Lookout Hill (9781101606735) (13 page)

The men rallied around him and started toward the barn door. But they stopped at the sight of two more
Pettigo gunmen walking toward the barn, their rifles guiding Bobby Hugh Bellibar along in front of them.

“Hold up,” said Dale Pettigo. “Let’s see what Tiggs and the Russian have brought us.”

When the guards arrived at the open barn doors, Leonard Tiggs, a squat, powerfully built Canadian, couldn’t resist poking his gun barrel in Bellibar’s back and sending him stumbling inside the barn.

“Here’s one for you, boss,” he said to Pettigo in a proud tone.

Bellibar instinctively turned facing Tiggs, his fists clenched, ready to do battle. But he froze at the sight of all the rifles and pistols cocking toward him.

“Easy, hombre,” Pettigo warned him. He half turned and called out to the Mexican stable boy, “Hey, pissant, is this one of the hombres?”

The boy leaned a hay fork against a stall and hurried to the doorway. His eyes widened when he looked up and saw Bellibar staring down at him. He saw a trickle of blood at the corner of Bellibar’s lips.

“Oh no, Señor Pettigo!” the boy said. “This is not one of the killers. This is a good man. He was just going into the cantina when the shooting started.”

Dale Pettigo puffed on his cigar and turned his cold blue eyes to Tiggs.

“He was leaving the tent in one hell of a hurry, boss,” Tiggs offered. He carried Bellibar’s Colt and the big Remington shoved down behind his belt. Beside him, Cherzi the Russian carried Bellibar’s rifle he’d pulled from his saddle boot. “His horse is tied out back there,” said Tiggs. He jerked his head toward the stable
boy. “He had the kid here leave them there for him, he claims.”

Dale Pettigo’s eyes went back to the stable boy. The rest of the gunmen stood gathered around Pettigo.

“Pissant…?” Pettigo queried to the boy above his thick cigar.

“
Sí
, it is true that I took the horses there for him,” said the boy. “But he is a good hombre, this man—not a killer.”

Tiggs started to say something, but Pettigo stopped him with a raised hand. Then he turned his eyes to Bellibar.

“So you were just heading into the tent when our accountant got shot?” he asked, looking Bellibar up and down, noting his empty holster and the wrinkled oily spot on his shirt where the Remington had stood at his waist.

“Your
accountant
…,” Bellibar said, bemused.

“Answer Mr. Pettigo’s question, saddle tramp,” said Tiggs, giving Bellibar a sharp poke with his rifle barrel.

Bellibar stiffened and grunted but refused to show any pain from the blow. He stared at Pettigo, his jaw clenched, showing he wasn’t going to answer under this kind of abusive treatment.

“That’ll be enough of that, Tiggs,” Pettigo warned the squat gunman. He looked back at Bellibar.

“Yeah, I was going inside,” Bellibar replied now that his silent demand had been met. “I heard four shots, saw your
accountant
there stumble out with three bullets in his chest.”

“What about his foot?” Pettigo asked.

“He couldn’t get his Thunderer up,” said Bellibar, “but that didn’t keep him from pulling the trigger.”

“He shot himself?” said Pettigo.

“Yep,” said Bellibar, “over and over, the same foot.” He stifled an evil little grin. “It was hard to tell which he would run out of first, bullets or toes—”

“Watch your mouth, saddle tramp,” Tiggs warned, cutting him off. “That man was one of us.”

“Oh?” said Bellibar. “So you own a suit like that?” He gestured over at the dead man on the dirt floor.

“Why, you lousy—” Tiggs gripped his rifle tight with both hands, keeping himself in check.

“Stand down, Tiggs,” Dale Pettigo warned the powerful Canadian gunman. He turned back to Bellibar and asked, “What happened to the back of our man’s head?”

“While he was still jerking, wiggling some, one of them smacked his head with a smithing hammer,” said Bellibar, liking the way a couple of the men winced at the thought of it. “I hope I never hear such a terrible sound again in my life.”

“But you went on inside and drank with the men who did it,” Dale Pettigo reminded him.

“That I did,” said Bellibar, “for the purpose of keeping them rounded up until some arm of authority, like yourselves here, come along.” He paused and stared at Pettigo in silence for a moment, then said, “Can I be honest?”

“That’s what
I’m
wondering,” Pettigo countered. He blew a stream of cigar smoke beneath a raised and skeptical brow.

Bellibar ignored the veiled insult.

“The fact is,” he said, “when I left the tent, I was on my way
here
, to warn you. This young man told me you were here.”

“Is that true, pissant?” Pettigo asked the stable boy.

“
Sí
, it is,” the boy replied.

“So, if I wanted to be a real turd, I could’ve told those mullets about you and sent them running,” said Bellibar, “but I didn’t.” He stared at Pettigo, his jaw firmly set. “You want to know why?”

“Tell me,” Pettigo said with a curious look.

Bellibar looked all around at the rough faces, at the drawn guns. This was his kind of place—his kind of people. He’d fit in here, given a little room to make space for himself. Sure, he might have to pistol-whip the Canadian, maybe maim one or two of the others, kill one if he had to. But that was only natural. He took a deep breath.
Here goes….

“Because I rode up here looking for gun work. I heard that Pettigo-American Mining needs some real
professionals
here in the hill country.”

“
Professionals…?
” Pettigo gave him another quick once-over and shook his head slowly. “Not hiring,” he said bluntly.

“Not
hiring
?” Bellibar stared at him in disbelief.

“You heard me: I’m full up,” Pettigo said. “I’ve got work for hire.”

“Not even for a man who’ll walk into that tent, no gun, knife or nothing else, and kill them two mullets for you, in, say…five minutes flat?”

The men chuffed, all except Pettigo. He stared at the seedy gunman through a rise of cigar smoke.

“Five minutes, huh?” he said.

“Yep, I’ll say five,” Bellibar replied. Thinking it over for a moment, he added, “Maybe six…but I doubt it.” He looked all around, seeing both laughter and scorn in the eyes of the gunmen.

Pettigo looked at Tiggs and the Russian and asked, “Who’s got the back of the tent covered?”

“We left Hayworth Benton there with his ten-gauge,” said Tiggs. “Nobody’s getting past him.”

“Good,” said Pettigo. He turned back to Bellibar and said, “Take as much as
ten
if you need it. I never like to rush a
professional
when he’s working.”

Bobby Hugh Bellibar walked into the tent through the rear fly dusting his hands together. Bad Sharlo Bering and Harvey Moran turned to him with bloodshot eyes, each of them smoking brown dope-laced cigars. The two young women fought on, but one lay naked and prostrate on the dirt floor, a fallen knife inches from her hand. Only her toes and fingertips struggled to right herself back up onto her feet. Thick red welts crisscrossed her from where the other woman had broken a chair across her back. Now the other woman stood back with one of the broken chair legs in hand.

“Stay down,
puta
,” she warned in a rasping voice. Blood ran down from her swollen right eye. A four-inch knife cut bled down her left side; teeth prints bled down her left thigh.

Looking over at the woman in passing, Bellibar clasped both hands together as if in regret.

“Please don’t tell me I missed the best part,” he said in a mock sorrowful voice.

“Sorry to say, but, yes, you did,” said Moran. He
licked salt from the back of his hand. “But there wasn’t as much cutting went on as you might think.” He sighed a little. “Like everything else, these hill country gals are becoming more and more civilized. They’ve gotten a little too tame for my taste.”

“And for my taster as well,” said Bad Sharlo. He commented to Bellibar, “Damn, pard, what took you so long? I’ve never seen a lizard so huge it takes this long to choke it down.”

Moran and Bellibar just stared at him.

Sharlo’s drunken face turned painfully red as he caught what he’d said and tried to fix it.

“Not that I ever wanted to see one that huge,” he said. “Or that I even want to see one, of
any size
…far as all that goes.” He winced at what he’d said. “What I mean to say is—”

“
Jesus!
Let it go, Sharlo,” said Moran in disgust. He shook his head and turned back to Bellibar. “What’s happened to your guns?” he asked, gesturing a nod at Bellibar’s empty holster and the place where he’d carried the big Remington behind his belt.

“Damn it all,” said Bellibar, sounding disappointed with himself. “I must’ve left them both out back. Can I see yours?” He held out a hand.

“You can sure enough, pard,” said Moran. He nodded, raised his black-handled Colt from its slim-jim holster and handed it over to Bellibar butt first.

“Fine-looking six-shooter,” Bellibar commented, examining the gun.

“It’s always done well by me,” Moran said with a tequila slur to his voice.

“I bet,” said Bellibar. He cocked the big Colt with a flat grin and shot the unsuspecting gunman squarely between the eyes.

The sound of the gunshot prompted a thunder of boots across the dirt floor. The music stopped cold. Chairs turned over; men crouched behind overturned tables and drew guns of their own.

“
My God!
” Sharlo Bering bellowed as his partner’s warm brain matter splattered all over his face. His reflexes kicked in. He fell back a step, reaching for his own gun, as Bellibar swung the smoking Colt toward him and fired again.

Bellibar aimed for the same spot between Bering’s eyes, thinking how impressive that would look to Pettigo and the others. But the shot fell short. The bullet sliced through Sharlo’s throat just beneath his chin and blew out the side of his neck in a spray of blood and exposed tendons. Drinkers continued fleeing in every direction; the woman standing dropped her chair leg, ran wildly headlong into a thick tent post and crumpled to the ground.

At the bar the bleeding gunman managed to turn and hurl himself away from Bellibar as a third shot exploded from the Colt in Bellibar’s hand. The bullet hit Sharlo low in his back. He stiffened but didn’t let it stop him. He stumbled and scraped, half running, half falling, and managed to get out the front fly onto the dirt street. Along the street the sound of gunfire caused more running, more shouting, more leaping for cover.

“Here it is,” said Dale Pettigo, him and his men standing across the dirt street watching as Bellibar
leisurely followed the bleeding gunman, the Colt out at arm’s length, smoking in his hand. Another shot exploded, hitting Bad Sharlo between his shoulder blades. He went down but kept crawling, his gun flying from his bloody hand.

“I got to admit, he’s made a believer out of me,” said Denver Jennings, one of the most respected and feared of all the Pettigo mercenaries.

“Yeah,” said Newton Ridge, the former assassin, “Bad Sharlo Bering has never been known as a man to take lightly—Harvey Moran neither, to my knowledge.”

“Do tell,” Dale Pettigo murmured, watching closely as Bellibar took his time, stepped alongside the crawling gunman and finally planted a boot down on his bloody back, stopping him.

“What do you say, boss?” Denver Jennings asked. “Are we going to take him in, make him one of our own?” He gave a wry grin. “Take him home to meet your pa, so to speak?”

“We’ll take him in,” said Pettigo. “But he’s not going to be one of us.”

Jennings looked at him.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

“Never mind,” said Pettigo. “I’ve got plans all my own for this one—something special I want him to do for us here.”

From the middle of the empty dirt street, his boot keeping the badly wounded gunman crawling in place, Bellibar looked over at Pettigo and the mercenaries and called out, “Did anybody check the time on that?”

“He’s a cocky son of a bitch. I’ll give him that,” Jennings said sidelong to Pettigo. They stared at Bellibar, who stood at ease in the street with his holster empty, Moran’s smoking Colt aimed down at Sharlo’s bloody back.

“Nobody, huh?” Bellibar called out. “I’m going to say
under five minutes
,” he added, “unless somebody wants to correct me on it?” He gazed back and forth among the faces watching him, waiting for someone to challenge his timekeeping. When no one did, he looked back down at Bad Sharlo, who coughed and hacked and spit up a surge of dark blood. With Bellibar’s boot on his back, Sharlo still tried to press forward in the dirt. “Let me ask this, then,” Bellibar called out to the silent, staring gunmen. “Has anybody got a hammer?”

“He’s a gone-crazy son of a bitch, this one,” said Denver Jennings to Newton Ridge.

“Yeah, I noticed,” said Ridge, the seasoned assassin. “But he did exactly what he said he would do.” A thin trace of a smile came to his lips. “That’s about all that counts in gun work.”

Dale Pettigo saw Bellibar look toward him. A faint smile of satisfaction came to Pettigo’s lips as he gave Bellibar a single nod.