He exploded from the deeper forest into the thinned-out trees near the cabin site. Nothing stirred, and Gabriel slowed to a walk feeling foolish, but with senses keened and his eyes searching.
He was still a hundred yards out when Mop Galloway stepped from his cabin and started across the clearing toward the swale where the garbage was buried.
Shooter’s entire body jerked and his forward motion ended, because his uncle held both arms overhead as if surrendering, and an instant later, two strangers, both pointing pistols, followed him from the cabin and urged Mop toward his own dump.
Shooter stepped behind a tree, and an instant later one of the stranger’s eyes swept the woods before he returned his attention to marching Mop to what Gabriel Galloway believed would become a killing spot.
Without hesitation or particular consideration, Gabriel’s slung rifle slid from his shoulder. The Ruger came up, and he was staring through his four-power scope at the enactment below.
Now what? Uncertainty shook Gabriel to the core. He could shoot, but what if it were not for real, or the two men might be law officers or who on earth knew what?
Shooter did not believe any of that, but he could not know. Even as he watched, the trio reached the edge of the garbage pit, and Mop turned to face the strangers. Shooter saw his eyes turn to the woods, but his uncle’s features were resigned, and although his eyes searched, they held no real hope.
The smaller of the strangers faced directly away from Shooter’s rifle, and the right spot was at the base of his skull smack in the center. The Medulla was there, and if struck, there would be no final reflexive jerking of a trigger, and certainly no last words. Death would be instantaneous. A live man would become an instant corpse.
If everything was right, Gabriel Galloway could place every shot within slightly more than a one-inch circle at one hundred yards. The range was just that, but Gabriel’s position was not perfect—which meant that he would hold that much tighter and sink even deeper into his concentration.
The thoughts flashed but did not settle in Gabriel’s mind. Uncertainty be damned! There was no time. Pistols were aimed, and this was no joke. His crosshair was centered just above the shirt collar, and Gabriel began his squeeze.
The .22 cracked. Not the powerful blast of a .30 caliber, but the result was at least as electrifying. The smaller stranger collapsed as if he had been dropped from a great height.
Through his four-power scope, Gabriel saw the back of the enemy’s skull change shape, but he was already squeezing on his second round. The second shot was harder because the body was falling, but Shooter thought he got it home before he swung onto the other stranger.
The man was fast. He was already dancing aside and pumping bullets into the trees. Gabriel heard them breaking limbs and striking trunks, but not very close to his position. Within the scope’s field of view, he saw uncle Mop coming up with his North American Arms pistol, but he got his crosshair centered on the stranger’s chest, and he began to shoot.
Shooter’s greatest fear was that the stranger would turn his pistol on Mop, and he doubted that he had time to fine his shooting. The man wore only a shirt, so there would be no armored vest.
A corner of Shooter’s awareness marveled that he could consider such a detail at this moment of ultimate and fear-filled action, but he held solidly on the enemy’s breastbone and began shooting. His magazine still held eight rounds, and before he paused to take stock, Gabriel put five of them into a very tight group in the stranger’s chest.
Firing continued, however, and Shooter belatedly realized that Mop had his small pistol working, and at Mop’s extremely short range, the Ruger’s remaining cartridges would not be needed.
The second stranger also went down hard, and Mop ceased fire, but he held his pistol leveled for a long moment before turning to check the smaller man—who Shooter knew did not need examining.
Gabriel popped his rifle’s magazine and began to reload—just as he had practiced, and just as the books said a smart sniper or combat soldier always did.
Then reaction hit. Gabriel’s nerves began to jump and his strength melted away leaving his knees shaky and his hands palsied. Sweat popped, and his fingers were instantly slippery as well as grotesquely clumsy. His senses reeled, and monstrous doubts surged leaving him again uncertain and horrified that he might somehow have shot someone innocent.
Extra cartridges fell to the ground as he struggled with the rotary magazine, but he got it done. Then, almost too exhausted to walk, he slung his piece and started down the hill to where his uncle stood over the dead strangers.
As he got closer, Gabriel could see that Mop Galloway was not a lot better off, and he, too, was shaking like an aspen. Mop had not gotten around to reloading, and as far as Gabriel could tell, he was not even thinking about it.
Mop turned to Shooter, and Gabriel saw his struggle to speak.
Mop’s voice was hoarse and sounded dried out. “God damn, Gabriel, I thought I was done. I didn’t think there was a chance in hell that you would be up there in the woods, but you were my only hope, and I was praying.
“Shooter, I was praying like I’ve never prayed before.” Mop sucked a number of deep breaths, and used the time to study his nephew.
Gabriel doubted his uncle knew what to say, and he certainly didn’t. The action had been too fast and too terminal to easily absorb. He wished mightily that he could stop shivering and that his voice wasn’t tied in a knot.
Mop struggled to get himself together. He cleared his throat a few times and began to study the dead men lying in their yard.
The smaller man had buckled at the knees and had slumped forward and lay with his face ground into the dirt.
Mop looked closer at the wound in the man’s skull. Shooter looked away.
Mop said, “Dead on,” and sounded pleased before he walked the few steps to the second stranger.
The second dead man had been hit repeatedly, and without looking too closely, Gabriel could see where his bullets had struck. The man had taken Gabriel’s bullets in his chest, and despite their small size, the five rapid impacts must have hit like hammers driving deep and destructive.
Mop had also been fast, and he had aimed for the head. As Shooter had expected, Mop hit what he aimed at, and their enemy was dead before he struck the ground. The man had collapsed forward, as most terminally shot humans did, but the fall had rolled him onto his back, and he stared sightlessly at the endless Montana sky. Mop and Gabriel both turned away.
Mop headed for their cabin, but immediately stopped to let Gabriel catch up. As if suddenly realizing what his seventeen-year-old nephew had done, Mop Galloway had to talk about it.
“Damn it, Shooter, are you all right?”
Gabriel was not feeling his best, but he judged he was passable. “Yeah, I’m all right, Uncle Mop.” He knew his voice was too high and way too tight.
Mop said, “Well, you can’t be all the way settled, so we’ve got to talk it out a little.” His chuckle was almost a snarl. “The fact is, I need to get most of it straighter in my own mind.”
Mop went on. “First I’ll call the sheriff. We don’t want someone to come driving in and find us with two unreported dead men laying in the yard.”
Shooter sat down on the porch and leaned against a post. His legs were still shaky, and his mind churned with uncertainty that they had done everything exactly right. It had happened too fast. There had been no time to consider or to plan, and . . . Gabriel Galloway enjoyed an unexpected epiphany. Everything he had read and studied claimed that even the best laid battle plans rarely worked, and that combat was almost always rapid, disorganized, and unpredictable. He had read it, now he understood what the words really meant.
Two men dead. One he had killed and he supposed he and uncle Mop shared the other. Shooter felt his stomach lurch.
Holding the phone to his ear, Mop leaned out the doorway. His voice had smoothed, and he appeared settled and once again the wise and experienced teac
her and guardian.
Mop was apparently on hold, but he said, “Gabriel, if you are having any doubts or bad feelings about what just happened, dump ‘em. Don’t waste time or emotion on those two worthless thugs.
“Look, Gabriel, those were hit men. They were sent up here by one of the criminals I told you about. They came to kill me, and they put it all on tape for that scum ball to hear on the next telephone call.
“If they had just gone ahead and shot me, they wouldn’t be laying out there, but they sat me down at our table, set out their tape recorder, and talked about it.
“They jerked around bragging about how tough and deadly they were just long enough for you to get here. Then . . . ” Mop turned to the phone as someone came on the line, and he disappeared back into the cabin.
Shooter waited feeling sodden and beaten out. He hadn’t enjoyed shooting Boxer Elder those long years ago, but that was planned revenge, and he had not felt badly about it. He examined his feeling closer.
He guessed he did not really feel badly about this time either. It was just that it had been so sudden and so uncertain. There was also the need to make his shots perfect, and that pressure was new to him.
Mop was back. He sighed mightily and sat down against his own porch post.
“Well, Sheriff Buffington is on his way. Probably bringing half his force, the local scene photographer, and maybe his four man SWAT team. This is going to be the biggest news to hit around here since the minister ran off with the collection box.”
Mop turned to his nephew. “I’m sorry as hell about this, Shooter. I really didn’t think they would find me up here, but one of that rotten crowd saw me in Billings and asked around.
“Word got to the bastard doing life, and he called in some debts, enough to hire those two, it seems.” Mop paused to gaze angrily at the bodies.
“I was telling you about the tape. It is in the little guy’s pocket, so we won’t have a thing to worry about with the law. They managed to lay it all out in detail. I suppose they figured to use it as proof of getting me. There’s a camera also, so there are pictures of me at the table, and I figure they planned to have photos of me laying in the garbage.”
Mop shook his head. “God, criminals are dumb. You’d think they would know enough NOT to take photographs or make tapes.”
He looked around. “They’ve got a car parked somewhere, I guess, but I didn’t see it when I drove in.”
Shooter said, “It’s a pickup about a quarter-mile further along hidden in the woods.”
Mop’s forehead wrinkled. “You saw the truck?”
Shooter stirred, uncomfortable with his earlier uncertainties. “I saw the Florida plates, and I thought about you putting a bunch of those bad guys in the can, so just in case—I really didn’t believe it, Uncle Mop—but just in case, I ran here as fast as I could go, and there you were coming out of the cabin with those two holding guns on you.”
Shooter involuntarily shuddered, and Mop Galloway settled himself to listen closely to all that his nephew had to say. Holy hell, Shooter had not just happened to be there, he had guessed right and had come a’ running. Then he had shot one man dead and put a handful of bullets into the other. Mop looked at his almost grown nephew with greatly increased respect and through clearer eyes.
Sheriff Buffington was appropriately astounded. He smoked two pipefuls deciding just how he could milk the most from the shootings without young Gabriel Galloway stealing all of the press releases.
He agreed with Mop Galloway, that the less said about Gabriel’s part the better it would be for the young man. A report was a report, however, and the facts could not be altered. The trick would be to keep the very newsworthy story local. Sheriff Buffington went to work on his photographer, who was also the local paper’s only reporter.
Details were developed, and the deadly hit men with their tape of their intended kill was featured. The Galloways were named, but Gabriel’s tender years were glossed over.
The story was the weekly’s lead, but it was four days old by publishing day and, as old news, the big papers barely reported on inside pages. The local TV station had the sheriff on, of course, but they, too, were a day late. Buffington made political hay explaining the technicalities of interstate crime and his initiatives involving the FBI who entered the case because it was interstate. Some aspects of the story made the local news each week throughout the summer, but Gabriel left early for school. He would spend two extra weeks at his home in The Notch before reporting to Carson Long for his senior year.
Mop Galloway got Sheriff Sonny Brunner on the phone and explained all that had happened. He sent copies of the paper and received the sheriff’s assurances that the information would be held close to the sheriff’s vest, but if questions were asked, Brunner would not be blindsided and could explain with appropriate emphasis.
Mop also informed attorney Dan Grouse who was completely flabbergasted by the violence and Shooter’s part in it. Mop worked at getting the attorney to understand that the Florida prison system now had the bad guy locked down without phone or visitations other than his lawyer, with his mail censored and federal charges probably pending. Mop claimed the danger was squelched, and Gabriel would not be coming back to Montana, anyway.
Until he graduated in June, Shooter would stay in the east. He would be a couple of months shy of eighteen, on graduation, but as soon as it was legal, Gabriel intended to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. It could be a long time before he again visited Montana.
Mop hoped fervently that the news of the shootings would not leak to the school and into the cadet corps. Gabriel did not need the notoriety of having killed a man—perhaps two men—for his final year in high school.
Young Shooter was safe in the east, but Mop Galloway bought a leather vest that he wore religiously. The vest zipped in the front and had two deep pockets that almost met in points just below his belt buckle. Virtually undetectable, each pocket held a lightweight, titanium Smith and Weston .357 magnum, hammerless revolver equipped with Crimson Trace Lasergrips. A touch of the button along his second finger placed a red dot on what was aimed at. The bullets went directly to the dot.
Mop still wore his ankle holster and the .22 revolver. But unless he was caught in the shower, anyone coming for him would eat a full meal of handloaded .357 slugs.
Chapter 11
Sam Elder liked late May weather. The county was finally free of cold snaps, greenery was popping out all over, and the heat of summer had not yet sunk in to wilt everything including humans.
Before some slimy bastard had pushed his house over the cliff, Sam had enjoyed rocking on the porch they had built at the edge of The Notch. Of course, that went down along with the house. Someday, someone would talk and word would come to him naming who did it. Then, Sam figured, the Elders would even the score in spades.
Now, he, and the boys when they were around, lived in a factory pre-fab house brought in on two trailers. The wind blew through the damned dump in the winter, and the sun baked through the flimsy roof in the summer, but he hadn’t bothered with much insurance on the log house, and he couldn’t afford anything better.
If they could just figure a way to get hold of The Notch timber, the Elders could thrive again and maybe this time he would be a little more careful about insuring and keeping an eye out. The house wrecker was still out there, and probably it was the same ambusher who had shot Boxer.
Sam still rocked in the warmth of May sunshine, but now he sat on a pressure-treated wooden deck, backed against the pre-fab, with his 12 gauge coach gun propped alongside.
12-gauge coach gun
Sam was rocking with his eyes closed and half dozing when someone said his name.
“Mister Elder.”
The unexpectedness of it jerked Elder awake, and his hand went around the forestock of his shotgun.
His visitor was a young man, and Sam’s careful look showed that he wasn’t carrying a weapon, and he did not look dangerous. The boy had
sure gotten close, though. He was standing with his back toward The Notch and only seven or eight steps off the wooden deck.
Sam said, “You shouldn’t sneak up on a man, boy.” He waggled the shotgun suggestively. “What are you doing here, anyway?”
“I’m Gabriel Galloway, Mister Elder.”
Then, Sam recognized him. “Oh yeah, you’ve grown. You look different.”
Galloway did look different. He was man-sized and he was dressed funny. He had something weird on his feet, and there was a coiled rope in his left hand.
Sam said, “What are you doing up here, Galloway, and what in hell have you got on your feet?”
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