Shawn O’Brien was a gunfighter, schooled by gunfighters, and that night he was death.
Startled, the convicts dived for the Martini-Henry rifles propped against the boulders . . . but they never made it.
At a distance of less than six feet, Shawn O’Brien didn’t miss.
He thumbed three fast shots and all three men went down, hit hard. The face of one convict crashed into the fire, erupting flame, sparks and a scream of sudden agony.
Shawn scored two headshots, killing the convicts instantly. The third man, his booted feet gouging the ground as he cringed away from a visitation from hell, had taken Shawn’s bullet in the throat. The side of his neck between earlobe and shoulder was a mass of red, mangled meat that pumped blood.
Sir James, gun in hand, stepped beside Shawn and looked into the smoke-streaked hideout.
In a wet, gurgling voice the wounded convict screamed to the older man, “Help me! I’m hurt bad and I need a doctor!”
Sir James, in shock, turned to Shawn and said, “He needs a doctor.”
Shawn nodded. He thumbed back the hammer of his Colt and shot the man between the eyes.
“He just got one,” he said.
The time for vengeance was over. Now came the grief.
Shawn spent the rest of the long night with his dead wife in his arms, holding her close to his chest as the slanting sleet bladed around him.
Come the dawn, Sir James, his face gray as ash, gently tried to take his daughter from Shawn’s arms and said, “I’ll bring the horses.”
“No,” Shawn said. “I don’t want the horses.”
He lifted Judith’s body, her face as beautiful in death as it had been in life, and said, “I’ll carry her. I’ll carry my wife home.”
The memories of that different time and place flowed out of Shawn’s mind like water as the dawn chased darkness from between the pines and the new aborning day came in fresh and clean and full of promise.
Sally’s head stirred in his lap and she opened her eyes and smiled that sleepy, sweet smile a woman often gives a man when she first wakes in the early morning.
Without moving, she said, “I hope I didn’t keep you awake. I do wiggle sometimes.”
“No,” Shawn said, deciding on a small lie, “I slept just fine.”
Over by the dull glow of the campfire, Hamp Sedley got to his feet and stretched the kinks out of his back.
“Had a damned rock under me the whole night,” he said. He glanced down at Jasper Wolfden and said, his face sour, “How the hell can a man sleep like that, all curled up like a dog?”
Sedley never got an answer to his question because a man’s voice cut through the morning quiet.
“Hello, the camp!”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Shawn O’Brien gently raised Sally Bailey to a sitting position, and then rose to his feet, his right hand dropping to his holstered Colt.
“Come on in, all smiling and friendly, like you were visiting kissin’ kin,” he called out.
A few moments later a small, plump man on a bay horse rode out of the pines. He had a booted Winchester under his left knee.
“Howdy,” he said. “I’m sorry to intrude.”
Wolfden was on his feet and he didn’t look like a man about to unroll the welcoming mat.
“You from Holy Rood?” he said, his words hard edged.
“Of course, I got food,” the small man said. “I got a ways to ride and a man needs to eat.”
“He said, are you from Holy Rood?” Sedley said.
“Eh?” the small man said, cupping a hand to his ear.
This time Sedley shouted, “You from Holy Rood?”
“Yes, I’m from Holy Rood,” the small man said. “And be damned to ye for a mumbler. Pronounce your words properly, young man.”
“State your intentions,” Sedley said.
“Eh?”
Sedley tried again. “Why are you here? Speak up now. Be quick.”
“Eh?”
The man on the horse held up a hand. “Wait one all-fired minute. Lord, I can’t abide a whispering man.”
He reached into the pocket of his coat, an action that merited the sound of triple clicks as three Colts cocked.
“Hold on, now,” the small man said. He looked like a jolly German toymaker. “I was just getting me ear trumpet so I can damned well hear mumbling men.”
The man produced a contraption that looked like a brass horn, stuck the thing to his ear and said, “Eh?”
Sedley, with the irritated tone of a man fast running out of patience, said, “State your intentions.”
“My intentions?”
“You heard me.”
“No I didn’t. I read your lips.”
“Well, state them anyway,” Sedley said.
“Hell,” Wolfden said, “we’ll be here all day,”
“No need to keep me at bay,” the small man said. “I’m your friend. As to my intentions, I plan to ride clear to Albuquerque and leave behind this hellish country forever.”
“Then light and set,” Shawn said.
“Eh?”
This time Shawn yelled the invitation so loud, it set the jays in the pines fluttering in panic.
“No need to shout,” the little man said. He had red apple cheeks, bushy gray side whiskers and looked to be about seventy years old. “You should learn some respect for your elders, young feller.”
Before he swung out of the saddle, the man said, “Name’s Nathan Scruggs. Scruggs by name, Scruggs by nature, I always say.”
The little man tethered his horse to a pine branch, and then stepped to the fire that Sedley had fed with wood.
“No coffee?” Scruggs said.
“We don’t have any,” Sedley said.
“Eh?”
Irritated, Sedley yelled directly into the ear trumpet, “We ain’t got no coffee!”
Scruggs nodded and said to Shawn, “There’s coffee and a pot in the poke tied to the saddle, sonny. Go get it and then look for water.”
He shook his head. “Then I have a sad story to tell you.” His eyes lighted on Sally. “It will chill the young blood in your veins.”
Shawn was going to say, “About Holy Rood?” But he held his tongue. Yelling into Scruggs’s trumpet was too much of an effort.
A mossy stream ran through the trees at a distance from camp and soon coffee bubbled on the fire.
Sedley, who had appointed himself the camp spokesman, said, “Tell us your story.”
“Nah, let it bile a little longer,” Scruggs said.
Sedley was spared having to shout again, when the little man said, “They’re burning a witch this morning in Holy Rood.” His eyes wounded, Scruggs’s voice was hollow, distant. “Only she’s not a witch—she’s my dearest friend.”
“Who is she, Mr. Scruggs?” Sally said.
A woman’s voice is pitched higher than a man’s and Scruggs seemed to hear the girl better because he answered her question without hesitation.
“Her name is Annie Gaunt. People say she’s crazy because she thinks her dead son and husband are still alive, and maybe she is, but then, Queen Victoria doesn’t reckon so and that’s good enough for me.”
Scruggs looked around at blank faces and said, “Annie and old Queen Vic have been exchanging letters since Prince Albert died, nigh on twenty-five years ago. I know because I’m a calligrapher by profession and when Annie got older, I copied her letters for her and fine letters they were too.”
Shawn leaned forward slightly, and said, “Why are they—”
“Eh?”
He turned to Sally. “Ask him why they’re burning the old woman.”
The girl repeated the question, and Scruggs said, “Burning her for a witch. I already told you that.” He pointed to Sally. “Young lady, Brother Matthias says he shot Annie out of the sky while she was flying a bat across the moon with you.”
“With me?” Sally said.
“Eh?”
“But that’s ridiculous,” th
e girl yelled.
“I know it is, but they’ll burn poor Annie just the same,” Scruggs said.
Shawn looked at Jasper Wolfden, but the man shook his head and said, “Nothing we can do, Shawn. She’s already dead.”
Shawn opened his mouth to speak, but Scruggs, with a deaf man’s disregard for ordered conversation, said, “I fled town in the dark. I’m a friend of Annie’s, her only friend, and I reckoned I’d be next for the stake or the chopping block.”
Scruggs lifted his tin cup and motioned to Shawn.
“Here, sonny, fill this up,” he said. “I don’t want to burn my hands, me being in the profession I’m in.”
After Shawn poured the coffee, Scruggs said, “We only have but one cup, so we’ll pass it around. Just don’t get your damned mustaches into it.” He smiled at Sally. “Of course, that doesn’t apply to you, dear lady.”
“Did you ever think Annie was a witch?” she asked him.
The little man heard and he answered.
“Of course not. Annie was the only sane woman in a town gone mad.” His eyes moved to Wolfden. “You lived in Holy Rood for a while. Is it possible? Can a whole town go mad?”
“It’s happened before in history,” Wolfden said. “Salem comes to mind.”
Now Shawn asked Wolfden another question.
“Why would Hank Cobb murder a harmless old woman?” He shook his head. “I can’t come up with any reason for it.”
“I don’t know,” Wolfden said. “To scare folks, maybe.”
Scruggs had been watching the two men intently, reading lips.
“It’s all about the tithe,” he said.
Shawn said to Sally, “Tell him we’re not catching his drift.”
“Eh?” Scruggs said, looking around him.
“We don’t understand,” Sally said.
“Huh? What wonderland?” Scruggs said.
“We didn’t catch your drift,” Sally yelled.
“What’s to catch?” Scruggs said. He accepted the coffee cup from Sedley. “Didn’t put your mustache in it, did you?”
“Yeah, I sure did,” Sedley said.
“Just as well you didn’t,” Scruggs said. “It isn’t hygienic.”
He sipped the coffee, passed the cup to Shawn and said, “I believe Annie was condemned to burn because the tithe has been increased and Brother Matthias—”
“Hank Cobb,” Shawn said.
“Eh?”
Now Shawn roared at the top of his voice.
“He isn’t Brother Matthias. He’s a two-bit crook by the name of Hank Cobb!”
Scruggs winced and quickly unplugged the trumpet from his ear.
“No need to shout, sonny. I reckon your pa should’ve taken a switch to your backside when you were a younker and taught you some manners.”
“Sorry,” Shawn said.
“He says he’s sorry,” Sally yelled, doing her best to suppress a grin.
“And so he should be,” Scruggs said. “Raising your voice like that, young man. I declare, the very idea!”
But somewhat mollified by Shawn’s apology, the little man told how the tithe had been increased to buy gunfighters to protect the town against witches and their familiars.
“Of course, you four are included in that distinguished group,” he said.
Scruggs glanced at the brightening sky like a man gauging if it was time to leave.
But he shoved a half-burned stick back into the fire and then said, “By tonight there won’t be a piece of jewelry, a wedding ring, watch or gold coin that won’t be in Brother . . . I mean Hank Cobb’s hands.”
“What about the bank?” Shawn said.
“Eh?”
“Ask him, Sally,” Shawn said.
“What about the bank?” Sally yelled.
“The money in the bank stays where it is for now,” Scruggs said. “I reckon maybe fifty thousand in deposits. Brother . . . uh . . . Hank Cobb says he’ll tithe the deposits if and when he needs them.”
“He’ll need it,” Wolfden said. “He’s planning to blow town, I reckon. Get all he can get and then light a shuck, and that includes the money in the town bank.”
“Seems like,” Shawn said. “Unless we stop him.”
“Are the people in Holy Rood worth it?” Sedley said.
“It’s not for them,” Shawn said. “It’s for all the victims of Hank Cobb, including a young cowboy who died for nothing and now a crazy old woman who was the friend of a queen.”
“Shawn, there’s three of us,” Wolfden said. “Now I don’t know how many gun hands Cobb has left, but I figure he’s got enough. We’d be bucking a stacked deck.”
“And you can count me out,” Sedley said. “I’m not drawing iron against professional gunfighters. Man can get himself killed playing that game.”
“If we can stop Cobb collecting the tithe as he calls it, we can keep him in town for a while and deal with him there,” Shawn said.
“I repeat, there’s three of us,” Wolfden said. “How do you figure we can pin Cobb in Holy Rood.”
“Two. I’ve opted out, remember,” Sedley said.
“Three,” Shawn said. “Hamp, here’s today’s lesson. You draw your gun, get your work in and take your hits until the smoke clears. Gun fighting isn’t real complicated.”
“Thanks, O’Brien, now I feel a lot better,” Sedley said.
“What are you three whispering about?” Scruggs said.
“It’s none of your business,” Wolfden said.
“You’re talking about my baldness?” Scruggs said.
“Yes, we are,” Wolfden yelled.
“Then I won’t stay here any longer to be insulted,” Scruggs said.
He opened the lid of the coffeepot, poured the dregs into the fire and picked up the empty cup. When he’d shoved them both back into the sack on his saddle, he turned and said, “Nine.”
He noted the puzzled faces and said, “Cobb has eight gunmen and he makes nine.”
Scruggs swung into the saddle, gathered the reins and said, “Read your lips.” He smiled. “Maybe I’ll see you folks in Albuquerque. That is, if you ain’t all dead by then.”
“The little man might be a prophet, you know,” Wolfden said.
“Not too hard to predict that if we don’t get out of this country we’ll all be dead soon,” Sedley said.
“Not me. I’ve got a score to settle with Cobb and the whole damned town,” Shawn said. “I won’t step away from it.”
“You’re fixing to set yourself up as a town tamer, huh, O’Brien?” Sedley said.
“Yeah. Something like that.”
“Then what do we do?” Sedley asked. “Walk down Main Street with guns blazing?”
“We could, but I don’t think we’d last too long,” Shawn said.
Smiling no longer came easily to Shawn O’Brien, but he managed one now as his thoughts amused him.
“I have an idea if we can make it work,” he said. “Maybe we can beat Hank Cobb at his own game.”
After a few moments silence, Wolfden said, “Well, let’s hear it.”
“Not yet,” Shawn said. “I have to find a volunteer.”
He saw the alarm in Sedley’s face and said, “Not you, Hamp. I need a volunteer that Cobb won’t recognize.”
“And where are you going to find one of them?” Wolfden said.
“I’ve already found him,” Shawn said. “You’re sitting right there, Jasper.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The burning had gone really well.
The old woman had screamed enough to impress the crowd, but not too much that it might have made some sympathetic to her suffering.
Cobb’s only disappointment was that the search for Annie Gaunt’s friend, a man called Scruggs, had turned up nothing. He would have burned with the old woman, but it seemed that the man had scampered.
Still, Cobb grinned as he drank his morning coffee and studied the pile on the table in front of him.
“Good work, Brother Uzziah,�
� he said.
“Hell, boss, that’s only the beginning,” Shel Shannon said, huge in his monk’s robe. “I ain’t near through squeezing them yet.”
Cobb idly picked up a gold ring with a ringlet of hair enclosed in its locket-like setting and turned it in his fingers.
“It’s what they call a mourning ring,” Shannon said. “The woman who owned it said it was a lock of hair from the head of her daughter who died when she was six or seven. I don’t rightly recollect.” The gunman grinned. “Damned slut didn’t want to part with it until I convinced her that a ring wasn’t worth a broken finger.”
“How much?” Cobb said.
“Hard to say, but I reckon it will bring a hundred easily in Texas.”
Cobb tossed the ring onto the heap of jewelry and gold watches on the table.
“How much is all this in front of me worth?” he said.
“Five, six thousand,” Shannon said.
He saw the disappointment on Cobb’s face and said, “The boys are still gathering stuff, boss. By tonight we’ll have twice that and maybe more.”
“I know, but it isn’t gonna be near enough,” Cobb said. “But we’ll make it up with the bank money.”
Shannon nodded. “I asked some questions about that, discreetly, like you said. Ain’t that the word you used?”
Cobb nodded and Shannon said, “There’s gold miners’ money in there and a few cattlemen’s accounts. Seems like they figured a law-abiding town like Holy Rood was a safe place to leave it.”
Cobb smiled. “Their mistake. How much?”
“Near as I can figure, twenty, maybe thirty thousand. But there could be twice that, I reckon. Only Reuben Waters knows for sure.”
Cobb considered that, then said, “All right, we’ll pay off the hired guns with the jewelry and stuff, and split the bank money between us.”
“Seems fair to me, boss,” Shannon said, pleased.
Cobb picked up the mourning ring and after a while found a tiny clasp at the side of the setting. He opened the locket and let the lock of hair inside fall to the floor.
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