"What about me?" Kate asked.
"How about you go on ahead a ways further, then start making your way down along the far side of those ruins?" J.D. pointed. "If Hiram's got backup bushwhackers waiting like we figure he does, some of them are sure to be waiting in there. Maybe all of them, but I got a hunch there'll be some in that tree line down by the creek, too."
"If that's the set-up, you'll be walking into a crossfire."
J.D. shook his head. "No, not with you for the boys in the ruins to contend with. They're bound to see you coming so they'll have to worry about you before they do me. All you've got to do is keep from getting picked off before you've spotted your targets for when the blasting starts."
"When will that be?"
"Since it seems like Hiram wants to make a show out of it this time before we get to the actual shooting, I figure he'll have his boys on hold until he opens the ball himself. Should give you plenty of time to get in a good position."
Kate's brows furrowed with concern. "But you'll be out in the open pretty much all the way. When I get down in amongst those ruins, I may not be able to keep you in sight for at least part of the time. And if you're right about Hiram having men over in that tree line, too, then you'll still have lead coming at you from two directions once things pop—from the trees and from Hiram."
"There's plenty of scrub brush and young trees down there for me to squirm in behind. I'll make out okay. You just worry about keeping your own pretty self out of the way of any flying lead and do what you have to in amongst those charred timbers. If we're going to try and take Hiram alive and allow him to duck for cover, those ruins will be the closest place for him...You may end up with him smack in your lap."
* * *
After exchanging a quick kiss for luck, they parted and started on their separate courses.
In addition to the Colt riding on her hip, Kate was also armed with a .44 caliber Starr Army Model revolver, with a six inch barrel, tucked in the waistband of her split riding skirt at the small of her back. J.D. was packing his own Colt and once again wielding the Winchester Yellowboy. If this combined firepower wasn't enough to get the job done against Hiram and his hired coyotes, then there was little chance they'd be in a condition to fire any more rounds, anyway.
J.D. started down the slope.
The sun was hot on the back of his neck. Internally, though, a kind of cool, calming current was running all through him, mind and body alike. His hands were steady, his ceaselessly sweeping eyes were clear and alert. This was what he did. What he was good at—one of the best around.
His gaze flicked momentarily in the direction of Kate. The same, he knew, was true for her. The Ice Princess, when it came to gun work. In the beginning, when they'd first started riding together, there had been a time or two when the concerns and protective inclination any man would naturally feel toward the woman he loved had caused J.D. to partly lose focus—due to worrying about Kate—on his own part of the action they were involved in. This lack of concentration slowed him enough so that it only added to the risk of the situation for both of them. After that, and after getting roundly chewed out by Kate, he'd learned to put his fears and concerns aside and have complete faith in her coolness and competence.
His angular approach brought J.D. even with the creek end of the burnt rubble, what he assumed had once been the front entrance to the hotel. Another quick glance showed that Kate was no longer in sight, having been lost behind the sloping ground, scrub brush, and sapling growth. J.D. strode out into the open area in front of the ruins.
Up closer now and down on the flat, he saw that the remains of the old hotel were more substantial than he'd first realized. Long stretches of the stone foundation, though blurred by weed growth, were still standing, as well as a handful of blackened wall sections and a few thick, half-charred beams leaning at odd angles here and there. Two towering stone chimneys, rising up from what J.D. judged had once been great hearths at either end of the structure, stood mostly intact. The one back toward the slope was partly fallen away but the nearest one stood tall and square-topped even though the hearth around its base was only rubble.
More places in there to hide than he'd figured, J.D. thought somewhat sourly as he took a stance before the ruins. As if on cue, reminding him that there also were other places for concealment to stay aware of, a low breeze moaned from the direction of the creekside line of trees.
Squaring his shoulders, lifting his chin, J.D. called out. "Woolsey! Hiram Woolsey!"
His voice hung hollow in the emptiness for a long moment.
And then Hiram appeared, emerging from the shadows underneath a scorched timber tipped against a corner of stone foundation. He came forward until he was standing in the sunlight a dozen feet from J.D.
He was medium height, lean and narrow-faced, with dark eyes under a ledge of black brows and thick sideburns flaring flamboyantly wide at the corners of his jaw. He was clad in striped pants tucked into high boots and a gray coat flared wide open to reveal a black-handled pistol thrust into a wide blue sash worn around his waist.
Hiram licked his lips and then spoke in a moderately high-pitched voice with a heavy nasal twang. "You've been wanting a face-to-face meeting. Well, here we are."
J.D. kept his own voice and expression flat, unreadable. "Uh-huh. Just the two of us, is that it?"
Hiram's top lip curled into a sneer. "You think I don't know about your pretty blond partner sneaking down the slope over my shoulder?"
"And I'm supposed to not figure you've got men hidden all around the edges of our little confab here? Bushwhacking is a hard habit to break, from what I understand."
"'Bushwhacking'." Hiram snorted. "What a ridiculous term. One I was blissfully unfamiliar with back in the city, back in civilization where I come from."
"What did you call it? 'Backshooting'? Or just plain old 'yellow dog cowardice'?"
"What are trying to do?" Hiram said, his sneer returning. "Unnerve me by hurling insults?"
"I know better than that. You've probably been called every lowdown name there is."
"And 'gunslinger' is a title of high stature?"
"I prefer gun fighter. It has more class."
Hiram barked a nasty laugh. "What a joke. I haven't seen anyone with even a hint of class since I got this side of the Sierras."
"Careful. You'll insult your latest bunch of hired thugs."
"I pay them enough so they can afford to be insulted and not worry about it."
"That's real interesting." J.D.'s eyes narrowed. "And how much are the Ballard brothers paying you? Enough that you can afford to end up with a bellyful of lead in a six-foot hole in the ground out here on the side of this no-class mountain?"
"They're paying me a hell of a lot more than that ungrateful whore is paying you to risk your neck for her."
J.D. stood with the Winchester gripped in his raised right hand, resting across his shoulder. Close to his ear, he could hear the wood fibers of the stock section above the cocking lever creak quietly as his grip tightened.
"How is the slut paying you, anyway? From the money she'll inherit off her fool of a husband? Or are you taking it out in trade? But where would that leave your pretty little wife? Oh, wait a minute...now I remember. Kinky three-way sessions were always a specialty of Belle's. And I guess it stands to reason that any gal like that blonde of yours, who totes a pistol and makes her way as a gunslinger—excuse me, I mean gun fighter—probably is inclined toward wishing she had a meat pistol, too, so that would make her—"
"Shut your filthy mouth!" The words exploded out of J.D.
"Before you swing that rifle into play, stop and think!" warned Hiram. "Not about payment, but about cost—the risk of costing you and your wife your lives. And for what? For a lousy goddamn whore?"
* * *
Inside the ruins, Kate knew how hard J.D. must be struggling to hold his temper and keep from blasting the foul-mouthed Hiram. She knew, because she was fighting the same battle herself.
She had maneuvered into a position where she had a clear shot at Hiram if she'd wanted to take it. But that wasn't the plan...if and when it came to cutting down the piece of slime, then it was J.D.'s call to make.
Besides, should shooting break out, Kate had plenty to occupy her attention right in her immediate surroundings. She harbored no fantasy that she'd made it this far without being spotted. She, in turn, had spotted one of Hiram's hirelings and had a pretty good idea where another was. In the latter case, it wasn't that she had seen or heard anything specific, but rather a matter of sensing there was someone there. Such feelings had proven accurate enough in the past to mean never ignoring one. At any rate, when the fireworks inevitably popped, there wasn't going to be the need to hunt for a target. What it would come down to was who could shoot the fastest and most accurately. In the sooty shadows where she was hunkered down, Kate smiled a thin, confident smile...she liked her chances.
* * *
"If everybody keeps cool heads and plays this smart," J.D. responded to Hiram, "there may be a way to do this without costing any more lives."
"I don't think so. But I'm willing to listen."
"It's real easy. You give the right answer to a simple question and then agree to go back to Frisco and never bother Belle again, we call it even and call it quits."
Hiram grunted disdainfully. "What I thought. Nothing but a bucket of hog slop. In the first place, you've got no kind of advantage to be making the call on anything. You're covered by more guns than your stupid cowboy brain can probably count. Same for little wifey. Shame to have to blast a doll like her to pieces. But it looks like we're not going to have a choice because, in the second place, there's no way in hell I'm going back to Frisco without Belle. Dead or alive."
"What sense does that make? She can't earn money dead. Even alive, she'll never earn back what the Ballards have paid you to chase her clear the hell out here."
As if by rote, Hiram said, "It's a matter of principle. And it sends a message to any other whore who might be thinking about trying the same stunt."
The coolness circulating through J.D. suddenly turned ice cold. It was a familiar feeling to him, the one that signaled a situation had reached the point where there was nothing left but to start throwing lead. "Any message sent back to Frisco by you," he said in a tone as chill as the way he felt inside, "is going to have to come from Hell."
In the same instant, J.D. shrugged the Yellowboy off his shoulder and swung it down and forward in a swift, smooth motion. The forestock slapped solidly into the cupped palm of the left hand he reached out to brace the barrel. Simultaneously, his finger stroked the trigger and the first shot roared out. As fast as he could lever rounds into the chamber, J.D. fired twice more, aiming low, meaning to cut Hiram's legs out but leave him alive.
With surprising speed, Hiram yanked the pistol from the sash around his waist and was thrusting it toward J.D. when the first slug hit him in the right thigh, just above the knee. He screamed and twisted away, managing to snap off a wild shot that went harmlessly high and wide. Another of J.D.'s shots chewed into the dirt, but the third one also hit Hiram, shattering his left ankle. Hiram screamed again.
The two men hit the ground at the same time—Hiram because he had no choice, J.D. because he knew he needed to duck away from the volley of shots that were certain to be coming his way. He was right. No sooner had he landed on his stomach and began scrambling for the cover of some brush tangled around the trunk of a young cottonwood than bullets sizzled through the air above his head and went slapping through the scrub growth near where he'd been standing.
* * *
At the sight of J.D. swinging his Winchester into play, even before he triggered his first round, Kate sprang into action. She knew for certain where one of Hiram's concealed gunnies was, and she also knew that he knew where she was. So, as her Colt leaped into her fist, she pitched herself hard to the left—lunging four feet away from where the gunny would be aiming—and squeezed off a shot while she was still in mid-air. Exactly as she'd calculated, the gunny was spinning and firing at where she had been when her slug caught him high in the chest, just below his Adam's apple, slamming him back and down.
A calculation Kate had failed to make, however, was to take into consideration how much dust and loose soot had accumulated on the skeleton of timbers amidst the hotel ruins. When she landed and rolled—intending to rise up and swing her Colt toward where she had sensed the second gunny was—she bumped against an upright board tilted against some horizontal ones and a boiling, blinding, choking shower of black granules was knocked loose to rain down on her.
She fell back, coughing and cursing, eyes burning. A pair of shots rang out and smacked into blackened timbers uncomfortably close, dislodging more soot. Kate fired blindly in the direction she thought the shots had come from and then ducked down, squirming to find cover under the roiling clouds of smothering blackness.
* * *
Out on the flat in front of the hotel, J.D. was also squirming low to find cover from the lead pouring hot and heavy in his direction. Like he'd anticipated, Hiram had placed two shooters in the trees down by the creek. But the satisfaction of having that anticipation proven out wasn't gaining him much right at the moment, not with the pair of them bent on trying to blow his head off. The one thing he had going for him, though, was that the damn fools were armed only with handguns, diminishing their accuracy at the distance involved. With his Winchester, he was able to make it hot for them in return and, if given just a glimmer of a target, to do so with truer results.
The flip side of that, unfortunately, was the fact he couldn't concentrate solely on the creek shooters because he had Hiram and however many gunmen were inside the hotel ruins—at least until Kate took care of them—to worry about from the other side.
Whimpering and cursing and mewling in pain, Hiram was crawling raggedly across the ground, trying to gain the cover of the tall stone chimney. He still gripped his gun in one hand and, twice now, he had reached behind himself and fired again at J.D., but without really aiming.
"Keep that bastard pinned down, boys!" he hollered as he crawled. "My legs are shot to hell, but don't let him kill me!"
"Stop crawling and lay still! Throw your gun away and call your dogs off, I'll let you live," J.D. offered, still hoping to try and keep Hiram alive long enough to get an answer on whether he had anything to do with the killing of Oliver Braedon.
"You go to hell!" Hiram's voice trembled with pain and rage and fear.
A fresh volley from the tree line shooters forced J.D. to flatten and hug the ground once more.
He wondered what was going on in the ruins. There'd been shooting from inside—though none of it aimed his way, from what he could tell—only then it had gone quiet. He felt a pang of concern for Kate, but was forced to sharply remind himself that she could take care of herself. What was more, he couldn't do her any good if he allowed himself to be distracted and ended up with a bullet through his skull.
J.D. guardedly swung his attention back toward the creek, peering around the cottonwood trunk and through an opening low in the brush. When the six-gun fire eased up momentarily, he was ready. All he needed was—There! He saw a wink of sunlight reflected off a gun barrel and almost before the wink had faded the butt of the Yellowboy bucked against his shoulder, sending a slug sizzling across the flat and into whoever was holding the gun. J.D. heard a shrill yip of pain and then a man's limp body spilled forward out of the foliage to flop and remain motionless on the ground.
J.D. jerked back behind the tree trunk as two rounds of return fire were sent his way. Glancing over at Hiram, who continued to crawl toward the ruins, leaving a trail of stringy blood in the dust, J.D. emitted a taunting laugh and called to him. "Your saviors are falling fast, Hiram. And the one who's left can't shoot for shit!"
Hiram had dragged himself nearly to the chimney. If he gained its cover and still had the strength to do some more shooting, he could become a serious threat. J.D. k
new he ought to finish him right then and there, regardless of any unanswered questions. But, damn, the thought of shooting a wounded man in the back of the head while he was crawling away on the ground brought out a gag reflex in J.D. that was almost more than he could choke down.
* * *
Kate was still struggling to regain her vision inside the old hotel. She lay very still, wedged deep in a pile of crumbling debris and a thick layer of sediment that had accumulated over what had once been the floor of the hotel. Her only movement was the minimal wiping motion of her left thumb, trying to clear enough gunk out of her watering eyes to be able to see. In her right hand she now gripped the fully loaded Starr revolver.
The only thing keeping her alive, she judged, was the cloud of soot and dust still hanging in the air around her—obscuring her from the second shooter almost as much as her temporary blindness was making him invisible to her.
But she could hear him moving, edging closer to make sure of his kill. Faint crunching and whispery snatches of noise as he brushed too close to a charred timber reached her ears. The sporadic shooting from out front helped mask the sound of his movement, but at least it also told Kate that J.D. was still in the thick of the fighting.
As she continued to blink and wipe the gummy wetness from her eyes, Kate realized her vision was starting to improve from nothing to being able to vaguely discern blurry shapes and outlines. Her heart hammered and her grip on the Starr tightened. Yes! Now, if only...
And then, almost directly in front of her, one of the blurred shapes moved. The second shooter was right there, practically on top of her! Kate's mind raced. The only thing she could think was that she was sunk so deep in debris and sediment and so blackened by all the soot that had gotten dumped on her that, through the further impediment of the haze still hanging in the air, the shooter could not see her. He, on the other hand, standing upright against the light from outside, was easily outlined, even to her limited sight.
Blaze! Western Series: Six Adult Western Novels Page 29
