Six-Gun Law

by Jory Sherman

  The clouds turned dark and shadowed the valley by the time Lew and Carol sat down to supper with the kids.

  “It’s going to snow tonight,” Carol said.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, yes, yes, snow,” sang Lynn.

  “A snowman,” Keith said. “A big snowman.”

  “The food is delicious,” Carol said. “Thanks, Lew. I wish you didn’t have to stay in town tonight. You might have to dig us out tomorrow.”

  Lew smiled, but said nothing.

  When they were finished, they heard a rumbling sound.

  “That’s not thunder,” Lew said.

  “It sounds like thunder,” Carol said.

  They all went outside and stood there, watching the long line of wagons heading out of Leadville. A mist hung over the town and the wagons emerged out of that heavy gauze, made even darker by the black thunderheads.

  “Taking the ore down to the smelters at Pueblo,” Lew said. The kids waved to the drovers and ran around like excited birds, jumping up and down.

  “They’ve never seen anything like it,” Carol said. “It’s like a parade to them. And they’ve never seen a parade, either.”

  On and on, the wagons rolled by as the sky grew darker, and then the first flakes of snow started to fall.

  And still the wagons came, as the snowfall grew thicker.

  Finally, in the rear of the caravan, Lew saw a man on a black trotter. The man waved.

  “Who’s that?” Carol asked.

  “Hard to see, but I think it’s Jack Hardy.”

  “Oh, yes, I recognize him now. He’s coming this way.”

  Hardy left the wagon train and rode over to the cabin.

  “Lew,” Hardy said as he reined up.

  “Jack.”

  “You better git while the gittin’s good. Goin’ to be a helluva snow tonight.”

  “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  “We’re hoping to outrun it. I took up the rear so I might have easier going. Wagons will keep the road clear for a good long time.”

  “See you in Pueblo, maybe,” Lew said.

  “Watch yourself, Lew. I saw Don McDermott at Beeker’s dry goods and hardware store when I was leaving. I went in to buy a couple of shovels. He was buying something, too.”

  “What was he buying?”

  “Dynamite.”

  “Dynamite?”

  “That’s what I said. And he’s an experienced powder man. You watch your back.”

  “I will.”

  “McDermott’s not going to blow him a mine shaft, Lew.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Hardy waved good-bye and turned his horse, rode back to the wagons, caught up with his lead drover. He disappeared in the mist and snow, which was falling faster and thicker than before.

  “What did all that mean?” Carol asked. “What Mr. Hardy was telling you about McDermott.”

  “Oh, probably nothing. I ran into McDermott today and told him to leave you alone. I think he got the message.”

  “You did? Was there trouble?”

  “No. Just conversation.”

  He said good-bye to Carol a few minutes after the last wagon rolled out of sight and they were left in the silence of the snowfall. He told her to be ready to ride out in the morning.

  “I wish you wouldn’t go, Lew.”

  “It’s only for a night. See you early in the morning.”

  He wanted to stay. Carol wanted him to stay. But he wanted to give McDermott enough rope to hang himself, and he could only do that by leaving and hoping McDermott would be watching him ride back into Leadville.

  The road was still fairly clear, but the snow was accumulating along the sides. When he rode into town, all the roofs were white. They gleamed like linen sheets in the darkness. Only a few places were still open, and their lamps glowed through the falling snow like orange beacons.

  He rode to the livery stable, but did not go in. He dismounted and waited a few minutes. He heard a horse galloping down Harrison Street, heading east out of town. Then the quiet returned. Lew climbed back up on Ruben after he put on his winter coat. He pulled the rifle from its scabbard and saw that it was still dry.

  He rode to high ground and headed east, riding above the town, heading back toward the cabin where Carol and the children were.

  Ruben picked his way through the trees, dislodging a few rocks as he clung to the sloping hillside. Lew’s heart started pounding as they neared the cabin. Finally, there it stood, isolated, detached from any other signs of civilization, its windows glowing a pale orange through the heavy mist and the falling flakes of snow.

  He tied Ruben to a scrub pine, drew the rifle from its sheath, and walked down behind the cabin. He was close enough that he could hear the voices of the children. They were at one of the windows, looking out at the snow. Every so often, he could hear Carol comment on something they said.

  But Lew’s ears were attuned to a different type of sound. He didn’t expect McDermott to ride up to the house, but he had a strong feeling that he would show up, probably on foot.

  He heard a horse whicker on the other side of the road.

  “Please don’t put out those lamps,” Lew whispered to himself. If the house went dark, he knew he wouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  Finally, he heard the crunch of boots on stone. He strained his ears to pinpoint which direction they were coming from as they grew louder and louder.

  He saw a shadow moving through the curtain of snow. A man was walking toward the cabin.

  Lew cocked the rifle, holding the trigger in slightly so that it didn’t make enough noise for the approaching man to hear it.

  Then, when the man was within thirty yards of the front of the cabin, he stopped.

  Lew licked his dry lips.

  A bright flame flared as the man struck a match. For a brief moment, the fire illuminated the man’s face. Don McDermott. He touched the match to something, and Lew saw sparks spew out into the darkness.

  A fuse.

  McDermott let it burn for two or three seconds until the fire was racing down the fuse. Then he drew his arm back and threw it overhand toward the cabin. The fuse made a fiery arc, streaming golden sparks behind it as it sped toward the cabin.

  Lew brought his rifle to his shoulder and took dead aim on McDermott.

  He squeezed the trigger and the rifle jumped in his hand, bucked against his shoulder.

  Lew dropped his rifle and ran toward the cabin. He didn’t even look toward McDermott. He’d heard the bullet hit something and then heard a sound like a body falling.

  There were a half-dozen sticks of dynamite tied together.

  The fuse was burning short when Lew came upon it. He knew he had only a second or two to either put out the fire by pinching the fuse, or toss the lethal bundle as far as he could throw it.

  The fuse sizzled like a hissing snake as Lew bent over to pick up the sticks of dynamite.

  Each second seemed to last a thousand hours as the fuse burned down to the blasting cap.

  A lifetime passed in the agony of that last second of life. The hissing stopped and there was dead silence in that same passage of hours and years and lifetimes.

  An eternity in a single tick of a man’s pocket watch.

  29

  JUST AS LEW’S HAND GRABBED THE DYNAMITE, THE FRONT door opened behind him. Then a shot exploded from where McDermott had been a few moments before. A bullet plowed a furrow in front of Lew as he threw the sticks of dynamite toward the road. A shotgun blasted from behind him, spewing orange sparks into the night.

  The dynamite exploded in midair, a huge blast that knocked Lew to the ground, burst in his eardrums with deafening force. For a single vivid moment, he saw McDermott staggering toward him, pistol in hand. He lit up like a wax figure in a lighted gallery, and then disappeared as the fire in the sky went out, smothered by snow, its many brilliant sparks extinguished as they fell to earth.

  Lew looked over his shoulder,
saw Carol standing in the lighted doorway of the cabin, a smoking shotgun in her hands.

  “Get back inside,” Lew yelled, then turned back to McDermott.

  He heard the front door slam shut, cutting off the shaft of light that had partially illuminated McDermott. Lew saw a shadow through the white drapes of the snow. The man was still coming toward him, his right arm outstretched. Lew jumped to his feet and drew his Colt, surprising even himself with his speed.

  McDermott fired his pistol.

  Lew saw him clearly in the bright orange flash from the pistol’s muzzle, saw him for an instant as his weapon spat death at him. Lew went into a crouch and held his pistol with both hands to steady his aim, something he had practiced for months back home.

  Lew squeezed the trigger even as there was the chilling sound of a bullet whizzing past his ear, a ghostly rustle of wind in the eerie whiteness of the dark. McDermott vanished as the muzzle flash disappeared. In place of his shadow, Lew saw only the orange afterglow of the pistol blast, a maddening vision that burned through his pupils and etched itself like a splash of acid in his brain.

  “Arrrgh,” McDermott grunted.

  Lew sidestepped from his position, then charged ahead several paces.

  And there, looming out of the snowy ink of night, McDermott reappeared, still standing, his pistol at the ready, staring at the lighted cabin.

  McDermott was hit. Lew could see that by the way the man swayed to keep his balance. How badly, Lew did not know.

  McDermott spotted Lew at that moment and swung his pistol.

  Too late.

  Lew stopped, crouched, and fired. The range was no more than a dozen feet.

  The hammer of the Colt struck the primer, exploding the powder in the cartridge. Flame and lead burst from the muzzle at over nine hundred feet per second, striking McDermott with the energy of a wrecking ball. McDermott staggered backward with the impact of the bullet. His gun hand went limp with the shock of it and his pistol dropped onto the snowy ground.

  McDermott crumpled, a blank look on his face, a vacancy creeping into his eyes like a soft mist. Lew stood over him, holding his Colt close to McDermott’s left cheek. He thumbed back the hammer, breathing hard and fast, his temples throbbing with the rush of blood.

  “Damn you, McDermott, I warned you to leave Carol alone.”

  “Who . . . who in hell are you?” McDermott babbled, staring at Lew with cloudy eyes as the pain stabbed at his senses.

  A wind, seemingly risen from nowhere, blew past the two men. The snow swirled around them, the flakes like dervishes dancing a macabre series of pirouettes around the two men. McDermott slumped onto the back of his legs until he was in a kneeling position.

  Lew’s finger caressed the trigger. It would only take a slight squeeze to blow McDermott’s brains to mush.

  “Death wind,” McDermott murmured. “A wind of death . . .”

  Lew heard footsteps behind him. He looked up and there was Carol, the shotgun in her hands. She was staring at McDermott like a woman in a trance.

  She looked like a wraith in her pale nightgown, the wind making it flap and then plastering it to her form until Lew could almost see through it.

  “Death . . .” McDermott said, and pitched forward, smashing his face into the patina of snow that lay on the ground.

  Lew eased the hammer back down and slid his Colt back in its holster. He knelt down and put two fingers just under McDermott’s ear, feeling for the pulse.

  There was none.

  “Is he . . .” Carol stammered.

  “He’s dead,” Lew said.

  The shotgun in her hands dipped as she relaxed, the barrels pointing to the ground at a forty-degree angle. Lew stood up and she ran to him, pressed against him. He could feel her body tremble against his. Then she began to shiver with the cold.

  The brief wind stopped and the snow fell straight down, faster and faster, thicker and thicker, until they stood in a white vortex of nothingness, a lump of a man at their feet, his back turning white as the snow clung to his coat.

  “What did he mean?” she said.

  “I don’t know.”

  “That sudden wind. Was it . . .”

  “I don’t know,” he said again. “Let’s go inside before you freeze to death.”

  “Yes, yes. Inside.”

  She seemed dazed as Lew walked her back to the cabin. The door was open and the children stood there in bewilderment, like two orphan waifs come to beg in their long nightgowns.

  Lew pushed Carol inside.

  “I’ll be back,” he said. “I’ve got to get my horse in out of the weather. Lock the door.”

  “Hurry,” she said.

  Lew walked away, the snowflakes touching his face like cool kisses from silken lips. He retrieved his rifle, then walked a zigzag course up the slope. Ruben whinnied as he came near. Lew patted his neck and untied the reins. He and the horse walked back down the slope, which was turning slippery under their feet.

  Lew carried only his rifle when he knocked on the cabin door.

  Carol opened it and he stepped inside, snow swirling in his path. She closed the door.

  “I left my bedroll in town,” he said.

  “You won’t need it, Lew. Set your rifle down and let me take your hat. The children are in bed and I’ve brewed some fresh coffee.”

  “I should—”

  “Shhhsh,” she whispered and took his hat, set it on a chair. She took his hand and led him to the divan.

  It was snug inside the cabin. Carol had a fire blazing in the hearth. He could see the snowflakes dancing against the windowpanes, melting as they struck, leaving tiny streaks of water, like snail tracks, on the glass.

  And there was no wind outside. Only the gently falling snow.

  It was quiet in the Double Eagle that afternoon when U.S. Marshal Horatio Blackhawk sat down with Wayne Smith for his first interview with the policeman.

  While they were talking, Blackhawk remembered a report he had seen when he was working in Springfield. It was a police report from Bolivar, Missouri, regarding theft by a man named Wayne Smith. And Smith, according to the report, was a fugitive from the law.

  But Blackhawk said nothing to Smith. He regarded him with the cold dispassionate eye of a lawman as he had been trained to do.

  Smith was a pasty-faced man with long sideburns, attesting to his vanity, a neatly trimmed, pencil-thin moustache, and a squirrel’s tail of a small beard flourishing at the point of his pointed chin. He had small, deep-set eyes so pale and blue they looked dead. Smith was thin and wiry, cocky as an Irish sailor home on leave.

  “So, you think this Lew Zane murdered your father-in-law, Jeff Stevens?” Blackhawk said after a few moments of silence in their conversation.

  “Dead sure of it. I’d like to see the bastard hang. Jeff was a good old fella.”

  “What makes you so sure Zane did it?”

  “Hell, he was the one rode with Jeff. He had the opportunity. Probably robbed him.”

  “Do you have any idea where Zane might be now?”

  Smith took a sip of whiskey. He was off duty. Blackhawk was nursing a whiskey of his own.

  “I heard tell he went up to Leadville. I’ll get him. One of these days.”

  “And you’ll arrest him?” Blackhawk asked.

  “Damned right. And I’ll see him hang.”

  “What about your wife, Smitty? Isn’t she up in Leadville?”

  A nervous twitch worked the muscle under one of Smith’s eyes.

  “She’ll be coming down any day now. They had a snow up in the mountains, but the roads ought to be clear.”

  “You think Zane will show up here in Pueblo?”

  “Sooner or later.”

  Blackhawk left it at that. He knew who Wayne Smith was and he could keep for the time being. In fact, Smith might be the man to draw Zane out in the open if he did come back to Pueblo.

  When Blackhawk left the Double Eagle, he rode straight to the Grand Hotel, where he had an
appointment with a man from Leadville, John Jacob Hardy, otherwise known as “Jack.”

  “That was quite a display you put on today, Mr. Hardy,” Blackhawk said as they talked over whiskeys in the hotel bar. It was dark, with a pale sun slanting through the stained-glass windows of the saloon. “Those silver bars looked mighty tempting to a few people.”

  “Call me Jack, Marshal. And they sure as hell don’t call you Horatio, do they?”

  “None do.”

  “Well, that display was for the short-lived pleasure of a member of Pueblo’s finest, one Wayne Smith. I think Smith plans to pull off a robbery of that silver down around Spanish Peaks when we haul it to Santa Fe. Only, I’ve got a surprise for Mr. Smith. When he attacks us, he’ll get no silver. Only hot lead.”

  “Do you know Smith’s wife? She was in Leadville, I understand.”

  “Met her. Got two kids.”

  And that’s when Hardy told Blackhawk about the insurance policy Smith had taken out on Carol. He told him about Don McDermott and a man named Lew Wetzel Zane.

  “So you think this Zane feller is with Wayne’s wife?”

  “He was looking after her and the kids.”

  “I want you to do me a favor, Jack,” Blackhawk said.

  “Glad to. What is it?”

  “Hold off on going to Santa Fe until after Zane and the Smiths come down from Leadville.”

  “How come?”

  “I’ll let you know later. You might not have to worry about Wayne Smith robbing you.”

  “Are you going to arrest him?”

  Blackhawk smiled.

  “Who knows what will happen,” he said.

  The day came when Lew brought Carol and her children down to Pueblo. The snow on the foothills had melted and they stood stark and mottled in the sunlight. The high peaks were still mantled in snow, but the roads were passable.

  Lew’s stomach quivered with the sensation of flying insects. Carol had told him that she was going to divorce Wayne the minute she got to Pueblo. Lew had made no comment. He had fallen in love with her, but he knew Wayne wasn’t going to give her up. Not without a fight. And he might even try and kill her.