Gut-Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  “I don’t,” Maddox said. Then, “We’re supposed to meet young Steve McCord here. Have you seen him?”

  Tweddle shook his head. “Can’t say as I have.” He smiled. “Is that young scamp in trouble?”

  “You could put it that way,” Maddox said, an infuriatingly tight-lipped man.

  He turned and walked out the door, his spurs ringing in the quiet.

  Tweddle considered a move. A quick shot into Maddox’s back then a rush out the door, guns blazing.

  He dropped the idea as soon as it occurred to him. Those boys outside would take their hits and shoot back. It was way too risky. Tweddle’s face tightened. Why did these things always happen to him? His carefully laid plan was ruined. He should have known a treacherous lowlife like Trace McCord wouldn’t keep his word and come alone.

  Maddox led his horse to the others and spoke to McCord again. After they swung into the saddle, the four riders separated and began a search.

  Tweddle smiled to himself.

  Good luck with that, McCord. Your no-good son is lying drunk in Open Sky.

  He stayed at the window like an innocent traveler waiting for the rain to subside, but Tweddle continued to observe McCord’s every move. Damn him, the rogue was never isolated, always within hailing distance of his men. A quick strike was totally out of the question.

  Finally, the four riders huddled together. They talked for a while then left.

  Frustrated, Tweddle saw no alternative but to head back to town and try again when the odds were more in his favor. He stepped to the door and behind him Slaton said, “Excuse me, mister, you haven’t paid your score.”

  “Go to hell,” Lucian Tweddle said. “I don’t pay for pig swill.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The Circle-O was a dark, lonely and haunted place.

  For a week the ranch had been plunged into mourning, first for Brendan O’Rourke then, two days later for his wife. When Flintlock had broken the news to her of her husband’s murder, she had thanked him kindly then turned her face to the wall and willed herself to die.

  Now the two lay together on a hill above a treed valley, side by side in death as they’d been in life. There were no heirs. Audrey had a sister in Philadelphia but since nobody had heard from her in years, it was supposed that she’d passed away.

  After the O’Rourke funerals, Sam Flintlock slipped into a black depression and blamed himself and his moral weakness for all that had happened. He told himself he should have acted sooner, settled matters with a gun and then rode away.

  A man who stepped lightly from one side of the law to the other, he’d allowed himself to be governed by legal principles and that had led only to disaster and the deaths of men he liked.

  The old Sam Flintlock knew only one law . . . the law of the Colt . . . and to that code and to the life it represented he planned to return.

  Sir Arthur Ward and his daughter, Ruth, both badly scarred by the death of Audrey, left the ranch and Jamie McPhee went with them.

  “Ruth has made me no promises,” he told Flintlock. “But I live in hope.”

  “Then good luck to you, both of you,” Flintlock said. After a while he said, “The murder of Polly Mallory will always dog your back trail, McPhee. But there’s nothing I can do about that.”

  “Time will pass. It will be forgotten.”

  “I sure hope so.”

  McPhee stuck out his hand. “It’s been an honor, Sam. You taught me much, including what it takes to be a man.”

  Flintlock smiled and shook hands, but said nothing. But finally he said, “The Ward wagon is leaving. You’d better go.”

  “I’d guess I’d better.”

  The young man swung into the saddle. His pale clerk’s face never tanned, but he was brick red. McPhee said, “Good-bye, Sam Flintlock,” then turned his horse away.

  Flintlock watched him leave for a few moments then called after him: “Jamie! Good luck.”

  The young man waved, smiling, then rode at a gallop after the wagon.

  Flintlock locked up the ranch house and bunked with the hands.

  Brendan O’Rourke’s will stated that on his death the ranch must go to Audrey, but it seemed that now it belonged to no one.

  Taking advantage of the situation, Trace McCord had already moved cattle onto the Circle-O range, but that was not Flintlock’s battle to fight and he ignored it.

  Then came the news that the rancher planned to wed Miss Maisie May, the New Orleans Nightingale, and Flintlock and the Circle-O hands were invited to their engagement shindig.

  Flintlock declined, as did the Circle-O punchers.

  Two weeks to the day after Audrey O’Rourke’s death, Marshal Tom Lithgow rode up to the ranch house, a paper in his hand, and his face solemn. The lawman sat his horse. Sweat leaked from under his hat and stained the armpits of his shirt. He didn’t need this damned grief and it showed.

  Flintlock had been wielding an ax, adding to the woodpile stacked beside the cookhouse. Now he buried the blade in the stump that served as a block, shoved his Colt into his waistband and stepped in front of the big lawman. His face showed open dislike without even a trace of a compromising smile.

  “What can I do for you, Lithgow?” he said. His voice was flat, cold as steel.

  “Well, you can say howdy for a start,” the marshal said.

  “Consider it said. Now, what can I do for you?”

  “Got me a notice of foreclosure here, Flintlock. But I got no one to serve it to. Unless you’re aiming to take over as owner.”

  “Lucian Tweddle?”

  “He says old man O’Rourke took out a five-thousand-dollar loan and never repaid a dime. Now he’s foreclosing on the delinquent loan.”

  Flintlock’s anger spiked at him. “Tweddle is a damned liar. Brendan O’Rourke never borrowed money in his life.”

  Color flushed into Lithgow’s face and neck. “It’s all legal and signed by witnesses,” he said. “All I can do is serve it. You’ve got three days to vacate, Flintlock.”

  “I don’t live here. There’s three punchers who do, at least they were still living here earlier this morning.”

  Lithgow swung out of the saddle. He was ill at ease and Flintlock smelled his sweat. “Then I’ll tack it to the ranch house door,” he said.

  The marshal seemed to have prepared for this eventuality. He took a hammer and some nails from his saddlebags and stepped to the door. Tack, tack, tack. The noise of the hammer was loud in the silence.

  “There,” Lithgow said, stepping back like an artist admiring his work. “It’s done.” He spoke without turning to look at Flintlock. “Railroaders in town. Well-fed men in black broadcloth and gold watch chains.” Flintlock said nothing and the lawman said, “The rails are coming right enough and so is the money.”

  “What about Trace McCord? What about his share?”

  Lithgow looked puzzled. “You mean you didn’t hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Three days ago Trace McCord and Miss Maisie May were murdered on the wagon road a mile west of Open Sky. They were headed into town to buy Maisie’s wedding trousseau when it happened.”

  Flintlock felt as though he’d been punched in the gut. “Who did it?”

  “Bushwhacked by person or persons unknown is how it stands. Trace didn’t even get a chance to draw his gun.”

  “And the ranch?”

  “Young Steve McCord is the new owner. He’s all grown up now since he gunned Beau Hunt. He struts. I guess that’s the word.”

  “He murdered Beau Hunt,” Flintlock said.

  “That’s not how folks see it. Local boy does good, shoots down notorious desperado. That’s how they sum it up.”

  “How do you see it, Lithgow?” Flintlock said.

  “I don’t see anything.” The lawman mounted, then touched his hat brim. “So long, Flintlock. Maybe we’ll meet again in some other town.”

  “Tweddle murdered Polly Mallory. You know that, don’t you?”

 
; Lithgow didn’t answer right away. Then he said, “I’m a tough lawman with a reputation and you’re a famous bounty hunter and draw fighter. Right, Flintlock?”

  “If you say so.”

  The marshal looked like he’d just sucked on a lemon. “Flintlock, the fact is we’re nothing. We’re just two little men in a world grown too big for us. Right now the real power isn’t this Colt on my hip, it’s back in Open Sky, where fat men are smoking Cuban cigars, planning a railroad and talking in millions.”

  Flintlock said nothing, still waiting for an answer to his question about Tweddle.

  “All right, Flintlock, if I knew for a fact that Lucian Tweddle strangled Polly Mallory, there’s not a damned thing I could do about it,” Lithgow said.

  “His smart lawyers would tie the court in knots, huh? Is that how you see it?”

  “Tweddle would walk and he’d see to it that I never again worked as a lawman. I need my seventy-five dollars a month, Flintlock. I don’t want to end up old and destitute, begging for my bread in some dung-heap town.”

  “Did he murder Polly Mallory? Tell me what you believe.”

  “Yeah. I believe he did. And many more beside.”

  “Trace McCord?”

  “Yes, I think so. But there’s not a damned thing I can do about it.”

  Lithgow kneed his horse forward, but Flintlock grabbed its bridle. “Even for little men like us, there is a way,” he said.

  “There is no way. We’re done, Flintlock, you and me. Tweddle has beaten us and you’re too damned stubborn to accept it.”

  “And I won’t accept it. Very soon I plan to step over the line, Lithgow. Just don’t be waiting for me on the other side.”

  “If you commit murder I’ll do my duty by the town, Flintlock, and go through the motions of earning my salary. That’s how it’s going to be with me.”

  “I don’t want to kill you, Tom.”

  Lithgow smiled. “Then that’s a chance I got to take, isn’t it?”

  “Some towns just aren’t worth dying for, Marshal.”

  Lithgow shook his head. “Hell, Flintlock, what do you believe in?”

  “I believe in what old Barnabas taught me. Justice. Honor among men. And most of all that for every evil deed there must be a reckoning.” Flintlock let go of the horse’s bridle. “I am the reckoning,” he said.

  Lithgow’s eyes opened wide. “Damn it, I could swear the big bird on your throat just spread its wings.”

  Flintlock smiled. “Maybe it did. The Ojibwa say when the thunderbird gets angry and spreads its wings it means it will bring thunder and violent death.”

  Lithgow stared into Sam Flintlock’s eyes, but shocked, he quickly looked away.

  “God help us all,” he whispered.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  “You did a fine job, Steve,” Lucian Tweddle said, smiling. “I mean I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

  “It was easier than I thought it would be,” Steve McCord said. “After I shot dear papa, his wife-to-be begged for mercy. What a stupid sow.”

  “But from what I heard you didn’t feel inclined to extend it to her, of course.”

  McCord grinned and made a gun of his fingers. “Dropped her as she tried to run away. Pop! Pop! Pop! She went down like a ton of bricks.”

  The young man wore his gun low, almost on his thigh, and the cartridge belt slanted across his lean belly at a rakish angle. He looked ten years older than his twenty-one years.

  Tweddle smiled and squeezed his cigar. “Did your pa give you any trouble?”

  “He said he was in a good mood because of his upcoming marriage and offered me money to leave the territory and never come back.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing. I just shot him. Boy, was he surprised. He looked down at the bullet hole in his chest and you should have seen the look on his face. How could you do this to me?Yeah, right, daddy, and here’s another, smack between the eyes.”

  Tweddle changed the subject, the image of the dying McCord troubling him. “So, how does it feel to be a rich ranch owner?” he said.

  “Just fine. I’m riding out there later today.”

  “Frisco Maddox could give you trouble. He set store by your pa.”

  McCord slapped his Colt. “He’s nothing. I can take care of him.”

  “Stay alive, gunfighter. I can’t afford to lose my partner.”

  The young man grinned. “Frisco can’t shade me and he knows it.”

  “The railroad talks went well,” Tweddle said. His piggy eyes were greedy.

  “How much?”

  “Nothing will be settled until my foreclosure of the O’Rourke property is finalized. Say, two, three days.”

  “How much, Lucian?”

  “Enough to make us both very wealthy men. And I’m pushing for shares in the railroad as a bonus.”

  A clerk tapped on the door and stepped inside. “Marshal Lithgow wishes to talk with you, Mr. Tweddle.”

  “What the hell does he want?” the banker said, scowling. “Oh, very well, show him in.”

  Lithgow’s huge presence seemed to fill Tweddle’s office.

  “What can I do for you, Marshal?” the banker said.

  “Just a word of warning,” Lithgow said.

  Tweddle frowned. “You are warning me? Come now, that’s a bit, shall we say, impertinent? You’re acting above your station, Marshal.”

  The big lawman ignored that. “I believe Sam Flintlock means to kill you,” he said.

  Tweddle almost swallowed his cigar. “That’s preposterous,” he said. “Did you arrest him?”

  “No I didn’t.”

  “Why not? Flintlock is a violent, dangerous thug.”

  “I can’t arrest a man for making a threat.”

  “If he comes this way I’ll make him eat his threats,” McCord said. “I’ll gut shoot then watch him kick.”

  Lithgow, already on a short fuse, rounded on the young man. “You damned, lily-livered cretin, the only way you could shade a man like Sam Flintlock is to shoot him in the back like you did Beau Hunt.”

  “Swallow that, Lithgow,” McCord said. His face was livid. “Swallow that down and then you go to hell.”

  McCord cursed and dived for his gun. But as he cleared leather, the big marshal’s left hand shot out as fast as a striking rattler and grabbed McCord by the wrist. At the same instant he delivered a crashing backhand that slammed into the man’s face.

  Spraying blood from his mouth and nose, McCord staggered. His head and shoulders hit hard against the picture window that gave Tweddle his view of the street. The glass shattered as McCord went through it backward. He came to rest with his upper body on the boardwalk, his legs still inside the office.

  Lithgow picked up the young man’s fallen revolver and tossed it, bouncing, onto Tweddle’s desk. “Chain up your dog, Tweddle,” he said.

  The fat man was furious. “By God, Lithgow, you’ll pay for this,” he said.

  A clerk opened the door and stuck a timid head into the office. His eyes flicked to the shattered window and the unconscious Steve McCord.

  “Are you all right, sir?” he said to Tweddle.

  The banker ignored him. “Get out of here, Lithgow,” he said. “You’re finished in this town, and any other town.”

  “Tweddle,” the marshal said, “you’re nothing but a piece of murdering filth and I hope I see you hang.”

  Tweddle’s smile was unpleasant. “You won’t live long enough to see anyone hang,” he said.

  A couple of clerks helped Steve McCord back into Tweddle’s office.

  The young man dripped blood from his swollen nose and mouth and his rage was a snarling, dangerous thing, strands of pink saliva stretching between his teeth.

  “Give me my gun,” he said. “I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch.”

  “No, you’re not,” Tweddle said. The fat man picked up the revolver and struggled to his feet. “You’re coming home with me to have a drink and calm down
,” he said. He smiled. “Maybe write a poem.”

  “The hell with you. I’m through with poems. I want my gun.”

  Suddenly Tweddle was angry. He looked like a fat, belligerent pumpkin.

  “You fool, you’re a respectable rancher now and soon you’ll be part owner of a railroad,” he said. “You can’t go around shooting lawmen, at least not in daylight, you can’t.”

  McCord visibly struggled to calm himself. Finally he wiped blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand and said, “You’re right. I’ll kill him later.”

  After McCord cleaned up, Tweddle handed him a brandy and bade him sit in a parlor chair. “Feel better?” he said.

  “Yeah, I do, but I still aim to kill Lithgow,” Steve McCord said. “The son of a bitch split my lip.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. But you can do that in a few days. First things first, my boy.”

  “I’m not your boy, Lucian. I’m not anybody’s boy.”

  “I’m aware of that now. Hell, I saw you grow up real fast after you shot Beau Hunt.”

  “And the others.”

  “Of course, of course, you’re man grown and no mistake. How old are you now, Steve?”

  “I was twenty-one a week ago.”

  Tweddle gave the appearance of being crestfallen. “And I didn’t get you a twenty-first-birthday present! Don’t worry, your forgetful friend will remedy that just as soon as he can.”

  McCord built a cigarette, a recently acquired habit. He thought it made him look tough, like Frisco Maddox and the Texas punchers. Behind curling blue smoke he said, “Where do we go from here?”

  “You ride out to your ranch and take possession. Move right into the ranch house and sleep in your pa’s bedroom. Too bad you can’t take over his woman. That would be so . . . elegant.”

  “Well, to late for that. I shot her, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did. But no harm done.”

  McCord drained his glass and rose to his feet. “All right, I’m heading out to the ranch.”

  “Stay the night, then report back to me tomorrow, Steve.”

  “Report! I have to report?”