Straw Men (17 page)

Colonel Farelli was a beaten man. Clint could tell that much in the way Farelli walked and the way he hung his head. Every last one of Farelli's steps was the heavy, shuffling movement of someone walking to the end of his trail.

Even so, Clint kept his hand close to his gun and his eyes open for any sign of treachery. Farelli may have been a pathetic, cowardly excuse for a soldier, but he hadn't survived this long by being stupid. Once desperation was added to the mix, the colonel became a genuine threat to Clint's well-being.

While inside his shack, Farelli sifted through a couple drawers and pulled together a collection of documents that looked mostly like a bunch of letters. There were a few papers bearing the Army seal upon them, but Clint wasn't about to study each and every one. Farelli was guilty. There were already witnesses to testify to that and there would surely be more stepping forward. If need be, Clint intended on gathering those witnesses himself. He didn't expect it would be too difficult to convince the lesser rats to save their own skins by sacrificing their leader.

“All right,” Clint said. “That's enough. Let's go.”

Farelli looked at him with the expression of a lost child. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. “Oh…all right. Can I ride my own horse?”

Now, Clint couldn't help but find the situation pathetic. At any moment, he expected Farelli to make an even bigger mockery of himself and the uniform he wore. “We'll take what ever horse we can find. Let's just go.” Placing his hand upon his gun, Clint added, “Right now.”

Nodding weakly, Farelli clutched his papers to his chest and walked out of the shack. Rather than turn toward the stable, he looked over at the saloon.

“No, Farelli. This way.”

But Farelli didn't even glance at Clint. He still had his papers pressed against himself when he barked, “A thousand dollars to whoever kills this man!”

Clint grabbed Farelli's arm and dragged him toward the stable.

“He's kidnapping me!” Farelli cried. “A thousand to whoever guns the bastard down!”

At first, none of the men standing outside of the saloon took much notice. But when a few of them were able to see Farelli's face as well as Clint dragging him away, they walked toward the shack.

“That you, Colonel?” one of the gunmen asked.

“Yes, it's me! Kill this man!”

That was all it took to light a fire under the gunmen. They had come to Fort Winstead to fight and most of them were drunk. It wasn't a good combination.

“Oh, hell,” Clint said as the first gunman drew his pistol.

The first few rounds were wild and hissed through the air around Clint and Farelli. Clint drew the modified Colt and jumped back a few steps so he could put the shack between himself and the saloon. More bullets flew, shattering windows and punching through the flimsy wooden planks. As more gunmen joined the fray, the bullets moved closer to their target.

Clint swore under his breath when he realized Farelli had ducked back into the shack. Once inside, the colonel could arm himself or even slip out another door, and Clint had gone through too much to let Farelli escape now.

Circling around the shack, Clint discovered there wasn't a back door and there were no other windows. He stepped around to the front, preparing himself for the worst, and that was exactly what he got. At least eight gunmen were walking toward the shack. Each man had a gun in his hand and all of their faces lit up when they caught sight of Clint.

“There he is!” one of them shouted.

Two of the gunmen swung their aim toward Clint and pulled their triggers. Even as bullets drilled through the shack on one side of him and hissed through the air on the other, Clint waited until he knew he had no other choice before squeezing his trigger. The Colt barked twice in quick succession, knocking both of the gunmen from their feet. Clint waited a few more seconds before firing again.

Just as Clint had hoped, a few of the gunmen scattered when they saw a couple of their own hit the dirt. Some froze and the rest forged ahead with guns blazing. Clint ducked around the shack, waited a few seconds, and then looked around the corner again. This time, Clint dropped to one knee so his head emerged at a much lower point than it had before. That little trick bought him the fraction of a second he needed to fire a few more rounds.

One of Clint's bullets ripped through a gunman's knee, sending the man to the ground where he could curl up into a writhing bundle. Another bullet punched into a gunman's hip, spinning him around like a top while the man fired wildly into the air. Clint's third shot didn't find its mark, but got close enough to send a man running for cover. Knowing that he only had one more bullet in his cylinder, Clint fired it over the gunmen's heads before pulling himself back around the shack so he could reload.

As his fingers flew through the motions of pulling out the empty casings and replacing them with fresh ones from his gun belt, Clint pressed his ear against the shack. The wall was just thin enough for him to hear Farelli stomping around inside. Even though Clint could hear plenty of shouted cursing within the shack, he was more concerned by the shattering of glass and the low roar of a fire bursting to life.

Clint ran around to the front of the cabin as more gunmen ventured closer to the rickety little building. Raising his gun and turning to see if he needed to shoot, Clint found one of the gunmen taking aim at him with a rifle. Before Clint could pull his trigger, a shot was fired from somewhere else and the rifleman keeled over.

“Who's next?” Abigail hollered as she pointed her smoking gun at the largest group of hired shooters.

While some of the gunmen seemed ready to accept her challenge, most of them were put off by the fact that they'd have to fight a woman to do so. Apparently, the rifleman didn't have any friends among the killers, because none of them stepped up to avenge him.

Kicking open the shack's door, Clint found Farelli standing inside amid a growing fire. The flames spread outward from his desk, lapping at the walls and quickly moving along the dry wood.

“The Indians did this!” Farelli shouted. “That's what they'll think! Nobody will ever know what happened here! Any Federals coming around will think those redskins burned this place down and that you helped them!”

There was no mistaking the crazy fire in Farelli's eyes. It burned brighter than the flames that were consuming the cabin.

Farelli's chest heaved as he looked around at the flames closing in around him. “I hear them now. Don't you hear the Indians, Adams? They're coming, just like I said. Just you watch!”

“Get the hell out of here before you're cooked alive!” Clint shouted. “You'll set this whole damn place on fire!”

But Farelli was beyond talking now. The moment he felt the fire on his sleeve, he started to twitch and flail his arm. His motion only added to the flames and soon his whole upper body was engulfed in them. Farelli let out a wild cry and ran at Clint like some sort of demon loosed from the pits of hell.

Clint thought Farelli might have tried something stupid to get himself out of the mess he'd made, but this went well beyond Clint's expectations. The more Farelli moved, the more the fire blazed around him. When he saw Farelli charge at him, Clint's first instinct was just to hop out of the way.

Farelli bolted past Clint, ran out of the shack, and immediately started running toward the nearby stable. In that instant, Clint could imagine the stable burning down with all those horses inside of it. Soon, the entire fort would be one giant fireball.

When Clint fired his next shot, it was to prevent Farelli from making an already bad situation even worse. After the colonel dropped and flailed on the ground, Clint fired another round into him as an act of mercy.

“Where's the fire brigade?” Clint shouted to the closest soldier that had come rushing at the sound of all the shooting.

The soldier simply looked stunned. “Fire brigade?”

“A bucket line! Just some damn water to put out these flames! What the hell do you do in case of a fire?”

“I don't…we don't…we never…”

Clint shook his head and walked away from the shack. Suddenly, he started to wonder if Farelli's madness had infected him as well. He could hear the Indians. Looking toward the front gate, Clint realized the sound was real. There were Indians outside and they were rushing into the fort with weapons drawn. The first face Clint picked out was Ahiga's. Then he spotted Elsu and plenty of other Navajo braves.

The gunmen that had come out to claim Farelli's thousand dollars fired a few shots at the Indians, but quickly decided to cut and run. Most of the soldiers went to the bunk house and stable to collect their horses and possessions before scattering from the burning fort along with the civilians who worked there. The only ones who weren't abandoning Fort Winstead were the Navajo warriors, Clint, and Abigail.

“What in the hell went wrong?” Abigail asked.

“Just about everything.” Clint sighed. Seeing Ahiga walk toward him, Clint gave the Navajo a tired wave. “What brings you folks here?” he asked.

“You helped us clean up our tribe,” Ahiga replied. “So Chief Mingan thought we could help you clean out yours.”

“You still got that translator?”

Ahiga nodded.

“Let him go. He may be better off with your people than out here, so remember he was just doing a simple job and could use your help. If he doesn't want it, just let him be.”

“And Tolfox?” Ahiga asked.

Clint walked to the hitching post where Eclipse was tied and loosened the reins. The horses were already gone from the stable and everyone from cooks to soldiers were riding away. Already the fort felt empty as the crackle of flames became steadily louder. When he caught sight of Fawn among the Indians just outside the gate, Clint gave her a weary smile.

“Tolfox dragged your people into this whole mess,” Clint said. “You should be the ones to deal with him. I trust you won't be attacking any more wagon trains from now on.”

The big Navajo raised his nose and pulled in a deep breath of smoky air. “I am He Who Fights. If there is another war, I will fight.”

Clint was too tired to argue. Shots had been fired and blood had been spilled on both sides of this fight. With Tolfox, Farelli, and all of the killers who blindly followed them out of the picture, this fight was over. “Just try not fighting for a while, huh?” Clint requested. “You may just like it.”

“And what of this place?” Ahiga asked as he looked around at the burning fort.

“This place should bum to the ground,” Clint replied. “That's all a straw man's good for anyway.”