Cato bunched his legs under him, aiming to launch himself at the guard up there, but the man ducked back, snapping another shot down at him first. The whole house would be awakened by now and he would have little chance to make good his escape. If it was any solace, he would at least go down fighting, but he didn’t reckon that was any real compensation ...
If he could help it, he didn’t want to go down at all.
The flames behind him licked at his heels and he made his jump, just as the gunman stepped back, and began to throw down again. The buckle knife wasn’t designed for throwing, but Cato flung it anyway and the heavy brass hilt hit the man in the middle of the face, knocking him backwards as he fired. Then Cato was on him, twisting the gun from his grasp and kicking him viciously in the kidneys. He slammed the gun against the side of the man’s head and put him down, leaping over him and leaving the knife. A door smashed open down the corridor and he whirled that way, seeing someone coming out and lining up a gun on him. He fired and his lead screeched across the adobe wall, raising a long, spraying line of white dust. The man dodged back but got off one shot and Cato dropped, knowing that his own Manstopper was being used on him.
It had been one of the standard .45 cartridges that had been fired but he knew their distinctive sound—he loaded them all by hand with his own mixture of propellant powder, giving them a peculiar flat, cracking sound. He pounded down the corridor, side aching, wet with blood oozing from his old wound. A man came around the far end of the passage and Cato fired, seeing him go down in a flailing heap. Another man stepped around and Cato shot him, too, and he knew the gun was either empty or else he only had one shot left. He wasn’t quite sure how many the gun’s original owner had gotten off at him on the steps. Flames and smoke billowed up from the cellar and he stopped dead as Arnie Watts stepped out of the room on his left, holding Marnie Hendry half in front of him. He held the Manstopper in his other hand.
“Hold it, Cato! You’re through!” Watts angled the gun towards the girl as Cato started to lift his hands out from his sides. Then Marnie sank her teeth into Watts’ hand and he yelled a curse, wrenching his hand back. She threw her body into him and grabbed with both hands at the Manstopper.
Cato dropped hammer on his six-gun but it fell on an empty chamber. He jumped forward, slamming a knee into Watts’ groin and the man gagged, falling to one knee. Bullets spanged against the wall next to Cato. He heaved Watts and the girl into the room and kicked the door closed. Watts was rolling on the floor and Cato reached down and snatched up his Manstopper. Immediately he felt as if he was ten feet tall. He grabbed Marnie’s hand and dragged her across the room towards the window. He threw it up as someone pounded on the door. He pushed the girl to the sill.
“Out ... It’s only a short drop!” he snapped.
He watched as she climbed over the sill and, looking back at him, she suddenly yelled a warning. Watts was getting painfully to his knees, dragging his own six-gun from its holster. Cato shot him between the eyes, thumbed the hammer toggle to ‘shot barrel’ and lifted the gun as the door burst open and three men entered with guns blazing. He dropped hammer and the Manstopper roared its thunderous message of death. The three men went down, writhing and screaming against a background of smoke and flames. Then Cato swung a leg over the window sill and dropped five feet to the ground where the white-faced girl crouched.
Together they ran towards the corrals where, in the light of flames now billowing from the adobe mansion’s windows, he could see four or five mounts tethered, still saddled. Men were running about, forming a bucket brigade from the pumps and horse troughs near the house, intent only on the fire. Cato and Marnie scrambled into the saddles of two mounts and thundered out into the night, not stopping until they were on the top of the tree-fringed knoll. Here he reined down, turned to look back at the gigantic blaze at Rainey’s ranch.
“How the hell did you get here?” Cato panted, wincing a little and holding his elbow tightly against his wounded side.
“I—I hadn’t wanted us to part bad friends,” Marnie said hesitantly. “And I was worried about that wound in your side ... So I set out to follow you. They caught me just after dark and Watts, of course, recognized me from the train wreck ... He thought I must be working for Dukes, too, and sent for you to be brought up ... Then—then ... Oh, dear John! I’m so glad you’re safe!”
She leaned from the saddle and hugged him tightly.
“I’m glad we’re safe!” Cato told her with a grin and kissed her soundly.
As they turned and headed out on the long trail to Austin, he thought this was the first time ever that any woman had followed him into danger, faced bullets and death, just to be with him.
A man would be loco to let go a woman like that, he thought. Plumb loco ...
They rode on side by side into the night.
~*~
Rainey came slowly into Yancey’s room and gave the Enforcer a wide smile as he closed the door behind him. Mrs. Wallis, white-faced and strained-looking, dropped a thick-bottomed glass with a clatter on the bedside table.
The senator stood at the end of the bed and looked at her, then turned his gaze to Yancey as she busied herself with her tray of medicines.
“Well, Yancey! Feeling much better, I hear.”
“Some, Senator,” Yancey said tiredly. He couldn’t quite stifle a yawn. “I’m thinkin’ Dr. Boles is doping my medicine or somethin’ I’m so—damn weak …”
Rainey glanced at Mrs. Wallis, but the woman had her back to him and continued working at her tray of bottles, measuring dark brown liquid into a glass and mixing it with water.
“Well, I guess he knows best. I’m glad you’ve got your memory back, Yancey.” Rainey’s smile was fixed. “Must have been hell not knowin’ who you were or what had happened back there in Bent’s Junction ... or before that.”
Yancey nodded. “Sure was.” He looked up at Mrs. Wallis as she handed him a glass of dark liquid. He took it and frowned up at her. “This mine, ma’am? Looks different somehow.”
She couldn’t help a glance in Rainey’s direction. “It’s ... been prescribed for you ... Now drink it down.”
Rainey looked strained as Yancey swirled the liquid around in the glass and then started to lift it to his mouth.
He got it as far as his lips, glanced at the tensed Rainey and the tight-lipped Mrs. Wallis. He froze, lowered the glass, then held it out abruptly towards Rainey.
“You care to try it, Senator?”
Rainey blinked in surprise. “Medicine?” He forced a laugh. “No, thanks, Yancey! It’s all yours. Now drink it up like Mrs. Wallis says.”
“I want to see you drink some first, Rainey!” Yancey snapped in a harsh voice, holding the glass out, hand rock steady.
Rainey frowned, looked at the woman and saw that she was shaking. “Damn you! You told him!”
He whipped a hand beneath his coat for the Sheriff’s Model Colt with the short, two-and-a-half-inch barrel he carried in a shoulder holster. Mrs. Wallis screamed and dropped to the floor beside the bed as the gun appeared in Rainey’s hand and he bared his teeth as he swung it to cover Yancey.
Then there was a muffled explosion and the bed covers jerked as flame stabbed through them, leaving a smoldering hole. Rainey staggered as the lead hit him in the chest and he slammed against the wall. The door burst open and the big Ranger who had been on guard burst in, gun in hand. But Rainey had no fight left in him. He was coughing a ribbon of blood and Yancey sat up in bed, holding his smoking gun out in the open now.
“Get him to Dr. Boles ... He might save him for the hangman,” he ordered and the Ranger dragged the wounded senator out. Mrs. Wallis stood up, still shaking, and looked towards the door as the governor and Kate hurried in. Kate went to Yancey’s side, taking his hand and squeezing it in her relief.
“Thanks, Mrs. Wallis,” Yancey said with feeling. “If you hadn’t told us about Rainey coming to you ...”
“I—I could never do murder just for t
he sake of a little security, Mr. Bannerman,” she said, flushing. “Not even for my children.”
“Well, you won’t have to worry about security after this,” Dukes told her, smiling. “The state will provide you with a proper home and a guaranteed pension. And there will be a bank loan to get you started in your dressmaking shop.”
Mrs. Wallis, looking as though she could hardly believe it, went out of the room, still thanking the governor profusely.
“Funny thing is,” Yancey said, “Rainey needn’t have tipped his hand. Carlsen hadn’t told me anything about him. I knew there was someone named Onslow in Bent’s Junction, but that was all. If Rainey had sat tight, he might have gotten away with it.”
“Oh, no,” Kate told him. “John Cato managed to track the trouble right back to Rainey’s ranch. He’s sent a wire and is on his way here now with a girl, no less.”
“Why the note of surprise?” Yancey asked. “Cato’s always got some woman in tow.”
“Yancey, I think there’s something a little more permanent about this one. Just from the tone and his choice of words in his telegram,” Kate said.
Yancey arched his eyebrows. “This I’ve got to see!”
“Well, he’ll be here tomorrow,” Dukes said, looking at Kate and Yancey. “Until that time, I think I might leave you two alone. Somehow I feel superfluous.”
They looked at him innocently, but Kate, smiling, held open the door for him. Dukes shook his head slowly as he went out. Kate closed the door and put the lock peg through the latch tongue as she moved back towards the bed and the smiling Yancey. His arms were waiting for her.
BANNERMAN 13: THE GUILTY GUNS
By Kirk Hamilton
First Published by The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd
Copyright © Cleveland Publishing Co. Pty Ltd, New South Wales, Australia
First Smashwords Edition: December 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with The Cleveland Publishing Pty Ltd.
About the Author
Keith Hetherington
aka Kirk Hamilton, Brett Waring and Hank J. Kirby
Australian writer Keith has worked as television scriptwriter on such Australian TV shows as Homicide, Matlock Police, Division 4, Solo One, The Box, The Spoiler and Chopper Squad.
“I always liked writing little vignettes, trying to describe the action sequences I saw in a film or the Saturday Afternoon Serial at local cinemas,” remembers Keith Hetherington, better-known to Piccadilly Publishing readers as Hank J. Kirby, author of the Bronco Madigan series.
Keith went on to pen hundreds of westerns (the figure varies between 600 and 1000) under the names Kirk Hamilton (including the legendary Bannerman the Enforcer series) and Clay Nash as Brett Waring. Keith also worked as a journalist for the Queensland Health Education Council, writing weekly articles for newspapers on health subjects and radio plays dramatizing same.
More on Keith Hetherington
The Bannerman Series by Kirk Hamilton
The Enforcer
Ride the Lawless Land
Guns of Texas
A Gun for the Governor
Rogue Gun
Trail Wolves
Dead Shot
A Man Called Sundance
Mad Dog Hallam
Shadow Mesa
Day of the Wolf
Tejano
The Guilty Guns
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