The Sapphire Gun (14 page)

Over the next two days, Clint checked in on Galloway every couple of hours. He learned from Galloway's partner where to get ahold of the man when he wasn't at the Western Union office, so Clint could even check in on him in the middle of the night.

In actuality, Clint only checked on Galloway a handful of times. He just made sure to do so a twice in a short amount of time and also at odd hours. After that, Galloway was so anxious for the next visit that he felt like he couldn't take one wrong step without being spotted. At least that way, Clint could take care of some business on his own without being too worried about Galloway running off.

One of those points of business to check on was Johnny's house. Clint rode out there to get a look at what remained after the drunks and partygoers finally cleared out. As he expected, there wasn't a whole lot. The fence around the house was knocked down in several places. The little barn was wide open. Even the front door of the house itself swung back and forth on its hinges. As he rode up closer to the house, Clint could make out more than a few windows that were broken now that hadn't been broken before.

Clint couldn't see any movement as he approached the house, but his hand still went reflexively toward the gun at his side.

Leaving Eclipse near the front gate, Clint continued on foot toward Johnny's old front door. Every so often, he could hear something falling and breaking inside the house. A few shuffling steps made their way to Clint's ears, but suddenly stopped.

Clint stopped as well and thought back to what else Galloway could have mentioned in the telegram he'd sent. Since Clint hadn't mentioned a thing regarding where Johnny was truly headed, he wasn't too concerned about putting his friend in danger.

Johnny was most certainly long gone by now. From what Galloway had mentioned, he'd done plenty of talking about traveling and had dropped hints of visiting everywhere from the Amazon to the Far East along the way. All that babbling had paid off in the end by forming something of an ink cloud in Johnny's wake.

Despite the fact that he wasn't worried about Johnny's safety, Clint became more concerned for his own as he tried to get a look at what had happened in Johnny's absence. All he'd truly wanted was to see if those assassins were truly working in some sort of group marked by the fancy weapons they carried. Clint had seen gangs mark themselves by everything from bandannas and sashes to tattoos or pieces of jewelry.

He figured the best, and possibly only, way for him to know if he was dealing with more than one killer was to try and draw a few of them closer. As he walked up to Johnny's place, Clint felt like a hunter approaching a recently sprung trap.

“Hello?” Clint shouted as innocently as he could. “Anyone there?”

For a few moments, the house was quiet as a grave. The few hesitant steps that could be heard made Clint's hand draw closer to the gun at his side. Suddenly, as if they'd realized there was no more sense in trying to hide, three men walked out of Johnny's house.

One of them was a kid with short blond hair. He exited the house with his hands held up and a wide smile on his face. “Don't shoot. We were just here for the party.”

Clint planted his feet and examined all three of the men. The second to step out of the house was a skinny fellow in his early twenties. The third had a bulkier frame and wore battered buckskins decorated with stray bits of fringe hanging from the sleeves.

“Party's over,” Clint said. “It has been for a while.”

“Yeah,” the blond man said. “We kind of figured that out for ourselves.”

“Then what are you doing there?”

“Do you know where John Blevin is?”

“Why do you ask?”

As if only just spotting the gun in Clint's holster, the blond man shook his head and started to back into the house. “Look, mister, we don't want any trouble. Mr. Blevin threw a party and said we could stay as long as we wanted. He left and we haven't heard from him since. I was hoping to stay on for another day or two until we scrounged up our horses.”

The man in the buckskins nodded once and added, “Some asshole stole our animals. If you know about that, I'd like the chance to wring the bastard's neck.”

“I'll bet you would,” Clint said. “Are there any more of you in there?”

“No, sir,” the blond replied. “Everyone else wandered off, but not before doing their share of damage. Bunch of animals if you ask me.”

“And you three didn't have anything to do with that, I suppose?”

Before responding to Clint's question, the three men glanced back and forth at one another as if they were each afraid to speak first. Finally, the blond looked back to Clint and said, “I guess we did, but it was one hell of a party. Were you there for any of it yourself?”

“Yeah,” Clint said as he thought back to the chaos that had greeted him when he'd first arrived. “I was there for a bit.”

“You didn't see anyone stealing horses, did you?”

“Actually, someone tried to help themselves to that animal right over there,” Clint said as he hooked a thumb back toward Eclipse.

“You're lucky you spotted the prick in time,” the man in the buckskins said. “I hope you put a good hurtin' on him.”

Clint nodded. “He didn't get what he was after, that's for certain.”

All three of them men had allowed their shoulders to relax by now. Two of them even approached Clint. The skinny one only took a few steps from the front door of the house before coming to a stop.

“Think you could tell us where Mr. Blevin went?” the blond asked. “We'd sure like to thank him for his hospitality.”

Clint wasn't about to say anything of the sort to anyone who'd simply squatted on Johnny's property after drinking all his beer. His guard came up even more when he spotted the glint of a sapphire stickpin on the skinny man's collar.

At first, the glint of light off the sapphire seemed to come from a button. After seeing the first hint of blue in that sparkle, Clint knew exactly what he was looking at. More importantly, he realized who he was looking at.

“Actually, Johnny isn't too far from here,” Clint said.

Hearing that brought another sort of glint into the eyes of all three of the other men.

“Really?” the one in buckskins asked. “We'd sure appreciate an introduction.”

“Or better yet,” the blond one said, “you could just point us in the right direction.”

“Sure thing,” Clint said as he turned and walked toward the gate. Even though his stride was casual enough, his ears were sharply attuned for any sound that could be threatening. All he heard was two of the men coming up behind him.

Stopping in his tracks, Clint said, “But first, wouldn't you like to know what happened to that Spanish friend of yours?”

None of the other three said anything right away.

Then, the blond one asked, “Spanish friend?”

“You know the one I mean. His name was . . . oh yeah! Dominguez.”

As he said that name, Clint pivoted on the balls of his feet until he'd turned completely around and squared off against all three men. His expression was still leaning to the friendly side and his hand wasn't too close to his Colt, but his eyes didn't stray from the other three men for one second.

The man in the buckskins leaned forward a bit until he resembled an animal getting ready to pounce.

The skinny fellow stayed where he was. His hand was now setting on top of the grip of his own holstered pistol.

The blond maintained his smile, but something in his eyes told Clint that he knew he'd been found out. “That name don't sound familiar.”

“It doesn't? Then I suppose you don't care if he was killed a few days ago.” Clint didn't see any of the men react too much to that, but he could sense that all three were starting to squirm. “He had a thing for sapphires, too. Just like you boys and those pretty pins you're wearing.”

With that, the smile on the blond's face disappeared. The other two took on more serious expressions as well, as their muscles tensed.

Being the closest one to Clint, the blond man acted first. He started to take a step back, but made a quick reach for his gun instead. As he drew the pistol from its holster, he dropped to one knee.

Clint waited just long enough to see how the others would react. The moment he realized that the remaining two were following the blond's lead, Clint plucked the modified Colt from his holster and aimed from the hip. He pulled his trigger and watched as his bullet followed along his own line of sight to tear a bloody hole through the blond's chest.

The blond still got a shot off, but it was more of a reflex than anything else. His finger clamped tightly around the trigger as his body reacted to being shot. As he fell back onto his bent leg, the blond's other leg splayed out in front of him as his shoulders hit the dirt.

Standing only a few paces behind the blond, the man in buckskins jumped to one side as soon as he saw Clint clear leather. He drew and fired a shot to cover himself, but scrambled behind a nearby water trough without looking to see what he'd hit.

When Clint shifted his eyes to the house, he was just able to catch a glimpse of the skinny man's foot as he ducked in through the front door. There wasn't any cover nearby, so Clint hunkered down a bit and circled to his left while watching for one of the other two to make a move.

The first thing to catch Clint's attention was the shattering of glass. One of the windows next to the door was broken from the inside as the skinny man used the butt of a rifle to clear it out. Rather than take a shot, however, he paused to stare at Clint over the top of his barrel.

Like another part of the same machine, the man in buckskins took full advantage of the skinny man's distraction and fired his own gun while Clint was looking at the house.

Clint was starting to fire a shot in response to the one the skinny man had taken at him, but he ducked and turned when he caught a glimpse of the man in buckskins rising up from behind the trough. Clint's finger tightened around his trigger as his body dropped. Once on the ground, Clint rolled toward the house and kept firing at the trough.

Chunks of wood flew in every direction as the trough was hit again and again by incoming rounds. The man in buckskins fired from behind it but only hit the ground. He kept shooting, even as he saw Clint roll beneath the rickety front porch.

Once under the crooked boards, Clint flipped open the cylinder of his Colt and emptied out the spent rounds. He didn't have much room to maneuver, so he wasn't able to look at what he was doing as he reloaded. That didn't pose much of a problem, since Clint could have taken fresh bullets from his gun belt and slid them into place with his eyes shut.

The skinny man leaned out the window, but quickly pulled himself back in as more bullets tore through the house from behind the trough. “Hold yer goddamn fire!” he shouted.

Nodding quickly, the man in buckskins stood up and began reloading his own weapon. In between fitting in the fresh rounds, he jabbed a finger toward the bottom of the house. From the window, the skinny man nodded.

Gripping his shotgun in both hands, the skinny man aimed at the floor and squinted through the dust and smoke that now swirled through the air. He flinched at every bit of movement he saw, right down to the insects that skittered across the floorboards. Finally, the skinny man held his breath and stayed perfectly still so he could listen.

For a few seconds, he only heard wind whistling through the broken windows.

Then, the sounds of his partner moving outside reached his ears.

Eventually, the skinny man picked up the crunch of something dragging over the packed dirt beneath the house itself.

The skinny man slowly moved forward. He barely made a sound as he placed one foot carefully in front of the other. All the while, he kept his eyes glued to the floor and his ears open for another sign pointing to where Clint might have gone.

There was another muffled crunch, which stopped just as quickly as it had started. As the skinny man leaned down a bit more, he stared through a dark space between two loose boards. He thought he might have seen something move under the boards and took aim just to be certain.

Suddenly, he realized something was under the floor. He could see the glint of light reflecting off of something smooth and rounded. By the time he realized he was looking at the barrel of a gun, it was too late.

Clint pulled his trigger and sent a pair of bullets up through the floor. His first shot sparked against the skinny man's shotgun and knocked the weapon aside as thunder exploded from its twin barrels. The sound of the second shot was lost amid the noise of the others, but managed to widen the hole in the floor.

Now looking up from the opening he'd made, Clint kept pulling his trigger until his bullets drew blood. The skinny man reeled backward and dropped his shotgun. When his body hit the floor, it covered Clint with a thick layer of dust that had been loosed from the floor. Just to be certain, Clint adjusted his aim and fired at the dark shape above him.

The skinny man twitched as the bullets tore through him, but he didn't move much more than that. At that point, the only thing left for him to do was bleed.

Clint went through the motions of reloading once more as he pushed himself against the ground using both legs. By the time his snapped the Colt shut, his head was emerging from beneath the house and he rolled onto his belly so he could scramble into the fresh air.

A shot was fired from the front door.

Clint stayed low and waited a second before stretching up to look through one of the broken windows at the rear of the house. All he could see from that angle was the shadow of the man in buckskins moving into the front room.