“First, you’ll shed your hardware,” Willy Boy said. “Startin’ with you, old man. Use two fingers and toss your six-shooter as far as you can.”
Stone did as he was told. It was either that or be shot. He threw his revolver a good ten feet, then placed his hand on the handle to the coffeepot.
“Now you, boy,” Willy said to Pratt.
“Don’t call me that,” Alonzo bristled. “You’re not much older than I am, if you’re older at all.”
Willy Boy’s jaw muscles twitched. “I’ll call you any damn thing I want. Throw that smoke wagon, now.”
Alonzo’s own jaw worked as he plucked his six-shooter and cast it barely four feet. “There? Happy?”
“You call that far?” Willy Boy said.
“You want it farther, throw it yourself,” Alonzo said.
Stone wished the boy would behave. He was ready to make his move but couldn’t with Willy’s Colt now trained on Alonzo. “Quit givin’ Willy Boy a hard time.”
“Whose side are you on?” Alonzo angrily replied.
Stone was watching Jenkins. Willy Boy’s Colt was cocked, Willy’s finger curled around the trigger. All it would take was the slightest of squeezes to send young Mr. Pratt into eternity. “When an enemy has the better of you, you do as he says.”
“The hell I will.”
Willy Boy said, “You ought to listen to him, boy. The old buzzard knows what he’s doin’.”
“Not if it means kowtowin’ to the likes of you,” Alonzo spat. “Who knows what you did to Jenna, all that time you had her.”
“Why do you keep bringin’ her up?” Willy Boy said. “What’s Jenna Grissom to you?”
“My friend.”
“I wonder,” Willy Boy said, his brow puckering. “Sounds to me as if you’re smitten.”
“She’s a decent gal,” Alonzo said. “Much too good for the likes of you.”
“Insult me one more time. I dare you.”
Alonzo opened his mouth to say something.
Stone’s every instinct warned him that Pratt was about to provoke Jenkins into shooting. In order to save him, Stone did the only thing he could; he hurled the coffee into Willy Boy’s face. The coffee wasn’t as hot as Stone would have liked but it splashed full into Willy’s eyes and Willy stumbled back, cursing, and swiped at them with his sleeve. Stone sprang as Willy Boy’s Colt went off. He felt a searing pain, and then he had hold of Willy’s wrist. Hooking his foot behind Willy’s leg, Stone tripped him. They both went down, Willy Boy growling like a wild beast and struggling to break free.
Stone tried to pin him, but something was wrong. He suddenly felt weak, and his legs wouldn’t move as he wanted them to. A fist caught Stone on the cheek. Willy Boy drew back his arm to strike him again, but Alonzo Pratt pounced on Willy’s free arm and slammed it to the ground.
Despite his wounds, Willy fought fiercely: he bucked; he rammed a knee into Stone’s back.
Stone grew weaker. He lost his grip on Willy Boy’s wrist and Willy thrust the Colt at him. It was Alonzo who swatted it aside as it went off, the blast nearly deafening Stone in his left ear. Alonzo grabbed Willy’s wrist with both hands, and they grappled for control of the Colt. Stone tried to help but his arms were as useless as his legs. He fell onto his side.
The world blurred. Stone was aware of the struggle taking place beside him but he was powerless to help. Gritting his teeth, he tried to rise onto his elbows. He got partway and saw that Alonzo had bent Willy Boy’s arm and the Colt was pointed at the bottom of Willy’s chin.
In a desperate bid to fling Alonzo off, Willy Boy thrashed fiercely. When his Colt went off, the shock on his face matched Alonzo’s own. The slug tore through the soft flesh between the jawbone, up through Willy’s face, causing scarlet to spurt from each nostril, and burst out the top of Willy’s head, taking his hat and some of his brain matter with it.
Stone collapsed.
Alonzo bent over him, concern in the younger man’s eyes. “You were hit? How bad is it? What can I do?”
“Save her,” Stone gasped. “Get the girl away from them.”
“But you . . .” Alonzo said, clasping Stone’s hand.
“I’m dead, son,” Stone said.
“No! You can’t! I need you!”
“Sorry.” Jacob Stone smiled, and was engulfed in blackness.
32
Shock numbed Alonzo Pratt. “Deputy Stone?” He felt for a pulse in the lawman’s wrist and couldn’t find one. “No!” he cried, and pressed his fingers to Stone’s neck. Still nothing. The terrible realization that Stone was gone washed over him and he sat back, shaking his head in denial. “No, no, no, no, no.”
Alonzo gazed blankly about. This was the worst thing that could happen. Jenna needed to be rescued, and the one man most able to do that was gone.
“What do I do?” Alonzo addressed the empty air. His thoughts were in such a jumble, he sank onto his back, closed his eyes, and sought to compose himself.
First off, Alonzo told himself, Jenna wasn’t in any danger. She was back with her father. But she’d told him that she didn’t want anything more to do with the outlaws, and, in fact, wanted to return to California.
The problem with that, Alonzo reflected, was that the outlaws might not let her go. Spiriting her away wouldn’t be easy, not when the four still alive would kill anyone who tried.
Opening his eyes, Alonzo turned his head toward Jacob Stone’s body. “You picked the worst time to die on me, consarn you.”
Alonzo had a choice to make. He could go after Jenna. He could risk his life for her. Or he could take Stone’s horse and collect his packs, and continue on with his life of living hand to mouth, impersonating folks.
Alonzo had a sense that he was at a crossroads. He adored Jenna Grissom. And he had a strong feeling that she liked him, too. Could he turn his back on her? On the only woman to ever show an interest?
If he did go after her, Alonzo decided, and by some miracle succeeded in getting her away from the outlaws, and by some bigger miracle she and he stuck together, things would have to change. He’d have to find real work. He’d have to live an ordinary life, as other people did. Was Jenna worth that? Alonzo surprised himself at the answer that popped unbidden into his head. Of course she was.
“Well, then,” Alonzo said, and stood. He didn’t need the coffee. Fighting Willy had set his blood to racing and cleared his head better than the coffee ever could.
He must head out after the outlaws while their trail was still fresh.
Alonzo collected the lawman’s and Willy Boy’s revolvers and placed them in his saddlebags, then went through their pockets and helped himself to their pokes. In Willy’s he found two pokes and guessed that one might have belonged to Tom Kent. Together, the total came to six thousand dollars, a staggering sum. Their pokes went in his saddlebags, too. Finally, Alonzo took hold of the reins to the lawman’s horse, and climbed on Archibald.
Alonzo stared down at Stone’s body. “Sorry I can’t bury you.” The ground was so hard, it would take hours to dig a grave deep enough. “So long, Jacob,” Alonzo said, and gigged Archibald.
Alonzo reckoned the outlaws must be miles off by now. But he hadn’t gone all that far, and was nearing a bluff with a flat crown and sheer sides, when Archibald raised his head, pricked his ears, and nickered.
Alonzo drew rein. Archibald usually only ever did that when he caught the scent of other horses. “Surely not,” Alonzo said out loud, and then smelled smoke. A tingle of excitement ran through him. The outlaws must have stopped sooner than he reckoned. Climbing down, he led both horses on foot, moving slowly, and as quietly as possible. The bluff swelled until it towered above him.
The outlaws’ tracks bore to the left. Alonzo went to the right, his mouth suddenly dry, the enormity of what he was about to do sinking in. He was pitting himself against the G
rissom gang. Notorious man-slayers who thought he was a lawman and would shoot him on sight.
Alonzo imagined Jenna in his mind’s-eye, and it firmed his resolve. For her he would do this. For her, and the prospect of something he’d never had before: a future.
He took another step, bumped a rock with his boot, and his spur jingled. Stopping, Alonzo broke out in a sweat. Mistakes like that could get him shot. Sitting, he removed both spurs and added them to his saddlebag collection. As an afterthought, he took out Stone’s revolver, checked that it was loaded, and stuck it under his belt, close to the buckle. Two revolvers were better than one.
His chest hammering, Alonzo worked his cautious way around the bluff. With boulders and broken chunks of earth littering the bottom, it stood alone and aloof in the middle of the prairie, its own little world.
A drop of sweat trickled into Alonzo’s left eye, and stung. He thought of the canteens on the saddles, and dearly thirsted for a swallow of water.
The outlaws were on the south side of the bluff. Alonzo came to a boulder as high as an outhouse and as long as Archibald, and peeked around it.
Gray tendrils rose from a campfire. Alonzo couldn’t see the fire because of the intervening boulders. He didn’t see the outlaws or Jenna, either, but he did spy four hobbled horses.
Alonzo left his own horses behind the boulder and cat-footed forward. Drawing both revolvers, he cocked them. He supposed the smart thing to do was wait until dark when he could sneak in unseen. But nightfall wasn’t for nine or ten hours yet. And with any luck, he’d catch the outlaws sleeping.
Alonzo skirted a pile of loose rock. The smoke smell was so strong, he smothered an impulse to cough.
Sometime in the past a rift of dirt, shoulder high, had broken from the bluff and spilled a dozen feet onto the plain. Alonzo started around it and was almost to the end when a figure in a metal helmet suddenly rose, hitching at his pants, and moved toward the fire. They both set eyes on each other at the same instant.
Alonzo stopped and pointed both six-shooters.
Spike Davis turned to stone, his hands on his britches.
“Not a sound,” Alonzo whispered. He didn’t want to shoot; the others would hear. And the Prussian’s revolver was in its holster.
Davis arched an eyebrow as if to say, “Well?”
“Hands in the air,” Alonzo whispered.
The Prussian let go of his pants and they fell down around his knees. As they dropped, he grabbed at his revolver and brought it to bear with his arm extended, military-fashion.
Alonzo squeezed both triggers. He did it without thinking. The twin blasts, magnified by the bluff, resembled the crash of a cannon.
Spike Davis, or Ladislaus Dowid, or whatever his real name happened to be, was slammed back as if kicked by an invisible mule. His legs buckled and he oozed down, his revolver drooping to his side. He stared at Alonzo as if he couldn’t believe what had happened, and went limp.
Alonzo could scarcely believe it, either. The Prussian was supposed to be formidable, yet he’d died as easy as anything. He kept thinking Davis would raise his arm and try to shoot, but no, the man was truly and really dead.
A shout brought Alonzo out of himself. Crouching, he ran to a boulder and sank to his knees.
Someone began yelling, “Davis! Davis! Where are you?”
Alonzo recognized Weasel Ginty’s voice. Boots thudded, coming closer. Alonzo bent so low, his hat brushed the ground. He saw the boots, scuffed and caked with dust, come around the boulder and stop, and he looked up.
Weasel Ginty was gaping at the Prussian, his revolver in his hand, his back to Alonzo.
“Drop your six-shooter,” Alonzo said.
Weasel half-turned, and caught himself at the sight of the twin muzzles of Alonzo’s revolvers. “You!” he exclaimed. “Where’s the other one? The old one?”
“Covering you,” Alonzo lied, and when Weasel looked all around, he said, “I told you to drop that six-gun.”
“Damn you,” Weasel hissed. But he let the pistol drop and raised his hands, fingers spread.
Alonzo’s elation at disarming him lasted all of ten seconds. That was when he realized Burt Alacord and Cal Grissom were somewhere close, and hadn’t made Weasel’s mistake. “Where are your friends?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Weasel looked around again. “I don’t see that old lawdog anywhere.”
“Take a few steps back,” Alonzo commanded to keep Weasel from jumping him.
His features a mask of resentment, Weasel obeyed.
Alonzo rose high enough to peer over the boulder. The smoke still rose and the horses were still there. But no one else. Alacord and Grissom could be anywhere, concealed behind any of a score of boulders, or in rents in the bluff.
“You and that old man have bit off more than you can chew,” Weasel said. “Burt will snuff your wicks.”
Alonzo was trying to think what to do. Should he march Weasel in at gunpoint and demand the others throw down their guns? “How fond are they of you?”
“Burt and Cal? What kind of question is that?”
“Holler to them,” Alonzo said. “Tell them to come out with their hands empty or I’ll put lead into you.”
Weasel laughed.
“You think that’s funny?”
“I think you’re funny, boy,” Weasel said. “How long have you been wearin’ that badge? Any tin star worth his salt knows they’d never do that. They’re my friends, sure. But they’re not dumb.”
Alonzo was stymied. His rescue attempt was falling apart. “Listen. All I want is Jenna. Yell for them to send her to me and I’ll let you go. The three of you can head wherever you want.”
“What’s Grissom’s gal to you?”
“Damn it.” Alonzo was losing his temper. “Quit stallin’. They send her over and you go on breathin’. That’s fair.”
“Except that her pa ain’t about to turn her over to you or anyone else. He’s powerful fond of that girl of his.”
“I don’t want more blood to be shed,” Alonzo said.
Weasel tilted his head quizzically. “What kind of lawman are you? Sheddin’ blood is what you do for a livin’.”
“No, lawmen enforce laws,” Alonzo said, and the ridiculousness of it struck him like a slap in the face. Here he was, a pretend lawman, arguing with a notorious lawbreaker about what real lawmen did.
“Boy, you beat all,” Weasel Ginty said.
“Tell them anyway,” Alonzo grasped at a straw. “Yell to her father.”
“You’re plumb loco,” Weasel said, but he cupped a hand to his mouth and bawled, “Cal? You hear me? The young deputy shot Spike Davis and has me dead to rights. He wants me to make you an offer.”
Every nerve aflame, Alonzo waited for the reply. He thought that maybe Cal Grissom wouldn’t want to give his position away by answering, but then a shout rose from boulders thirty feet away.
“What the hell do you mean by an offer?”
“The deputy says the three of us are free to go if you’ll give him your daughter.”
“What the hell?” Cal Grissom said, sounding as if he thought he hadn’t heard right.
“If you give him Jenna, the rest of us can go free.”
“What does he want with her?”
“Beats me. But that’s the deal. You hand her over and no more blood has to be shed. His very words.”
There was a long pause; then Cal Grissom responded with a question Alonzo never would have expected.
“Is he drunk?”
“Doesn’t appear to be,” Weasel hollered. “Just stupid.”
“Where’s the old one? Deputy Stone?”
“The young one says he’s around somewhere.”
“Deputy Stone?” Cal Grissom shouted. “Deputy Jacob Stone, wasn’t it? Answer me, old man.”
Alonzo had to do something. They’d figure out right quick that he was alone, and close in. “Enough stallin’,” he said, holding both revolvers steady on Weasel Ginty. “Have them send Jenna Grissom over or I’ll send you straight to hell.”
“You’re bluffin’,” Weasel said.
To show that he wasn’t, Alonzo reared up and rammed the barrel of his Colt into Ginty’s gut. Weasel cried out and doubled over, clutching himself. Dropping down again, Alonzo jammed the Colt against Weasel’s temple. “Still think I am?”
“Damn your miserable hide,” Weasel snarled.
Taking a desperate gamble Alonzo slipped behind Ginty, jerked him upright, wrapped his left forearm around Ginty’s throat, and gouged his Colt into Ginty’s ear.
“You see this?” he hollered.
“I see it,” came Cal Grissom’s shout. “Let him go, boy. I’m not handing my daughter over to you no matter what you do.”
So much for Alonzo’s bluff. He stood there not knowing what to do next, and distinctly heard the clicks of twin gun hammers behind him. He didn’t need to look to know who was there.
“You’ll oblige me by takin’ your six-shooter out of my pard’s ear,” Burt Alacord said.
Weasel Ginty chuckled. “About time you showed.”
“I was nosin’ around for the old one,” Burt Alacord said. Then, “I’m waitin’, boy. But I won’t wait long.”
Alonzo racked his mind for a way of turning the tables. The only thing he could think of was, “You shoot me, the lead might go clean through and hit your friend.”
It happened frequently to bystanders during shooting affrays, which was why when bullets commenced to fly, savvy onlookers were quick to hunt for cover.
“Not if I shoot you in the foot,” Burt Alacord said. “And when you fall, I’ll finish you with a shot to the head. Get shed of those six-guns while you still can.”
With no other recourse, Alonzo threw his Colt to one side, then tossed Stone’s to the other. Hiking his arms, he turned. “Do your worst,” he said, hoping he sounded braver than he felt.
Guns on the Prairie Page 24
