Slash stopped before the man, just as the man’s shaking hand and shaking gun cleared leather. Slash grabbed the gun, over the man’s own hand. Slash couldn’t believe the strength remaining in the shaking hand. The man himself grimaced at Slash, gurgling between his lips, from which blood was dribbling down from both mouth corners. He fumbled for Slash with his other hand but was having trouble keeping it raised.
“For cryin’ in the queen’s ale, bucko,” Slash said through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle the pistol out of the man’s hand, “you’re dead!”
Finally, the gun came free. Slash tossed it away and started to raise his rifle to bean the Gatling gunner with the Winchester’s butt, but then the man leaned toward him. Gritting his teeth, he wrapped his hands around Slash’s neck, grinding his thumbs into Slash’s throat. His eyes were flat, and his face was already going pale—Slash could see that in the growing dawn light filtering into the loft—but he still had a hell of a death grip!
Slash hadn’t been prepared for the attack from a dead man. Or a man nearly dead, anyway. He stumbled backward, tripped over his spurs, and fell to the loft floor on his back.
His half-dead assailant fell on top of him, blood still oozing from his mouth and dribbling up around the blade in his chest. He ground his thumbs once more into Slash’s throat. Unable to work the man’s hands free of his neck, Slash wrapped his hands around the blade handle painfully grinding into his own chest, just beneath his breastbone.
Gritting his teeth, he twisted the handle and thus the knife embedded in his assailant’s chest.
The man’s grip loosened. His head jerked, his eyes widened in horror as he stared straight down into Slash’s own eyes. Slash twisted the blade again, working it around, hearing the soft grinding in the man’s own brisket as the razor-edged steel shredded the man’s ticker.
“Oh,” the man said through a weary groan, whispering. “Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . .”
The light faded from his eyes. His hands fell to both sides of Slash’s neck. His head sagged toward Slash’s head. Keeping his hands on the bowie’s handle, Slash pushed the man over to one side and onto his back.
“Damn,” Slash said, breathless, heavily gaining his feet. “Doesn’t anything ever go as planned?”
Outside, voices sounded. They seemed louder now.
Slash’s heart hiccupped.
Pecos!
He ran over to the Gatling gun and stared over the canister into the yard just as one of the men gathered around the dead men’s horses blew straight back off his feet, taking two other men to the ground with him. The first, cannon-like blast was followed quickly by a second blast. Another man was hurled up and back with a shrill cry, slamming another man to the ground before he himself hit the ground and rolled wildly, ass over teakettle.
As all seven of the horses gathered down there began leaping wildly, as did the men around the horses, jerking back in shock, then whipping up their guns, Slash saw one of the “bodies” drop from a bucking horse. Pecos hit the ground and rolled, his sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun gripped in his left hand, while his right hand grabbed for the big Russian thonged low on his right thigh.
Slash swiveled the Gatling’s barrel, taking aim at the men congregated in the yard below, and wrapped his right hand around the wooden handle of the crank.
He shouted, “Get your head down, Pecos, you big ugly galoot!”
Slash turned the crank, and the Gatling gun began caterwauling, spewing flames and fire.
CHAPTER 39
The echo of Pecos’s second twelve-gauge blast hadn’t stopped rocketing around the ranch yard, and the second man nearly cut in two by the double-ought hadn’t stopped rolling on the ground before Pecos kicked himself free of his horse’s back as well as the yellow rain slicker he’d shrouded himself in.
He hit the ground and rolled, feeling a lightning bolt of pain in his shoulder. Dropping his shotgun, he clawed his Russian from the holster on his right thigh. He looked up through the dust wafting around him, noting with a rippling chill that one of the hooves of the horse he’d just kicked free of missed smashing to pulp his left temple by the width of a cat’s whisker.
With another chill, he saw several rifles being leveled on him by the yelling, wide-eyed Spanish Bit men around him.
One snapped off a shot, which, since the shooter himself was moving and Pecos was also still moving, missed its target by a good foot, pluming dirt to Pecos’s left. At the same time that Pecos brought up the cocked Russian and shot the shooter just above the man’s square, brass cartridge belt, Pecos heard a familiar voice shout something, though the only words he could make out above the cacophony around him were “big galoot!”
Grinding his molars in anger but knowing what was coming, he threw himself belly down to the ground and hooked his right arm over his head, while the left one, on fire with pain, hung limp at his side.
The signature rat-tat-tat belching of a Gatling gun filled the air, drowning out all the other sounds—the men’s shouts and the fleeing horses’ screams—and made the ground beneath Pecos shudder like a giant beast trembling fearfully. Around him, the men’s shouts turned to screams, and he felt warm, wet liquid splash him as Slash and the Gatling gun went to work, giving the savage, murdering gold robbers a taste of their own medicine . . .
Giving them no time to pray.
* * *
Inside the cabin, Gerta stared in silent shock out the window to the right of the door, as the second blast resounded outside and a second man went hurtling back off his feet, blood flying in all directions around him.
Still sitting in the hide-bottom chair at the table, Hattie stared in silent shock, as well, vaguely aware of her lower jaw dropping as she saw the “dead man,” who’d just killed two of the gold robbers and knocked at least three more to the ground tumble off the side of his suddenly pitching horse and roll. His head came up, long silver-blond hair flying, to show the flushed face of the Pecos River Kid.
At the same time, a thundering clatter rose from somewhere on the north side of the ranch yard. The horses galloped away in all directions, leaving the men who’d been standing around them open to the 45-caliber bullets being sprayed by what could only be a Gatling gun—for Hattie would remember the distinctive caterwauling roar of such a weapon on her deathbed.
Gerta gasped, her thickly rounded shoulders drawing back as her lungs filled with air. Hattie gasped, as well, as she stared out from behind Gerta and the Spanish Bit men performing a bizarre death dance, each man dancing to the beat of the 45-caliber rounds plunging into him, ripping and tearing, causing blood to spew and the men’s screams to rise above even the thunderous roar of the savage machine gun.
“Daddy!” Gerta cried as her father, who’d gone running down the porch steps into the yard, raising his rifle to return fire, was punched sideways and down as at least one bullet tore into him.
“Daddy!” Gerta cried again, louder, pounding the palms of her hands against the window.
Seething, her fleshy face mottled red and white, she turned toward where she’d leaned her rifle against a post. She pumped a cartridge into the Spencer’s action and started toward the door.
Hattie leaped up out of her chair. Over the past several minutes, she’d made more progress on the ropes binding her wrists. She’d gotten six or seven inches of slack between them. Now she launched herself off her bound feet at Gerta. She looped her wrists over Gerta’s head and drew the seven-inch length of rope back against the woman’s fat neck. With her ankles still being bound, she couldn’t find much purchase for her feet.
She fell backward against the table and brought Gerta back with her, pulling back harder and harder against the woman’s throat.
Gerta strangled and fought, dropping the Spencer to the floor. Spitting and snarling like a trapped wildcat, she flung her hands up toward Hattie’s wrists. Hattie drew them back even farther, feeling the rope, slick with the blood from her own cut wrists, slice into Gerta’s neck. Hattie leaned farth
er back over the table, gritting her teeth, her heart racing as she continued to choke the life out of Gerta’s soft, fleshy body.
Gerta gave up on trying to loosen Hattie’s grip and began flailing her fists toward Hattie’s head, trying to punch her. Hattie leaned far back against the table, drawing farther and farther back on the rope, just out of Gerta’s desperate reach.
Gradually, Gerta stopped punching. Just as gradually, Hattie felt the taut muscles in Gerta’s body slacken. For another full minute, as the Gatling gun continued wailing outside but in shorter, intermittent bursts, Gerta continued making strangling sounds. Then the sounds died, her hands dropped to her sides, and her big body fell slack against Hattie.
Hattie removed her bound wrists from around Gerta’s neck.
Gerta sagged to the floor at Hattie’s feet.
The cabin door flew open. Hattie looked in horror at Daddy stumbling through the doorway, his chest matted in blood, holding his old Winchester rifle low in his right hand. He stopped when he saw his daughter piled up on the floor.
“No!” Daddy cried, staring down in bright-eyed shock at the dead Gerta. He raised his enraged gaze to Hattie and yelled again, “Noooo!”
At the same time, straightening, he raised the rifle in his hands. He cocked a round into the action and aimed down the barrel at Hattie’s head. Hattie turned away from the certain bullet. She squeezed her eyes closed.
The rifle belched loudly, the report rocketing around inside the kitchen.
Hattie jerked with a start. She opened her eyes, frowning, wondering why she didn’t feel anything except her heart racing like a bronco stallion in her chest.
Daddy stood before her, blinking rapidly, the rifle sagging in his arms. The front of his head had been blown out by a bullet fired from behind him. His knees buckled, and he dropped straight down to the floor to land in a bloody heap next to his daughter.
Just beyond where he’d been standing, out on the porch, stood a blue-eyed young blond woman dressed in men’s range clothes, including a tan Stetson and batwing chaps that fit snug against her slender but rounded hips. Her face was boyishly tanned but pretty, her eyes cold and unyielding.
She held a smoking Bisley revolver straight out in her right hand, gray smoke curling from the barrel. A five-pointed silver star winked on the left breast of her wool plaid coat. She looked half wild.
Slowly, she lowered the pistol.
It was then that Hattie realized that the Gatling gun had fallen silent. Beyond the blonde with the silver star, the Spanish Bit men lay in bloody heaps around where the seven horses had been standing less than two minutes ago.
The blonde stared at Hattie. Hattie stared uncertainly back at her.
The blonde looked Hattie up and down, then curled one half of her upper lip in sneering disdain. She turned around and stepped back out onto the porch. In the yard beyond her, the Pecos River Kid lay amongst the dead Spanish Bit riders. He was howling like a wounded coyote.
Quickly, Hattie slipped a knife from a sheath on Daddy’s belt and crouched to saw through the ropes binding her ankles. When she’d sawed through the rope still binding her wrists, she ran outside to where the pretty blonde stood crouching over the Pecos River Kid, who flopped against the ground like a landed fish.
“Pecos, what is it?” Hattie cried, dropping to a knee beside the man. “Are you hit?”
Before Pecos could respond, Slash came running out of the barn, holding his hat in one hand, his rifle in the other hand. “What happened, partner?” he shouted, running faster. “Did I hit you? I told you to keep your head down, ya big fool!”
Slash stopped near Pecos, breathless. Leaning forward, hands on his knees to catch his breath, he said, “Where ya hit? You’re a bloody mess, partner!”
Pecos was writhing, holding his left arm down by his side, like an injured wing. “My sh-sh-shoulder!”
“What?” Slash said, dropping to a knee to regard the man’s shoulder.
“Dis . . . dislocated the cussed thing when . . . when I d-dropped from the hoss!”
Slash stared curiously down at his partner’s arm. It was one of the few parts of the big man’s body that wasn’t bloody.
“I ain’t hit!” Pecos bellowed. “My shoulder, fer godsakes! It came out of its cussed socket!”
Slash saw the bulge in the big man’s left shoulder, just behind the seam in his coat. He waved to Lisa and Hattie. “Step back, ladies. Time for Doctor Slash to go to work.” He grabbed Pecos’s hand.
“No, no, you don’t, you devil!” Pecos bellowed.
“Stop your cussed caterwauling!”
“Leave me be! Oh, God, it hurts!”
“Oh, come on.” Slash took a firm hold of Pecos’s left hand and placed his right boot on the man’s side. “You’re makin’ a damn fool out of yourself in front of these ladies. I’m right ashamed of you, you big Nancy-boy!”
“Don’t you daaarrrre!”
Before Pecos had gotten “dare” out of his mouth, Slash gave Pecos’s hand a hard tug.
There was a grinding, crunching sound as the bone slid back into its socket.
Pecos jerked as though he’d been struck by lightning. He opened his mouth, drew a breath, and flopped back against the ground, where he lay staring intently up at the sky, round-eyed, as though he were watching something both horrible and amazing. He moved his legs a little, but he’d otherwise stopped writhing.
Slash stood over him, frowning down at his partner’s face. “I do believe I ain’t never seen a man turn so completely white.”
Something plunked into the ground just off Slash’s right boot, between him and where Hattie stood, staring down in concern at the big cutthroat. A rifle’s sharp crack reached Slash’s ears a half-second later, echoing. Both Hattie and Lisa wheeled, gasping.
Slash reached for the rifle he’d handed to Hattie, but a man’s voice kept him from raising it. “Don’t do it, Slash!”
Slash stared toward where a man was just then riding out from behind the house. It was Red Ingram, coming around the house’s southern front corner. Ingram rode a big dun and was trailing two beefy pack mules. Cream tarpaulins were wrapped around whatever the mules were carrying on their wooden pack frames.
Slash had a pretty good idea what they were carrying, all right . . .
“Pa!” Lisa yelled. She’d started to pull her Bisley; now she left it in its holster, on her right thigh, but kept her hand around the handle. “I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”
“Drop the rifle, Slash!” Red ordered.
“Pa!” Lisa yelled. “What . . . what . . . ?”
“Fetch your horse, daughter.”
“What? Why . . . ?”
“He’s got the gold,” Slash said.
Pecos was sitting up now, leaning back on one elbow. He was still a little green around the gills, but he was more concerned about Red Ingram now than he was about his shoulder. “Red . . .” Pecos shook his head slowly. “Red . . . what the hell . . . ?”
“Shut up, Pecos. Slash, throw down that rifle.” Ingram looked at his daughter, flushing with impatience. “Fetch your hoss! We’re ridin’ out of here!”
“The leg must be feelin’ better,” Slash taunted him. “Leastways, it ain’t so hard to climb into the saddle with a busted knee when you’ve got a coupla hundred thousand dollars in pure gold to fetch.”
Lisa looked at the mules. Her eyes returned to her father. “Is . . . is that the gold on them mules, Pa?”
“Yep.” Ingram’s voice was grim. He kept his eyes on Slash and Pecos. “It’s the gold, all right.”
“You were workin’ for Greenleaf, weren’t you?” Slash kept his own hard gaze on Ingram, keeping his rifle in his hand. “You let him know when folks came around, asking about the gold mine . . . the ranch. The ghost mine and the ghost ranch. You helped him keep the secret, helped him spread the word around town that no one better get too curious about why no miners ever showed up in Honeysuckle. Only ranch hands. Still, gold went out every
couple of months. Without any miners or any other sign of mining. You kept the secret. Greenleaf must have been payin’ you for that. You’d have been in the best position of anyone in town.”
“Yeah . . . yeah,” Lisa said, catching on. “Just riders coming through Honeysuckle now and then. Riders with pack mules . . . just like those you’re leadin’, Pa.” Her gold-blond brows beetled over her probing blue eyes. “You were workin’ for Greenleaf and his daughter. . . keepin’ his secrets, keepin’ anyone from riding out to the ranch or the mine to look around. That’s why you forbid me from ridin’ out here, forbid me from askin’ questions about it.”
“I was only tryin’ to keep you alive, daughter.”
“Pa . . . Pa . . .” Lisa still couldn’t wrap her mind around it. “Were you takin’ blood money? You?”
“Why the hell not? I’m an old man. I have a daughter to finish raisin’. The town’s all but dead. Where am I gonna get another job after the city council gives me my time an’ sends me on my way? I still got a daughter to raise. Look at you, Lisa. You’re as wild as the coyotes! I need to get you out of here. Take you somewhere civilized. Finish raisin’ you up.
“You’re a beautiful girl. You need better manners. You need to dress nice. Like a woman, not a man! You need a good husband. You ain’t gonna find none o’ that out here. Now!” Ingram glanced at the mules behind him and smiled giddily. “Now . . . hell, we can go to San Francisco an’ live high on the hog!”
“Pa, you’ve gone mad. I’m not goin’ anywhere with you an’ that gold. How did you get it anyway? How did you know . . . ?”
“I rode out lookin’ for you. Got worried about you when you never showed up back in town yesterday. I rode to the mine. Figured you’d followed these two old rapscallions . . . out to the mine . . .”
A Good Day for a Massacre Page 31