“I don’t suppose you have any brandy.”
The bartender shook his head. “Not much call for it. Not any call for it, come to think of it. Got beer and several kinds of whiskey, but no matter what’s on the label, they’ll all peel the paint off your innards, if that’s what you’re lookin’ for.”
“I’ll just take a beer as long as it’s cold,” Luke said. “My innards need what paint they have left on them.”
The bartender grinned at him and filled a mug from a barrel under the bar. As he set it in front of Luke, he said, “Coldest beer you’ll find in this part of the territory, friend. That’ll be two bits.”
Luke picked up the mug, which had foam spilling over the top, and used the thumb of his other hand to point at the group of miners. “Those damned stinking dirt-grubbers are going to pay for it,” he told the bartender in a loud, clear voice.
The words might not have been heard in other parts of the room, but they carried to the miners just fine and interrupted their revelry. Their profane japing at each other came to an abrupt halt, and in the surprised silence that took its place some of the men slowly turned their heads to scowl at Luke.
One of them, a burly gent with a bald head and a dark, sweeping handlebar mustache, glared and demanded, “What the hell did you just say, mister?”
On the other side of the hardwood, the bartender’s eyes bugged out slightly in alarm as he started shaking his head back and forth, trying to catch Luke’s attention.
Luke ignored him and grinned at the bald miner. “I said you and your friends would pay for my drink. It’s the least you can do for a man who works at an honest job instead of crawling around in the dirt like a squirming pack of worms.”
The miner’s big hands clenched into blocky fists as he took a step toward Luke. “Why, you—”
Luke stopped him by holding up a hand. “My apologies, friend. I never should have called you worms. You’re not worms.”
The miner’s jaw jutted out like a rocky shelf as he waited to hear what Luke was going to say next.
Luke glanced around the room. He was the first of McKinney’s gang to reach the saloon, just as he’d intended, and if his plan was going to work, he had to keep it that way. He couldn’t afford to waste any more time. “I wasn’t specific enough. You’re not worms. You’re filthy, disgusting maggots, feasting on the hard work of real men.”
And just in case that wasn’t enough to do the trick, with a flick of his wrist he slung the entire contents of the beer mug into the bald-headed miner’s face.
CHAPTER 29
For several heartbeats, the man was too stunned to do anything except stand there in front of the bar with the foamy amber liquid dripping off his face while he stared at Luke.
Then, with a deafening bellow of rage, he charged.
Luke let out a yell of his own as he set his feet and braced himself. His shout of “Yeeehaaahhh!” echoed from the ceiling. It was the legendary Rebel yell, the battle cry of the sons of the Confederacy who had headed west by the tens of thousands after the end of the War of Northern Aggression.
Luke had spotted a man wearing an old Confederate campaign cap with a broken black bill among the group of cowhands standing farther along the bar. Just as Luke hoped, the man let out a Rebel yell of his own and rushed along the bar to come to Luke’s aid if necessary, one southern boy pitching in to help another. Luke saw that response from the corner of his eye, then had to focus all his attention on the bald-headed miner, who swung one of those sledgehammer fists in a wild, looping blow.
That punch would have ended the fight then and there if it had landed, but Luke ducked under it. The knobby-knuckled fist still came close enough that he felt the wind of its passage. The miner’s midsection was wide open, so he stepped in while the miner was slightly off balance from the missed punch and hooked a left and a right into his belly.
It was almost like punching the sandstone bank of an arroyo. The miner didn’t even grunt. He just whipped a backhand at Luke’s head.
Luke jerked out of the way again, and the man’s hand struck his hat and sent it flying. A second later, the man grabbed the front of Luke’s shirt and hauled him forward. Luke couldn’t afford to let the miner wrap him up in a rib-crushing bear hug, so he stomped a boot heel down on top of the man’s left foot and lowered his head and rammed the top of it into the man’s face.
That two-pronged attack made the miner yell in pain and lean back as blood spurted from his flattened nose. He let go of Luke’s shirt. Luke clubbed both hands together and brought them up in a smashing blow that caught the man under the chin. The miner’s head rocked back from the impact. Luke slashed a side-hand blow to the exposed throat, and the miner staggered against the bar, choking and coughing.
“That son of a bitch is fightin’ dirty!” another miner yelled. “Get him!”
The group swarmed forward.
As Luke got ready to meet their attack, the cowboy in the Rebel cap stood shoulder to shoulder with him and said, “Let’s whip us some Yankees!”
A second later, the area in front of the bar was filled with flying fists and the meaty sound of punches landing on flesh and bone.
The fact that one of their own was in the middle of the fracas was enough of an excuse for the Reb’s friends to leap into action with enthusiastic yells. The battle spread quickly around the room, as cowboys and miners who had been playing poker in relative peace a moment earlier cursed and lunged at each other, overturning tables and sending cards, coins, and greenbacks flying. Painted saloon girls in short, spangled dresses screamed in alarm and scrambled to get out of the way of the wildly punching men. Judging by the way the bartender’s mouth was working, he was yelling at the men to stop fighting, but nobody could hear him over the uproar and wouldn’t care if they did.
All the while, the rinky-dink strains of the player piano continued dancing through the tumult.
As if the yelling and cursing by the combatants, combined with the crash of furniture being broken and thrown bottles shattering, wasn’t enough of a commotion, several meek-looking townsmen bolted from the saloon and shouted for the marshal. The few people on the street took up the hue and cry, and as the shouts rose over the settlement, even more people poked their heads out of doors and windows and hollered demands to know what was going on. Within minutes, the ruckus had roused the entire town, except for a few very sound sleepers and those who had passed out from drinking.
Inside the saloon, Luke had no way of knowing all that, but he hoped his ploy had been successful. Jack McKinney and the men with him wouldn’t be in position to make their move on the bank yet, and if the guards hired by the mine owners to protect the gold had any sense, they would be on full alert, aware that such a brawl could serve as a distraction for an attempted robbery. McKinney’s group was large enough that they might be able to fight their way into the bank despite that, but not without attracting a great deal of attention . . . too much attention for them to have the time needed to blow the vault open with dynamite.
With their plans ruined, their most likely reaction would be to get out of Stanton while they had the chance. Most outlaws were practical enough to cut their losses and abandon a job when the odds were against them.
What Luke had to do was find McKinney and capture him without the rest of the gang realizing what was going on. He had to get away from the saloon and all the chaos going on inside it.
Seeing his hat upside down on the bar where it had landed, Luke snatched it up and clapped it on his head, then leaned quickly to the side as a yelling miner tried to punch him in the face. As the man crowded against him, Luke slammed a fist into his belly and had more luck than he’d had with the bald hombre earlier. That man’s midsection was a lot softer. He gasped and doubled over as he turned green and sick-looking. Luke shoved him away.
The space between Luke and the batwinged entrance was filled with men flailing away at each other. He had no choice but to run that gauntlet. Ducking his head, he plunge
d into the melee and shouldered men out of his way. Several times, fists thudded into his back and shoulders, but he shrugged off the impacts and kept going. Once he tripped over a fallen battler but caught his balance before he wound up on the sawdust-littered floor himself. If he had fallen, he could have been stomped senseless in a matter of moments.
Finally, he stumbled toward the batwings right in front of him. Before he could reach them, someone grabbed his shoulder from behind and hauled him around.
The bald-headed miner had hold of him. He appeared to have recovered from the throat punch, but his face was still bright red, even where it wasn’t smeared with blood from his broken nose. He yelled hoarsely, “You’re not goin’ anywhere!” and clamped both hands around Luke’s throat.
Luke felt the man’s thumbs digging for his windpipe and knew he had only a few seconds to break free before the rage-filled miner did serious damage to him. He grabbed the man’s wrists to brace himself and brought the toe of his boot up into the miner’s groin. The vicious kick made the miner’s eyes bulge almost from their sockets. Luke had learned many years earlier that when it came to battling for his life, there was no such thing as fighting dirty.
There was only winning and losing—and survival.
Wrenching hard on the man’s wrists, Luke tore the hands away from his throat, hooked a foot between the man’s calves, and jerked his legs out from under him. The man fell, landing so hard that Luke felt the floor shiver under his feet.
Quickly, he turned and pushed out through the batwings onto the saloon’s porch.
The first thing he saw was a familiar figure reining a horse to a rearing halt in front of the saloon. The rider was one of the men who was supposed to start the brawl that had broken out early.
“What the hell happened?” he called to Luke.
“I don’t know! As soon as I stepped in there, all hell broke loose!”
To Luke’s left a man came flying through one of the saloon’s windows, which sprayed glass everywhere as it shattered. The luckless man rolled and skidded across the porch and fell into the street. Somebody had put a lot of effort into throwing him through the window.
“You mean it’s a real fight?” the outlaw asked as he fought to get his spooked horse back under control.
“Yeah! We’d better get out of here while we still can! Have you seen McKinney?”
If the outlaw thought that was an odd question under the circumstances, he gave no sign of it. He just waved a hand wildly toward the bank. “Him and the others ought to be gettin’ close, but they’ll have to call it off now!”
With that, he was able to wheel his horse around and kick it into a run away from the saloon. Luke didn’t pay any more attention to him. He untied his horse from the hitch rack, swung up into the saddle, and trotted toward the bank.
There was a chance McKinney and the others hadn’t yet reached the settlement and had turned back without ever getting there once they heard the sounds of the brawl starting prematurely. Luke realized that he might have to postpone making an attempt to capture McKinney. But he’d had to act as quickly as he did in order to prevent innocent men from being killed and the bank from being looted. He could come up with some other plan to nab Three-fingered Jack later on if he needed to.
He gave the bank a wide berth when he saw the guards clustered in front of it, bristling with rifles and shotguns. He nudged his horse into a gallop as if all he wanted to do was get away from the fight, which was spilling out of the saloon and into the street. When he glanced over his shoulder, he saw several knots of men punching away at each other.
He rode around a corner and onto one of the cross streets. A man yelled at him from one of the houses, asking him “what the hell all the commotion” was about. Luke ignored the man and hurried on, heading toward the hills east of the settlement where the members of the gang were supposed to rendezvous.
The drumming of his horse’s hooves, plus the distance as the town fell behind him, made the sounds of battle fade. He hadn’t heard any shooting and was glad no gunplay had erupted. In the morning, the men involved in the brawl would have sore heads, maybe even a few broken bones, but they would still be alive. The saloon’s owner would have some damage to repair and broken furniture to replace, but that was better than having the bank cleaned out.
The moon was higher, casting a wash of silver light over the landscape. Luke watched for any sign of other men on horseback and had ridden perhaps a mile when he spotted movement ahead. Urging his mount to greater speed, he closed in and soon came within hailing distance of three riders.
“McKinney!” he called. “Is that you?” Even if the boss outlaw wasn’t in the bunch, maybe they could tell him where to find the man.
The riders reined in and turned to face Luke as his horse trotted toward them. The moonlight was bright enough for him to see that Three-fingered Jack McKinney wasn’t among them, though they were members of the group that had gone with him to raid the bank.
“Jones!” one of them exclaimed. “What happened? We were still a quarter of a mile from town when we heard the uproar start.”
Luke brought his mount to a halt beside the other men. “One thing we didn’t count on. That saloon was full of miners and cowboys who hate each other’s guts, and they started fighting on their own. We never got a chance to start the brawl when we wanted to!”
“Damn the luck! When we heard all that commotion going on, Jack said we had to turn back. Said the guards would be ready for trouble and we’d wind up having to shoot it out with all of them.”
“I’ll bet Creager wasn’t happy with that,” Luke said.
Another outlaw laughed harshly. “I thought they might reach for their guns and settle it then and there. Creager was all for gallopin’ in and shootin’ it out with the guards, and devil take the hindmost! But in the end, he went along with Jack’s order to scatter and then meet up back at the rendezvous later tonight.”
An all-out assault on the town like Creager wanted would have resulted in a lot of innocent blood being spilled. Luke felt some grim satisfaction that he’d been able to prevent that.
“So you don’t know where McKinney is? I thought I’d better tell him what happened.”
The men shook their heads.
“He headed off into the dark like the rest of us did. You can tell him about it when we get back to the rendezvous.” The outlaw who spoke paused to spit, then shook his head in apparent disgust. “I sure was lookin’ forward to gettin’ away with a wagon full of gold.”
Luke turned his horse away from the others and said, “Those people in town don’t have any reason to raise a posse, since they don’t know how close they came to having the bank hit, but riding in a bunch like this probably isn’t too smart anyway. I’ll see you fellas later.”
None of them wished him luck or called farewells as he rode away. He was the new man, after all. They didn’t have any real fondness for him yet and likely never would since he didn’t intend to be among them for very long.
He circled through the hills, counting on instinct to guide him back to the rendezvous point. He felt the opportunity to wrap up this odd quest slipping away from him, but he couldn’t do anything about it except wait and see how the hand played out.
That thought was going through his mind when he suddenly spotted a lone rider in front of him. Luke increased his mount’s pace, and as he drew closer, he realized the man was the right size and build to be Three-fingered Jack McKinney.
The man stopped short with no warning and wheeled his horse around. Moonlight glinted on the gun he held. He’d heard Luke coming up behind him and didn’t take any chances on being ambushed.
Luke drew back on the reins with his left hand and raised his right in the universal gesture of peace as his horse slowed. “Hold your fire, boss,” he called. “It’s me, Luke Jones.” He was close enough that he could see the other rider’s face, although the man’s hat brim cast a shadow over it. Certain he had found McKinney, Luke thought
maybe his luck was going to hold, after all.
McKinney lowered the iron in his hand but didn’t pouch it. “Jones, what in blazes went wrong back there?”
“A bunch of proddy miners and cowboys in that saloon jumped the gun on us,” Luke explained, edging his horse nearer. He wanted to get close enough to buffalo McKinney over the head with one of his Remingtons. It would help if McKinney holstered his own Colt first, though.
“You mean they just started fighting for no good reason?”
“None that I could see,” Luke said.
McKinney let out a bitter curse. “That’s the one thing I didn’t count on, and that was enough to ruin the timing of the whole thing.”
“I ran into some of the other boys. They told me Creager wanted to go ahead with the raid.”
“It would have been fine with Creager if we’d stormed in there, gunned down everybody we saw, and burned the town to the ground as we left.” McKinney snorted contemptuously and jammed his gun back in its holster. “That’s not the way I do things, no matter what Creager wants.”
Luke’s hand moved inconspicuously toward the Remington on his right hip. He was ready to jerk it from leather and lay the barrel alongside McKinney’s head with enough force to knock the boss outlaw cold when he heard a sudden swift rataplan of hoofbeats from behind him.
His reflexes jerked him around. A rider moving that fast on such a night didn’t have anything good in mind.
A big, dark shape bulked up out of the shadows, and a gravelly voice shouted, “You! It was your fault!”
Creager!
Luke palmed out the Remington he had been reaching for, but Creager already had a gun in his hand. He fired as he charged, muzzle flame blooming in the darkness like a crimson flower. Luke felt a terrible impact slam into his head. The Remington slipped from his fingers, unfired. He knew he was falling, toppling out of the saddle, but oblivion swallowed him whole before he ever hit the ground.
CHAPTER 30
Luke had been knocked out enough times in his life to know what was going on as he began to regain consciousness. A throbbing, all-too-familiar pain originated in his head and radiated out to fill his entire being. He knew what would come next, too—more pain, a sickness deep in his belly, and dizzying disorientation when he tried to open his eyes and move. That would just make it worse.
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