"Of course, it is, darling. You didn't think I'd leave you in the clutches of those...those fiends, did you?"
Elizabeth gazed up at him for a long moment, then gave a sound that was half sob, half laugh. "Oh, Elliott," she cried. "You wonderful, stodgy man!"
Pannier frowned and patted her on the back with his good hand as she leaned against him.
"I'm sorry, Elliott," she said against his chest. "I'm so sorry I...I treated you the way I did. I never should have done the things that I did—"
"Hush!" Pannier said sharply. "I love you, Elizabeth, you know that. I don't care what happened before. Now, we really have to go..."
"Roland!" Elizabeth suddenly exclaimed. "Wolfe told me Roland was here!"
"Have you seen him? Do you know where he is?"
Elizabeth shook her head. "There's an old saloon down the street. Wolfe and his men spent part of their time there. They might have taken Roland there!"
Pannier nodded and said, "We'll do what we can for him." Abruptly, a wave of pain washed through him. The shock of being shot was wearing off, and now the pain was asserting itself. "Come on," he whispered hoarsely.
Leaning on each other, the two people left the room and started toward the stairs. Pannier suddenly realized that although gunshots were still exploding elsewhere in the town, silence had fallen over the hotel.
What will we find waiting for us in the lobby? he wondered. Pannier put his good hand back on the butt of his gun, and then, together, he and Elizabeth limped on.
Cully was thumbing the last of his fresh cartridges into the Colt when he heard the footsteps at the top of the stairs. He turned quickly, snapping the cylinder of the gun shut and bringing it up, then relaxed as Elliott Pannier and Elizabeth Stockbridge came into view. Ashen and shaking, Pannier had a bullet wound in his left arm. Elizabeth, dressed in her shift, held bound hands in front of her as she leaned against Pannier.
The stunned expression on Pannier's face as he stood at the top of the stairs and gazed down made Cully stop reloading his gun. From where he stood behind the bullet-scarred registration desk, he followed Pannier's gaze and took in the carnage. At least half a dozen bloodied, unmoving men were sprawled around the lobby, most of them near the windows. Angus stood next to him, Winchester raised and ready for more trouble.
Cully grinned up at Pannier. "Looks like you found that woman of yours, Elliott," he said. "You all right, Elizabeth?"
Elizabeth nodded shakily. "I...I think so."
Pannier said, "You killed all of them!"
"Seemed like the thing to do," Cully said. The grin had vanished from his face. "They were sure doing their best to kill us."
While Pannier had been upstairs, Cully had spent a hectic few minutes—the seconds blending into a long, blurred nightmare of blood and smoke and explosions. The deputy remembered loading and firing, loading and firing, until there had been no one left to shoot at.
As Pannier and Elizabeth limped down the stairs, Cully moved out from behind the counter and asked, "Was Roland Stockbridge up there?"
Pannier shook his head. "Wolfe told Elizabeth Roland was here, but she never saw him. There's a saloon down the street where he may be. Wolfe and the rest of his men are probably there."
A fresh burst of firing shattered the night. "Shouldn't be hard to find them," Cully said dryly. "Angus, you and Pannier get Elizabeth out of here. Head back to the camp and get the posse started toward Abilene as fast as you can."
Angus nodded. His thick hair was in disarray, and his features were grimy with gunpowder, but he seemed to be glorying in the fighting, as fierce a warrior as any of his highlander ancestors. "Aye! And wha' about ye, lad?"
"I'll try to get Stockbridge away from Wolfe. We'll catch up as soon as we can." One corner of Cully's mouth twitched in a grimace. "If you don't see us in a couple of days...well, in that case I don't expect we'll be along at all."
"I could go wi' ye after Wolfe—" Angus began.
Cully shook his head. "Pannier is hurt. You've got to go with them, Angus. But thanks anyway." Smiling broadly, he clapped the big Scotsman on the shoulder. They had been friends in Abilene, but if they both got out of this alive, they would be even closer than before.
Angus took Elizabeth's arm. "Come along, lass." He steered the woman and Pannier toward the hall leading to the back of the hotel. Looking over his shoulder as a thought occurred to him, Angus asked, "But wha' about tha' strongbox o' money Wolfe stole from the train?"
"I don't care about that," Cully said, shaking his head. "Those desperadoes can keep on fighting over it, as far as I'm concerned. I'm just going after Stockbridge."
"Good luck, Cully," Pannier said. He was beginning to wobble from shock and loss of blood, but he managed to shake hands with Cully before he followed Angus and Elizabeth through the kitchen and out the back door of the hotel.
Cully covered them from the doorway in case anybody tried to take a shot at them, but the attention of everyone else in Elysium seemed to be centered on the other side of the building and the battle still raging along the main street. Cully watched as Angus hustled Pannier and Elizabeth away through the field behind the hotel. Within moments they would be in the brush where the horses had been left, and then they would be that much closer to the posse and relative safety. When their fleeing shadows had vanished into the darkness, Cully turned and started down the alley that ran behind the buildings. The gunfire seemed to be slacking off a little. Cully wondered if one group of hardcases was on the verge of victory. If that were the case, it wouldn’t matter to him. Every hand in Elysium tonight was against him now.
17
Listening carefully and moving as silently as he could, Cully followed the alley behind the buildings until he could tell from the sound of the shots that he had reached the saloon housing the last of Roscoe Wolfe's men. Gunfire still blasted from inside the ramshackle structure, but it was coming from only a few guns now, instead of the many that had shattered the night earlier. It looked as though Roscoe Wolfe was making his last stand.
Cully tried the back door of the building and found it unlocked, but when he attempted to push it open, it gave an inch or so and then stopped. Carefully sliding his fingers through the gap, he encountered what he had been afraid he would find—somebody inside had blockaded the door with a heavy piece of furniture.
He stepped back and scanned the rear of the building. There was one single window high above the ground through which he could enter—if he could reach it and if he could get through it without calling too much attention to himself.
After spotting an old crate leaning against the building, Cully set it on its end under the window, hoping that the wood, which was weathered and partially rotten, would support his weight for a moment. He holstered his gun and stepped up, immediately reaching for the windowsill as he felt the sides of the crate starting to give.
His fingers caught the sill, and with a soft groan of effort he pulled himself up. Supporting himself with his left hand, he pushed at the window with his right. It slid up a few inches, stuck, then slid again as Cully put all his strength into the push.
He caught hold of the sill again with both hands, then levered himself up and pitched himself headfirst through the open window. At the moment he didn’t much care where he landed.
The gunfire covered up the sounds of his entrance as he fell to one corner of the big room and sprawled in a pile of debris. Evidently someone had broken up some of the saloon's tables and stacked them in this corner. One lantern was burning, and it had been placed on the floor in the center of the room, probably so that a stray bullet would be less likely to hit it.
Desperately searching the saloon for a place to hide, Cully saw a barrel to his right and, keeping low, rolled behind it. Hunkering down there in the deep shadow, he drew his gun and cautiously peered around the side of the barrel.
Three men were crouched at the front windows of the saloon, each of them firing toward the buildings across the street. Shots bo
omed in reply, the slugs whining past the heads of the men inside and punching through the faded wood of the saloon's walls. It was a desperate situation, one in which several other men had already lost their lives, judging from the bloody, sprawled bodies around the room.
Roscoe Wolfe was in the center of the trio at the window, his burly, red-bearded figure unmistakable. To his left was one of his gang, a man Cully thought looked familiar. He had probably been one of the men who had helped kidnap Elizabeth from the stable back in Abilene. The third man was crouching to Wolfe's right, holding a pistol in each hand, and firing them in turn through the bullet-shattered windows. He was Roland Stockbridge.
Cully stared, his jaw tight. No doubt about it, Roland was fighting right alongside Wolfe, trying to drive off the rival bandit gang. Maybe Wolfe forced him to help, Cully thought. Roland's just trying to save his own skin.
"Dammit, Stockbridge," Wolfe yelled as he paused to jam fresh bullets into his pistol, "if that strongbox had been on the train like you said, none of this would've happened!"
"I told you it wasn't my fault!" Roland snapped back. "I never knew my father was playing games and moving it around."
"You still double-crossed me!"
Cully had been about to put a bullet into Wolfe when the outlaw spoke up angrily. Now Cully waited, listening as the awful picture unfolded for him.
"You didn't have to steal my sister!" Roland punctuated the angry accusation with several shots.
Wolfe laughed. "Once I knew that money wasn't on the train, our deal was off, Stockbridge. I was gettin' my payoff, one way or another. You didn't have to hire me to kill that union leader when you was bustin' up that strike a few years ago in Kansas City, neither, but you did."
"I knew you were a killer," Roland said coldly. "I never knew you were a damned blackmailer, too."
Cully's mind was racing. Now he understood why Roland had been so agreeable to Brennan's idea of a raid. More than anything else, he wanted Roscoe Wolfe dead so that Wolfe couldn’t reveal his part in the scheme. That plan had backfired, though, leaving him Wolfe's prisoner and now his reluctant ally.
"Cuss me all you want to, boy, just keep shootin' at those sons of bitches over there," Wolfe said, rising to shift his position and fire a couple of shots through the window. "We're all in this together now."
Roland edged back from the window. He reached into the open box of cartridges lying on the floor next to him and brought out a handful of shells. Wolfe ignored him as Roland started reloading his pistols.
When the cylinders of both guns were full, Roland snapped them up and turned them toward Wolfe. Crouching in his hiding place, Cully was astounded as he suddenly realized what was about to happen. Roland was going to try to kill both Wolfe and the other man and attempt a getaway.
The other man must have spotted Roland's movement from the corner of his eye, because he spun around and yelled, "Look out, Roscoe!" The man fired at the same instant that Roland's guns exploded.
The outlaw's bullet tore through Roland's side, knocking him backward so that both of his shots went wild. Wolfe whirled and brought his own gun up.
Cully lunged out of the darkness, aiming at the other outlaw. The man was dark featured and had a bushy beard, but that was all that Cully had time to notice—that and the fact that the outlaw was about to shoot Roland Stockbridge again. Cully fired first.
The bullet caught the hardcase in the chest. He went down, his gun blasting into the floor.
Wolfe jerked his aim to the side to meet the new threat, instead of shooting at Roland as he had intended. The gun in his hand thundered, the roar blending with Cully's second shot.
Wolfe's aim was better. Cully's bullet nicked his left arm, while the outlaw's slug slashed across the outside of Cully's left thigh. The crease was deep enough to send fire down the leg. It gave way; Cully felt himself falling but could do nothing to stop it.
Wolfe was on him in a flash, kicking the gun from the deputy's hand, sending it skittering away across the dusty floor. Pointing his gun at Cully's chest, Wolfe peered down at the deputy in the dim light and muttered, "Do I know you, boy? Hell, yes, you was in Abilene! The kid from the stable!"
Cully clutched his leg, feeling the blood seeping between his fingers. He glanced over at Roland Stockbridge. The young easterner still had his guns, and he was struggling to lift them...
Jerking his head to follow Cully's glance, Wolfe snorted. "Almost forgot about you, Stockbridge," he said. He lifted his pistol almost casually and fired. The bullet smacked into Roland's forehead, snapping his head back, killing him instantly.
Wolfe turned back to Cully. "Don’t know what you're doin' here, boy, but it ain't none of my business. Those bastards across the street are goin' to be rushin' this place any minute, soon as they realize we ain't puttin' up a fight no more. So I got to be gettin' out of here. Too bad about the gal, but I reckon they can have her. I got what I really want." He picked up a pair of saddlebags from the floor and slung them over his shoulder, then stepped to the rear door. With one hand, he shoved aside the heavy liquor cabinet that his men had used to barricade it.
Cully's gun was only about six feet away. He licked his lips. I can roll that far, he thought. Wolfe would be able to put another slug in him, but Cully thought he could still manage to pull the trigger a time or two... Roscoe Wolfe wasn’t going to ride away with that fifty thousand dollars.
Cully lunged for the pistol. Wolfe spun around, raising his gun as he heard the movement.
"Wolfe!" a voice cracked from the now-open back door.
The outlaw glanced over his shoulder and saw the same thing that a stunned Cully Markham saw—a man in black, with an ivory-handled Colt in each hand.
Caught between two dangers, Wolfe twisted, trying for a last desperate shot—
Tom Brennan's twin Colts roared, the slugs driving Wolfe back against the liquor cabinet he had just moved. The cabinet leaned, then toppled with a crash, and Wolfe went down with it. One foot twitched a couple of times, and then he didn’t move again.
Brennan strode briskly into the room, barely glancing at the man he had pursued for so long. The debt could never be paid, but at least justice had come for Roscoe Wolfe.
The federal marshal bent over the astonished Cully and extended a hand to him. "Come on, son," Brennan said urgently. "Those other hardcases are all around the place. We've got to move."
Cully took Brennan's hand and pulled himself unsteadily to his feet. He had his Colt in his other hand again. If he and Brennan weren’t meant to get out of Elysium, at least they could go down fighting.
"What the devil are you doing here, Brennan?" he asked with a grin.
"Saving your bacon, it looks like." Pausing beside Wolfe's body, Brennan nodded to the saddlebags. "Reckon that'd be the money. I guess we'd better try to take it back—though old man Stockbridge may not want it, what with all that blood on it, and the bullet holes and all."
Brennan stripped the pouches from Wolfe and, wincing slightly, draped them over his left shoulder. Cully remembered that he had been wounded in that arm and said, "What about that bullet hole in you? Didn't look like it was bothering you much when you came in that door."
"I'm a tough old bird, son. Time you learned that about me." Brennan threw back his head and laughed, the booming, hearty laugh that had at first fooled Cully into thinking he was just a friendly, harmless old man.
About as harmless as a nest of rattlesnakes, Cully thought as he joined in the laughter.
Then the two lawmen stepped outside through the back door of the saloon.
Bullets thudded into the wall beside the door. "There's a couple of them!" a shadowy figure yelled as he fired again. "Come on, boys, they must have the money!"
The man ran forward, still firing wildly. Brennan smoothly raised one of his guns and shot him once, sending him flopping into the dirt of the alley. More figures appeared, running toward them down the alley behind the buildings, drawn by the man's cries and the shots.
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"Head for the street!" Brennan rasped. "They won't expect us to go that way!" Brennan raced along the back of the saloon.
His leg throbbing, Cully forced himself to run after Brennan. The marshal ducked around a corner, and with Cully right behind him they hurried down the alley that ran beside the building, heading toward the street.
As they emerged onto the boardwalk, they saw at least six men crossing the street, converging on the building. There were several others behind them, pounding closer with every second. Cully realized that he and Brennan had nowhere left to run.
Brennan grinned and lifted his Colts. "Been nice riding with you, son," he said.
Cully returned the grin. There was nothing left to do now but sell their lives as dearly as possible.
With the thunder of pounding hoofbeats and the ear-shattering explosions of guns, riders swept into Elysium, galloping down the street, catching the outlaws in the open and cutting them down with a hail of bullets. Cully blinked at the suddenness of it, then fired instinctively as a slug whined close by his head. His shot hit one of the outlaws in the alley next to the saloon.
One of the men on horseback, a burly figure with a shaggy beard, aimed a shotgun toward the alley and fired it one-handed. Angus MacQuarrie thundered, "Have a taste o' buckshot, ye bloody-handed buzzards!"
Cully and Brennan sagged against each other, holding themselves up while the rescuers swarmed over the rest of the outlaws, killing most of them and capturing what few were left. When the shooting had died away, the man who had led the charge turned his horse and rode toward the saloon. Marshal Lucas Flint reined in and, leaning forward in the saddle, grinned broadly. "Looks like you had a little trouble," he said.
Cully, realizing that he had been gaping at Flint in amazement, shook his head. "A little," he said. "Not that I'm complaining or anything, Marshal, but what the hell took you so long?"
Flint, still grinning, lightly slapped his leg. "Had to wait a couple of days for this bum leg to heal up enough for me to sneak out past Rose. By that time, the fella you sent back with the ransom note had gotten to Abilene, and so had a bunch of Pinkerton agents that Nicholas Stockbridge had sent for." Flint jerked a thumb at the mounted men behind him who were finishing up the chore of pacifying Elysium. "Stockbridge insisted he was going with the Pinks and the ransom money, so I figured I'd better come along, too."
Rattler's Law, Volume One Page 58
