by Tabor Evans
“Well, you shoulda, Harley. Shoulda told me about your suspicions soon as I pulled all that dynamite outta my saddlebag. Men in our position can’t make mistakes like this. We might all end up responsible for the untimely death of a woman, and sweet Jesus, perhaps even children, for all we know. Ain’t that a horrific thought?”
Court looked stricken when he said, “Children? Christ Almighty, don’t think they’s children up there, do you, Long?”
Longarm cast a worried glance back toward Calico Jack’s stronghold. “Reckon we can talk to him? Did you, or any of your people, try to feel him out a bit before you started back to Hadleyville for help?”
“Sure. ’Course we tried. He can hear us just fine. Fact is, I’ve come to think that sound kinda creeps up his way, somehow. Echo in this place can be damned near deafening when we’re pourin’ lead in on him. Yeah, I figure ole Jack hears damned near everything we do and most of what gets said. Willing to bet you the piddling six dollars in my wallet he already knows someone else has showed up to help us bring him to book.”
“Well, that might be stretchin’ it a mite.”
“No. Don’t think so, Marshal Long. We shouted up first chance that presented itself. Tried to get him to come out. Told him he’d be safe if he gave it up. Longer we talked, the louder the son of a bitch laughed. Pitched more and more lead our direction ever’ time I opened my mouth.”
“He never called out and said anything about a hostage?”
“Nothin’ ’bout no hostages. I swear it. Not a single word. ’Course, he swore at us in the ugliest kinda language he could lay his tongue to. Accordin’ to ole Jack, every one of us boys from Hadleyville is either a motherfucker or a cocksucker or a puss-covered anal sphincter of some kind or related by birth to some form of stinkin’ human waste.”
A toothy grin spread across Longarm’s face. “Sounds like you boys got an earful.”
“Hell, that’s not the half of it. On top of the constant stream of scabrous lip, the murderin’ wretch musta fired off near a hundred rounds that first day we had him pinned down. Surprised the hell outta me he had that much ammunition available to burn up. We could hear him screechin’ and laughin’ like a loon, shootin’ off his guns and such, but I swear, he never offered to talk and there was no mention a’tall about other folks bein’ up there.”
The tension appeared to drain from Longarm’s face. “Well, maybe we’re okay, Harley. But it might still be a good idea to try and feel him out a bit. Think I just might try and get him to come out and palaver for a spell. Can’t hurt.”
The words had barely tumbled from Longarm’s lips when Rader and Potts cut loose and peppered the hilltop hideout with a hailstorm of lead. Longarm glanced up at the cabin’s heavy front facade and watched as flying chunks of splintered timber and dusty ricochets worked to obscure the posse’s view. Within minutes, the stagnant air at the bottom of the canyon reeked with the acrid smell of spent black powder. Dense gray clouds of drifting gunsmoke hovered overhead.
The unhurried shelling continued as Longarm strolled back to the campfire, poured a cup of coffee from the posse’s pot, then sat down on a rock and pulled a cheroot from his vest pocket. He lit the cigar and took his time smoking it, while nursing the tin of overcooked stump juice. Marshal Court poured a cup as well, but spent his time moving back and forth from one of his men to the other. He talked, patted them on their backs, and encouraged their efforts.
With his last drag on the smoldering, mangled cheroot stub, Longarm stood and called out to Rader and Potts, “That’s enough, fellers. Wanna let ole Jack chew on his predicament for a spell. If he don’t respond, call out or somethin’, then maybe we’ll start up again when Rudy shows himself on the canyon wall.”
For about ten minutes, the inside of Wild Horse Canyon got quieter than a deaf-mute’s shadow. Then, all of a sudden, as though from the bottom of an enormous metal barrel, Longarm barely heard someone say, “That you down there, Long? Seen you come in. Watched everthang you boys done through my long glass. If’n I’d a had my Big Fifty in hand, couple of you fellers would already be dancin’ with Jesus.”
Harley Court whispered, “See what I meant? Damn. Can you believe that? Sounds like he’s sittin’ right here in camp with us.”
Longarm hustled from the fireside, pressed himself against the nearest boulder, then snatched a fleeting peek up the slope. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “That you, Jack?”
Somewhere up above, Longarm could scarcely make out a man’s laughter. Then, louder the second time, he heard, “’Course it’s me, you stupid, law-bringin’ cocksucker. Who’d you think it was? Jesse Fuckin’ James?”
In spite of himself, Longarm smiled. He called out, “Need to get yourself on down here, Jack. Gonna be hell to pay if you don’t.”
“Well, now, that’s a hoot. Hell to pay if’n I don’t. Shit. Hell to pay if’n I do, too. Oh, I know you boys is up to somethin’. Just cain’t figure exactly what. Seen that feller leave a while back. That don’t mean I’m a gonna give it up. Hangman’s a-waitin’ for me, Long, and you know it. Law cain’t wait to stretch my neck. Think I’d rather die here, maybe take some of y’all with me, than shit my britches in front of a buncha drunk gawkers.”
“No need to make the situation any worse, Jack. Might go and get yourself, or one of these other men, killed for sure if you keep this up. Just come on down. You know me. I’ll treat you right.”
Tinny laughter filtered down from the cabin. “Yeah, bet you would. You know, Long, I seen you a year or so back. You was there when they hung Squeaky Evans from the gallows up in Carbondale.”
“I remember, Jack. Nasty business. Squeaky murdered a parlor house whore up that way. Cut her throat with a straight razor. Damn near took her head off.”
“Yeah, well a man shouldn’t have to die in such an unsightly manner for murderin’ no parlor house whore. Folks talked it around that you was the one what caught ole Squeaky and brought him back to swing. You ’member how that poor man messed hisself right in front of nigh on a thousand people, Long? I do. Ain’t lettin’ nothin’ even approachin’ that ever happen to me. You sons of bitches gonna have to kill ole Calico Jack right here in Wild Horse Canyon.”
Red-faced and shaking, Marshal Court yelled, “We can damned sure bury you here, or you can come on down and give yourself up. Either way, you ain’t leavin’ this place a free man. Killed people in my town, you son of a bitch, and I’m takin’ you back, one way or the other.” Cackling laughter was the answer to Court’s tirade.
“Come on up here and get me, you badge-totin’ bastards. Ain’t none of you yeller bellys got balls big enough to slap chains on Calico Jack Blackman.”
The mouthy outlaw followed his challenge with a pair of well-placed rifle shots that splattered shards of broken rock all over Longarm and Hadleyville’s angry marshal. Court gritted his teeth, then spat, when broken stone and dust decorated his face. Rader and Potts cut loose with another harmless volley that did little more than make a lot of unneeded, booming racket.
Following a number of similar exchanges, the afternoon settled into relative quiet. As the sun got higher and the day seemed to get longer and sweatier, Longarm made himself a nest, lay down, and drifted off into a much-needed nap. He awoke, pulled out his Ingersoll railroader’s watch, and checked the time. As he snapped the case shut and slid the timepiece back into his vest pocket, Stewart Potts hustled over and pulled him to his feet. Everyone in camp appeared mesmerized by something. The agitated deputy pointed to the canyon wall above the cabin.
“Be damned,” Longarm whispered. “Rudy actually made it. And he done it damned quick, too.”
Beside a massive boulder, perched precariously on the gorge’s rim, Rudy Crabtree leapt up and down and waved his hat. “Everyone wave back,” Longarm said. “Want the boy to know we’ve spotted him.”
For some seconds, the entire party tried to make it clear they’d seen their stalwart compadre. All of a sudden, Marshal Cour
t said, “What the hell’s he doin’? Thought you told him to drop the dynamite on the cabin roof, Long.”
“That’s exactly what I told him. You stood right beside me when I said it.”
“Well, he’s makin’ motions like he’s up to somethin’ else. Can’t imagine what, but he’s actin’ mighty odd.”
It took a bit, but Longarm finally figured out what Court’s enthusiastic deputy had in mind. “Holy shit, boys. He’s gonna blast that big ole rock up there loose and drop it right on top of Calico Jack’s unsuspecting noggin.”
Mike Rader made a sound like a pig snorting. “Bullshit. Rudy’s a lot of things—brain smart ain’t one of ’em. Most likely the poor goober’ll blow his own dumb-assed self clean to Kingdom Come.”
Longarm snapped, “Get back to your shooting stations, gents. Let’s give Calico Jack something to occupy his feeble thinker mechanism for a minute or so. Ain’t no way we can stop Rudy from doin’ whatever he has in mind now. So you fellers get to makin’ some noise.”
Soon as the rifle fire cranked up again, Rudy Crabtree disappeared from the precarious edge of the canyon wall like a puff of smoke. For some minutes, the booming sound of Winchesters drowned out just about any other noise a man might have made. Then a resounding thump, which shook the entire floor of Wild Horse Canyon, stopped all of the posse’s concentrated blasting. Everyone backed away from his firing site, raised an anxious gaze, and stared awestruck at the events unfolding more than sixty feet above Calico Jack’s stronghold.
At first, nothing extraordinary appeared to take place. Then a second rumbling thump rattled everyone’s teeth, and the monstrous boulder began to slowly move forward and down. A wave of red dirt squirted from beneath the heavy stone and rained down on the cabin’s poorly constructed roof like a heavenly shower of dirt, rubble, and crushed rock.
Longarm heard someone say, “Sweet Jesus. Looka that, would you? Fuckin’ thing is huge. Bigger’n a Denver and Rio Grande locomotive.”
Rudy Crabtree’s third, and final, effort to move heaven and earth proved beyond any doubt that the boy must have had some powder monkey hidden somewhere deep inside. The explosion’s concussive force hit everyone watching on the canyon floor directly in the face. From beneath the jagged stone, a prehistoric rumble welled up out of the earth’s scarred and tortured hide. Slow and steady at first, the clap of doom grew, swelled, and turned into thunder.
All of a sudden, the boulder slipped free of its earthly bonds. The immense rock tipped forward as if a single grain of sand might stop it, then fell through the air like a gigantic rust-colored cannonball on its deadly way to an eternal resting spot below. It rocketed through Calico Jack’s roof like a Comanche war spear. The rustic building exploded in a cyclone of flying wreckage.
Dust, wood splinters, and all manner of other debris shot toward heaven and in every direction imaginable. The front facade of the log shack splintered into a jillion fragmented chunks, as if all three sticks of dynamite had been detonated inside at the same time. Hand-hewn window frames, attached to the walls with wooden pegs, disintegrated and flew into pieces like shattered glass. The front door broke off its leather hinges, went spinning through the dust-choked air like a tin pie plate, and shot sixty feet down the hill toward the party of lawmen. Several lesser but equally damaging pieces of airborne, rocky debris followed their enormous leader from the canyon wall and crushed anything left standing below.
Longarm heeled it around the string of protective boulders for a closer look. The rest of the party followed as fast as they could run. Soon the entire group had assembled in an amazed knot of pointing, chin scratching, head shaking, and mumbled commentary.
Mike Rader gazed up at the mushroom-shaped cloud of thick, red dust hovering over the obliterated log structure and breathed, “Sweet Merciful Father. That’s got to be the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Watched a feller eat a live scorpion once in a travelin’ show. Even had occasion to see Nekkid Nadine and her snake when I was in New Orleans. Hell, her trick with the serpent warn’t nuthin’ compared to this’un.”
Stewart Potts yelped, “By God, fellers, think I’d pay hard coin to watch this here show again. Got any more of that dynamite, Marshal Long? Maybe we could set off another stick or three just for the pure fun of watchin’ it go up.”
Marshal Harley Court stared in wordless wonderment and, for several seconds, appeared overcome with astonishment.
Skunk Hornbuckle slipped up near Longarm’s elbow. “Helluva performance you done put on for us today, Marshal Long. Hafta say I’m right glad I didn’t rabbit on ya. Wouldna missed this dance for all the whiskey in Cheyenne. Bet folks’ll be tellin’ this tale for years to come and, by God, I was here to bear witness to the whole shebang. Christ, I ain’t never even heard of nuthin’ to match ’er.”
Then, to everyone’s slack-jawed bewilderment and total surprise, a singular and stunning miracle occurred. Calico Jack Blackman stumbled out of the billowing waves of dust churning their way down the hill. Like a ghostly performer in a traveling magician’s show, the murderous outlaw wobbled into view. His hat and most of his clothing had gone missing. But somehow, in some astounding and unfathomable way, the man still had possession of a rifle. He rubber-legged a stumbling path down the slope like a man on a mission. Firing from the hip, the dynamite-and-boulder-blasted outlaw proceeded to spray a curtain of hot lead at anything that moved.
The second shot Blackman snapped off hit Skunk Hornbuckle smack between the eyes like a closed fist. The slug knocked the odiferous outlaw’s head backward as if the angel of death had reached down from heaven and slapped him speechless.
Longarm glanced over just in time to see Skunk’s dead muscles spasm in a useless effort to jerk the smelly killer back into an upright position. A stream of hot, purple blood spewed from the poor goober’s shattered forehead in a stream the size of a grown man’s finger and showered Longarm in the process. Then, Hornbuckle suddenly went as limp as a squeezed-out bartender’s rag and dropped to the earth like a hundred-pound bag of bird shot.
Longarm, Marshal Court, and both of the astonished deputies came back to themselves like men brought out of a deep trance and proceeded to return fire as fast as they could lever shells through their rifles. But Calico Jack kept coming, and he laid down a relentless wall of air-splitting lead.
Jack’s near-misses kicked dirt into Longarm’s eyes, scared the hell out of the two Hadleyville deputies, and forced Longarm to spin on his heel and head back for cover behind one of the rocks. Before he could make it all the way to complete safety, a blue whistler from Blackman’s amazingly accurate weapon burned a path above his ear and knocked him flat on his back.
The rest of the posse yelped and scattered like scared dogs. Marshal Court ran like hell, took a flying leap, and landed behind several stacked saddles piled near the campfire. He scrambled around on his belly, laid his weapon’s barrel on a saddle for support, and took trembling aim.
Longarm swam back to the surface of his muddled senses, rose to one elbow, and fingered the bloody trench over his ear. Dizzy and tangle-headed, his bug-eyed gaze landed on the open muzzle of Calico Jack Blackman’s still-smoking rifle. The killer grinned like a thing insane, took two steps that put him within spitting distance of his tormentor, then stopped and laughed out loud. He appeared mighty pleased with himself, and was happier than a gopher in soft dirt.
“Well, Marshal Custis ‘By God’ Long,” the grinning outlaw spat, “you might wanna say a prayer, or two, maybe even three. Your immortal soul’s in jeopardy, cocksucker. Way I’ve got this whole shootin’ match figured, it’s a good deal past your time to shake hands with Jesus, you law-bringin’ son of a bitch.”
Blackman flashed another cheery, yellow-toothed grin, then leveled the rifle up. He even took aim at Longarm’s chest before Marshal Harley Court put one in the maniacal killer’s fogged-up thinker box. The .45-caliber slug went in above Calico Jack’s right eye and pushed most of his brains out the back of
his thick skull.
Court’s miraculous shot straightened Blackman up on the run-down heels of his worn-out boots. Surprised, fluttering eyes rolled up into their sockets. Then he went to ground like a sack full of dirty laundry and almost landed across Longarm’s legs.
Court stormed up to Longarm’s side and helped his bleeding counterpart scramble to his feet. For several seconds, both men stared down at the lifeless corpse. “Shit almighty,” Court whispered, “he didn’t even twitch.”
Longarm pulled out a bandanna, pressed it to his wound, then turned and gazed at his savior in wonder. “You’ve never killed a man like this before, have you, Harley?”
Court appeared unable to move. “No, sir. I’ve shot one or two in the service of my job, but I ain’t never kilt none. Had hoped I’d never have to do such a horrible thing. But I sure as hell kilt this’un though.”
Longarm slapped the unsettled Hadleyville lawman on the back. “Yes, indeed. You most certainly did, Harley. And you saved the hell out of my bacon in the process.”
Chapter 4
In Denver, two weeks later, U.S. Marshal Billy Vail stared across the paper-littered top of his overburdened desk. A thick cloud of pungent cigar smoke hovered above his head. He gazed at Longarm through steepled fingers, nodded, then said, “That may well be the damnedest tale you’ve ever brought back from the field, Custis. My God, you’ve been party to some garter snappers in the past, but the oddity of the combined, bloody demise of Calico Jack and Skunk Hornbuckle will likely go down as one of the most amazing gun battles in the collective history of the West. Bet the papers back East have a field day with this one.”
Slumped in Vail’s guest chair and looking completely wrung out, Longarm snatched a well-chewed nickel cheroot from between chapped lips and shook it at his boss as though the cigar weighed fifty pounds. “Ah hell, Billy. Wasn’t all that much to the dance. Not really. If you’ve seen one boulder the size of a boxcar fall off a cliff and destroy a house, hell, you’ve seen ’em all. Hornbuckle and Calico Jack gettin’ dead in the process ain’t nothin’ more’n a bonus, far as I can tell.”
