Hired Guns

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  The others gathered around them under the big meeting canopy murmured words of agreement and consolation to the old prospector.

  The first rays of morning sunlight were reaching into the refugee mountain camp out of a partially cloudy sky. After all the previous night’s blustery wind and jarring, lightning-laced thunder, no rain had ever fallen. And with the first hint of dawn, the wind had abruptly died and the thick cloud cover had begun to break apart in time for intermittent slices of blue sky and sunlight to start poking through.

  A chill remained in the air, however. A chill deepened by the news Baker had brought with him when he showed up in camp, alone, shortly after first light. In the hours immediately preceding him, others returning from the rescue raid on the town—first the freed Belinda and Heath, accompanied by Betty Barlow, then followed by Whit Barlow and Howard MacGregor, even though the latter was suffering a serious leg wound—had all carried reports suggesting complete success. Anticipation had been high for the next arrivals to be the remainder of the rescuers, including the conquering leaders, with accounts of how the final mop-up had gone.

  Instead, the account they got was a bitterly ironic twist on what had been hoped for and expected. It boiled down to the original captives now being free and relatively unharmed—but at the cost of one man’s life, another getting badly wounded, and two key members of the group left behind in the custody of the ruthless gang members they had just riled to a new height of vengeful rage.

  “It’s all my fault, mine and Heath’s,” wailed a still disheveled-looking Belinda. “If we hadn’t run off the way we did and fell into the hands of those awful men, then none of the rest of—”

  “Stop it. None of that,” her mother cut her off sharply. “What’s done is done. You made your choice and so did the men who went after you. No amount of blaming or whining is going to change the results we now must face. But as long as your father is still alive, then I refuse to give up hope that all is lost.”

  “That’s a brave outlook, Jane. And I go along with it, up to a point,” Barlow was quick to say. Then, his gaze locking on Baker, he added, “But a lot hinges on the part about Sheriff Tom and Jensen still being alive. Are you sure that’s the case, Red?”

  A trapped animal look fell over Baker for a moment. Until, his mouth pulling into a tight, determined line, he replied, “That’s the way as best I know it. Like I said, I saw ’em fallin’ and rollin’ down the stairs. But I never saw ’em get shot. And after Ferris and those other snakes cut down Turley, I never heard no more shootin’ as I made it to the horses and rode off.”

  “Then count me in,” spoke up Ben Pettigrew from where he sat at the long table with his wife and son pressed in close behind him, “as another voice sayin’ that if Eagle and Jensen are alive, then this thing ain’t necessarily over.” He paused, his eyes sweeping the other faces turned to him, before adding, “If nobody heard it before, then by now you all know that, for a long time, I had little use for Tom Eagle. Didn’t have no reason except on account of the Injun blood in him. What was worse, I didn’t even have the guts to bad mouth him to his face. But I sure did it plenty behind his back . . . Only I know now I was wrong. Bad wrong. After we got ambushed out there on the edge of those badlands, him and Jensen could have left me—a useless cripple—and never looked back. But they didn’t. They treated me square, treated me like a man. A whole one. And we all made it out of there together. Now we got to do everything we can to give them every chance to make it out of this new trouble they’re in.”

  “But how?” said MacGregor, propping himself up on his elbows where he lay stretched out on the table just a few feet away. His pant leg was cut open and peeled back and his bloody, bandaged leg was still extended straight out to facilitate Jonathan and Edna Wray’s removal of the bullet that had been in his thigh. Except for the spots of rosy color on his cheeks from the whiskey he’d tossed down to battle the pain, his face was as chalky white as the un-bloodied roll of bandages Mrs. Wray was holding in her hand.

  “How?” he said again, his eyes filmy and his voice thick-sounding. “What can we do to help them? What can we do to help ourselves? We never had a chance to begin with, and now it’s only turned worse.”

  His wife Colleen put her hands on his shoulders and tried to get him to lay back and settle down.

  “That’s the thing we definitely can’t do—just give up,” said Pettigrew. “Like Jane said, as long as Eagle and Jensen are alive we can’t give up hope. And I’ll go one better. The rest of us bein’ alive counts for something, too. We’re not a bunch of helpless babes, are we? Ain’t we got our own measure of fight in us?”

  “Do we?” said Clarence Copley. “In spirit maybe, but what chance does mere anger and indignation stand against the hardened gunmen we would be facing? Why do you think the sheriff kept us safely tucked away here all the times he went out alone on his excursions? Except for only a few of us—the six who went with him last night, and now that number has been cut by four—he knew our limitations. Like all old men, I hate admitting my best time is past and I have such limitations. But it’s a fact, and there’s no getting around it. I suggest we all be realistic and accept the hard realities of our situation.”

  “I, too, am an old man forced to live with knowing I can no longer do certain things,” responded Jonathan Wray with a deep frown. “But one of the things I never will accept, not as long as I have a breath in me, is to roll over and give up!”

  “The limitations Tom saw,” Jane said, “were largely imposed by his heart and his refusal to ask others to take what he believed to be risks they were unprepared for. An example, something he’d never allow me to do in a hundred years, is the fact I can ride and shoot a gun quite accurately.”

  “So can I,” said Betty Barlow.

  “And I as well,” spoke up Dinah Mercer.

  “Hell’s bells,” said Isobel, the older of the spin-stered Byerly sisters, “I don’t know that our old bones could hang together on a horse these days, but my sister and I grew up shootin’ squirrels and rabbits in the Tennessee hills where we grew up, practically from the time we could lift a gun.”

  “And if we hadn’t got good at it,” agreed her sister Estelle, “we would have gone hungry. Put a couple of those fancy repeatin’ rifles in our hands and stick that fat-bottomed Hack Ferris or some of his cutthroats in front of us and watch us plant a pattern of lead in ’em you could cover with a teaspoon.”

  “That’s right,” added Isobel. “We was taught not to chaw up good meat with our bullets—though I expect no such thing as good meat could be found on any of those rascals.”

  An expression of astonishment and horror had slowly settled over the face of Mary Hobart. “I can’t believe I’m listening to this,” she gasped, her voice strangled by emotion. “Are you people all mad? We’re no kind of fighting force! Like Howard MacGregor said, we never were. And now, more than ever . . . Can’t you see? The only chance we have is to throw ourselves on the mercy of Parker Dixon. He’s a wealthy, respected man. Ruthless in his business dealings perhaps, but not some sort of bloodthirsty monster. He already has everything he wants from us—our land, our businesses, our dignity. Destroying us the rest of the way, killing us as you all think he has in mind . . . What would that gain him?”

  “He has to. He can’t afford to leave us alive. I hate to put it so bluntly, Mary,” said Neal Vickers in a tolerant yet firm tone, “but those are the facts. We went through all that before, and for you to cling to any other belief is simply unreasonable.”

  From where he stood with his father and mother, Heath Pettigrew abruptly spoke. “Mr. Vickers is right. All of you who are saying we need to make a stand and fight—with or without Sheriff Tom and Mr. Jensen—are right. They’re not going to give us any other choice.”

  All eyes swung to the young man. Ben Pettigrew twisted in his seat and looked up at his son. “What are you saying, boy?”

  “You need to remember that we were right there in the midst of t
hem for several hours,” Heath replied. “When night came they tied us up and shut us away in a room at that saloon. But before that, we were out among ’em and they talked pretty freely.”

  “What did they say?” somebody prodded.

  “For starters,” Heath said, his voice growing stronger and surer, “they were never gonna make a fair trade for Belinda and me. It was all a trick to capture the sheriff and Mr. Jensen, just like they’ve gone and done anyhow. Either way, their intentions were the same. They’ve got some kind of special plans for those two.” His brows pinched tighter together. “Exactly what, was never made clear. But you can bet it ain’t anything pleasant.”

  The grim expressions on the faces of Jane and Belinda grew even more so.

  “After that,” Heath went on, “something that was made plenty clear was that they intend to come after this camp and wipe it out . . . along with everybody in it.”

  “They know about us being here?” his father asked.

  “They’ve suspected all along that Sheriff Tom had some others backing him. They don’t know how many or where we’re holed up. When they caught the sheriff and the rest of you in that ambush and saw there were other men riding with him, that clinched it as far as knowing for sure he wasn’t strictly on his own. But they still had no way of knowing how many.”

  “Tell them the rest, Heath,” Belinda urged. “Tell them how they tried to force information out of you.”

  The words caused Heath to wince involuntarily. Setting his teeth, he said, “They knocked me around pretty good at one point, aiming to get me to reveal the location of our camp and how many of us there are. When I wouldn’t tell them anything, they threatened to start in on Belinda as a different way. So I pretended like I gave in and started to talk. But I lied like crazy. Oh, how I lied.” The young man chuckled devilishly. “I told ’em there was right around two hundred of us, and that over half was veterans of the war. I claimed Sheriff Tom had been stealing guns and ammunition from all over the valley and that’s all we were waiting for, to make sure we had plenty of firepower. In the meantime, I said, we had a tough old drill sergeant who was working every day to get everybody in top shape for the charge.”

  “And they believed you?” Pettigrew said.

  Heath shook his head. “No, I laid it on too thick. So they beat me some more for that. And then they moved on to wanting to know how to find our camp. I told them the truth about the entrance maze but made like I couldn’t accurately describe how to find it. Then I acted like I was begging not to be beat no more, so I told them I could take them and show them the spot. Dark was coming on so I knew we wouldn’t be going out right away. I was buying time. But they seemed to believe me, at least enough for the beatings to stop. Shortly after that, they tied us up and stuck us in that upstairs room for the night.”

  “That was some mighty brave and clever thinkin’, lad,” Pettigrew said, beaming up at his son. “I’m proud of you.”

  “But that’s not all. Tell them the rest,” Belinda urged once again.

  Heath took a quick breath and then expelled it slowly, cheeks puffing out, before saying, “The rest of it is that the big boss, Parker Dixon himself, is due here soon. Sometime this afternoon. He’s the one who has some kind of personal beef to settle with Luke Jensen. On top of that, he’s bringing more men with him. This is all according to what his son Roland told Ferris when he came by the Elkhorn. We got the lowdown from the talkative little varmint who brought us some supper after they dumped us up in that room. He was all too happy to crow about it, just to make sure we’d enjoy our lousy meal all the less. ‘Steel tough gunnies’ was his favorite term for the new men Dixon was bringing—men whose job, after the business with Jensen is taken care of, will be, like I said before, to concentrate on finding and destroying this camp and all of us in it.”

  The final part of Heath’s statement hung in the air like a physical weight replacing the canopy over their heads. Under the pressure of this, nobody said anything for what seemed like a long time.

  Until Ben Pettigrew finally spoke, summing it up in a gruff, somber tone. “Well, if that ain’t plain enough for everybody, I don’t know what more it’s gonna take. Much as I wish it was otherwise, I don’t see how we can do anything to directly help Sheriff Eagle and Jensen. Except to hope, maybe pray, they can come up with something on their own. But what we can do—for our own sake and for the sake of everything Sheriff Eagle has been fighting for—is take care of ourselves here. Get ready to fight and defend this place with everything we got if and when the devils come.”

  “Oh, they’re comin’, Pa,” Heath said with conviction. And then, looking deeply and directly into his father’s eyes for the first time in too long, he added, “And when they do, you need to remember something. What me and Belinda did was foolish and maybe even added to bringing this whole thing to a head . . . but I ain’t a kid no more. And when it comes to defending this camp and people in it who I love, including the gal I still intend to marry some day, a rifle is gonna fit my hands just as good as yours or anybody else’s.”

  Chapter 40

  “Well, well, well, what have we here? The spectacularly stubborn and irksome Tom Eagle and the elusive and mysterious Luke Jensen. Right before my very eyes.” Roland Dixon stood with feet planted wide apart, hands clasped behind his back, and regarded the men he was addressing with smug superiority. “I can’t deny harboring a good deal of ill will toward you two gentlemen, in keeping with an equal amount you no doubt feel toward me. But I must admit to a genuine appreciation for you so obligingly taking actions that resulted in your early deliverance to me here rather than necessitating another visit to that repulsive town of Hard Rock to view your apprehension there later at noon.”

  “How about you let us oblige you even more,” Eagle replied through clenched teeth, “by takin’ that appreciation and chokin’ on it!”

  The stocky hombre standing directly behind Eagle wasted no time viciously slamming the butt of a Henry repeating rifle across the former sheriff’s kidneys. A loud grunt of pain exploded out of Eagle as his head pulled back and his knees buckled. But he stayed on his feet.

  Beside the stricken man, Luke lunged reflexively but his restraints prevented him from doing anything more than making a choppy half-step forward. Like Eagle, his wrists were tied behind his back, legs shackled at the ankles, and a leather thong was looped around each of their necks. The man on the other end of Luke’s thong was none other than a grinning, nastily chuckling Hacksaw Ferris.

  “Whoa up there, hero,” Ferris barked. “Where do you think you’re goin’?”

  “Easy,” Roland was quick to admonish. “You know the orders regarding that one. You’ve complained about them enough. And by the look of him—and the other one as well—you’ve already pushed the limit of their treatment quite sufficiently.”

  Both Luke and Eagle were stripped to the waist and a generous pattern of welts and bruises marked their torsos along with more of the same on their faces.

  “That ain’t a fraction of what the dirty scum deserve!” snarled Ferris. “Look at the rest of what’s standin’ before you!” He swung his free arm, indicating the five men gathered around him and the captives. They were indeed a sorry-looking lot, having just ridden hard from town out to the Gold Button mining operation. The morning sun, less than two hours risen and glaring through the last of the dissipating clouds left over from last night’s empty bluster, shone down on a battered, bleary-eyed, bedraggled bunch with sagging shoulders yet grim, flinty-eyed faces.

  “This is all the men I got left, includin’ the extra miners you lent me,” Ferris went on. “The condition they’re in and the loss of all the others is almost entirely due to these two lead-slingin’ varmints . . . and you say they’ve been treated sufficiently?”

  Roland’s smug supremacy withered under the demanding question and the hard stares of the men backing Ferris. “Here now.” He cleared his throat. “I certainly understand the thirst for revenge that yo
u and the other men have for the damage these two have inflicted on your comrades. After all, the men who’ve been lost were comrades of mine, too, in a manner of speaking.”

  A towering man with streaks of dried blood running down his face and holding a bloodstained bar rag to his forehead stepped forward and said in a booming voice, “I didn’t see you at the Elkhorn when these dogs were smothering it with fire and lead. Look at what that gunhawk Jensen did to my head. A half inch lower my skull would have been popped open like a Mexican piñata!”

  “Naturally I sympathize for your injury,” Roland was quick to assure him. “We have a fine doctor here at the mine who will care for you.”

  “That’s Big Olaf,” Ferris said with obvious pride. “If he hadn’t survived that bullet crease to his head when Jensen thought he’d killed him, probably none of us would be here now to tell about it. It was Olaf who landed on Eagle and Jensen like an avalanche, just when they’d got behind me and Grimsby and the handful of us left in the barroom, aimin’ to bushwhack us and wipe us out the rest of the way.”

  “I share your gratitude for Olaf. Certainly he deserves to be rewarded,” Roland said. “That’s what I meant when I said I consider all of you my comrades as well. As employees of Dixon Enterprises, you see. That also means I feel your loss and share in wanting just punishment.”

  “Let us take care of it then!” somebody shouted.

  “All we need is a tall tree and a couple of strong ropes!” someone else added.

  It was Ferris who quickly quelled this talk, chopping the air with his hand and raising his voice above the others. “Knock it off! We already covered that back in town. I explained to you how it was, how Mr. Roland here takes orders same as everybody else down the line. It’s his father who’s makin’ the demands and callin’ the shots on this Jensen hombre. Meanin’ Mr. Roland has to go along just like the rest of us.” He turned plaintively to Roland. “I need you to tell ’em that’s so, Boss. Tell ’em how your old man is due here soon and when he shows up he’s bound to have some plans for Jensen that will square this whole thing and help get even for Dog and all the others. After everything we’ve been through, it’s important they hear that from you.”