Gut-Shot

by William W. Johnstone

  “Just a slip of the tongue. I should have said, consult with me tomorrow.”

  “Don’t make too many more of those slips, Lucian. I don’t like them.”

  “Of course not, dear fellow.” Tweddle squeezed his cigar and looked worried. “Steve, you’re a firebrand and you’re always on the prod. Don’t antagonize Frisco Maddox.”

  “I’d say that’s up to him, isn’t it?” McCord said.

  After McCord left, Tweddle locked his doors and windows and pulled the curtains together. He placed one of his Navy Colts under his pillow, the other in the parlor.

  Sam Flintlock was not a man to be taken lightly.

  But then neither was Lucian Tweddle.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Frisco Maddox stood outside the McCord ranch house in cobalt blue twilight. The glow of lamps made orange rectangles of the windows and smoke rose from the chimney of the bunkhouse. The air smelled of fried bacon and of the surrounding pines.

  Maddox smiled and touched his hat. “Howdy, Steve. It’s good to see you again.”

  Steve McCord sat motionless on his horse for long moments. Then he said, “Shouldn’t that be boss?”

  “You ain’t my boss, Steve,” Maddox said.

  “I own this ranch.”

  “No, you don’t. You never did and you never will.”

  “Damn you, Frisco, are you trying to steal what’s rightfully mine?”

  “Nope, on account of how this spread isn’t rightfully yours no more.”

  Several hands had drifted from the bunkhouse. Like Maddox they carried guns and their faces were less than friendly.

  McCord tried to look tough, his right hand close to the iron, but he knew he was running a bluff that impressed nobody.

  Then Maddox shook him to the core. “You could have let Maisie live, Steve. You had no call to kill her. Hell, she had friends and admirers here.”

  “Damn right,” a man said, his face in shadow. “Purty little gal like that and she could sing like a nightingale.”

  “Hell, I didn’t kill them.”

  “Yeah, you did.”

  McCord swallowed hard. “Whoever told you that is a damned liar!”

  “You can tell him to his face, Steve.” He turned his head. “O’Hara!”

  The tall figure of a man detached itself from the shadows and glided forward like a ghost. O’Hara stood and stared silently at McCord, his black eyes glittering.

  “Steve says you’re a damned liar, O’Hara.”

  “I heard,” the breed said.

  “O’Hara says he was headed back from hunting when he saw you kill Trace and Maisie,” Maddox said. He smiled. “Though how come the belly of the deer he shot was stuffed full of newly minted double eagles, he hasn’t rightfully explained.”

  O’Hara shrugged his shoulder high, an expressive Indian gesture. “Maybe the deer was hungry and got them from a Butterfield stage,” he said.

  “Yup. Maybe so, it being hungry an’ all,” Maddox said.

  “Are you going to take the word of a dirty half-breed over mine?” McCord said, his anger peaking.

  “Any day of the week,” Maddox said.

  “I saw you through a long glass, McCord,” O’Hara said. “You shot the man called Trace and then the woman. And then you rode away. I speak the truth.”

  “Yeah, sure you do, breed. And a jury of white men is likely to believe you, huh?” McCord said.

  “God calls down a terrible curse on those who commit patricide,” a gray-haired puncher said from the gloom. “It is among the very worst of mortal sins.”

  McCord was furious. His slightly slanted eyes narrowed and his face, a pale oval of hate, picked up dull red highlights on his nose and cheekbones from the oil lamps inside.

  “All right, that’s enough!” he yelled. “My talking is done. I want all of you off my property. Now!”

  Maddox smiled without humor. “Steve, I told you, this is no longer your property.” He reached into his canvas coat and produced a folded paper. “Know what this is, Steve?”

  McCord didn’t answer.

  “Well, apparently you don’t. It’s a will your pa made a year ago, before he decided to marry again. I don’t need to read it, because I’ve pretty much memorized the thing.”

  “Cut to the chase, Frisco.” McCord said.

  “It says that if he dies without further issue, ownership of the McCord ranch passes to James Charles Maddox. That’s my legal name, like.”

  “You forged the will, damn you.”

  “No, Steve, it’s legal, all signed and witnessed. Mind you, your pa told me he planned to change the will again in favor of a son born of himself and Maisie May. But he never got the chance, did he?”

  Steve McCord’s mouth opened but no words came out. Finally, his face bitter, he said, “He cut me off—”

  “Without a penny,” Maddox said.

  The big man slid the will back into his coat. “Steve, I watched you grow up and always I tried to tell myself that you were not a bad seed, that you’d break through one day. I was wrong. You’re just sorry, murdering trash.”

  Maddox drew, his gun coming up faster than Steve McCord could ever have imagined. It made something sick lurch in his gut.

  “Now get off my property,” Maddox said. “This once, for old times’ sake, I’m letting you live, Steve. The next time I see you, anywhere, anytime, I’ll kill you.”

  Two realizations hit Steve McCord that evening, both of them unpleasant.

  The first was that all he could do was ride away with his tail between his legs. Empty threats would not impress Maddox and the dozen or so hard cases that faced him. The second, and this tore at him, was that he called himself a gunfighter but the speed of Frisco Maddox’s draw had shown him that he wasn’t in a real shootist’s class.

  He’d killed Beau Hunt, but that was murder and meant nothing, just an empty thing to impress folks when he was on the brag.

  Frisco Maddox had demonstrated a harsh reality.

  “I’ll be back, Frisco,” he said, trying to make it sound thin, menacing.

  But as he swung his horse away a hard ball of horse dung hit the back of his neck and Steve McCord’s face burned with shame and defeat as hard men laughed.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  Lucian Tweddle was concerned. A real man had just spanked his protégé and he saw a major part of his plan and maybe even his future empire crumbling. Somehow he had to salvage this disaster.

  As for Steve McCord, he’d lost most of his swagger and somehow the gun he wore no longer looked intimidating.

  “Damn it, I told you not to brace Maddox,” Tweddle said. “He’s a man-killer from way back.”

  “It was him who braced me and then he showed me pa’s will. What was I supposed to do?”

  “Did you examine the will?”

  “No. It was dark, remember?”

  “It’s no matter, we can challenge it in court, Steve. Maybe a judge will allow you to take possession until the matter is settled.”

  “Frisco said he’d kill me on sight.”

  “You can shade him. Your timing was off, just a little.”

  “No, I can’t shade him. He’s too fast.”

  “Then, if Maddox needs killing, I’ll do it myself.”

  “You kill Maddox? That I have to see.”

  “Don’t underestimate me, Steve. Don’t ever do that at your peril.”

  “Then what about Flintlock? He’s probably even faster than Frisco on the draw.”

  “My concern right now is the McCord ranch. We can deal with saddle tramps like Flintlock later. Still, you’d better stay the night here as a precaution.”

  “I need a drink,” McCord said. “Damn, I need a drink bad.”

  “Help yourself. You know where the whiskey is.”

  Tweddle, his massive belly a huge mound under his bathrobe, sat in his chair and considered his options.

  Have Steve contest the will?

  No. It could take months, maybe years,
and the railroad wouldn’t wait.

  Kill Frisco Maddox?

  Risky, but it was a way if all else failed.

  Offer Maddox a partnership with the O’Rourke range as bait?

  Now that was a real possibility.

  Of course, Tweddle realized he’d need to dispose of Steve McCord, a small matter that he could settle tonight.

  But he instantly dismissed that idea.

  No, he must talk with Frisco Maddox first and settle the deal. Then get rid of Steve.

  The fat man smiled to himself.

  Yes, that was the way to handle this difficult situation.

  He’d ride out to the McCord ranch tomorrow.

  Maddox was a pragmatic man. He’d see reason.

  Steve McCord was surly.

  A full glass of whiskey in hand, he scowled at Tweddle.

  “What are you hatching in that brain of yours, Lucian?”

  “I will ride out to your ranch”—your ranch, such a nice touch—“and demand to see your father’s will.”

  “And if it’s legal?”

  “I will tell Maddox we’re disputing the content of the will and that he must vacate the property until the matter is settled in court.”

  “Will he go for it?”

  “He won’t have any choice. Not when I threaten him with a battery of out-of-town lawyers.”

  Steve McCord’s face regained some of its viciousness. “There’s treed rises all around the ranch house,” he said. “I could lay for him and kill him the first chance I get.”

  “That remains a viable possibility, Steve. But let’s try it legally first.”

  “Whatever you say, Lucian.”

  McCord knew that his standing with the fat man had slipped since Frisco had put the crawl on him. It would take time, and maybe a killing or two, to regain his previous status.

  Flintlock! Yeah, that was it! If he gunned Sam Flintlock, Tweddle would be impressed. How could he fail to be?

  That was the answer.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  In the thin gray of dusk, Sam Flintlock strapped his blanket roll in place behind the saddle and slid his Winchester and Hawken into their boots.

  His few possessions were in his saddlebags along with clean socks and underwear.

  He mounted and looked around him at what had been Brendan O’Rourke’s Circle-O, now a place of the hurting dead, empty, echoing with a dreadful silence. Superstitious as all cowboys were, the hands had decided to leave and winter on the grub line rather than remain where ghosts walked, and Flintlock did not blame them.

  He mounted and sat his horse for a while, head bowed, thinking.

  Frank Constable’s place must look just like this ranch. It too lay abandoned and desolate, his barn and infernal machine destroyed, and all the old man’s dreams of journeying to the moon on a steamship with Jules Verne had died with him.

  Deep in his gut, Flintlock believed he could have prevented all this death and desolation. But he’d laid back. Let it happen. He tilted his head and looked at the amber sky where the first sentinel stars were posted, a vast, empty space inside him.

  “God forgive me,” he whispered aloud.

  Old Barnabas perched on top of a hayrick beside the ranch house, knitting needles click-click-clicking in his hands and a ball of bright green yarn at his feet.

  “Lookee, boy,” he said. He held up about five feet of the knitting. “I’m making me a winter muffler fer ol’ Genghis Khan. He’s an ornery cuss, always wanting to massacree folks, but he feels the cold something terrible.”

  “There ain’t any winter in hell, Barnabas,” Flintlock said.

  “So you say, but I say different.”

  Barnabas paused his needles. “Didn’t do so good this time around, did you, boy?” he said.

  “I reckon not. A lot of fine people dead.”

  “And you let it happen, Sammy.”

  “I could have done better. I was dealt a lousy hand but I could have played my cards better. I think that.”

  “And now you’re going to make amends, right?”

  “That’s the plan, Barnabas.”

  “Shoot straight and fast, boy, like I teached you, even though you were an idiot and couldn’t remember anything.”

  “I’ll try to remember this time.”

  “Afterward, like a good boy, you go help your mama down there in the bayou and have her give you your name. You hear what I’m saying, boy?”

  “I will, Barnabas. You can depend on it.”

  “I asked that heathen Injun O’Hara to help you, but I don’t know if he will. He don’t like you much, says you’re too easy to kill, even for a white man. Well, I got to go.”

  Now Flintlock saw only a hayrick in the gloom . . . then the ball of green yarn came bouncing toward him. He leaned from the saddle, picked it up and shoved it into his saddlebags.

  “For your ma,” Barnabas said. His hollow voice seemed to come from the far end of a long tunnel. “Tell her I think about her every now and then.”

  Flintlock kneed his buckskin into motion and rode through shadows under a somber sky that brought him no comfort.

  Sam Flintlock planned to be in Open Sky just before dawn.

  Taking his time, he spent the witching hours when the night was at its darkest hunched over a small fire near a stream that ran brown from silt. But the coffee tasted just fine.

  Flintlock’s head nodded, but he woke with a start when a man’s voice rang out from the darkness. “Hello, the camp!”

  He recognized the voice immediately. “Dave Glover, what the hell are you doing out here?” he yelled.

  “Is that you, Sam’l Flintlock?”

  “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “You got coffee and smoking tobacco?”

  “I got both.”

  “Then I’ll come in.”

  Glover led his mule into the glow of the firelight. The man looked older, as though his years had suddenly caught up with him.

  “What are you doing wandering around at this time of night?” Flintlock said.

  “I could ask you the same question.”

  Flintlock smiled faintly. “I’m a lost soul, I guess.”

  “Me too, Sam’l. My house fell down. The whole thing just crashed to the ground”

  “Where’s your woman?”

  “The house fell down on top of her. I buried her a two-week ago.”

  “Damn, I’m sorry to hear that. She was a real nice lady, comfortable if you catch my drift.” Flintlock shook his head. “You’re a crazy old coot an’ no mistake. I told you not to build a house where there was never a house before. Help yourself to coffee.”

  “You got the makings?”

  Flintlock tossed over tobacco and papers and after Glover had settled, he said, “Sorry about your loss, Dave. I truly am.”

  “Thank’ee kindly. I can always build another house, but I’ll never find another Miss Maybelline Bell. She was one of a kind.”

  “Hard thing to lose a good woman.”

  “Ah, well, she made me happy fer a spell. You ever been happy fer even a little while, Sam’l?”

  “Looking back, no. Can’t say as I have. Not happy like feeling good about everything happy.”

  “I didn’t think so. It’s left a mark on you. Lines on your face, scars on your soul.”

  Glover smoked and drank coffee for a while, studying Flintlock with shrewd eyes. Then he said, “Got your hair tied back.”

  “My hair is as it’s always been.”

  “No, it ain’t, Sammy. It’s tied back.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “What I mean is, I reckon you got revolver fighting in mind.”

  “I’ve got killings in mind, Dave.”

  “You lost your way, Sam. For a while you did. You tried to ride a more peaceful trail, but in our world there ain’t any of those, not fer rannies like us.”

  “It was that obvious, huh?”

  Glover said nothing. He stared into the fire where the embers glowed
red.

  “I plan to even things out this morning,” Flintlock said. “Make it right.”

  “I recollect Billy said that, said it right afore he shot Sheriff William Brady in Lincoln back in ’78.”

  “Yeah, I guess he did. But we all had a hand in that killing, Dave. Our hearts were bad that day because we were hurting over John Tunstall.”

  “I had no hand in that killing. My Henry jammed. You recollect?”

  “No. I reckon I don’t recollect that.”

  Glover drained his cup then threw the butt of his cigarette into the fire. He rose to his feet.

  “I got to be moving on, Sam’l,” he said. “I’m headed into the Sans Bois, do some trappin’ and a little prospecting, maybe.”

  “Bide awhile, Dave. Spread your blankets by the fire and warm them old bones of your’n.”

  The old man shook his head. “You reckon you’re on a high lonesome, boy, but you’re not, you’re surrounded by ghosts. They tell me I’m not welcome here and that I got to line out.”

  Flintlock nodded. “Then so long, Dave.”

  “Yeah, you too, Sam. So long.”

  Glover gathered the reins of his mule and without another word stepped into the crowding darkness.

  The fire crackled and flames danced as a wind rustled in the trees. Sam Flintlock pulled his knees to his chest, bowed his head and became one with the night.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  Sam Flintlock rode into Open Sky after dawn. The sky was ablaze with scarlet and the air was clear, the morning coming in clean.

  A stray dog skulked along the boardwalk past the darkened stores then stopped and studied Flintlock for a moment before deciding he was of no interest and moved on.

  The false front of the Rocking Horse saloon was draped in black bunting for the death of Maisie May and the town had a drab, weatherworn appearance in the harsh light of morning like a tired old whore gazing into a cruel mirror. A north wind blew strong and lifted skeins of dust from the street and the hanging store signs banged back and forth on their chains.

  Lucian Tweddle’s house was the biggest in town, built on a shallow hill with shade trees along the driveway. For a fat man it was an easy downhill walk to the bank, slightly more strenuous on the return.