The big gundown (4 page)

The wind tugged at The Kid’s hat as he leaned forward in the saddle, over the neck of the hard-galloping buckskin. Without really thinking about what he was doing, he reached up to tug the hat down tighter on his head. It was just a reflex action. His brain was full of worry for the family he had left.

He had covered about a mile, so he was only halfway there. Despite the way the buckskin’s long-legged pace ate up the ground, it seemed to take forever to get anywhere. The Kid’s lips pulled back from his teeth in a grimace. He shouldn’t have ridden off like that, he told himself. He should have stayed to make sure Sean and Frannie and Cyrus were safe. He should have known that the colonel would be suspicious and would come back to the Williams spread sooner or later.

The Kid shoved those thoughts out of his head. He knew from tragic experience that all the “should haves” in the world meant nothing. All that mattered was what actually happened.

A column of black smoke climbed into the Arizona sky that had turned a brilliant blue with the advent of morning.

The Kid bit back a curse and lashed the buckskin with the reins, trying to get more speed out of the horse. The buckskin responded gallantly, stretching out even more. The landscape flashed by in a blur. Man and horse were one, racing across the flats, bounding up and down the gentle hills, wheeling tightly around obstacles.

Finally The Kid realized that the horse’s heart might burst if he kept up this pace. The buckskin would run himself to death, if that was what The Kid asked him to do. The Kid hauled back on the reins, slowing his mount a little even though the smoke curling into the sky called out to him with a terrible urgency.

It wouldn’t do any good if the buckskin collapsed underneath him, he told himself. He held the horse at a hard run instead of the full-out sprint.

He couldn’t hear the shots anymore, but it was unlikely he’d be able to hear them over the buckskin’s pounding hoofbeats, even if they continued.

A long rise loomed in front of him. The Kid knew that the ranch headquarters was on the other side of that rise. There was no longer any doubt about where the thick black smoke was coming from.

He pulled the Winchester from its sheath as he started up the rise. If whoever had attacked the ranch was still there, he intended to make them pay for what they had done.

As he topped the rise, he saw that the raiders were gone. Nothing was moving around the ranch. Smoke poured up from the house, the barn, and the bunkhouse. Those structures were made of adobe, but their interiors could burn. The corral was empty and its gate open. The raiders had taken the horses with them.

The Kid’s heart slugged heavily in his chest as he spotted several dark shapes sprawled on the ground near the bunkhouse. The vaqueros must have run outside when the shooting started, only to be cut down. Another body lay face down near the house. The Kid rode hard toward it. Maybe somebody was still alive. He knew it was a forlorn hope, but he couldn’t abandon it.

As he came closer, he saw a big hole in the wall of the house, as if something had smashed through it. He didn’t know what could have inflicted the damage but it didn’t really matter. He hauled back on the reins and slowed the buckskin, swinging down from the saddle even before the horse came to a halt. The Kid landed running, with the Winchester held ready for instant use if he needed it.

He recognized the man lying facedown as Sean Williams. The Kid dropped to a knee beside the young rancher and set the rifle on the ground. He took hold of Sean’s shoulders and carefully rolled him onto his back. The Kid’s hard-planed face took on an even grimmer cast as he saw how sodden with blood Sean’s shirt was. The rancher was shot to pieces.

But somehow, he was still alive. His eyelids flickered open. The Kid slipped an arm under his shoulders and lifted him a little. He peered up at The Kid without seeming to recognize him. “F-Frannie?” he husked.

“It’s Morgan, Sean,” The Kid said. “What happened?”

Blood dribbled in a crimson stream from the corner of Sean’s mouth. He still didn’t seem to know who The Kid was, but he answered the question.

“Men…rode up…started shooting…we’d just sat down…to breakfast…I ran to the door…oh, God!” His face twisted, either from pain or the memory of what had happened or both. “There was…a terrible noise…something came through the wall…Frannie and Cyrus were still at the table…Oh, God! No! No!”

The Kid glanced at the hole in the wall. If whatever had caused that destruction had gone on through and hit Frannie and Cyrus, there was no way they had survived. And if they were still in the burning house, there might not even be anything left of their bodies.

Sean’s fingers clutched at The Kid’s arm. “You’ve got to…save them…get them out…”

“Sure,” The Kid said. “I’ll do what I can, Sean. I swear.”

But he didn’t get up, knowing that there was no point. He had already seen the light fading in Sean’s eyes, and a moment later, the young man’s grip relaxed and his fingers slid off The Kid’s arm. His breath came out of him in a long, final sigh. The Kid closed Sean’s eyes and eased him back to the ground.

The Kid stood up and looked toward the house. He had promised Sean that he would do what he could for Frannie and Cyrus, and he fully intended to keep that promise. He would also do the one thing that was within his power.

He would avenge their deaths.

The Kid checked on the three vaqueros who lay near the bunkhouse and found that they were dead, also shot full of holes just like Sean. He didn’t see the fourth member of the crew, but he assumed the man’s body was inside the bunkhouse, being consumed by the flames. He couldn’t put out the fires. They would just have to burn themselves out.

In the meantime, he covered the bodies with blankets from his bedroll to keep scavengers off them, then mounted up and rode in a large circle around the ranch headquarters. He saw numerous hoofprints, and while he wasn’t an expert tracker like his father, he could tell that the men who’d attacked the ranch had approached the place from the southeast.

The Kid noticed something else that was odd—two parallel lines etched into the sandy ground that looked like the tracks of wagon wheels. They were too close together to be wagon tracks, though. He wasn’t sure what had made the marks, but he was reasonably certain it was something the raiders had brought with them, then taken away again, because the marks turned and went back in the other direction.

The place where they turned around was on top of a small ridge that commanded a good view of the ranch house. The Kid sat there on the buckskin for a long moment, frowning as he thought about what he was looking at. An idea played around in the back of his mind, but he didn’t know if there was any truth to it.

The fires inside the buildings were starting to die down. The roofs had collapsed, but the adobe walls still stood. The Kid rode back down there, dismounted, and started looking around for a shovel. He found one in a small shed that stood near the barn but wasn’t attached to it. The fire hadn’t spread that far.

He walked up a small, aspen-dotted hill behind the ranch house that looked like it might be a good place to dig some graves. He figured Sean and Frannie and Cyrus would like to be laid to rest overlooking the home where they had lived for too short a time. He hadn’t started digging, though, when he heard a sudden rustling noise in some nearby brush. Instinct made The Kid drop the shovel and whirl toward the sound, palming out his Colt as he did so.

A weak voice said, “P-Please, señor…h-help me…”

Wary of a trap, The Kid approached the brush carefully, gun in hand. He crouched, moved some branches aside, and saw a man he recognized as one of the Williams vaqueros lying there covered with blood.

No one else was around. The Kid holstered his gun and moved quickly to the injured man’s side. One glance was enough to tell him that the vaquero was in the same shape as Sean Williams had been—shot to pieces and not long for this world.

“Did you see the man who did this to you, amigo?”

The vaquero’s tongue came out and licked blood-smeared lips. His hands moved aimlessly around his bullet-shredded midsection. “The hombres…Señor Sean…warned us about…a dozen of them…maybe more…they had…
artilleria
…”

The Kid wasn’t sure he had heard right, but what he thought the vaquero had said fit in with the theory he had come up with. On one knee next to the man, he leaned closer and said, “You mean a cannon?”

“Sí, señor…a c-cannon…” A shiver went through the man, and he cried out, “Aii, Dios mio!”

Those were his final words. His head slumped to the side. His eyes were open and staring without seeing anything.

The Kid closed this man’s eyes as he had Sean’s, then came to his feet and looked down at the ranch house. A cannonball had caused the hole in the wall. The words of the dying vaquero had confirmed his suspicions. The cart on which the big gun was mounted had left those tracks.

What sort of men would attack a peaceful ranch with a cannon and brutally wipe out a family that had done nothing wrong?

Even as that question went through The Kid’s mind, he knew the answer.

The sort of men who rode with Colonel Gideon Black.

He had known as soon as he saw them that they were evil, cold-blooded killers. The colonel himself had seemed different, polite and well-spoken. But he had been in charge, and he had to know the kind of men who were riding with him. To The Kid’s way of thinking, that made Colonel Black just as bad or worse. The Kid had no doubt that it was Black who had ordered the attack on the ranch after finding the bodies of the men buried under the bank of the arroyo. Black hadn’t asked any questions. He had just assumed that those on the Williams ranch were responsible for the deaths of his men, and he had acted quickly and ruthlessly to settle the score for them.

Colonel Black was going to discover that he wasn’t the only one who could avenge some deaths. The Kid intended to make the colonel and his men pay for what had happened there that morning. He didn’t care how many of them there were, and he didn’t give a damn that they had a cannon. The big gun didn’t matter.

Before this was over, The Kid vowed as he stood on the hill and looked at the thinning smoke from the ruined ranch, there was going to be one hell of a big gundown.

Bisbee, Arizona Territory, was nestled in the Mule Mountains, not far from the Mexican border. It was stretching a point to call the low peaks around them mountains, but in that generally flat country, The Kid supposed they qualified. Dusk was settling down, and lights from the buildings were spread across the lower slopes.

The discovery of copper in the area almost twenty years earlier had led to the founding of the settlement, and it had grown as miners realized that smaller quantities of gold and silver could be found along with the copper. The Kid recalled that as Conrad Browning, he had owned a stake in a copper mine near there. Still did, he supposed, but he had never visited the operation and it had represented nothing to him then except some figures on a balance sheet. Now it was even less than that to him. He had no reason to go there, at least none that he knew of.

The first time Colonel Black came to the Williams ranch, he had said that he and his men were headed up the San Pedro. That might have been a lie, or it might be that the killers had indeed gone up the river and then returned to the ranch to wipe out the Williams family. Either way, The Kid didn’t know where they were now, and since he wanted to pick up their trail, the best place to start seemed to be Bisbee. He knew from what Sean and Frannie had told him that the four men he’d killed on the ranch had been planning to rendezvous with Colonel Black in Bisbee.

Somebody there would be able to tell him where to find the colonel.

Once The Kid knew that, his plan was simple: kill the son of a bitch and everybody with him.

It was all he could do for Sean and Frannie and Cyrus.

In the early afternoon he had found the bodies of mother and son in the charred ruins of the ranch house, once the heat had subsided enough for him to go inside. The ashes were still hot under his boots, so he moved quickly as he wrapped the bodies in blankets and carried them out to place them gently next to Sean’s body. He had already dug seven graves up on the hillside. He was drenched with sweat, his muscles ached and there was still work to be done.

The metal framework of the wagon that had been inside the barn was still relatively intact. Only some of it was twisted from the heat of the flames. The Kid shook out his rope, tied the vehicle to the buckskin, and used the horse to pull it out of the ruins. He found enough scraps of charred lumber and cobbled together a new bed for the wagon. Once he had done that, he placed the bodies on the wagon and used it to carry them up the hill to the gravesites.

Earlier, he had spotted the basket where Cyrus had kept the pups. A glance into the basket told him that someone had emptied a six-gun into it. The Kid took the basket up the hill, too, and put it into the grave with Cyrus. Then he started filling in the seven holes.

It was mid-afternoon by the time he finished, and he still had a long ride to Bisbee. But he paused long enough to stand for a moment over the graves. He wasn’t a praying man—he didn’t think
El Señor Dios
would look too kindly on words from a man who had so much blood on his hands—so he said to the people he had just buried, “I can’t make it right. But I can make the bastards pay.”

He was settling his hat on his head when he saw movement down at the ranch. A couple of small dark shapes darted around the ruins. The Kid frowned, wondering if they were rats.

When he heard the faint yipping he knew that he was looking at a couple of Cyrus’s pups. Somehow they had escaped the massacre of their brothers and sisters. Probably off wandering around somewhere when the attack came.

The Kid thought about it for a long moment, then heaved a sigh. He mounted up, rode down the hill, and called and whistled until the puppies came to him. He made room in his saddlebags, scooped them up, and put them in there. As the buckskin walked along Bisbee’s main street a few hours later, they were still there, their heads sticking out the top of the saddlebag as they looked around. They didn’t weigh more than a few pounds each, little squirming bundles of black and gray and brown, and The Kid didn’t know what the hell he was going to do with them. All he knew was that he couldn’t leave them on the death-haunted ranch to survive on their own. Cyrus wouldn’t have wanted that.

The Kid angled the buckskin toward the hitch rail in front of a general store that was still open. He saw two men walking along the planks of the boardwalk toward the store but didn’t pay much attention to them as he dismounted. He took the pups out of the saddlebag and cradled them both in the crook of his left arm as he started up the steps to the high loading dock in front of the store.

“Would you look at that, Rawley? Fella’s got hisself some little dogs.”

The Kid glanced toward the men, saw them elbowing each other and laughing as they looked at him and the pups.

“Naw, them ain’t proper dogs, Paxton,” the one called Rawley said. “Look how little they are. I think maybe they’re prairie dogs.”

Paxton giggled. “You ever had fried prairie dog? It ain’t bad.”

“Yeah, and I’m hungry.” Rawley grinned at The Kid. “Say, mister, you want to sell us those little varmints? We’ll fry ’em up and see how tasty they are.”

The Kid recognized the two men for what they were with a single look. Rawley wore a Mexican sombrero with little balls dangling from the brim, while Paxton sported a dusty black suit and Stetson. Both men carried Colts in cut-down, tied-down holsters. Would-be hard cases and desperadoes, men who fancied themselves fast with their guns. They’d been drinking, but their steps were steady enough and they didn’t sway as they stood on the store’s loading dock grinning at The Kid. The combination of all those things made them dangerous, although The Kid wasn’t particularly worried. He just didn’t want to be bothered with them.

“Sorry, boys,” he said. “These pups aren’t for sale. I’m looking for a good home for them, though.”

“We’ll give ’em a good home,” Paxton said. He grinned and rubbed his belly.

“Hand ’em over, mister,” Rawley added, “and there won’t be no trouble.”

This was ridiculous, The Kid thought. The two men didn’t really want the puppies. They were just looking for an excuse to bully somebody, and the pups had provided it.

“There won’t be any trouble,” The Kid said flatly. “I’m going in the store, and the pups are coming with me.”

Rawley’s lips pulled back from his teeth as his mouth curled in a sneer. The Kid’s response was just what he’d been waiting for.

“What if we say they ain’t?”

“Then you’ll be wrong.”

“You know who we are?” Paxton demanded in a blustering tone. “You got any idea who you’re mess-in’ with here, boy?”

“I think I do.” The Kid paused. “A couple of damned fools looking for somebody to run roughshod over. Well, I have to tell you, I’m in no mood for it.”

Both gunnies stiffened in outrage at The Kid’s words. “Why, you little piss-ant!” Paxton spat. “You can’t talk to us like that!”

“Sure as hell can’t!” Rawley added.

The Kid took a step toward the store’s entrance. “Go somewhere and finish getting drunk. And leave me alone while you’re at it.”

He wasn’t trying to pick a fight with them. He honestly wanted them to go on and leave him alone. If they had done so, that would have been the end of it.

But Paxton yelled, “You son of a bitch!” and reached for his gun, and Rawley made his draw in silence.

The confrontation wasn’t worth killing over, but both men were fairly fast and The Kid knew he wouldn’t have the time for anything fancy. He pivoted toward them as the Colt leaped into his hand as if by magic. The two hard cases had called the tune. Time for them to dance to it.

Both men cleared leather, but The Kid’s gun was level while their weapons were still coming up. The Colt roared and bucked in his hand as he put his first shot in Rawley’s chest. The impact rocked the man back a step, but he stayed on his feet. The Kid switched his aim and fired again, this time at Paxton. Paxton was moving, darting to the side as The Kid drew, so that the bullet intended for Paxton’s heart shattered his left arm about halfway between the elbow and shoulder instead. Paxton screamed in agony as the shot spun him halfway around.

Rawley was still trying to get a shot off, so The Kid planted another round in him. Rawley’s head jerked, and the sombrero with its dangling, decorative balls went flying off his head. He finally managed to pull the trigger, but his gun was still pointed down and the slug smacked harmlessly into the loading dock at his feet. Rawley fell to his knees and pitched forward onto his face.

Panting in pain through clenched teeth, Paxton stood at the edge of the dock and tried again to raise his gun. The Kid fired for a fourth time, and this bullet sent Paxton plunging off the dock into the street. His face plowed into the dirt as he landed. He didn’t move again.

The pups had been squirming before the shots began to roar, but the thunderous reports had stunned them into stillness. The Kid glanced down at them to make sure they were all right and saw them staring up at him wide-eyed, with almost human expressions.

“Sorry,” he said.

He turned his attention back to the two men he’d just shot. He was pretty sure they were both dead, but he still had one round left in the revolver’s cylinder in case he needed it.

Neither man was moving. The Kid stepped over to the edge of the loading dock to take a closer look at Paxton, then used the toe of one of his boots to roll Rawley onto his back. The man stared up sightlessly into the night.

Bisbee had a reputation as a tough town. Most settlements that had sprung up because of their proximity to mines were like that. But even so, an outburst of gunfire was enough to draw considerable attention. A number of men converged on the general store to see what all the commotion was about.

He glanced over his shoulder when he heard a clicking sound behind him. He saw a man standing in the store’s doorway, pointing a double-barreled shotgun at him. The sound he’d heard had been both hammers of the greener being cocked.

“I want to see both hands empty, mister,” the man holding the shotgun grated, “or I’ll blow you plumb in two!”