Hank Cobb rang the church bell to announce a meeting of the townspeople.
As the citizens appeared, most of them in nightclothes, Cobb and his gunmen steered them away from the church to the sheriff’s office.
Cobb wanted to speak to only the most influential residents, the businessmen and their wives, and the others were left outside on the boardwalk, to take shelter from the still hard-driving sand as best they could.
After Cobb called the meeting to order, he told Shel Shannon to present the butcher’s bill for the battle against what he called, “the terror riders.”
Shannon read the warning in Hank Cobb’s eyes and mentally reframed his statement to suit the mood of the curious crowd that had squeezed inside the sheriff’s office.
“Brothers Amos, Gideon, Kent, Bernard and Lemuel are all dead,” he said. “Brother Matthias is gutshot and squallin’ like a—”
“A grievous, mortal wound,” Cobb said, his glare again flashing a warning to Shannon that he should watch his tongue. “And painful.”
“Yeah, an’ Brother Jeremiah’s knee is bullet smashed and he ain’t never again gonna walk again on two legs.”
“Where is the witch?” a fat man with wet lips said. “We must burn the witch.”
“Yes, we must, but did she escape?” a woman said.
“The terror riders took her,” Cobb said. “Our brothers had no chance against such a host of gunmen and the witch, the devil’s harlot, helped them prevail by casting her evil spells.”
He pulled his cowl over his head and looked at the people around him from shadow.
“The good Lord is testing us,” he said. “The brothers laid down their lives to protect this blessed town from outlawry, violence and witchcraft, but were laid low.” His voice rose to a shout. “But we will prevail over evil. Those who cast envious eyes on our fair town and wish to destroy it will themselves be destroyed. This is the word of the Lord!”
This last drew a cheer, but a few of the women tugged their dressing gowns closer around their necks and exchanged fearful glances.
“Brother Matthias, we must have safety and security at any price,” the fat man said. “Only then can Holy Rood regain its peace and tranquility.”
“Where will you lead us, brother?” a man in a plaid robe and carpet slippers said.
“Perhaps we must flee and establish a new Holy Rood away from all danger,” a woman said.
Cobb shook his head. “No. That is not the way.”
“Then ease our minds and show us the way, Brother Matthias,” a voice from the crowd said, to nods of approval.
“I say we execute outsiders with evil in their hearts right away and not keep them for trial before the Grand Council like we did the witch and the two men with her,” the fat man said.
This brought another murmur of approval.
“Yes, mistakes were made, but they will not be made again,” Cobb said. “We have lost holy and valiant brothers this night, but, as I prayed over their dead bodies in the street, God spoke to me.”
A chorus of, “What did He say? Tell us, brother.”
“He told me that I have brought three years of peace and prosperity to our town and He instructed me to bring many more,” Cobb said. “He said it is His wish that more skulls of the evil interlopers who would do us harm line the road into Holy Rood.”
There were a flurry of cheers and a few shouted questions, but Cobb held up his arms for quiet.
Ignoring the gesture, a thin, older woman, her mouth as tight and mean as a snapped-shut steel purse, raised her voice and yelled, “More rolling heads! It is the Lord’s wish.”
/> “Indeed it is, madam,” Cobb said. “But first we must replace the holy warriors we lost with more heroes of the same stamp. The terror riders and the witch who now leads them must be hunted down and destroyed.”
Recognizing his cue, Shannon called out, “Our town is in grave danger, Brother Matthias, but for pity’s sake tell us where such brave men can be found?”
“Money will bring them, Brother Uzziah, and plenty of it,” Cobb said.
His eyes glittered in the shadow of the cowl. “We will lure such paladins to Holy Rood with the promise of gold, saith the Lord to me, and then we convert them to our ways. Soon they will see the light and fight for peace and justice, just as the rest of our brethren does.”
“Brother, I have but a few cents in my pocket,” Shannon said. “But I give them to you freely for our holy cause.”
“Blessed be the givers,” a woman said. “And bless you, Brother Uzziah.”
Cobb threw his cowl back and, his pitiless, criminal eyes blazing, he said, “Then ye’ll pay for more crusaders, will ye?”
“Command us!” the woman with the mean mouth yelled.
“Just don’t break the bank, brother.”
This last came from white-haired Temple Carstairs, the owner of the town’s prosperous mercantile. As a major of Union infantry, Carstairs had fought well at Gettysburg and there was a hard edge to him.
But Cobb ignored the old soldier’s outburst and said, “All of ye standing here tonight, do you want the best? Do you want to live your lives free from evil and men who would do violence to you and yours?”
“Aye, the best there is,” another man said. “Keep us safe, brother.”
“Then I’ll find champions for you,” Cobb said. “But know this, such men don’t come cheap.”
There was not the roar of approval that Cobb expected, but Shannon stepped into the breach again.
“We’ll pay to restore Holy Rood to an island of peace in a sea of lawlessness,” he said. “Name the price we must pay, Brother Matthias.”
If anyone in the crowd thought that was big talk coming from a man with only a few cents in his pocket, he or she stayed quiet.
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