Gut-Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  Steve lay back on his elbows then reached out and toed the dead man’s bloody chest.

  Nothing. Only . . . deadness.

  The young man sighed and lay on his back, his clasped hands under his head. It was, he considered, amazing what a couple of ounces of well-aimed lead could do to a man.

  And it was a thing to remember.

  Fringed by tree branches, the sky was blue but Steve much preferred a thunder sky, especially during the mad days of March when the wind drove off the Great Plains with the sound of locomotives and gray and black thunderheads towered upward like titanic boulders.

  Ah, such a noble sky, one where the demon gods disported themselves. Steve smiled, well satisfied with himself. Indeed he had the soul of a true artist, but now he was much more. He was a warrior poet! A battle bard! A troubadour!

  Jumping to his feet, he pumped a fist at the sky.

  He’d finally proven himself a man, a status his father had long denied him. The evidence lay soundless and still at Steve’s feet. The man had been armed and he’d outdrawn and killed him.

  He wanted to shout to the world that Steve McCord was a man to be reckoned with, a draw fighter like Hardin, Longley and even the great Hickok himself.

  Ah, but it was a fine feeling to be young and tough with fast hands and hellfire in the belly. Another couple of kills and no man would dare try to cut him down to size.

  Hell, his father would welcome home his famous son with open arms.

  And that would be his big mistake . . . because the next time they met Steve McCord would have a gun in his hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  It was the custom of mountain men like old Barnabas to hold a riotous wake for their dead that could last for days or even weeks.

  But Sam Flintlock could give Clifton Wraith no such send-off.

  He pinned the Pinkerton’s badge on his chest and buried him that evening. The only mourners were himself, Marshal Tom Lithgow, the preacher and a couple of blanket Indian gravediggers. Frank Constable should have been there but wasn’t.

  Under a purple sky that flickered with heat lightning, the preacher said the words and Flintlock threw a shovelful of dirt onto the pine coffin that lay at the bottom of the dank, root-ragged hole.

  When the prayers were done, the clergyman left. Lithgow put a hand on Flintlock’s shoulder, gave him a wan, sympathetic smile, then he too headed back to town.

  The Indians, both middle-aged Tonkawa, stared at Flintlock in silence. Waiting. Flintlock nodded and they chanted their death song.

  Oh Sun, you go on forever but we must die.

  Oh Earth, you go on forever but we must die.

  The dark of endless night draws closer.

  When the song was done Flintlock gave the men each two dollars and walked away. He didn’t look back.

  Sam Flintlock spent the night at the hotel and at first light saddled up and headed back to the cabin at Bobcat Ridge. He’d not spoken to Frank Constable because it seemed the little man had vanished. Flintlock thought that strange but didn’t dwell on it. The lawyer was a strange one and could be anywhere, up to anything.

  There was no sign of Jamie McPhee when Flintlock rode in, and he fancied that the young man was still abed. Then, as he rode past the large building on his way to the barn, disaster struck.

  A thunderous, clanking roar preceded the outward flattening of the structure’s doors by a mere second. Spooked, Flintlock’s buckskin reared, threw him off and then ran, its stirrups bouncing.

  Flintlock, stunned for a moment, looked up from the ground and saw two massive, steel-rimmed yellow wheels churning straight at him. His yelp of sheer terror was lost in the greater bellow of the infernal machine.

  Rolling frantically to his right, eyes big as porcelain saucers, Flintlock avoided the crushing wheels by scant inches. He glanced up, sunlight flashing in his eyes, and saw the fire-breathing dragons trundle past, then the boiler and then the cabin.

  McPhee was in the driver’s seat, wearing goggles that made him look like a crazed owl.

  “Damn you, McPhee!” Flintlock yelled. “You nearly killed me.”

  “I got it started, Sam!”

  The machine clanked past, belching steam and wood smoke.

  “Then stop it!” Flintlock hollered.

  “I don’t know how!” McPhee yelled. “I can’t find the brave lever.” Then, “Help! I can’t steer it either!”

  The truth of that statement was confirmed when the infernal machine turned on a dime and headed in Flintlock’s direction again. Aghast, he scrambled to his feet and dived into the prickly cover of a thorn bush.

  The machine roared past as McPhee frantically yanked at levers, his mouth an O of alarm.

  Again the machine made a turn and Flintlock crawled out of the thorns, his face and hands crisscrossed with scratches. “Damn you, McPhee!” he yelled, jamming his hat back on his head.

  At the best of times Sam Flintlock’s temper was a finger looking for a trigger and now he was mad enough to chomp a chunk out of an ax head.

  He drew his Colt and sprinted after the runaway machine.

  But then horror piled on horror, disaster on disaster.

  “Not the barn!” he yelled.

  He saw McPhee desperately trying to steer. A hellish behemoth designed to destroy life and property, the infernal machine remorselessly stayed on a course for the barn.

  Flintlock raised his revolver and fired. Fired again. Aiming for the boiler. But the infernal machine was a weapon of war and the thick steel boilerplate shrugged off both bullets.

  Flintlock ran after the runaway again. When he was almost parallel with the driver’s cab he hollered, “Turn it, McPhee.”

  “I can’t!”

  The young man’s face was a white mask of fright as he batted at the controls.

  Flintlock glanced ahead of him. Oh my God! Fifty yards to the barn across flat, open ground. The infernal machine clanged, clanked and roared forward.

  “I can’t stop her!” McPhee shrieked. “Where’s the brake?”

  Forty yards . . .

  “I’m going to jump!” McPhee yelled.

  “Damn you, McPhee, stay where you’re at,” Flintlock hollered. “Stop that thing or turn it.”

  Thirty yards . . .

  “She’s out of control!” McPhee cried. “She’s a runaway!”

  “Stay with it! Turn!” Flintlock shouted.

  Twenty yards . . .

  McPhee’s horse, terrified by the approaching clamor, bolted from the barn like a cork out of a bottle, hay in its mouth.

  Ten yards . . .

  McPhee rose from the seat, opened the cabin door and jumped.

  “Damn you, McPhee!” Flintlock roared. “I told you to stay with it.”

  The infernal machine broadsided the barn, crashing, splintering, cracking through thin, brittle timber. Shattered, the barn wall caved in and immediately afterward the entire roof collapsed with a grinding craaash!

  Flintlock stared openmouthed as a few errant spars clattered onto the debris then one more, shaped like an L, dinked on top of the others. A cloud of yellow dust rose from wreckage and hid the calamity from view.

  The infernal machine tried to lurch forward, but finally defeated it groaned and hissed for a few moments like a dying dragon then lapsed into a ticking silence.

  Flintlock, appalled, looked around him at the devastation that Jamie McPhee had wrought.

  The doors to the large building lay flat and broken on the ground and would never again shield the secrets of the infernal machine. The barn, once lofty and proud, was now a pile of kindling and the lordly tin rooster from its roof that once pointed the way of the wind had been reduced by the machine’s wheels to a corkscrew of mangled metal.

  And then, when Flintlock figured the worst was over, the heap of smashed lumber that had been the barn began to burn. As smoke and flames rose higher, McPhee stepped beside him.

  “Oh dear, what will Mr. Constable say?” he whispered. />
  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Night riders. A tip-top idea.

  But where to recruit them?

  Lucian Tweddle pondered that question as he lay beside Nancy Pocket and lazed in the relaxed aftermath of sex. The banker lay on his back like a white, hairless slug and stared at the slanted, scrap lumber and tar-paper roof of Nancy’s shack.

  Surely there were enough ruffians in Open Sky to mount a raiding party of say, half a dozen men? Using Beau Hunt for this job was out of the question. Named draw fighters didn’t make good night riders.

  But he already had Pike Reid, Lithgow’s vicious deputy, in his employ and the man had dealt efficiently enough with the meddling Pinkerton.

  Call it five then.

  Tweddle elbowed the woman who lay beside him naked and sleek as a seal.

  “Hey, how many badmen do you know in this town?”

  Tendrils of damp hair curled over Nancy Pocket’s sweaty forehead. Lucian Tweddle’s massive weight made for a stifling load.

  “None,” she said.

  Tweddle smiled and hit the side of the woman’s head with the heel of his hand. It was intended to be a playful blow, but it hurt and she yelped.

  “Think. How many?”

  “One or two,” Nancy said.

  In truth she knew none. But she didn’t want to be hit again.

  “I need more than that.”

  “Why?”

  Another heel of the hand. Harder this time. “None of your damned business.”

  Tweddle sighed. “Why the hell am I asking you? You’re only good for one thing.”

  The whore smiled and tried to be provocative. “That’s why you love your Nancykins, huh?”

  “I don’t love you, you’re a whore. I use you, that’s all.”

  Tweddle stared at the roof again. He was a man destined for great things, but he was surrounded by idiots like Nancy Pocket and that slowed his progress. Damn, but it was unfair how underlings treated men of promise.

  But then the woman surprised him.

  “There’s always Hank Stannic, if you can find him,” she said.

  “Stannic, yeah. I quite forgot about him. He worked for me that time I had trouble with the McGuiness clan. Took care of all of them squatters, grandparents, parents, brats . . . and an aunt and uncle as I recall.”

  Nancy stayed silent, but she remembered well the McGuiness Massacre as it came to be called. Fourteen men, women and children were killed that day.

  Tweddle had made sure the blame fell on a young farm laborer named Abe Dell who’d had been sparking one of the McGuiness daughters.

  Dell had been tried, found guilty and hanged in less than a week.

  Nancy remembered Tweddle and Hank Stannic laughing over that as they drank at the Gentleman’s Retreat brothel on the day of the hanging.

  “Abe was a rube who never had a lick of sense and the son of a bitch owed me money,” the banker had said. “He’s no great loss.”

  Now it seemed Stannic’s services would be called on again. But for what reason, Nancy Pocket could not guess.

  “Where can I find him?” Tweddle said.

  “The Gentleman’s Retreat is a good place to start, Lucian,” Nancy said. “Josette will know where he is.”

  “What was Stannic’s latest?”

  “Bank job down El Paso way. I heard he killed the manager and a teller.”

  “I told Stannic before that I don’t approve of bank robberies.”

  “It was a small bank, Lucian.”

  “So is mine.”

  Tweddle thought for a moment, then said, “Get the hell up. Go find Pike Reid and bring him here.”

  Thin as a cadaver, his alligator eyes darting to Nancy Pocket, Deputy Marshal Pike Reid stood hat in hand close to the bed where Lucian Tweddle lay, his belly forming a massive mound under the sheet.

  Nancy, with an experienced whore’s disdain for modesty, had stripped to the waist and used a sponge to bathe her breasts and shoulders.

  “You can have her later, Pike,” Tweddle said, following Reid’s eyes. “First we need to talk business.”

  The stench of the fat man’s sweat was rancid in the stifling heat of the tiny cabin. Sunlight slanted through the cabin’s only window and puddled around Reid’s feet.

  “Boss, I couldn’t make him tell me what he knew,” the man said.

  “Are you talking about the Pinkerton?” Tweddle said.

  “Yeah. He was tough.”

  “No matter, you got rid of him and made him pay for the inconvenience he caused me. I don’t want to talk about the damned Pinkerton.”

  Reid waited and turned his hat in his hand.

  The man’s eyebrows met in a thick V over the bridge of his nose and gave him a sly, ferrety look. He looked like a man born for the noose.

  “Pike, you’ll head out to the Gentleman’s Retreat—”

  The man grinned. “Now you’re talking, boss.”

  The interruption irritated Tweddle. “This is business, not pleasure.”

  “Sorry, boss.”

  “You’ll talk to Josette and ask about the whereabouts of Hank Stannic and then you’ll find him.”

  Reid looked uneasy. “Hank ain’t right in the head,” he said.

  “I know. That’s why I need him.”

  “And all his boys are crazy. Herm Holloway does his killing with an ax and Slick Trent is a cutter who can’t be left alone around women.”

  “The character flaws of Stannic’s men don’t interest me in the least. Just bring him here to Open Sky.”

  “Can I talk money to him right away, like?”

  “I’ll discuss that when I see him.”

  “Suppose he don’t want to come?”

  “We’ve done business in the past. He’ll come.”

  “What about Lithgow?”

  “Lithgow is nothing, but he won’t know, will he? You’ll bring Hank Stannic to my home under cover of darkness.”

  “What’s the job, boss?”

  “You’ll be present when I tell Stannic what I need done.”

  Tweddle adjusted the pillow behind him and his enormous bulk seethed sweat. Nancy bathed her shapely legs with the sponge.

  “Well?” Tweddle said. “Why are you still here?”

  “When should I ride out, boss?”

  “Now, of course.”

  “But my duties . . .”

  “Don’t matter a damn. You never performed your duties anyway.”

  “I’ll be going then,” Reid said. He seemed confused.

  “Yes, do that, Pike,” Tweddle said. “Don’t let me stand in your way.”

  Before Reid closed the door behind him, he heard Tweddle say, “Idiot.”

  And Nancy’s vulgar laugh cut through him like a knife.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Frank Constable had an excellent view of the street from his office window. A man who slept little, he’d already been behind his desk when Sam Flintlock rode out early that morning.

  He’d not gone to Clifton Wraith’s burial, preferring to remain home with his Bible and his thoughts. But Marshal Tom Lithgow had told him about the funeral and the Pinkerton’s last words.

  Guilty big man . . .

  Those three words had haunted him.

  Why had the Pinkerton refused more of Dr. Thorne’s morphine, choosing to die in agony only to utter such a meaningless clue?

  Guilty big man . . .

  Constable had just read Isaiah 9:2 when the meaning of the words dawned on him.

  The people who walk in darkness

  will see a great light;

  Those who live in a dark land,

  the light will shine on them.

  And Frank Constable, attorney-at-law, had seen the light.

  Guilty big man . . .

  Lithgow had flippantly told Sam Flintlock that Open Sky had any number of big men, most of them guilty of something. And as an attorney, Constable knew that was true.

  But Wraith had desperately endured his pain long e
nough to tell Flintlock that Jamie McPhee was innocent of the murder of Polly Mallory and that a big man was the real killer.

  Big man . . .

  Clifton Wraith meant a notably big man. A large man . . . huge . . . immense . . . hulking . . . vast . . . colossal . . .

  There were muscular males in town, but none of those proportions. But there was one who did measure up . . . a man who was the mother lode of bigness . . .

  The grossly obese Lucian Tweddle!

  Now, with the patience of the aged, Frank Constable kept a close eye on the street. He had no specific reason for doing so, only a hope that something might transpire that could lead him in the right direction.

  He needed proof of Tweddle’s guilt, evidence that would stand up in court. The rambling words of a dying man were not enough for a murder conviction.

  Then, on what was to be the last day of his long life, Constable caught a break.

  He saw Pike Reid, that venomous piece of filth, ride out of an alley and swing into the street. Fifteen minutes later Lucian Tweddle left the same alley, stepped laboriously onto the boardwalk and headed in the direction of the bank, beaming, touching his hat to the ladies he passed, hand extended in a warm handshake to their menfolk.

  He looked what he wasn’t . . . a respectable, prosperous businessman on his sunny way to his office.

  Frank Constable pondered that. He decided that Reid and Tweddle using the same alley was too much of a coincidence. Back there, behind the main drag, there was nothing but a scattering of shabby shacks, storage buildings and cactus.

  The lawyer smiled. And Nancy Pocket.

  The young whore was the attraction. He was sure of it. Though Reid and Tweddle made for strange bedfellows. Too strange for Constable not to be intrigued.

  Did Nancy know anything about Polly Mallory’s murder?

  A man will sometimes confide in a whore with all the fervor of a repenting sinner. Had Lucian Tweddle?