Hired Guns

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  No sooner had this thought crossed the black-clad bounty hunter’s mind than both men edged into sight, almost simultaneously. Now he was faced with the dilemma he had only pondered before: which man to shoot first and which one to give a chance at firing on him in response? Both were brandishing Winchester repeating rifles and each looked equally grim and willing to pull the trigger.

  Luke’s solution was to rest his right-hand Remington on the rock surface before him and reach back for the Bowie knife sheathed on his hip behind the now-empty holster on that side.

  Generally speaking, Bowie knives were not crafted or balanced for throwing. They were heavy, durable, wickedly bladed weapons made for in-close slashing and stabbing and gut-splitting. But he had taken time during long periods on the trail to refine and re-balance it a bit and put in a good deal of practice toward additionally making it a reliable throwing weapon.

  The man down in the gully was to Luke’s left; the man making his way around the rock cone was slightly to his right. Although he could shoot just as well with either hand, Luke had discovered that his knife-throwing accuracy was considerably better with his right hand. He got the proper grip on the Bowie, snugged the Remington in his left fist . . . flicked his eyes one final time to each of the approaching men, mentally fixing their positions . . . then he shoved up and went to work.

  The Bowie streaked down with a short whistling sound that ended in a meaty thunk! as the blade sank to the hilt in the chest of the man in the gully. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground. Twisting smoothly at the waist, Luke extended his left-hand Remington and triggered two rapid-fire rounds, both of which found their target, the man by the rock cone, hitting him six inches below his gaping mouth and punching two red-rimmed holes high in his chest that slammed him hard against the rock face and left him sliding slowly down.

  The dull echo of Luke’s two shots rolled across the baked, barren landscape and that should have been it, at least for the moment.

  But it wasn’t.

  As he was reaching for the Remington he’d briefly laid aside, Luke heard two near-simultaneous sounds. First, by a fraction of a second, came another unmistakable thrrrp! of a bullet slicing the air a mere inch above his head—and then the report of the rifle that had fired it. If Luke hadn’t leaned forward to pick up his gun, that bullet would have laid open his brains!

  In a continuation of the leaning motion that had saved his life, Luke finished snatching up his second Remington and then threw himself all the way belly-down flat again. Instantly, he went into a series of frantic rolls across the slanted slab of rock that was his perch. Two more shots came in rapid succession, one of the bullets skimming the spot where he had flopped just a moment earlier, kicking up a geyser of dust and stone chips in his wake.

  That strike enabled Luke to recognize that the shooter was off to the south, not far from the rock cone where now lay the body of the second man Luke had just killed. Furthermore, the downward angle of the shot, the way it had gouged in, indicated that the rifleman was shooting from his own elevated position, equally as high or higher than Luke’s—making it time for the bounty hunter to abandon his platform.

  Continuing to roll, Luke reached the north edge of the high rock slab. Checking his momentum only briefly, he twisted and swung his legs over the edge. Braced on his elbows, still gripping his twin .44s, he dangled that way for half a second. Another slug sizzled in, gouging a long, grit-spitting furrow half an inch from Luke’s right elbow. He lunged backward with his head and shoulders, at the same time straightening his arms. As he faded back and away from the edge of the slanted slab, he blazed a pair of rounds from each Remington.

  The drop to the base of the mushroom-shaped formation was about seven feet from where his feet had dangled. Even though he bent his knees on impact, the landing was still jarring due to his inability to tuck and roll forward into the rise of the outcrop directly in front of him. Instead Luke had to fall back somewhat off balance. He took the second impact mostly on his rump, lucky not to crack his head on any of the other jagged rocks crowded close on all sides. Regardless, the final result left him sprawled awkwardly with part of his wind knocked out of him.

  Although he now had the full width and height of the mushroom rock between him and the new shooter, Luke knew he couldn’t stay in one spot for very long. The shooter, emboldened by having forced Luke off his high perch, would likely try to press his advantage by advancing quickly in hopes of perhaps having wounded or at least stunned his target. Luke welcomed the thought of the man being in a hurry to work his way closer. All he had to do was shift to the right position and be ready for him.

  With that thought running through his mind, Luke pushed himself to his feet. He paused like that, braced against the side of the mushroom rock, and took time to suck some air back into his lungs, getting his breathing leveled off while he replaced the spent cartridges in his Remingtons.

  But scarcely had he finished re-filling the cylinders before, half a foot off from his right shoulder, a fist-sized chunk of rock exploded outward in a spray of stone shrapnel and dust. With the crack of the rifle shot that had sent the bullet ringing in his ears, Luke once more threw himself to the ground and squirmed in tight behind a line of ragged, moderate-sized boulders.

  Surprisingly, no more shots followed immediately on the heels of the first. Instead, after a tense pause, a voice called out. A voice that had become too blasted familiar to Luke—that of Hacksaw Ferris.

  “Jensen, for an hombre who’s supposed to be hell on wheels, you sure spend a lot of time crawlin’ on your belly like a worm!”

  Luke hesitated a moment before replying. Then, deciding he had nothing to lose since his position was already revealed, he called back, “You ought to know about belly-crawling, you ambushing snake!”

  “Look who’s callin’ names. I seem to recollect that there’s a name for somebody who tries slidin’ out the back door and leavin’ all his pards in a tight spot the way you seem to be doin’. A name and a color—yellow.”

  Good, Luke thought. Let him think I’m making a run for it on my own and none of the others are involved. “You think I care about your opinion of me?” he grated insolently.

  Ferris snickered. “Something you should care about is that the shot I just took could have blown out a chunk of your skull just as easy as it did a piece of the rock you was standin’ beside.”

  “What I recognize,” Luke countered, “is that there’s a big difference between throwing lead and throwing it accurately. You and your boys have been trying for me for two days now and you haven’t hit anything yet. In the meantime, how many of yours have I cut down?”

  Now a tremor of rage crept into Ferris’s voice. “You know we got orders to take you alive. Wasn’t for that, you’d’ve been ventilated like a piece of Swiss cheese long before this.”

  Sensing he was getting under the hired thug’s skin, Luke kept digging. “That sounds to me like just a lame excuse for not being able to get the job done. By the way, if you want a current count on how things tally up for one side versus the other, chalk up two more for me. On second thought, make that tally mark with permanent ink. Because that’s how I took ’em out—permanently.”

  Ferris said hatefully, “My orders may be to take you alive, but nobody said how much alive. I already owe you plenty for the burns and bruises on the back of my neck and shoulders. I ain’t forgot those. And the more you keep runnin’ your mouth, the bigger the debt you’re pilin’ up. I’m thinkin’ you’re earnin’ yourself a nice round of Injun-style carvin’ before you get handed over to Parker Dixon!”

  Still working to gouge the barb deeper, Luke said, “That would mean getting close enough to put your hands on me. I don’t think you got the guts for that. If I’m wrong, come right ahead and prove it.”

  Ferris, perhaps realizing he was being intentionally egged on, went quiet.

  Luke took the opportunity to mentally step back and do some quick re-appraising of his own. For start
ers, he knew that his exchange with Ferris—while it might have had some value as far as goading the man into being careless—also had eaten up time that was very likely being used by the shooter Luke suspected of working his way in closer from the south.

  Abruptly, Ferris called out again, confirming Luke’s thought. “DeMarist? Dog! You still out there somewhere?”

  Chapter 29

  After a pause, a voice from behind Luke, still back on the other side of the mushroom rock, responded somewhat cautiously to Ferris’s query. “You bet I am. And I’m about to be landin’ with both feet on that slippery son of Satan you’re bandyin’ words with!”

  “Is it true what he said?” Ferris wanted to know. “Did he cut down a couple of the men over there with you?”

  “Appears that way. I don’t hear or see no sign of ’em movin’ around no more. But I nearly did for that sidewinder in return,” DeMarist growled. “Just a lucky last-second duck of his head is the only thing that saved him from gettin’ his punkin blowed clean off!”

  Ferris sputtered. “Then it sounds like it was a good thing he did duck! How many times do I have to tell you—”

  DeMarist cut him off. “I know, I know. Keep the devil alive. I’ve heard that enough I want to puke! I get Jensen in my sights again, I’m gonna plant a bullet anywhere I can. If he don’t survive where it hits, well, then I guess I’ll have to take it up with Dixon afterwards.”

  “Them’s some mighty dangerous words, Dog,” Ferris warned, a hard edge to his voice.

  “I can’t help it, Hack. That’s the way I see it,” DeMarist came back, sounding firm. “I signed on for dangerous work, yeah—but not for suicide.”

  “Hey,” Luke shouted into the middle of this. “If you fellas want to hash things out between you, go right ahead and take all the time you need. But me, I got places to go and things to do. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll just be on my way and you two can jabber all you want.”

  “You ain’t gonna be on your way to nowhere,” snarled Ferris. “Not less’n it’s at the end of my gun. If you was half as smart as you pretend to be, you’d see that you’re all out of chances.”

  “If I had a nickel for every time some cheap hired gun like you has told me I was out of chances,” Luke said with a taunting laugh, “I’d have enough money to buy and sell your Parker Dixon about ten times over.”

  “But you don’t, do you?” Ferris sneered back. “I’ll admit you’re pretty good. If it was just me and Dog puttin’ the squeeze on you, maybe you would have a chance. But you’re forgettin’ how many of us ‘cheap hired guns’ there are. Yeah, you got lucky and cut down a couple of Dog’s men. But he’s got plenty more spread out over there with him, and I got even more backin’ me over here. Tell him, Dog. Ain’t that right?”

  Apparently DeMarist was caught off guard by the sudden question. But he recovered quickly and managed to stammer, “Uh, yeah. That’s right, Hack. My boys are primed to swarm this varmint as soon as you give the word. They’re itchin’ to get some payback for their pards he gunned down!”

  Luke had to chuckle at these pitifully obvious histrionics meant to make him think he had a force of men closing in on him from either side. Instead it convinced him of just the opposite. He believed now that DeMarist had no more men with him after losing the two who’d gotten killed. On top of that, Luke was willing to bet that Ferris probably had only one or two with him.

  Armed with this conviction, placing a bet was exactly what Luke was fixing to do—betting his hide that, under the guns of only DeMarist and Ferris, he could get away with bolting to some new cover and eventually work his way to a new position.

  “What do you say, Jensen?” Ferris called out. “You can hear how it is—why not make it easy on yourself? You do that, I’ll even give a break to Eagle and those others who are crawlin’ around somewhere out there in those rocks with you. I’ll settle for ridin’ away with you and give the rest of’em a pass for today. Not to say I won’t be comin’ after ’em again some other time, especially if Eagle keeps stirrin’ up trouble. But, for today, I’ll settle for just you.”

  “Whew! That’s such a generous offer it plumb takes my breath away,” Luke said sarcastically. “Only trouble is, I wouldn’t trust the word of a lying, bushwhacking polecat like you if you told me the sky was blue!”

  His voice quavering with rage, Ferris responded, “All right, here’s my word on something I guarantee you can trust—I’m gonna make you pay for that smart mouth of yours and before I turn you over to Parker Dixon you’re gonna be the sorriest sack of misery anybody could ever imagine!”

  “And I’m gonna lend a hand in makin’ sure of that!” DeMarist crowed gleefully.

  Having the two thugs caught up in trying to outdo each other with menacing threats, Luke decided, gave him as good a chance as he was likely to get. All during the exchanges over the past several minutes, his eyes had been ceaselessly scanning his surroundings, both immediate and at various distances. Scanning and calculating, weighing the odds for success in reaching a position that would make him better off.

  Somewhat ironically, his gaze kept returning to the deep, ragged gully that twisted erratically through this whole area—the same slash in the earth where, in a spot off to the west, he and the others had first reconnoitered, and where the flanker with Luke’s Bowie knife in him now lay dead to the east. Although it wouldn’t do as a permanent position to try and hold, especially if a rifleman gained an elevated spot on either side, the best thing the gully’s narrow depth offered was a means for Luke, in a crouched-over run and thus virtually out of sight, to follow its twisting route until he could get clear from being pinched directly between Ferris and DeMarist.

  No matter what, Luke couldn’t afford to remain where he was; his cover was too limited. If he didn’t move, it was just a matter of time before either Ferris or DeMarist—or both—made it to where they could draw an unobstructed bead on him.

  With his mind made up and his stalkers busy spouting words aimed at trying to scare him into surrender rather than triggering lead to force the issue, Luke shoved to his feet and sprang forward. He leaped over the line of low boulders and hit the ground on the other side, heels digging hard, propelling him on. Rifles immediately cracked from off to the north and then the south, bullets sizzling in low, aiming to cut his legs out from under him. Geysers of dirt and dust erupted as the slugs hammered the ground.

  Luke zigged a half yard to his left and then zagged back right, always hurtling forward toward the gully. When he was three feet away, he threw himself into another dive, landing on his chest and forearms and whipping his legs around so that his feet went over the edge first. The rest of him followed and he toppled into the deep cut. Luckily the bottom was strewn with mostly gravel and sand, no chunks of jagged rock, so his landing was not particularly graceful but also not harmful.

  Gathering his legs under him again, Luke settled into a low crouch, a Remington still gripped in each fist. Just above his head, more bullets gnawed harmlessly at the rim of the gully on both sides. The bounty hunter smiled with grim satisfaction. He was puffing for breath, dripping sweat, and his clothes were caked with enough dust and grime to nearly obscure their underlying black color—but he was still in one piece and he’d just succeeded in pulling a fast one on his hunters.

  The rifle fire abruptly ceased and only moments after it did, Ferris was venting his frustration again. “See? Didn’t I tell you? He’s a blasted worm and now he’s found a new worm hole to burrow into!”

  “Relax,” DeMarist called back. “He may have bought himself a little more time, but not that much. That gully can’t go on forever. If he tries followin’ it west, he’ll run right back into fire from our boys on the hill. He crawls east, we’ll be waitin’ for him to pop his head up and it’ll be all over.”

  “If you don’t have anybody out there who can shoot any better,” Luke called out, going right back to his taunting ways, “I could spend the rest of the day popping up and down like
a jack-in-the-box and the only worry I’d have would be from my legs getting tired.”

  Now it was DeMarist’s frustration that erupted. “You see there, Hack? You hear him? He knows we ain’t supposed to shoot to kill and he’s mockin’ us over it! That’s the final straw, I tell you. No more! I get him in my sights again, I’ll be aimin’ to put him down permanent-like and to hell with Parker Dixon. And you, too, if you’re too stubborn to see the foolishness that’s gonna end up gettin’ the lot of us killed.”

  When Ferris replied, it was like the words were scraped over some of the surrounding jagged rocks. “I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that, Dog. But I’m warnin’ you for the last time to quit talkin’ like that.”

  With the tension between the two men hanging heavy over the scene, things went very quiet. But in that stretch of tense silence, Luke was planning, taking advantage of the temporary lack of focus on him.

  Fifteen yards up the gully to the west—the direction DeMarist was convinced Luke would never go—the gnarled gray spine of an ancient saltbush that must have sprung up at some past time when the gully held moisture still clung stubbornly to one side. It gave Luke an idea. It was an old trick, but “old tricks” get to be that way by enduring and still working from time to time. He was willing to gamble that this might be one of those times.

  Staying low, Luke holstered his guns and began moving along the bottom of the twisty gully. Upon reaching the dead old saltbrush remains, Luke quickly unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off. The sun was hot on his bare back but it felt good to peel away the sodden garment. Wrapping the shirt around his hands so his palms were protected from the rough stalk of the bush, he slowly tugged out and down until he snapped away a section of the growth about three feet long with some smaller branches flaring out up and down its length.

  His two hunters were still jawing at each other, with DeMarist saying, “It’s a helluva thing for you to threaten me that way, Hack, after all we been through together.”