by J. Roberts
“Okay, get up here,” Jones called. “Fan out on either side of me.”
The other men all mounted up and obeyed. Frank Hughes couldn’t get any of the other men to go along with his plan, so he didn’t know what he was going to do.
“Adams is mine,” Jones said. “I don’t know who the other man is, but he’s yours.”
“All of us?” Sterling said.
“Yeah.”
“And after we kill him?” Hughes asked.
“Nobody shoots Adams,” Jones said, “unless he kills me. Then he’s all yours.”
As Clint and Coleman approached the mouth of the pass the six men fanned out. Jones had two men on his right, three on his left. Clint wondered if it would have been a good idea to bring Chip Ryan along. The younger man might have been good enough with a gun. On the other hand he was still gimpy with a bad foot and, once they all got down off their horses, Ryan would have been at a disadvantage, like Coleman.
They stopped about twenty feet from the six men.
“Adams?” the big half-breed said.
“That’s right,” Clint said. “You must be Santiago Jones.”
“That’s me.” Jones made a show of looking past Clint. “No herd?”
“It’ll be along,” Clint said. “I wanted to have time to move the bodies.”
That made the other men stir. Clint knew he sounded confident, and that usually bothered people who had bigger numbers on their side.
“That’s funny,” Jones said, without a smile. “I’ve got an idea, Adams.”
“What’s that?”
“Why don’t we step down from our horses and settle this between us.”
“That sounds good to me.”
“Your man will stay out of it?” Jones asked.
“He will. And yours?”
“They will, too.”
“Okay, then,” Clint said. “Step down.”
“Is he serious?” Coleman asked.
“No,” Clint said. “Watch the others. They’ll draw, for sure.”
“Can you take him?” Coleman asked, as Clint dismounted.
“I don’t know,” Clint said. “Remember, turn your horse and stay behind it.”
“Okay.”
Clint turned to Eclipse and slapped him on the rump. The horses scampered away, not too far, but out of the line of fire. When he turned Santiago Jones was standing on the ground with his legs spread.
Clint noticed something helpful. The five riders standing behind Santiago Jones were confused. They had obviously received one set of instructions, but now the big man had gone off on his own. They were looking at each other, wondering what to do.
He turned his attention to Jones.
“Where’s your boss?” he asked.
“That doesn’t matter,” Jones said.
“Yeah, it does. I’m going to go and see him after I kill you.”
“Ogallala,” Jones said. “Give him my regards . . . if you get there.”
The big man went for his gun, and Clint was surprised at how fast he was. In his experience, big men were not usually very fast. Against anyone else, Jones would have had a chance. He almost cleared leather when Clint shot him in the biggest target presented to him—the man’s big chest.
Clint immediately turned to the five men on horseback. Coleman had already started shooting, and two men came out of their saddles as if they had been snatched from behind. He fired, taking another man from his saddle, and by the time the other two men realized what was happening, they were dead.
Clint quickly turned his attention to Coleman. As it turned out the older man had done most of his shooting while hanging over the side of his saddle. He was still on horseback.
Clint ejected the empty shells and replaced them as he walked to the bodies. He checked each one in turn, and they were all dead.
He turned and walled to Coleman, who was almost reloading.
“You hit?” he asked.
“No. You?”
“No.”
“I was wrong,” Coleman said.
“About what?”
“I once told you that years ago I was you,” Coleman said. “I saw what you just did. Jones was fast, but I’ve never been and have never seen anything as fast as you.”
Clint whistled and Eclipse came trotting over.
“We going to Ogallala to see Morgan?”
“No,” Clint said. “I don’t want to rob Henry Flood of that pleasure. We’ll head back to the herd.”
“Suits me,” Coleman said. “Suits me just fine.”
“Let’s move these bodies,” Clint said. “I don’t want the herd to trample them.”
“Should we take them all into town?”
“I think when we get here with the rest of the men we’ll bury them,” Clint said. “If the law in Ogallala doesn’t like it, let him come out and dig them up.”
“That suits me, too.”
FORTY-SIX
They forded the South Platte and then North Platte rivers the next day, then left the herd just west of town while Clint, Flood, Coleman, and Chip Ryan rode into town the following morning. Ryan was going to see the doctor while they were there.
Clint rode over to the doctor with him, while Flood and Coleman went to the saloon.
“I’m heading to the sheriff’s office,” Clint told Ryan as he dismounted. “See you there, or the saloon.”
“Which saloon?”
“Probably only a couple left,” Clint said. “The biggest one.”
“Gotcha.”
Ryan started for the doctor when Clint looked at the ground and saw the man’s boot print. There was an odd design in the dirt.
“Ryan!”
“Yeah.”
“That print,” Clint said, pointing. “That the boot you got from the hoodlum wagon for your hurt foot?”
Ryan peered down at the ground, said, “Oh, yeah.”
“What happened to the other one?”
“Dirker took it, said he needed a new boot.”
“And how did those boots get into the wagon on the first place?”
Ryan shrugged and said, “Somebody said they were Flood’s extra pair.”
Clint nodded.
“Okay, go get your foot looked at.”
Ryan headed for the doctor’s office, while Clint went to the sheriff’s office, shaking his head.
Clint and the sheriff found Flood and Coleman in the Driver’s Saloon. Flood was bracing Larry Morgan. The two men were facing each other in front of the bar, both red-faced from shouting. It looked as if gunplay was inevitable, until Sheriff Rance Howard stepped in.
“I need you to come with me, Mr. Morgan,” Sheriff Howard said.
“What for?”
“We need to talk about a man named Santiago Jones.”
Morgan frowned.
“I don’t know where—I mean, who that is—”
“We know where he is, sir,” Howard said. “In the ground, along with the other men working for you. Now come along with me. I’ll have that gun.”
Morgan glared at Henry Flood while he handed over his gun.
“See you in Fort Laramie, Morgan,” Flood said. “Oh, wait, you won’t be there.”
The sheriff marched Lawrence Morgan over to his office.
“Good thing you came in when you did, Clint,” Flood said. “I woulda killed him.”
“How, Hank?” Clint asked. “With a knife or a gun?”
Flood frowned.
“Whataya mean—”
“Your boots, Hank,” Clint said. “You should have burned them, or buried them, not put them in the hoodlum tent.”
“What’s this about?” Coleman asked.
“The boot you saw Andy Dirker wearing was Flood’s,” Clint said. “Chip Ryan has the other one on his hurt foot. After Flood killed Jack Trevor he put those boots in the wagon and put on a second pair. When somebody grabbed one of them for Ryan, he couldn’t object. And then Dirker grabbed the other one.”
“So Dirker didn’t kill Jack?�
�� Coleman asked.
“No,” Clint said. “He was probably following Hank and Jack around town, looking for a chance to do something that would sabotage the drive. But he didn’t kill Trevor. Hank did. Dirker might even have seen him do it.”
Coleman looked at Flood.
“That true, Boss?”
Flood shook his head, but he wasn’t saying no.
“That Trevor, he wanted a bigger piece of the action. My last drive, and he wanted to horn in. I couldn’t let him.”
“I don’t see why not, Hank,” Clint said. “It sure would have been easier, don’t you think?”
“How could you do that to Jack?” Coleman asked.
“Sorry, Bud.” He looked at Clint. “The sheriff?”
“Oh, he’ll be back. I asked him to give me time to talk to you.”
“Clint—”
“What? Let you go? I can’t do that.”
“No,” Flood said, “I wasn’t gonna ask for that, but . . . could ya finish the drive? Take the herd to Fort Laramie? Pay the men off. Finish my last drive?”
“I can’t do that either, Hank,” Clint said. “It just wouldn’t be right.”
“No,” Flood said. “No, I guess not.”
At that moment the sheriff came walking back in.
“Is he ready?” he asked Clint.
“Those stupid symbols on the bottom of my boots,” Flood said. “An old habit, just to identify my property. Learned it when I was a kid.”
Clint plucked Flood’s gun from his holster, tossed it to the lawman.
“He’s ready.”
As the sheriff led Flood out of the saloon, Bud Coleman said, “Jesus.”
“Have a drink with me, Bud,” Clint said.
Clint didn’t drink whiskey often, but this seemed like on occasion to have a shot.
“What do we do now?” Coleman asked, when they each had a drink.
“Finish the drive.”
“But you said—”
“I said I wouldn’t finish the drive for Flood,” Clint said. “But we can finish it, and instead of paying the men off you can all have an equal share.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t want any money,” Clint said. “I’m going to chalk three months work up to experience. You and the men can split it.”
Bud Coleman lifted his glass of whiskey and said, “That works for me.”
Watch for
THE HUNT FOR CLINT ADAMS
343rd novel in the exciting GUNSMITH series from Jove
Coming in July!
