High Wild Desert (22 page)

“Take it however you want it. I've got killing to do,” said Red Mike. He adjusted the front of his gun belt with the inside of his wrists.

“Kill them both,” Fenderson said to Oboe under his breath. He looked at Tom Singleton. “You stay with me, Tom . . . lead the way,” he said, gesturing a nod toward the restaurant's door.

“That's as close as you get, Ranger,” Oboe called out to Sam and Dankett.

Sam said sidelong to Dankett, “Keep walking, Deputy.”

“That's what I intended,” Dankett said, sounding as fearless and determined as the Ranger had decided him to be these past few days. He carried Big Lucy at port arms, cocked and ready, the shoulder strap drooping from its walnut stock, two fresh reloads stuck between three fingers of his left hand.

“I said stop, Ranger!” Oboe demanded.

But the Ranger and Dankett continued walking, drawing a few feet closer until Sam knew they were in pistol and shotgun range.

“Right here,” he said to Dankett; both of them stopped and stood ten feet apart.

Oboe looked relieved that the two stopped, but he knew that was only part of it. Now he saw the Ranger lower the Winchester and let it hang in his left hand. He watched Sam raise the big Colt from its holster in such an easy, natural manner, as if to merely check it and holster it again before the fight started. But instead of holstering it, the Ranger held it down at his side and cocked it, ready to bring it up into play.

Son of a bitch!
Oboe cursed to himself, realizing the Ranger had just drawn first and taken the upper hand.

Red Mike looked at Oboe in disbelief for letting the Ranger get by with drawing his Colt like that.

“What the hell, Sergio?” he said. “Whose side are you on?”

“Shut up, Mike! I wasn't expecting it!” Sergio shouted.

On the boardwalk behind them, Fenderson and Tom Singleton had just disappeared inside the restaurant. It didn't surprise the Ranger at all.

Chapter 22

Seeing the Ranger and his deputy face off with the gunmen out in front of the restaurant, the early morning townsfolk along the boardwalks ducked inside stores and open doorways. Signs in windows turned from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
with a flick of a wrist. Wagon and horse traffic veered off the street into open lots and alleyways. A gangly hound loping along the side of the dirt street slowed and changed his direction at the sound of the Ranger's voice in the middle of the street.

“None of you have to die here today. Except
Hugh Fenderson
,” Sam called out, almost matter-of-factly, yet making sure Fenderson heard him from the other side of the restaurant door. “Pitch him out to me and you can all go home.” He knew they weren't going to give up Fenderson. He called out to the closed restaurant door, “Hugh Fenderson, come out, do your own dirty work. Don't make these men die trying to do it for you.” He wanted Fenderson to know the penalty for trying to bring about the death of a lawman.

What?
Is this Ranger crazy?
Oboe asked himself.

“You best learn to count, Ranger,” he said. “There's six of us here.”

“Yeah, but there are two of us,” Dankett put in. He swung the big shotgun down level to the gunmen's midsections. “Three, counting Big Lucy.” The deputy appeared exuberant at the prospect of a bloody gun battle.

“To hell with this. I'm claiming the reward,” said Red Mike, stepping forward, his hand poised near his holstered black-handled Colt. “Ranger, leave the rest of them out of this. It's just you and me, here and now. We'll settle this thing—”

Without hesitation, the Ranger's big Colt rose and leveled in a glint of gunmetal. The first shot cut Red Mike off as the bullet bored through his chest. A crimson mist appeared to hang for a second in the air behind him. Then a long string of blood ejected out his back, following the bullet, and splattered on over the front of the restaurant. Red Mike Sylvane flew backward and landed dead on the ground.

“Kill them!” shouted Segio Oboe, sidestepping toward the cover of wooden shipping crates stacked in front of a store next door to the restaurant. Even as he shouted, rifles and handguns had already lifted into play. Gunfire erupted; bullets flew from both directions.

The Ranger fired the big Colt, hearing bullets zip past him. He swung the smoking barrel toward Sergio Oboe and fired. Yet Oboe, moving away, took only a deep graze on his upper right shoulder as he retaliated wildly.

All of the gunmen returned fire, in the open, moving only grudgingly, ducking as the Ranger's bullets whizzed at them. But when the cannonlike roar of Dankett's Big Lucy picked up two gunmen and hurled them away in a tangle of bloody limbs and torn flesh, the gunmen broke ranks and dived for any cover they could find before the shotgun exploded again.

•   •   •

In an alley alongside the Number Five Saloon where the Coyles and their men had spread blankets for the night, the group had sat up bleary-eyed and listened intently at the first sounds of gunfire from up the street. But the double blasts from Big Lucy had drawn them quickly to their feet.

“Good Lord!” said Sieg, the shotgun blasts resounding along the street above all other gunfire.

“Dankett,” Oldham said flatly to his brother, Dave, standing beside him.

“Yes,” said Dave. “Fenderson must've got here without us hearing his train.” As they spoke, they grabbed their rifles and ran back along the alleyway and behind the row of buildings in the direction of the gun battle. Sieg and Deak ran along behind them, Deak's short legs pumping like steam pistons, yet still unable to keep up.

At the alley nearest to the restaurant, Oldham and Dave turned and ventured forward until they could see the street around the corner of a building.

“Whoa, look at this!” Oldham said, seeing Clow Dankett go down onto one knee, reloading for the third time as a bullet sought him out. Around the Ranger and Dankett a cloud of gun smoke loomed thickly.

The Coyles watched Dankett almost fall over as the bullet slammed into his side. They watched Sam run to his deputy and help him to his feet. They saw Sam looping Dankett's arm across his shoulder and hurrying away. Sam still fired and levered his Winchester one-handed as they fell in behind a thick stack of nail kegs standing on the boardwalk of the town mercantile store.

“This is just the kind of break I was hoping for,” Oldham said almost to himself.

“What are you talking about, brother?” Dave said. “I was hoping after a night's sleep you'd put all this craziness out of your mind, we'd ride out of here.”

“I have one thing to do, brother Dave,” said Oldham. “I'll do it now while everybody's painting the streets with each other's brains.”

“I don't like the sound of it,” Dave said. “But I'll go along with it, if it'll get us out of here and back to robbing something.”

“You and Sieg go get Simon and Reye,” said Oldham. “Meet Deak and me at the livery barn with our horses saddled, ready to ride.”

“You got it, brother Oldham. Now you're making sense,” Dave said with a look of relief.

•   •   •

Inside the jail, Lang and the woman sat huddled at the front corner of his cell, listening to the sound of the gun battle raging three blocks up the street. In the neighboring cell, Teague and Sonny Rudabough sat listening too, passing a look of awe and trepidation between them each time Dankett's big shotgun let out another earth-shaking blast.

“I've got to get myself one of them,” Rudabough remarked quietly after the shotgun fell silent for a reloading.

Outside, they heard big boots run along the boardwalk in a long stride, followed by a rapid, lighter sound a few yards behind. They saw Oldham Coyle swing the front door open, rush inside and keep the door open for Deak Holder. Deak ran in a second behind Oldham, panting, struggling to catch his breath.

“Jesus!” said the dwarf, gasping, bowed at the waist on his short legs. “I didn't know we were racing.”

Oldham glanced at Lang and the woman in passing, then looked at Teague and Rudabough, who stood staring in return.

“All right! Coyle, amigo! Get us out of here!” Henry Teague said right quickly. “There's still time for me to straighten all this out and make things right.”

“Amigo?
Huh-uh,” said Oldham, his rifle hanging in his left hand. “I'm here to make things right, Teague.” He held his Colt down at his right side, cocked and ready.

Behind Coyle, Deak leaned against the desk, still panting, watching the door. He kept his short fingers lying on the butt of his big belly pistol.

“Make things right? What are you talking about, Coyle?” Teague said, appearing not to see Oldham's Colt. He stepped over to the cell door and rattled it with both hands. “Hurry up, let's get going,” he said. “I'll be damned if I'm going to Yuma over this mess.”

“You're right about that,” Oldham said. He raised the Colt level to Teague's chest through the bars.

Rudabough hugged back against the plank wall as shot after shot walked Teague backward haltingly to the rear wall. Teague slid down the wall and settled onto the floor beneath a long smear of blood.

“Okay, I have no qualms with you doing that,” Rudabough said wide-eyed, flattened back against the wall. “Whatever he did to you, he deserved to die for it, far as I'm concerned. I don't know why you did it.
I don't even want to know.
Lots of folks thought him and I were friends, but we never were—”

“It was over what happened to the dove, Rudabough,” Oldham said, cutting him off. In the other cell, Lang had shoved his arms through the bars and held Adele pressed as close as he could.

“The
dove
?” said Rudabough, as if having to probe his memory for anything on the subject.

“Yes, the dove. The one you beat nearly to death and threw in the public ditch,” said Oldham. “I killed him just for knowing you did it. Imagine what I'm going to do to
you.
”
He dropped the two remaining bullets from his Colt and pitched it through the bars onto the plank floor.

“Oh, what? Give me an empty gun?” Rudabough said wryly. As the two spoke, Deak rummaged in the desk for the cell key, standing slightly on his toes to see into the open top drawer.

“There's plenty of bullets for it inside a saddlebag,” said Oldham, “on a black-and-white paint horse . . . waiting for you behind the Number Five Saloon. All you've got to do is get there and load up before I can kill you graveyard dead.” Speaking over his shoulder he said, “Deak, how about that key?”

“Coming up, boss,” Deak said, bent over at the waist, his short arm searching back in the open bottom drawer. He stood up, the key raised in his hand and a smile of satisfaction on his face, and walked it quickly over to Oldham Coyle.

At the front corner of the other cell, Lang and Adele looked at each other in surprise at the sight of the cell key in Deak Holder's small hand.

Oldham looked down at the two as he unlocked the door to Rudabough's cell.

“What about it, Cisco?” he called out. “Here's your chance to ride away.” He held the key up.

Lang started to stand up, but then he slumped down and shook his head.

“Obliged, Coyle,” he said. “But I'm not Cisco anymore. I'm just Harvey Lang, ready to do my time.”

“Are you sure, Cisco?” said Oldham. “You can ride with me and my bunch. Stop being the man holding the horses. Make yourself a real long rider, eh?”

Lang looked at Adele, then at Oldham. Without saying anything, he shook his head, as if words might fail him.

“Suit yourself,” said Coyle. He swung the cell door open and pitched the key over atop the desk.

But Rudabough didn't move from the wall; instead he hugged back tighter against it.

“I'm not playing this game, Coyle,” he said. “How do I know that paint horse is there? How do I know what you say is true?”

“First off, I have never lied to you. Second, did I say you had a choice?” Coyle said through jaws clenched tight with anger, stepping inside the cell. The rifle bucked in his right hand; the bullet ripped splinters from the plank wall an inch from Rudabough's side.

Deak jumped up and down laughing, waving his short arms, as Rudabough bolted from his cell and headed out the front door. Oldham Coyle stopped at the front door long enough to lever a fresh round into his smoking rifle.

“If you change your mind, Cisco, have her get the key. Get yourself out of here. The Ranger and his deputy are pinned down. Like as not, they're going to die out there. This town won't pay your fare to Yuma. They'll shorten your trip on the end of a rope.”

“Oh my God!” said Adele, clasping a hand to her mouth.

“Wait!” said Lang as Oldham Coyle disappeared out the door behind Deak, in hot pursuit of Sonny Rudabough.

“My God, Harvey,” said Adele. “Would they do that? Hang you, I mean?”

Lang looked at her long and hard, thoughts racing through his mind. Finally he said, “Adele, get the key, let me out of here.”

“But, Harvey, what about us?” she said. “What about you making amends and straightening your life out—?”

“Adele,” he said, cutting her short. “You heard him. You heard what he said! I can't just sit here and do nothing. Get the key, let me out!” He stood and gripped the bars with both hands.

She hurried to the desk, picked up the key and ran back and unlocked the cell door.

“What if they're not going to come hang you afterward?” she said, stalling, the key half turned in the lock. Gunfire still exploded three blocks away.

“Adele, look at me. Listen to me!” he said, reaching through the bars and turning her hand along with the key. “I'm not talking about what Coyle said about me hanging. I'm talking about the Ranger and his deputy being pinned down!”

The gunfire grew more intense, as if to emphasize Lang's words.

“What are you saying, Harvey?” Adele said as he ran past her to the gun cabinet, grabbing a Winchester and a box of ammunition. “That you're going to risk your life trying to save the Ranger and his deputy?”

He looked at her as he feverishly broke open the box, grabbed a handful of bullets and loaded the rifle. He looked at the remaining bullets in the box, knowing it wasn't enough, not if the two lawmen were pinned down.

“Yes, Adele, I have to go. I have no choice,” he said. “I told you, I've seen what I am, and I don't like it. I want to make myself right.”

“I understand you wanting to do that,” said Adele. “And I admire you for it. But not like this! What if it's too late to help them? What if you only manage to get yourself killed?”

“Then I'll die a better man, in a better place than I was a week ago,” Lang said. “With no small thanks to you and Sam Burrack.” He levered a round up into the rifle chamber.