Hired Guns

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

Belinda’s arms tightened around him and she was quick with reassurance. “No, of course not.” She paused a moment and then added in a quieter voice, almost as if to herself, “That’s not it at all.”

  Chapter 23

  “I’d like it a whole lot better,” Pinkeye Scarns was lamenting, “if we could just shoot him. I mean, looky here, we got practically the perfect setup. We split ourselves into the rocks off on either side, wait for him to ride out there in the middle of the gap, then hit him with a crossfire. It’d be all over, slick as pie.”

  “Maybe killin’ a man ain’t supposed to go as slick as pie. You ever consider that?” drawled Clarence Horn from where he stood leaning leisurely against a smooth slab of rock off to one side of Pinkeye.

  Pinkeye scowled. “Whatcha mean by that? You sayin’ I ain’t got the right to think about a piece of business the way I want, that I can only look at it the way I’m supposed to? Who has the say over what men in our line of work should feel or think about what we do? You all of a sudden get bit by the religion bug or something, Horn? You—a hired gun who’s planted more men than you got whiskers on your chin?”

  The abnormality that perpetually tinted the irises of both of Pinkeye’s eyes the color that earned him his nickname was prone to deepening nearly to full red when he got annoyed or angry. A trace of this change was in evidence now as he fired off the retort to Horn.

  A runt all his life, suffering a diminutive size in addition to pushed-in facial features dominated by flat, flaring, pig-like nostrils and bulging eyes that displayed their odd color to the point of practically begging to be commented on, Pinkeye had grown up the brunt of endless ridicule. Only after he picked up a gun for the first time and discovered he was pretty handy with one, did he find the means to retaliate against all the teasing and unkind remarks he’d had to endure up to that point.

  And retaliate he did, often at the most minuscule thing he took to be disrespectful or disparaging. Such as the off-hand bit of musing from Horn, as if it were some kind of personal challenge to Pinkeye’s way of looking at things.

  Horn was a grizzled old veteran who’d seen Pinkeye huff and puff over little or nothing too many times to respond seriously to his latest display of raised hackles. At fifty, with his easy Texas drawl and mild, seen-it-all-before eyes, Horn still had a trace of lightning left in his draw even though the rest of him moved slow and somewhat wearily, never wasting a single motion. He’d killed a score or more men in his time, and though more likely loomed in his future, he seemed in no particular hurry for it.

  On that subject now, in response to Pinkeye’s chuffing, Horn said, “Yeah, I’ve planted my share of men. More than my share. So maybe that don’t give me the right to say how anybody else oughta feel about it. But I can speak for my own feelings and it ain’t got nothing to do with religion, neither. What it does have to do with is . . . well, balance. Weighin’ one thing against another. And by that I mean that snuffin’ out the life of a man, a human being, shouldn’t be taken as lightly as swattin’ a mosquito or plinkin’ the head off a rattler. That’s all I was sayin’. Do you see what I mean?”

  Pinkeye continued to scowl at him, only gradually it turned into more a look of confusion than annoyance. “No, I don’t,” he said dully. “But never mind. You not makin’ sense fits right in with the rest of what we’re in the middle of here. It’s no wonder none of us are thinkin’ or talkin’ straight. How can we, on account of this ‘take him alive’ bull? What kind of crazy business is that, anyway? You know good and well those Dixons ain’t goin’ to all this trouble to catch Jensen just so’s they can chew the fat with him over brandy and see-gars. He must have done something to really piss ’em off royal, so they got some kind of special payback in mind. Which means he’s gonna end up dead anyway, so why not just get it over with? That’s what I’d like to know.”

  “Well then,” said Paul Grimsby, the third man hunkered in the nest of boulders with Pinkeye and Horn, “maybe when we get back to Hard Rock with this Jensen varmint, you can march right up to Roland Dixon and demand some answers to all those things you’re fretting about. Better yet, maybe his old man will be coming ’round for a visit and you can corner both of ’em together and find out everything you want to know. How would that be?”

  Pinkeye’s mouth sagged open. “What are you sayin’? Yeah, like I’m apt to pull a fool stunt like that. That would take the crazy cake for sure.”

  Grimsby regarded him. He was a solid six-footer, about forty, with a weathered face bracketed by thick sideburns gone prematurely white. Penetrating blue eyes under a ledge of brows still stark black gave him a stern, no-nonsense air.

  “Why not?” he demanded now in a tone that fit his appearance. “You could be the spokesman for the whole lot of us. I know quite a few of the boys have got some of those same questions.”

  “To hell with that notion.” Pinkeye shook his head vigorously. “I ain’t gonna brace no Dixons with no bunch of questions on why they want something done a certain way.”

  “Why not?” Grimsby said again. “You got all these questions and you just got done spouting ’em out, along with saying how crazy the Dixons are. I think they might appreciate hearing all the things wrong with their ideas and what good ones you got to improve them.”

  Pinkeye shrank back a half step from Grimsby, like he’d suddenly learned the man was carrying a disease. “This is some kind of joke, right? I ain’t got no ideas about improvin’ nothing. That ain’t for me to say.”

  “Why not, Pinkeye?”

  “Whatcha mean, ‘why not’? ’Cause it ain’t my job, that’s why! All I am is a hired gun.”

  Grimsby set his teeth on edge and glared at the little man cowering away from him. “That’s right. All you are is a hired gun,” he grated. “That means you do what you’re told in order to earn your pay. You do what you’re told and you keep your yap shut while you’re doing it. Leastways that’s how it goes when you’re working for me. And since Hack put me in charge of this little shindig until he shows up, that’s what it amounts to—you working for me.” The heat in Grimsby’s eyes intensified. “Understood?”

  Pinkeye licked his lips. “Jeez, Paul. Sure, I understand that. No need to land on a fella so hard. I didn’t mean no harm. You know I always do my job when it counts. I was just makin’ conversation to help pass the time, that’s all.”

  “You’ve done nothing but flap your gums since we rode out this morning,” Grimsby growled. “You made enough conversation to help pass about six months. So enough is enough. My ears need a rest, and so does Horn’s and everybody else’s.”

  “All you had to do was say something,” Pinkeye muttered.

  “Then consider it said,” Grimsby told him. “Any more yammering, I’ll send you up to relieve either Touhy or Karpis on one of the lookout posts and you can listen to yourself.”

  The three men were positioned in a jumble of boulders and weather-scoured rock slabs accumulated around the base of a high, stony peak that rose behind and above them. The peak was the culmination of a long ridge reaching in from the west, most of it covered by brush and trees with a few outcrops of rock until it ended abruptly at a cliff that dropped almost straight down. To the east, on the other side of a flat, grassy expanse about a hundred yards wide, another cliff face rose to a similar peak and then another ridge, this one meandering away farther east until it was lost in the barren, baked humps and jagged arroyos of the badlands sprawl that lay beyond.

  The flat, north-south stretch between these peaks— or shoulders, as some called them—was known as Balfour Pass. Depending which way one was headed, this could be considered either the gateway to or the exit from the Hard Rock Valley. For the purpose that brought Grimsby and the others here this morning, they were viewing it as the exit on the road to Helena—the road they anticipated Luke Jensen to be taking in his flight from the harsh reception he’d received upon his arrival yesterday. If and when he showed up, it was their assignment—as issued by Hacksaw Ferris—t
o stop him.

  “Comes to climbin’ up and relievin’ one of those other fellas,” Horn said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and cranking his head from side to side to work out the kinks, “I wouldn’t mind takin’ a turn. Be a chance to stretch my legs a mite and keep from crampin’ up.”

  “Appreciate the offer,” Grimsby said. “But I’d just as soon you stayed down here on the ground, close to the horses. In case Jensen shows up and tries to make a run for it, you’re one of our best riders if we have to give chase.”

  The horses for the three men—as well as for Alvin Touhy and Rimrock Karpis, the lookouts Grimsby had stationed up high on each of the shoulders bordering the pass—were hobbled nearby but out of sight, deep in some underbrush that grew back around a corner of cliff.

  Shrugging in response to Grimsby’s rationale, Horn said, “Okay. If that’s how you want it.”

  “With any luck, if Jensen does make an appearance,” Grimsby explained further, “Hack and Dog and those other boys they’re bringing will be tight on his tail and we’ll be able to squeeze him between us. If he’s smart, he’ll see that he’s caught in the jaws of a trap and it ought to take the fight out of him.”

  Pinkeye couldn’t hold back. “Yeah, but think how much easier and surer it could be if not for that ‘take him alive’ baloney. Then we could use my idea of—” He caught himself in time, before he said too much, and clapped his mouth shut tight to hold back any more words. Except for meekly adding, “Never mind. That other idea should work swell.”

  A minute later, Grimsby said, “Looks like we’re about to find out. Judging by the way Touhy is all of a sudden motioning from over across the way”—he pointed—“I take it he’s spotted somebody approaching.”

  Horn and Pinkeye both perked up, becoming more alert.

  “There’s what I been hopin’ to hear,” declared Horn.

  “Me too,” agreed Pinkeye. Then, to Grimsby, he added, “But, say, do you think one of us maybe oughta go over there with Touhy? Sorta balance things on either side of the gap?”

  Grimsby nodded. “Good idea. You go ahead and scoot on over. Stay low, and remind Touhy I said for neither of you to do anything until I give the signal.”

  “Got it,” said Pinkeye, snatching up his Henry rifle from where it had been leaning against a boulder at his elbow.

  * * *

  “We’ve covered a good distance. Better even than I thought,” said Heath Pettigrew. He jutted his chin, indicating something up ahead. “Looky there. See those shoulders of high ground up yonder and that opening between ’em? That’s what folks call Balfour Gap. We get through that, we’re well away from home and on the main road to Helena and anywhere else we decide to go.”

  Belinda rested her chin on his shoulder and gazed ahead at where he’d indicated. “I’ve heard folks talk about Balfour Gap before,” she said. “I sure had it pictured different, though. I thought it would be . . . I don’t know. Bigger, more impressive somehow.”

  “Well, it’s impressive to me,” Heath responded. “It marks the first big step for us getting clear of everything we’re leaving behind. On the other side, like I said, is everywhere else. The rest of the world—whatever is waiting for the two of us, as long as we’re together.”

  Chapter 24

  Ben Pettigrew’s broad forehead puckered above his frown. “You sure we’re following the right trail?” he asked. “That boy of mine can be wrongheaded, I know, but even he wouldn’t be foolish enough to strike out across the badlands.”

  “We’re on the right trail,” Eagle assured him. “But don’t worry, I don’t think Heath and Belinda are aimin’ to take on the badlands.”

  Pettigrew squinted as he looked out across the sprawl of stark, ragged land stretching to the east. “This is where the tracks brought us, ain’t it? To the edge of what sure looks like the badlands to me.”

  The two men, along with Whit Barlow, indeed sat their horses at a point on the narrow end of the valley where the richer, grassier land that spread wide to the west and north, below the northern curve of the Spearpoints, pinched down and gave way to the rocky, sun-blasted wasteland Pettigrew was squinting at. Upon exiting the hidden entrance to their mountain encampment, they’d had little trouble picking up the trail of the fleeing young lovers.

  The ground, still soft from the recent rain, showed their marks clearly. Not surprisingly, these marks at first led south, the logical way out of the valley and away from Hard Rock. Also not surprisingly, after only a short ways, the trail began curving to the east, making a loop around the abandoned town. To the west and north lay the Gold Button mine and it would be logical for the couple to reason that going that way would mean greater risk of running into Hack Ferris’s thugs or some other of Dixon’s men traveling back and forth between the mine and the town they now claimed. For that reason, the loop to the east made good sense. But when the trail veered off more sharply and ended up disappearing into the rocky, broken ground of the badlands, that gave the trackers some pause to wonder.

  “You’re right, as far as you’re sayin’,” Eagle allowed. Then, peering past Pettigrew, he added, “But bein’ on the edge of rough country is hardly the same as headin’ out across it.”

  “What’s the point, then?” Barlow wanted to know. “Why cut all the way over here?”

  “How about to cause exactly this confusion?” Eagle countered. “All of a sudden their tracks ain’t so clear and we’re caught wonderin’ for sure which way they went. Slows us down, maybe even throws us off their trail for a while if we make a wrong decision.”

  Pettigrew considered this for a minute and then his expression shifted, seemed to brighten a bit. “I’ll be durned. If my boy thought all that out . . . well, from his end, for what he’s trying to accomplish, that’s kind of smart figuring, wouldn’t you say?”

  Hearing the gruff blacksmith say something that was even a borderline compliment to his son caught Eagle off guard for a minute. A part of him almost wanted to acknowledge it as a good thing. But then he remembered Belinda’s part in this and he was damned if he was going to share in any charitable thoughts toward the boy who was attempting to take her away.

  “Might be smart figurin’,” he grumbled, “if he was tryin’ to pull it on somebody who couldn’t track a plow horse through a tomato patch. But I’d like to think I’m a little sharper than that. And so’s Jensen, by the look of it.”

  His gaze swung in the direction of Luke, who had dismounted from his paint some minutes earlier and was now walking the tall horse about thirty yards within the perimeter of the broken land and sixty or seventy yards farther down, off to the south. He stepped slowly, his head tipped forward, eyes closely scanning the ground.

  Barlow followed Eagle’s gaze. “What’s he up to away over there?”

  “Tryin’ to pick up sign of the kids,” Eagle explained.

  “He can do that? He can spot sign in amongst all those rock slabs and hardpan?”

  “Uh-huh. If it’s there, he’ll be able to find it.”

  Pettigrew cocked a shaggy eyebrow. “And I suppose you could, too?”

  “Expect I could, yeah.” A wry grin briefly touched Eagle’s mouth. “I’m half Injun, remember? Us bucks practically crawl out of the womb knowin’ how to track and hunt and take scalps.”

  Pettigrew scowled. “Hey, that wasn’t called for. I never meant nothing by what I said. It was just a question.”

  Eagle’s mouth started to tighten, but then he relented. “Yeah, I guess it was at that. Look, Pettigrew, it’s important for me and you to pull together on this. It took grit for you to saddle up and go after those youngsters. I give you credit for that, and I don’t aim to say or do anything to make it harder on you.”

  Pettigrew responded with a nod. “Whatever was said or done or thought in the past . . . well, however this current business works out, I’d like to think we maybe can get past that other altogether.”

  “Be good to hope for that. Up to us to ma
ke it work,” said Eagle.

  Further discussion on the matter was interrupted by a shout from Luke. “Over here,” he called.

  Eagle, Pettigrew, and Barlow gigged their horses into motion.

  When they reached him, Luke said, “Looks to me like they’re continuing to move south, but just doing it over this broken ground so as to try and hide their tracks.” He pointed down where he stood. “Some recently disturbed gravel here and back that way a few yards there’s a fresh horseshoe scrape on the side of a rock. Appears they’re doing it smart—setting their horse to a long, steady stride but not attempting to run it as a precaution against having it step wrong in some of this rubble and maybe pulling up lame.”

  Pettigrew shook his head. “That boy of mine . . . I never would have thought he had the savvy for thinking of stuff like that.” He glanced over at Eagle. “Not to shortchange your daughter. Maybe she’s helping with his thinking.”

  “I doubt that,” Eagle replied. “Belinda’s a sharp gal when it comes to many things, but she’s never taken any interest in the outdoors. I’d say these steps they’re takin’ are all owed to Heath.”

  Pettigrew twisted his mouth sourly. “Hell of a thing, ain’t it? The first time I’m feeling kinda proud of my son and it has to come in the middle of a shenanigan like this.”

  The other three men exchanged glances, not knowing quite what to say to that.

  “The thing is,” Luke said, “we know they’re still moving south and—judging by the freshness of this disturbed gravel—I’d say they’re no more than three hours ahead of us.”

  “If that’s the case, if we know the direction they’re going and we figure they’re slowed down some by choosing to travel over this rough ground,” said Barlow, “can’t we just move back out onto the grass and ride parallel to ’em? That way, on better ground, we could push our horses harder and catch up that much quicker.”

  “That might work,” Luke agreed, “as long as they didn’t decide to shift direction at some point. If we don’t stick to actually following their trail, we might miss that.”