Outlaw Pass (9781101544785) (31 page)

Almost certain he had heard at least two cries of pain, Adam paused to reload the magazine of his rifle. Already, the under barrel of the weapon was too hot to handle because of the repeated firing, so he wrapped his bandanna around it to hold on to while he loaded in fifteen more shots. Then he waited for a couple of minutes. There were no more shots coming from the outhouse, so the question now was had he landed a fatal shot, or was Cruz trying to lure him in?

Cruz had stopped shooting for the simple reason he was too short to fire over the edge of the hole he was in. His only option for defense was to lean back in the corner of the pit to give him an angle to fire at Adam if he came in the door. The situation resulted in a stalemate between the two, with another worry to confront Adam. How long had he been there, pumping bullets into that toilet? Surely the sheriff, or some of Cruz's friends, might show up at any minute, but he wanted to make sure he finished the job before taking to the hills.
Maybe he's dead
, he thought, knowing that he had to be certain.
But if I walk up and open that door, and he ain't dead, then I'm as good as
. “Hell,” he exclaimed in frustration, “I can't just sit here wonderin'.”

He got to his feet and ran back along the side of the saloon, looking back frequently to make sure Cruz didn't come out of his hole. At the front of the building, he quickly untied Bucky's reins, jumped in the saddle, and raced back to the outhouse, shaking out a loop in the rope on his saddle. With no regard for the possibility of a shot coming from inside the cramped privy, he looped the noose over a corner of the roof, took a couple of turns around his saddle horn to pull it taut, then gave Bucky his heels. The big bay jumped to the task and lunged, pulling the outhouse over on its side and revealing the trapped murderer huddled in the corner of his malodorous grave. The fatal bullet came as Cruz tried to turn for a better angle to fire. Adam's slug caught him square in the chest, and he immediately sank to his knees in the filthy slime before falling over on his side.

Adam took only a few moments to gaze down at the corpse lying in the muck of the toilet to make sure another bullet wasn't necessary. It seemed a fitting ending for the conscienceless killer. He shook his rope loose from the roof corner and coiled it. Back in the saddle, he could hear the clamor of voices in front of the saloon. No one had dared to venture around to the back while the shooting was going on, but Adam knew it would only be a matter of minutes before they did, now that it had stopped. With no desire to get into it with the sheriff or any of Cruz's friends, he gave Bucky a firm heel and galloped away behind the buildings.

As he approached the rear of the assay office, beside one of the stables in town, a man ran out in the alley, waving his arms, trying to flag him down. Adam pulled his rifle, but the man appeared to be unarmed. “Hold on!” the man pleaded, and moved from side to side, trying to block Adam's path.

Adam pulled Bucky up to keep from running the man down, but he was in no mood to waste time with him. “Mister, I don't wanna run over you, but I damn sure will.”

“Wait! I'm a friend of Bonnie Wells! My name's Clyde Allen.”

“Well, whaddaya want, Clyde Allen? I'm kinda in a hurry.”

“I wanna warn you, mister. One of Ainsworth's men saw you ride into town, and they've set up ambushes on both ends of town, just waitin' for you.”

Adam was at once alarmed. He had counted on riding in unnoticed, completing his mission, and riding out before the outlaw sheriff knew what had happened. He peered at Clyde Allen in an effort to make a quick judgment. Maybe he was just part of another trap to stop him, but he seemed genuine in his concern for Adam's safety. And if what he said was true, it would explain why it took so long for the sheriff to respond to the shooting behind the saloon. Before deciding, he looked out across the open ground between the buildings and the ridge bordering the gulch with a thought to simply hightail it toward the slope, avoiding both ends of the town.

Reading his thoughts, Clyde said, “That's a long ride without a tree for cover. You'd be an easy target.”

Adam tended to agree. “All right, what have you got in mind?”

“Follow me,” Clyde said, and motioned toward the stable behind him. “Nobody's gonna look for you there, but we need to be quick about it.” Without waiting for Adam's response, he turned and trotted toward the open door.

Aware that his options were few, Adam decided to put his faith in the man's honesty, and followed him through the door of the stable. Coming from the bright sunny morning, he needed a few seconds for his eyes to adjust to the dark interior of the stable. When they did, he was startled to find himself confronting a semicircle of perhaps a dozen men. His initial reaction was to draw back hard on Bucky's reins while reaching for his rifle. “Hold on, Adam!” a voice bellowed. “We're friends!” Since no one of them raised a weapon against him, he hesitated, still unsure. The man who had called out to him stepped up beside his stirrup. His eyes now fully adjusted to the darkness of the stable, Adam recognized Mutt Jeffries, the stage driver.

“Mutt? What the hell?” was all Adam could say. He noticed then that all of the men were heavily armed, although none of them appeared to be other than store clerks and businessmen.

“You got here at a pretty good time,” Mutt said. “This is the vigilance committee of Grasshopper Creek, and we're fixin' to clean out this town of all the outlaws that have been robbin' and murderin' all over this valley. We've got the names of ever' one of the bastards that have been ridin' for Ainsworth and his outlaws. We was plannin' on goin' to get that murderin' son of a bitch that's been sittin' in the back corner of the Miner's Friend since yesterday, but you kinda beat us to it.” He paused to grin at the men behind him. “Matter of fact, you've cut down on the amount of work we had to do, ever since you landed in town a while back. Now we feel like we got enough men to finish the job you started.”

Astonished to hear that he had played a significant part in the vigilante effort to clean up the town, Adam was not sure if they expected more from him. “I told you from the first why I came to Bannack. I wasn't successful in finding my brother alive, but I did find the men responsible for his death. They're all taken care of. That fellow, Cruz, was the last on my list, so I'm done with what I set out to do. All I want now is to get on back home.”

“Adam,” Mutt implored, “this business is bigger'n just Grasshopper Creek. We've been workin' with the committee in Alder Gulch and Daylight Gulch, too. We're takin' our towns back from the outlaws that have been makin' a livin' robbin' honest folks. They're all comin' down, and I'm talkin' about Henry Plummer, too. A citizens group arrested him yesterday in Virginia City, gave him a short trial, and hung him—said he cried like a baby.” His remark caused a muttered wave of approval from the men gathered around him. “Last week a citizens group arrested five outlaws and took 'em to Nevada City for trial where Plummer couldn't get to 'em. They hung 'em, but before he died, Red Yager confessed and named Plummer as the boss of the whole thing. A lot of us knew Plummer was behind it all, but we couldn't prove it.”

“So now you're wantin' me to join you fellers. Is that it?” Adam asked.

“Well,” Mutt said, “we'd sure welcome it, but like you said, you've done your part, and you're ready to get the hell outta here. Can't blame you for that. To tell you the truth, we've got things under control now. Some of the outlaws got wind of what was goin' on and turned tail and cleared out. We've got enough of us to handle those waitin' in ambush for you at each end of town.” He grinned confidently. “No, we didn't stop you for that. We just wanted to keep you from ridin' right into an ambush. You just give us a head start and we'll take care of that situation.”

Although surprised by Mutt's statement, Adam was glad to hear that they weren't looking to him to participate. He had had enough of killing to last him the rest of his life, something he was going to have to carry on his conscience, even allowing the fact that every life he had taken would be justified by most men. “I appreciate it, Mutt,” he said. “I expect it is time that I got back home to help my pa with the stock. I wish you men good huntin'.”

“There's somethin' more you need to be worryin' about,” Mutt said. “Red Yager also told 'em that Plummer had already sent word to that damn professional killer of his to track you down and kill you. Yager said you had killed off too many of Plummer's gang. They was all sure that you was a hired gun that the citizens here had called in to clean 'em out. And since nobody he sent after you came back alive, he decided to call in some high-priced help.”

Adam didn't respond right away. Mutt had given him something to think about, something he hadn't considered, and something he could certainly do without. “Who is this professional killer?” he asked.

“I don't know,” Mutt replied. “There ain't much I can tell you about him. I don't believe he's ever been around here. If he has, nobody's ever seen him.”

“I heard Fred Smith talkin' to Big John Tyson about him,” Clyde Allen offered. “He said his name is Briscoe. That's all he goes by. When I asked Big John about him, he told me to mind my own business.”

“Sorry we can't tell you more about him,” Mutt said. “You just be sure you're careful, and don't leave a trail for anybody to follow.”

“Yeah, I will,” Adam said. “You mind you be careful, too, and good luck to you.” He grabbed Mutt's hand when it was offered to him, and they shook. “Briscoe, huh? Well, I don't plan to wait around for Mr. Briscoe. I'm headin' back to the Yellowstone. He's gonna have to be part Indian to catch me.”

He stood there, holding Bucky's reins, while the solemn group of men filed out of the stable on their way to the site of the ambush at the upper end of town. He waited nearly twenty minutes before stepping up in the saddle again. Walking Bucky to the doorway, he paused to search up and down the alley before venturing out again. A sudden eruption of shotgun and rifle fire from the upper end of town, past the hotel, told him that the vigilantes had confronted the outlaws waiting in ambush. And from the sound of it, Adam guessed that the outlaws were on the run.
I guess Mutt wasn't lying when he said they could handle it
, he thought. He nudged Bucky into an easy lope, pleased for the honest people of the town that they were ridding themselves of the vermin that had preyed upon them for over two years.

Kneeling between two lone fir trees near the top of the very hill that Adam had first considered heading for, an interested observer watched the developments taking place in the small mining town. While looking the town over earlier, he had spotted the miners' hired gunman when he rode up to the saloon. At least, he was about seventy-five percent certain that it was the man he had been sent to eliminate. He wasn't able to tell much about the man at that distance. He had simply been told that he was a big man, riding a bay horse. When, a few minutes later, the gun battle behind the saloon took place, he became more convinced that he was the right man. It was obvious that the gunman had come looking for his victim, and when he had done the job, he rode away behind the buildings. At that point, he lost track of him until the group of men emerged from the stable and headed for a confrontation with three bushwhackers hiding at the head of the trail out of town. Then his target appeared again, riding away toward the far hills. Briscoe was a hundred percent certain then that he had the right man.

He had the feeling that something on a large scale was occurring in the mining towns. What he witnessed here in Bannack on this day was something he never expected to see any time soon—a citizens' committee moving against the outlaws. Perhaps had he been in constant contact with Henry Plummer, he might have seen this coming. But it was not his style to stay close to the rabble that Plummer employed. In fact, he preferred to remain apart until summoned for a specific job, as in this case. He suspected that Plummer's days were numbered, but he had been paid a handsome fee to eliminate this so-called professional gunman, and he had always earned his money. And now he had a hot trail to follow. Mr. Professional Gunman was on a short string, because once Briscoe had a trail, the execution was as good as done. He stepped up in the saddle, guided his horse down the hill, and angled across the broad valley in the direction the big man on the bay had taken.

He struck his trail just west of the town, fresh tracks in the soft dirt beside a trickle of a spring, and he dismounted to study them. He wanted to familiarize himself with that particular set of tracks. Satisfied, he mounted again and followed the trail until it led to the road to Virginia City.
He's going to make it pretty easy for me if he stays on the road
, he thought.
It'll just be a matter of catching up with him.
Pausing to look for signs that the tracks departed from the many other tracks on the road, he studied both sides of the road for a distance of about a hundred yards. Satisfied then that his target was intent upon taking the road to Virginia City, and not concerned about being followed, Briscoe urged his horse into a lope.

It was Adam's plan to leave the main road when he came to the Beaverhead, then follow that river north to bypass Virginia City before cutting across to the Madison. This was what he had attempted to do before with Finn and the two women, only to be driven into the mountains to hide. Recalling that journey caused him to think about the young girl, Lacey, and the sorrow he felt for not seeing her safely home. He had no idea if it would have been a good idea to take Lacey to the Triple-B, but he felt that his father would have taken her in, especially if Adam told him that Jake had planned to marry her. No one would have to know her past. Adam was convinced that she deserved a second chance.
But I reckon it just wasn't in the cards
, he thought.