Lookout Hill (9781101606735) (30 page)

“You bet I do,” said Siebert, standing behind the Ranger at the edge of the rock, having climbed up silently right behind him. “I’ll go ahead and kill him right now,” he added, sounding anxious. He started to cock his rifle hammer; Sam started to swing around and fire. But Bellibar halted everything.

“Whoa, Aces!” he said. “Don’t pull that trigger until he tells us where he’s hidden that wagon! What the hell is wrong with you anyway?”

“You know damn well what’s wrong with me!” said Siebert. “I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He looked all around wide-eyed, fearfully. “I’m troubled by things! Dark, ugly things, damn it! Things nobody understands unless they happen to you!”

“Jesus, Aces, don’t start!” Bellibar warned him. “Everybody behind us is either dead or too far away to catch us. Don’t go nuts on me now—we’ve about got this thing done.”

The Ranger listened closely; was this his opening? He held the rifle up, ready to swing it in either direction, and edged inches back, putting himself in a straighter line between the two of them.

Bellibar half turned, facing Sam, the cigar glowing good and ready in his mouth. “You did hide that wagon somewhere down the trail, didn’t you?”

“You know I did,” said Sam, bluffing. “Blow up Juan Lupo there and you’ll never see that wagon, leastwise not what was in it.” He turned his next words to Siebert. “What kind of
dark, ugly things
?” he asked.

“None of your business, lawman,” said Bellibar, trying to stop it, knowing how stone-crazy Siebert could get, left unchecked.

“I’ve had a hex put on me,” said Siebert, ignoring Bellibar, his voice sounding shaky. “I’m hexed by both a
bruja
and her damn demon mare—”

“Shut up, Aces!” shouted Bellibar. “It’s not his damn business! He’s the law, remember? Shake it off! Get done with it.”

“All right!” Siebert shouted. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Then he took a deep, calming breath and let it out.

“That’s the way. That’ll do it,” said Bellibar, having been through this many times before. “Are you done with it?”

“Yeah, I’m done with it,” Siebert said, his rifle still leveled at the Ranger in spite of his mental difficulty.

Sam watched, waited, ready to strike at just the right second.

Aces Siebert looked calmer now, more intent on killing him, Sam thought.

But just as it appeared that Aces Siebert had collected his mind and nerves and gotten them back under control, two small birds swooped down out of the
morning haze and circled around him. The birds cheeped and screeched as if scolding him; and zipped in and out angrily, trying to light atop his singed and blackened hat.

“Get away from me!”
Siebert screamed at the birds. His voice turned high-pitched, hysterical. Taking his left hand away from his rifle, he snatched his hat off and slapped wildly at the little birds.

Here it comes.
…

Sam readied himself.

“Stop it, you idiot!” shouted Bellibar.

Seeing his chance, Sam took it as the two birds were suddenly joined by a third, a fourth.

Siebert screamed and slapped at them tearfully, breaking down, losing any concentration on what was at hand.

“Damn it to hell, Aces!” shouted Bellibar. He looked both stunned and enthralled as he witnessed some insane dance of man and bird atop a broad flat rock standing in the breaking sunlight on the morning sky. “Forget the damned bir—”

Instead of finishing his words, Bellibar jackknifed forward, bowed at the waist. He staggered back brokenly, his Colt clasped against his stomach with both hands as the Ranger’s rifle shot resounded out across the gully below.

Sam levered another round into his rifle chamber and waited for only a split second to see if he would need it. He did.

Bellibar straightened enough to raise his Colt and cock it just as the second bullet from Sam’s rifle tore
through the center of his chest and sent a spray of blood and heart tissue streaking out across the flat rock behind him.

“Son of a…,” said Bellibar through a mouthful of warm, surging blood, dropping to his knees. He swayed for a second, then fell face-forward, his Colt flying from his hand.

Convinced that Bellibar was dead, Sam swung toward the screaming, hat-waving gunman. Siebert had dropped his rifle and begun running back and forth, swatting at what had grown to be a half dozen circling, careening, angry sparrows.

“I didn’t kill her! I didn’t kill her!” Siebert screamed. As Sam raised the rifle and took aim, Siebert tripped and tumbled off the rear edge of the rock and landed ten feet below on the path leading upward around the rock. Hearing him screaming as he hit the ground, Sam didn’t go to the rear of the rock. Instead he ran to the front edge, raised his rifle to his shoulder and waited.

Siebert’s screams resounded down around the rock to the trail below, mixed with the sound of the heated birds. He ran away along the rocky trail, still swatting, still screaming and cursing the birds. The screaming only stopped when the sound of the Ranger’s rifle barked sharply and echoed along the gully walls.

Sam lowered his rifle a few inches, enough to see Siebert crawling along the middle of the trail, a gaping hole in the center of his back, a dark trail of blood smearing the ground behind him. Above Siebert, the birds still circled and chirped, only calmer now, seeming appeased—yet not completely.

Sam levered a fresh round into the rifle chamber, took aim and squeezed the trigger. Siebert’s body flopped an inch off the ground, then settled into death, as still as the rocks around him.

Sam watched the covey of small birds zip away into the brush and rock and scrub growth on the gully walls. Somewhere down there he thought he saw something move, something large and black streaking among the rocks in the fresh morning light. Strange, he thought, but had he heard a horse down there, right after he’d put the kill shot through Siebert’s back? He couldn’t say for sure, but he thought he’d heard a long nickering sound, like laughter of some sort?

“Whoa, hold on,” he murmured, cautioning himself.

Turning, he walked across the rock to Lupo, whose senses had been brought around by the chaos.

“I—I thought I heard…a horse down there,” Lupo said, weak, half-conscious. Even as he spoke, he reached a hand up for the Ranger to help him to his feet.

But Sam took his hand and laid it back onto his chest.

“Lie still, Easy John,” he said. “Let me get these grenades away from you.” He took the grenades and stuffed them back into Lupo’s shoulder pack.

“Is everybody dead…who should be dead?” Lupo asked.

“That depends on how you look at it,” said the Ranger.

Lupo put a hand to the side of his head as if doing so would clear things up for him.

“I—I could have sworn…I heard a horse,” he said
haltingly. “It made the strangest sound. Did you hear it, Ranger?”

Sam looked at him for a moment, debating with himself.

“Yes, I heard it too, Easy John,” he said finally. He wasn’t going to mention the birds. That was a little more than he would expect anybody to believe, especially a seasoned lawman like Juan Lupo, a man like himself. Everything had a reasonable explanation if you searched for it long enough. He waited and considered it for a moment. Well…most everything, he decided, and he put the matter away and stood and lifted Lupo to his feet.

“Speaking of horses,” he said, “I’ve got Black Pot waiting down the cliff behind the mining company. I’ll get you patched up and on your way. Then I’ll get him and come back.” He hefted the pack onto his shoulder.

Lupo looked troubled as they crossed the flat rock, his arm looped across the Ranger’s other shoulder for support.

“I know I heard the strangest sound,” he said.

But before he spoke any more on the matter, the Ranger cut him off, saying, “Forget it, Easy John. The shape you’re in, you were apt to hear anything.” He smiled wryly to himself and stared straight ahead, seeing morning sunlight break sharp and slantwise across the high, rugged land.

Whiskey Bend

The Badlands, Arizona Territory

Afternoon shadows stretched long across the rocky land as Arizona Ranger Sam Burrack walked into Whiskey Bend from the south, dust-covered, leading his copper black point dun by its slack reins. When he saw the tall figure wearing a black duster step out into the empty street forty yards in front of him, he knew what to expect. He stopped for only a second, long enough to flip the reins up over the dun’s saddle and give the tired horse a push, sending it out of the way.

Staring straight ahead, he slowly drew his big Colt from its holster and walked on, his thumb over the gun’s hammer. He didn’t stop again until he stood thirty feet from the gunman facing him. He took note of the man’s riding duster gathered back behind the long custom-made Simpson-Barre .45-caliber pistol holstered on his right hip.

The gunman, Lighting Wade Hornady, had stayed behind while the other five riders left Whiskey Bend only a moment earlier. The dust of the five riders still loomed in the air on the far end of the wide street. Seeing the gunman reach for something in his vest pocket, Sam tightened his thumb over the gun hammer, ready to cock it on the upswing. Yet he held back because the man raised a gold watch by its braided horsehair fob and held it in his right hand.

“Pardon me, young man, whilst I wind my watch,” Hornady said, cool, confident, opening the lid on the shiny timepiece and glancing down at it. “If I don’t wind it while I’m thinking about it, I fear I’ll spend the entire evening under an air of uncertainty.” He grinned around a long cigar clamped between his teeth. Smoke wafted from beneath his thick mustache. “I hope you don’t mind,
Marshal
…?”

“I’m in no hurry,” the Ranger said flatly. If this cordial manner was the way Lightning Hornady wanted to play it, he would accommodate him—
but only up to a point
, Sam cautioned himself. Correcting the gunman he said, “It’s
Ranger
…Arizona Territory Ranger Samuel Burrack.”

The gunman looked bemused; he stopped winding the watch, his left thumb and finger still clutching its stem.

“Oh, I see…,” he said. “Then you would be the young fellow who caused such a stir, killing Junior Lake and his whole gang back in—”

“I would be,” Sam said, cutting Hornady short,
staring into his eyes, yet managing to pay attention to the gunman’s hands.

“I have to say, I am taken aback, Ranger,” Hornady said, his left hand taking the watch now, his right hand dropping easily down his side, hanging near the big custom Simpson-Barre revolver. “When they asked me to stay behind and kill you, I didn’t realize what an important fellow you are.”

Sam didn’t reply right away. Instead, he watched the gunman’s left hand closely as it slipped the watch back into his vest and lingered there. The Ranger found it interesting that the gunman had held the watch in his right hand and used his left hand to wind it.

Wade Hornady opened and closed his right fingers near his gun butt, his left hand clasping the lapel on his duster. He chuckled behind his long cigar.

“Why have you been dogging our trail so fiercely, Ranger?” he asked. “Don’t you have plenty of other innocent citizens to harass and aggravate?”

“You and your pals robbed the bank in Goble day before yesterday,” said the Ranger. “That’s why I’m dogging you.”

Hornady’s right hand appeared ready to grab for his holstered revolver. But Sam had already seen enough to know the move wasn’t coming from the right hand. Lightning Hornady was only drawing his attention to the custom revolver.

Watch for the left
…Sam cautioned himself.

Hornady shrugged, gave his confident grin.

“It was only a small pissant of a bank, nothing
worth getting excited over—certainly not worth getting yourself killed over, is it?”

This journeyman gunman played his part well, Sam noted, so well that the Ranger decided if he waited long enough and gave this gunman enough room, the odds were good that Lightning Hornady might get an edge and kill him right here where he stood.

Sam continued to stare at him, revealing nothing.

“Well,
is it
?” Hornady asked again.

Without reply, without warning, the Ranger cocked the big Colt on the upswing, just like he’d planned to all along, and put a bullet through the unprepared gunman’s chest. The Colt bucked in the Ranger’s hand; the single explosion resounded along the street and out across the hill line.

Wade Hornady flew backward, his cigar abandoned in midair, appearing suspended there for a moment as he slid on the rough dirt street behind a settling mist of blood. As the cigar fell to the ground and the downed gunslinger came to a halt, Sam turned from side to side, crouched, fanning the smoking Colt toward any window or darkened doorway that could offer cover for any of Hornady’s cohorts.

Once satisfied that Hornady had truly been left alone to kill him, Sam lowered the big Colt an inch and walked forward toward the prone gunman. Hornady struggled for the belly gun inside his duster as his bootheels scooted him backward in the blood-splattered dirt. He stopped and stared up as Sam loomed over him.

Sam reached down, brushed Hornady’s bloody
hand aside and jerked a smaller custom Simpson-Barre revolver from a belly rig. He looked it over, admiring the ornate engraving covering its entire barrel and frame. Evening sunlight glinted soft on the gun’s ivory grips.

“Some gun…,” Sam said quietly. He shoved the adorned revolver into his gun belt, then drew his long-barreled revolver from its holster and let it hang from his left hand. He stared down at the bleeding gunman as townsfolk began easing back into sight and gathering a few safe yards away.

“We—we were still talking,” Hornady said in a strained voice. He stared up at Sam in disbelief.

“You were,” Sam said quietly. “I was all through.”

Hornady looked at the gaping hole in his chest; blood surged.