The Badlands Trail

by Lyle Brandt

  Not that he ever seriously thought of turning back.

  Dixon was a man of some influence back at home in Atoka, as Rogers was in Cold Comfort, though he seldom acted like it unless he perceived some danger to his livelihood. In that case, he would fight—had fought—against opponents of all colors of the human rainbow. So far, he had always triumphed in those struggles, though the cost was sometimes high, verging on terrible.

  But Hebron Stark had left him no alternative.

  If Stark had waited out the night, Dixon supposed he might have folded in the morning, paid the toll that Stark demanded, and deducted it from the profits earned upon arrival in St. Louis, but Stark’s arrogance had forced his hand, compelling him to do more.

  The death—murder—of Isaac Thorne demanded an accounting Dixon recognized as long past due.

  Honor demanded that he fight, regardless of the risk to the other men who’d joined his drive to herd longhorns, not plunge into a shooting war. Tonight—well, morning now, although the sun was still in hiding—marked their third fight in a month, roughly, and he could only hope that it would be their last, whatever happened in the next few hours.

  If he lost, then it would absolutely be his last, and Dixon would have taken good men with him as his final act on earth. If they won, whoever lived through it still had another ten, twelve days of driving steers to market, dwelling on the losses they’d sustained.

  Four drovers dead so far at hostile hands, the only good news being that he wouldn’t have to pay their salaries under the terms each had agreed to before setting out. Against that loss, they’d slain thirteen opponents, but that didn’t balance out in Dixon’s mind.

  Not even close.

  His first duty, after delivering the herd, was caring for the men who helped him on the trail, and he had failed at that with Thorne, Lott, Hightower, and Courtwright. Not through any weakness of his own, perhaps, but simply from the state of being human, which meant fallible.

  Tonight, we end this, Dixon told himself. We settle it, even if nothing in the world can put it right.

  * * *

  * * *

  TOBY BISHOP SCANNED the eastern skyline, waiting for the first pale blush of sunrise, but it wasn’t time for that yet. Just as well, since daylight would expose them to their enemies as they approached.

  Beyond that, he supposed their errand was rightly a job for darkness, after all.

  He didn’t think about how badly they would be outnumbered by Stark’s men. Fretting about it wouldn’t change a thing, except perhaps to weaken his resolve and spoil his aim when pinpoint accuracy was required. Bishop had no fear on that score—no real fear he could point to, if the truth were told—and some folks might have found that worrying enough.

  At what point would he face reality, accept the fact that he was basically a killer, and decide what that foretold for the remainder of his life?

  Or, then again, it might not be a problem.

  Five men against three or four times that number, presumably. He had no faith in winning just because they had “right” on their side. So, in their own opinion, had most of the men he’d killed during the Mason County war. He guessed the rustlers who met their deaths in Willow Grove had felt the same, doing what seemed the best for them. And the Comanches doubtless had a valid grudge against white men.

  All dead now, and likely forgotten by this time next week, except by Willow Grove’s survivors and the Circle K drovers who still had lives ahead of them.

  Nature or Fate, whatever people chose to call it, didn’t give a damn who won or lost a given fight. Of that, Bishop was reasonably sure.

  So, when they met the enemy, he planned to fight as if his life depended on it—which was fact, not speculation. Beyond that, whether it was the long view that made their struggle right, wrong, or indifferent, he didn’t care to think about it.

  A task was waiting for him, and beyond accomplishing it, nothing mattered.

  Not a blessed thing.

  * * *

  * * *

  I WISH TO GOD they’d hurry up and get here,” Harley Tilton said.

  “Uh-huh,” his deputy replied. He didn’t sound sincere.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Tilton demanded.

  “Nothing. I just wanna get it over with, the same as you.”

  “Sounds like you’re going to a funeral,” Tilton replied.

  “’Bout how it feels,” Hazlet admitted.

  “That’s no attitude for winning, Luke.”

  “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Harley. I mean ‘Marshal.’”

  “Never mind that. Any way you slice it, we’ve got numbers on our side.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You doubt it? Even if that Dixon fella brings all of his men—which we both know he can’t afford to do—Stark must have two, three times as many gun hands waiting for ’em.”

  “Yeah. If all of ’em will fight.”

  “You doubt it?”

  “Wait and see.”

  If fact, Tilton had doubts himself, but wasn’t voicing them tonight while being sheltered in the home of Hebron Stark. He owed the Big Man much of what he was today—though, for the life of him, at the moment Tilton would have been hard-pressed to say exactly what that was.

  A “lawman” in a poor jerkwater town, of course. He had the tin to prove it on his vest, for all the good that did him now. Most of the people in Cold Comfort had a healthy fear of him—or, rather, of the man he represented—but beyond that Tilton felt their simmering contempt. If Mr. Stark didn’t exist, virtual lord and master of his little realm, the townsfolk likely would have ridden Harley and Luke Hazlet out of town on rails, maybe with a fresh coat of tar for their traveling attire.

  None of that mattered now, of course.

  There would be time enough to deal with that tomorrow, if tomorrow came and Tilton was alive to see daybreak.

  “You check your guns?” he asked Hazlet.

  “Hell yes. Three times. Much more, and I’ll have blisters on my thumbs.”

  “Won’t kill you,” Tilton said.

  “No, that won’t. We got people coming wanna do that for themselves.”

  “And you know how to handle that.”

  “I do?”

  “Idjit! You kill them first.”

  “Don’t stand there and act like I’m the one who got us into this,” Hazlet replied.

  “I didn’t say—”

  His deputy talked over him. “Because I ain’t. We both know who’s at fault.”

  “Don’t let him hear you say that under his own roof.”

  “Hell, what’s he gonna do? Fire me?”

  “The mood he’s in right now, losing your job might be the least of it.”

  That sobered Hazlet and he shut his mouth, but he couldn’t help the sour expression on his face.

  Tilton was satisfied with that, under the circumstances. With his own life riding on the line, he had no time to spare for coddling Hazlet and his injured feelings—not that he’d seen Luke express feelings for anything beyond money, rotgut, and the whores who plied their trade at Cold Comfort’s saloon.

  Tonight, maybe he’d have a chance to see his deputy behaving like some semblance of a man.

  And how would Tilton, on his own account, make out?

  * * *

  * * *

  BISHOP RAN INTO the first lookout when he came within three hundred yards or so of Hebron Stark’s ranch house.

  The guy was smoking, had a rifle tucked under his left arm backward, muzzle pointing down behind him for a cross-hand grab at need. He also wore a pistol on his right hip, holster tied down to facilitate a faster draw, which meant that in a pinch he’d have to choose between one weapon or the other.

  If he picked the rifle, that meant swinging nine and one-half pounds around one-han
ded, measuring just shy of fifty inches long from butt to muzzle, before sighting on a target. If he hadn’t jacked a round into the firing chamber, add another two, three seconds to the whole procedure before he could fire a killing shot.

  Or, if he chose the handgun, he’d be fumbling with the rifle, trying not to drop it as he drew and fired. Three seconds minimum, no matter how often he practiced shooting stumps, bottles, or cans.

  And that was only if he saw Death coming for him through the darkness.

  Bishop was approaching from the watchman’s flank, careful with each step to produce no telling noise. It seemed to take forever, but if Dixon’s other drovers started shooting first, that might help him, distracting his intended target when the lookout needed to be most alert.

  And he could work with that.

  Ten feet before he reached his adversary now, and he could smell the sharp tang of tobacco on the night breeze, hear the lookout’s gun belt creaking slightly when he shifted weight from one leg to the other. Bishop had considered how to do this quickly, quietly, and had decided on a double hit: a butt stroke from his Winchester to put the watchman down and keep him quiet long enough for Toby to unsheathe his knife, pin the guy down beneath his weight, and do what needed doing.

  Now.

  He closed the last eight feet in two swift strides, swinging the Yellow Boy around stock first and slamming it into the stranger’s face. A muffled crack reached Toby’s ears just as he saw the gunman’s jaw slip out of line, causing his lips to twist and form a kind of sneer.

  That might have done him in, but Bishop couldn’t count on it. He followed through, kneeling atop the downed man’s heaving chest while his knife flashed by moonlight, vanished into flesh and gristle, came back streaming blood that glistened jet-black.

  Done, or nearly so.

  He had to wait out shivering death throes, but they passed in another minute, maybe less. Taking no chances, Toby tossed the dead man’s rifle out of reach and pulled a Colt Peacemaker from the fallen sentry’s holster, tucking it under his belt around in back.

  Another gun might come in handy when the shooting started.

  And as if in answer to his thought, it did, crackling around the ranch house in a flurry that a drunkard might mistake for Independence Day fireworks.

  If this turned out to be the last night of his life, Bishop could only hope to meet the threat head-on and do his best.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  WHEN THE GUNFIRE started, Hebron Stark moved toward the sound. If any of his men had taken time to focus on him then, in passing, they’d have been surprised—and maybe even horrified—to see that he was smiling like a cat sitting before a bowl of fresh, warm cream.

  Why not?

  His enemies had done the stupid thing, coming for him on his home turf, and he would break them there, annihilate them. When he’d finished that chore, he would ride out with his men to claim the longhorn herd, ready to kill the rest of Gavin Dixon’s men or let them flee if they were smart enough to do so.

  Whichever way that went, he’d finish up the day a richer man than when the sun last set.

  He couldn’t tell how many men Dixon had brought against him so far, but from spotting muzzle flashes and listening to the reports of rifles, he had estimated five or six all told. That would be all the rancher could afford to spare without leaving his stock unguarded on the prairie, every head at risk of being stolen or just wandering away and getting lost on unfamiliar ground.

  So far, Stark hadn’t fired a shot—no point in wasting ammunition on shadows—but he was looking forward to it, hoping he could draw a bead on Dixon in the flesh and be the one to bring him down.

  Officially, he might have bent some law by levying a toll on Dixon’s herd, but who was going to complain? Prior drives had paid up and gone on their way, avoiding Christian County if they made another trek across Missouri, but as far as Stark could tell, no one had griped about it to the law. State law, that was, and not the flunkies he’d installed to run things for him in Cold Comfort. If Tilton and Hazlet couldn’t pull their weight tonight, he’d have to find somebody else to fill their posts.

  Someone who wasn’t just a brute, but who had a knack for thinking on his feet.

  For thinking at all, in fact.

  But first, he had to win this skirmish, then move on to win the war.

  Just the thought of it bred more excitement in his gut than Stark had felt in years.

  * * *

  * * *

  BISHOP WAS CLOSING on Stark’s spacious barn when two men came out of a side door, one behind the other, looking all around, each with a rifle in his hands. They didn’t spot him right away, but Toby knew he only had a few seconds before that changed and he came under fire.

  The answer: beat them to it.

  Shouldering his Winchester, he framed the second defender in its sights, thumbed back the rifle’s hammer, and squeezed off. The recoil wasn’t bad, a pistol cartridge in a rifle weighing more than nine pounds, and his shot was true, slamming the second man in line against the door from which he’d just emerged.

  That slammed the door and blocked it, while the first shooter who had shown himself was spinning, looking for the sniper who had dropped his pal. His eyes focused on Toby just as Bishop pumped the rifle’s lever action and he fired again from forty feet or less.

  Another hit, the ranch hand’s Stetson taking flight and carrying a fragment of his skull along with it. Bishop had no need to confirm that he was dead—brains on the grass was proof enough of that—but he stood over the first man he’d shot, prodding the body with his Yellow Boy’s muzzle, ensuring that he’d made it two for two.

  So far, so good.

  The gunfire was increasing now, but no one else had noticed Bishop yet, as far as he could tell. Some of Stark’s men were firing from the house, at least one more crouching behind a privy, leaning out to blast the night, and now a muzzle flash erupted from the Big Man’s roof, followed a heartbeat later by the echo of a large-caliber hunting rifle.

  Bishop couldn’t say who that sniper was firing at, or even if he had a target in his sights, but his position made him dangerous to all of Mr. Dixon’s raiders on the ground below.

  Toby decided he should try to fix that.

  Cautiously, wearing night’s shadows as his cloak, he closed in on the manor house.

  * * *

  * * *

  SON OF A bitch!”

  There was no one around to hear Jay Cothran curse his wasted shot, and that was just as well. If there had been, he might have shoved them off the roof for watching as he let the darkness fool him, causing him to miss his first round of the battle from his Whitworth rifle.

  Damn the William Malcolm scope mounted atop the Whitworth’s barrel. It worked magic in broad daylight, but at night, with the illumination being poor to none, it didn’t help him differentiate between a lifeless shadow and a man intent on killing Hebron Stark’s defenders.

  Still, he hadn’t shot one of the ranch hands by mistake. That calmed him down a bit, but only slightly, as he manhandled the muzzleloader, feeding it more powder and another .451-caliber bullet.

  Everyone below was firing now—or most of them, at least. Cothran supposed a few had run away, perhaps even before the shooting started, though he hadn’t seen them riding off with horses from the paddock. If he had . . .

  Well, gutless “friends” could drop as quickly as advancing enemies.

  * * *

  * * *

  CREED ROGERS CURSED himself for lingering too long around Stark Acres—or for riding out at all, in fact, when Harley Tilton and his rat-faced deputy, Luke Hazlet, could have made the ride without him, to apprise their mutual employer of the risk he faced.

  But no. Rogers had come along—insisted on it like an idiot, in point of fact—telling the lawmen that the news should come to Stark from t
heir alleged superior, Cold Comfort’s mayor.

  Now, just when he’d decided to sneak off, ride back to town, and hope Stark didn’t miss him, he had lost the opportunity. A battle was in full swing just outside Stark’s house, and Rogers had no choice but to join in.

  Unless . . .

  Perhaps he could escape on foot, unnoticed. He could walk the five miles back to town. It wasn’t all that far, and daylight would be breaking soon to make it easier.

  If only he could leave the mansion without being shot.

  Clutching his Cole Sidehammer, Rogers moved from Hebron Stark’s parlor to the kitchen, where the two cooks—one a Chinaman, the other Mexican—were huddled in the pantry, muttering in pidgin English with their heads together, almost touching. They fell silent as he passed, then started up again as Rogers reached a side door granting access to the farmyard.

  Just another hundred feet or so to reach the barn, where he could either take the horse he’d ridden out from town or leave it there and start his trek back home.

  And after that?

  The best thing he could think of was another journey, this one taking him as far as possible away from Cold Comfort, from Hebron Stark, perhaps out of Missouri to some other state, leaving his sullied reputation in the dust.

  But first things first.

  Rogers was nearly at the barn, walking with head down, shoulders hunched, as if his posture would prevent an enemy from seeing him, when someone—just a man-shaped shadow in the night—stepped out to meet him from around the barn’s southeastern corner.

  “Leaving are you, Mayor?” the prowler asked.

  Rogers did not reply. Instead, he raised his Colt, triggered a shot, and literally hit the broad side of a barn, missing his man by six or seven feet.

  “Goddammit!”

  As he cocked the Colt, preparing for another shot, the faceless figure fired a rifle, its orange muzzle flash imprinting itself on Creed’s retinas. A sharp pain forced the air out of his lungs, then he was toppling forward, squeezing off his second wasted round into the dirt before the world leaped up to strike him in his face.