by R. Kent
Obviously, he didn’t have a six-shooter.
I didn’t have a pale horse.
It evened out.
Seth sauntered from the Watering Hole to take a leak off the side of the board walkway. Something McKade wouldn’t have tolerated. So Jack McKade wasn’t awake yet.
I cleared my throat.
Seth looked. His holster was a gaping hole yet to be filled with a new piece of iron. He fumbled at his open drawers and tripped over his spur rowels as he paddled backward. There was a clean white cloth wrapped around the palm of Seth’s gun hand. Rose was taking good care of him. I didn’t know if that fact niggled at my anger or my hurt worse.
I stood from leaning on the hitch rail, chucked the butt of my smoke to the mud, and smashed it as I walked forward. “I’ve got no quarrel with you, if you stop pursuing Sahara. It’s McKade I’m here to see.”
“McKade ain’t had his coffee yet. And I do have quarrel with you.” He continued toward the swinging doors. I noticed the potbelly stove’s pipe on the roof coughed smoke. Someone else had awakened.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. Seth would be difficult to kill. He was fast with a gun. He was sly and given to slight-of-hand tricks. Seth also had a lot of practice at killing.
No one lives forever.
“You killed my brother.” Yellow-brown spit sprayed from his lips. Drool seeped over the scraggly whiskers on his chin. “You killed Jeb. He was my brother.”
“Jeb set up to draw on me.” My long strides had me in the middle of Main Street before I finished chatting. “You pulled your leg iron to distract me. Seems it’s lucky you’re not dead too.”
“He warn’t no gunslinger like you. Jeb warn’t handy with no gun.”
Flight or fight. Kill or be killed. Choices. Always choices. I stood very, very still. “Jeb had made his choices.”
I unbuttoned the top of my coat to open the collar. It exposed my scar. “You’ve made your choices too. But right now, you can choose to walk away from this. I’m here for McKade.”
“If you want him, you’ll have to go through me first.”
“Don’t be stupid. You’re not heeled.”
“Take my gun, Seth.” A steel revolver poked through the swinging saloon doors. I couldn’t see who encouraged him. It wasn’t McKade’s six-shooter. The revolver had stock wooden grips.
Seth grabbed hold of the weapon like it was a life preserver thrown to a drowning man. He spun the cylinder in checking the load.
When he dropped it into his holster, he had made his next choice.
Seth propped the gun loose. Then jammed it in. Propped it. Jammed it. Propped it.
“I haven’t got the entire day for you to court her,” I said.
He bent to tie the strings around his thigh. His eyes darted anxiously, taking in his situation. When they became keen on me, he struggled on a swallow. That was his telltale sign. He’d committed to the draw.
“Huh-uh.” I interrupted. “Won’t work.” My palm itched. “I got you dead to rights.” I flexed my fingers alongside my holster. “Let’s make it a fair fight.”
Seth spit the wad he’d churned on. “Fair. I can do that.”
I doubted it.
He moved toward the step carefully while keeping a watchful eye on me. “You gonna let me set up, ain’t cha?” He cautiously dipped a toe over the edge as if testing the water for a swim.
I reached to tip my hat, bobbing my head at him. It took my gun hand a long way from my six-shooter. I wanted him to know I wasn’t worried. I wanted him to know I had this—calm and cool like. I was in no hurry.
Though, on another note, I was. I wanted this business over and done with. I didn’t enjoy the killing, like some did.
He stomped into the mud. “This won’t take Lightning Jack.” The street ran deep with sludge. “It’ll be my pleasure to kill you.” Sucking sounds followed Seth’s every step. He wasn’t in any rush now. Regardless, the slurry wouldn’t have allowed for haste.
The morning was cloudless. A bright sun peeked over the two-story roof of the Watering Hole, blinding me to the happenings at its door. I wouldn’t put it past the hired men inside to take a shot at me. But maybe they’d stick to some bad-guy code about who gets to shoot whom, when. I hoped they’d at least wait for Seth to drop dead first. I stood a better chance without dividing my concentration.
The glint of steel from a Winchester repeating rifle caught my attention. But it came nosing through the cracked door at the assay office. McKade’s men hadn’t had time to circle around town. And I didn’t think the government men would side with a notorious gunslinger.
The crackle of a cocking sidearm alerted me to a man in the alleyway between the two offices. Another man belly-crawled beneath the floorboards.
Opposing, there was a rifle on the roof of the saloon, behind its wooden facade. A green shade rolled up from the broken corner window. And the orange tip of a cigarette glowed over the swinging doors.
Guns surrounded me. I couldn’t tell where that left me, except for the obvious—right smack in the middle of an impending battle.
I hadn’t come here to start a war. Me and Jack McKade. That’s all I’d wanted.
Seth’s arm hung loose and relaxed as he faced me. Without a coat on, I could see he was thin from living on too much whiskey and not enough solid food. Dirty shirttails waggled in the slight breeze. His over-large Adam’s apple protruded from the front of his scrawny chicken neck. His hat roosted too high to protect his sight from the glaring sun. He hadn’t exactly been dressed for business when he came out of the saloon.
I honed in on him. I could see the excited rhythm of his fast breathing plump his chest up and down. I waited for his tell.
My senses heightened. My adrenaline surged. My muscles grew tense with both anticipation and restraint. I was itching to cock my gun on the draw. Desperate to hear that click, click, click, click of assurance that the moments following would come together in split seconds of deadly clarity, speed, and accuracy.
Seth swallowed.
His palm scratched leather, but I was already leveling my barrel from the hip. Pull the gun. Pull the trigger. No hesitation.
Blam. Blam. Two slugs slammed into him at the same second he turned his gun on me.
His eyes went as wide as saucer plates. His mouth opened in an O. His look of horror said that he didn’t believe I’d beaten him on the draw.
Seth flew backward to splash into the cold, muddy muck at the edge of the Watering Hole’s boardwalk.
Guns began to blaze from every direction.
Molasses Pond was now at war.
My feet stuck in the deep mud. I couldn’t move. Standing too long had cemented them in place. I couldn’t run. I couldn’t even walk. It was useless to duck. A shot pinged beside me, spitting a filthy, wet spray.
That everyone else had better cover didn’t deter me. I crouched and took aim. The man on the roof rolled down, flopping into the alleyway between the saloon and the bathhouse. A woman screeched. Shutters on the bathhouse facade slammed closed.
There was no alternative, if I wanted Jack McKade, I would have to fight my way to him. I fell to my rump and pried my feet loose. Once freed, I skittered over the top of the slop too fast to possibly sink. For a second, I thought I’d make it into the Watering Hole. But bullets rained down around me, splashing fountains of muck into the air. I tumbled, slamming my injured shoulder against the step.
It took me a minute to remember how to breathe. Pain struck through my body like lightning. I heaved. My gut turned inside out, attempting to climb past my tonsils.
A shotgun blasted from within the saloon. Pellets peppered the swinging doors, harassing them to motion. McKade.
A chill breeze picked up. The gunfire died down.
Trampling boot falls scattered from the Watering Hole like rats abandoning a sinking ship. A single shot knocked a man into the mud beside me. Too close for comfort. I aimed my revolver at him. But an open wound in his throat gurgled blood in repl
y. He was already dead.
I scrambled up the step then squatted against the wall, just to the side of the swinging doors.
“Austin. Hey, Austin.” McKade rumbled. “You out there? Come on in. I won’t shoot you, son.”
I couldn’t see into the darkness.
McKade lit a long-burning match on purpose and held it to a fat cigar. He clunked the sawed-off scattergun onto the top of his brass-edged bar. I could see by the glow of his cigar’s tip that he had moved away from his shotgun.
He was heeled. I knew he was heeled. But I took his forfeiting his favorite weapon as a relatively safe invitation. At least he’d let me in the front door.
Slowly, I shoved one of the swinging doors open. I hung onto it while my eyes adjusted.
McKade flicked a shade up at the front of the saloon. It sprung so hard that it flapped as it rolled, slapping the window frame repeatedly before settling down. With the opening of the next shade, bright light flooded the room.
In the midst of it stood Lightning Jack McKade, as bold as a weasel in a henhouse.
I walked, tall and straight, into his lair. My gun was aimed at his gluttonous gut. The door swung loose from my grip, waggling to a stop behind me.
He laughed, puffing his cigar to glowing. McKade took the smoke from his thick lips in a lazy fashion. He was mixed in with the solid, round tables and scattered chairs. “You going to kill a man just like that?”
I thought about it. It seemed like a good idea. “You killed my father,” I said.
Jack McKade chuckled. “I am your father.”
“Lie.” I shouted, cocking the hammer on my Smith and Wesson.
“I knew your ma, shall we say.” He held his hands in the air. “Fancied her. Even courted her.” Ash fell from the stump of the cigar protruding from his fat fingers. Smoke rose from it in a dense cloud. “Put your gun away, son.” He sneered the word son like he knew it wasn’t true. “Aren’t you man enough to draw in a fair fight?”
I was man enough. I was more man than him. Goaded. I thumped my six-shooter into its holster. I moved my hand from its grips, but not before propping it loose.
“She ran from me before we could marry. Bet she never told you that.” He stuck the cigar beneath his full mustache and puffed. “Nah, you were too little when you last saw her. How could she have told you anything?” His lips wrapped around that plump cigar and his mouth filled with smoke.
“But you’ve seen me before. You know you’ve seen me before. When you were still clinging to your ma’s apron back East, I came around, checking on your ma. Before the whole wagon train heading west crap. Before the Austin fellow took her away from me.”
McKade lowered his hands.
I flexed my fingers in the ready, moving them closer to snatching my revolver.
“Whoa now. Easy, son.”
“I’m not your son.”
“Yeah, maybe not my son, but I am your father.” He seemed too relaxed. He seemed too in command of this situation. McKade continued. “It was a couple of years later when she took up with that Austin fellow. He married her. Sired two kits on her.”
“There were three of us.” My eyes followed his every move. Watched his slight shifts. Keened on his gun hand. Surely, he had an ace up his sleeve.
“You were born before that Austin fellow had come along. You were considerably older than his two daughters. And you didn’t look anything like them. Did you?” He took another drag on his smoke and waved it in the air with the pompous overconfidence of someone who thought they’d always had all of the answers. “You, with your nest of wavy black hair.”
Hair meant nothing. I didn’t look like Jack McKade. He was thick and ugly.
“I kept a watch on her. When they packed a Conestoga and headed west, I followed just so I could kill him and take her back.”
He shoved chairs out of the way and edged toward the bar. “Pity,” he spat, like it hurt him to say it, “that Austin fellow killed your ma, just so I couldn’t have her.” At the end of the bar, McKade plucked a bottle and ripped the cork out. He proffered the brew toward me. “I thought my liquored injuns killed you. No one among the wagons survived they’d said.” He poured himself a healthy drink and tossed it back.
“Your ma was wearing a blue dress covered in tiny flowers. She was huddled in the boot of that wagon with her two little girls.”
He was there. I’d already figured out he was there. Him admitting it angered me more, if that were even possible. But it proved nothing about my parentage.
“I had thought there was something familiar about you when you prowled through the bar at times. A kindred killer, I assumed. I only recognized your face when I saw the sketch on that wanted poster for Jamie’s killing. You look so much like me when I was your age. You got the McKades’ dark hair, but you’re built slight like Jamie and Lily.”
I remembered Jamie. I knew Lily. We did have the same slender build.
“And you were under my nose all this time.” He poured himself another generous swig.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Yes. You do. I can see it in your blue eyes. Same eyes as your half-sister and your cousin.”
“No.”
“You’re a McKade. I thought to lure you into the family business. But you barely came around town.” The neck of the near-empty bottle chinked against the lip of the stout glass. “And you were too set in your ways. Too quiet. Too good.” He sneered the word good like it had a bad taste. “When I realized you couldn’t be turned, you had to be killed.” He raised his glass in a salute. “No whelp of mine is going to defy me.” McKade swirled the whiskey in his glass.
“Your bride? She’s a fringe benefit I’ll profit from. The town? Serves me. Lily?” He saluted with his drink again before belting it down. Sucking on the burn of it, he smacked his lips. “Ah, Lily is what I’ve made of her. She’s my prodigy. She will be greater than me, with her extraordinary ability to manipulate and destroy without a gun. She uses whispers as weapons.
“You, my boy, are like me in bullying with that six-shooter.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’ll never be anything like you.” My palm itched. It was sticky with sweat though the air was cold.
“I’ve realized that.” He gave a slight nod with his head. “You haven’t got the steel in your spine.” He roared with laughter, like thunder from an angry sky. “You haven’t got the lead.” McKade moved from the bar with intent.
My breath held. That was my tell.
“You can’t kill your own father. Your flesh and blood.”
I yanked my revolver.
Chapter Nineteen
Oof. Seth slammed me from behind. I went down. I thought he was dead.
My hat tumbled from my head. The gun flew from my hand. Grit coated my tongue as I hit the floor. I tried to crawl from beneath Seth’s pinning weight.
Foul breath hissed from his mouth. His limp body gurgled then farted.
I clawed the floorboards to pull myself free.
Not forgetting Jack McKade, I whipped my head around in search of his whereabouts. I couldn’t see him. And I couldn’t escape the crushing weight of Seth’s dead body. I stretched for my revolver.
A black boot landed on top of the gun. McKade.
His meaty paw gripped my coat’s collar, hauling me from beneath Seth’s lifeless body. Seth was really dead this time. A dry, gray haze glazed over his open eyes. I shivered.
“Make Austin tell me where the copper is before you kill him,” Lily said. She whisked past her father, filling a carpetbag with money and deeds from the cash register. Her hair was perfectly coiffed under a fashionable hat. Her white gloves flashed as she shifted papers into a cloth bag.
The clip, clip, clip of Rose’s footsteps echoed through the room. “Jack McKade. Lily. What are you doing?”
“Mind your own business.” McKade growled low in his throat. He tossed me like I was no more than a handful of empty clothes.
“Stop it at once.” Rose
wrestled the high heels from her feet to throw them at McKade. They bounced off his massive shoulders. He turned toward her. She fled through the swinging doors.
Gunfire continued outside. The battle was blazing again. I didn’t hear any screaming so I assumed Rose hadn’t been shot on her hasty exit.
The air hung rank inside the Watering Hole. Fetid body odor, overripe whiskey, and stale cigar smoke hovered like a petulant fog. Not to mention the dead Seth added a whole new tang to the rotted atmosphere.
I pushed myself up from the rough-hewn floorboards then scratched my way to standing. Blood rushed too fast to my brain. Its pounding filled my ears until I heard nothing else. My knees weakened. My head grew woozy. Pain flooded my body but I stood straight and tall.
McKade backhanded me. I spun, doubling over the bar. Breathing became difficult.
“Where’s the copper strike?” Lily demanded through clenched teeth.
I coughed. Bloody spittle drooled from my lips. I felt its warmth on my chin. I tasted its metallic tang as I forced a swallow.
Lily clawed my head. Her nails abraded my scalp. “Where’s the copper?” Her fingers yanked my hair. “Useless. Kill him,” she grunted in exasperation, cramming my swelling face to the bar.
Run, Sahara. Run. I can’t protect you. Run.
I love you. I should have told you over and over.
Jack McKade wrenched me to look at him. “Any last words?”
He shook me when I kept silent.
“I might trade your life if you had a copper strike like Lily believes.”
I mumbled under my breath.
Jack shook me like I was an empty flour sack. “What’s that? What are you saying?”
I quoted his words back to him. “‘None of them are worth anything unless they make a strike. Then, they’re only worth killing.’” I glared at McKade through swollen lids. “You won’t trade my life for copper. You like the killing too much.”
“True enough,” he replied.
Bang. I squeezed the trigger on the derringer secreted in my right palm.
Lily screamed.
Lightning Jack McKade grabbed his gut. Blood oozed from between his fingers.