The little knife wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was better than nothing, and Clint put all his muscle behind it when he delivered a swing of his own. It had been a reflex to draw the blade with his right hand, but Clint quickly found that arm still aching from the earlier blow Voorhees had landed.
Clint’s blade cut through the front of Voorhees’s shirt and raked along the bigger man’s midsection. It didn’t cut too deeply before it hit a wall of muscle. Without even flinching at the cut, Voorhees twisted his upper body around and slammed his left forearm into Clint’s side.
The impact of Voorhees’s arm was similar to getting hit by an uprooted tree. Clint braced for it as best he could, but that wasn’t enough to keep him from being knocked down. Hitting the ground only added to the dull aches that were piling up on his body. Fortunately, Clint was able to salvage something from the exchange.
Propping himself up on one arm, he reached out with the other to grab for the Colt that he’d lost earlier. As he strained to get ahold of the weapon, Clint could feel the impact of Voorhees’s boots thumping against the dirt as the big man closed the distance between them.
“Gimme that badge,” Voorhees snarled.
Clint threw himself forward and dropped his hand onto the Colt. As he rolled on his side, Clint was already bringing the gun up and tightening his finger around the trigger. His gun stopped short of its target as Voorhees rushed another step forward to drop his leg down like a brick wall.
Clint’s wrist knocked against Voorhees’s leg. The Colt went off. His bullet hissed away into thin air.
“I said gimme that badge.”
Clint didn’t say anything to that. He was still trying to figure out how Voorhees had moved so damn fast. Without wasting any more time, he rolled backward and prepared to take another shot. Even before he’d come out of his roll, Clint could hear Voorhees running after him.
The moment Clint was more or less upright, he fired toward him. That shot came close to the mark, but didn’t draw any blood. Clint’s next shot was taken a split second after the first, which was enough time for him to get himself situated and pick a better target. It wasn’t, however, enough time to put Voorhees down.
The bigger man twitched when the bullet drilled through the meat of his upper thigh, but he didn’t slow down. In fact, his movement wasn’t impeded any more than if he’d gotten poked with a stick. Voorhees must have felt something from the gunshot, because he bared his teeth and let out a low grunt.
Clint was squeezing his trigger again when Voorhees stepped right up to him and swatted at his gun arm once more. The palm of Voorhees’s hand felt like petrified wood and sent a jolt of pain all the way up to Clint’s shoulder. The Colt bucked against Clint’s palm, but it fired more or less straight into the air.
This time, Clint held onto the pistol with every bit of strength he could muster. Unfortunately for him, Clint felt Voorhees’s fist clamp around his own hand as well as the gun, to encompass both of them with his meaty grasp.
“I won’t let you shoot me again,” Voorhees said in a surprisingly calm voice. “Now hand over that badge.”
“Who are you?” Clint asked. “Tell me and I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Voorhees asked as he savagely batted his hand across Clint’s face.
All thoughts of fighting smart or getting information flew out the window the moment that slap landed. Clint didn’t care if he had his gun or not. He was not about to just stand by and be swatted like a bug. Balling up his left fist, he swung with every ounce of strength he had. Clint’s fist connected solidly, but still bounced off Voorhees’s ribs like they were a slab of beef.
Before he could even feel that punch against his knuckles, Clint swung his right foot forward to slam against Voorhees’s shin. He could see a wince on the bigger man’s face, but kicked him in the same spot just to press the matter further.
Now that Voorhees was pulling Clint’s arm almost hard enough to tear it from its socket, Clint had to put his foot down to maintain some of his balance. Almost immediately, Clint raised his other leg to bring his knee crashing into Voorhees’s groin.
Being a man himself, Clint was reluctant to hit that spot unless it was absolutely necessary. Even so, he should have done it way before the scales got tipped so far out of his favor.
Also being a man, Voorhees grunted and winced when Clint’s knee found its mark. He started to double over, but then forced his eyes open to look at Clint with a stare that would have been at home on the face of the devil himself.
Clint managed to pull his fist out of Voorhees’s grasp. The moment he regained control of his Colt, however, Clint also felt something similar to being kicked in the stomach by an angry mule. The impact doubled Clint over and lifted both boots off the ground. He thought some blood might have jumped into the back of his throat, but he was more concerned with the fact that he couldn’t breathe.
Glaring down at Clint, Voorhees watched him hack and wheeze. He then sent his fist down like a hammer to pound against the upper half of Clint’s gun arm and send the Colt once more to the ground. From there, he rained down one hammer after another until Clint was sprawled in the dirt.
Although part of Clint had a vague notion of what was happening, he couldn’t do anything to stop it. He could barely even fill his lungs enough to keep from suffocating. When Voorhees flopped him onto his back and grabbed him by the throat, Clint thought it was the end of his time on this earth.
TWENTY-SIX
Clint didn’t die, but he couldn’t move either. At least, not right away.
With a great amount of effort, Clint pulled in half a breath and rolled onto his stomach. The pain that ignited in his ribs, arms and chest was more than enough to get his limbs beneath him and lift him partly off the ground. Once he was on all fours, Clint felt another splash of something against the back of his throat and opened his mouth to spit out the vomit that had collected there.
He wasn’t too sick, but those motions reminded him of how badly his stomach had been pummeled by the bigger man. Every muscle had been tensed, only to receive a beating that felt as if it was still happening. Knowing that he wasn’t going to feel any better crawling back to town, Clint gritted his teeth against the pain and hauled himself to his feet.
Halfway up, Clint remembered the face of the man who’d dropped him. That thought lit a fire in Clint’s belly that not only got him walking back to where he’d left Eclipse, but forced him to walk tall the entire way. As he made his way to the spot he’d seen the Darley Arabian, Clint reached for the holster at his side.
It was empty.
That discovery stopped him in his tracks.
Clint kept his hand on the empty leather and turned around quickly enough to send another wave of pain through his entire body. The last time he’d seen his gun, it was getting knocked from his hand as if it was nothing more than a bothersome toy. He almost didn’t know what to think when he saw the Colt lying right where it should have landed.
Keeping perfectly still, Clint shifted his eyes to look around for any sign of the bigger man. Surely, the monster wouldn’t have just walked away and left Clint with his gun in sight. Clint became even more confused when he felt his gun belt and found the loops were still mostly filled with spare ammunition.
It had to be a trap.
Didn’t it?
Clint walked toward the gun cautiously. Part of him was expecting to be ambushed along the way or have some sort of trap sprung once he got there. But he made it all the way to the Colt without incident. In fact, the area seemed completely dead.
It was a bad choice of phrase, but accurate all the same. Although it hurt his battered body, Clint bent down to snatch up the Colt as quickly as possible. Once it was in his hand, he held it at the ready and turned to get a look all the way around him.
There was nobody coming.
There was nobody in sight.
As far as he could tell, there wasn’t a living thing in the range of his pistol.
For the moment, that suited Clint just fine. Then again, another possibility jumped to his mind that made Clint shudder. Drawing in a painful breath, he let it out in a whistle that was aimed at the barn.
The next few quiet moments put a feeling of dread into Clint’s belly. That feeling passed as soon as he heard hooves thumping against the ground and saw Eclipse trot from his spot around the back of the barn.
“Good to see you, boy,” Clint said as he scratched the Darley Arabian behind the ears. “I thought he might have gotten to you, too.” Just to be certain, Clint did a quick check of the stallion’s head, torso and legs.
“Looks like you’re all right,” Clint said. “At least something went right.”
It wasn’t an easy task, but Clint pulled himself up into the saddle. Once there, he checked the Colt once more and found it to be exactly the way he’d left it, spent rounds and all. After replacing the empty shells with fresh bullets, Clint holstered the pistol and took another look around.
Something seemed strange.
Despite being glad to be alive and relatively well, Clint couldn’t help but wonder why the big man would leave him that way after clearly gaining the upper hand.
When he thought back to what little the man had said, Clint realized what he should be looking for. He reached up for his shirt pocket, even though he knew what he would find. Sure enough, the badge Henry had given him was gone.
Clint didn’t bother looking around for the badge. He knew he wouldn’t find it. What he needed to do was find the man who’d taken it, and he needed to be quick about it.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Clint made it back to Solace, despite the fact that every bump along the way felt like another punch to his stomach. By the time he hitched Eclipse to the post outside of the Archer Hotel, Clint was becoming accustomed to the constant pain every breath cost him. He must have looked nearly as bad as he felt, since he attracted plenty of troubled stares on his way into the hotel and up to Bower’s room.
After knocking on the door, Clint pushed the door open as soon as the Texas Ranger took a peek outside.
“Jesus Christ, Clint,” Bower said as he stepped aside and then shut the door after Clint had entered. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Where’s Mark?” Clint asked.
“You look like you went through hell.”
“Where’s Mark?”
“He’s in the room across the hall,” Bower replied. “That way, we can hear if someone’s coming, or the other can get behind someone if they—”
Not too interested in Bower’s strategy, Clint left the room and stepped across the hall. He knocked on the door and heard steps on the other side of it. “Open up, Mark. It’s Clint Adams.”
The door came open. When Clint got a look at the face of the man who’d opened it, he thought he might be looking into a mirror. Mark’s face was bruised and bloodied. His eyes were somewhat vacant, but that could be explained by the stench of whiskey on his breath.
“What the hell happened to you?” Clint asked.
Mark started to grin, but winced instead. “I could ask you the same thing.”
Just then, Bower placed his hand on Clint’s shoulder and pushed him toward the door. Clint reacted quickly and almost knocked Bower into a wall in his haste to shake free of the younger man’s hand.
“I’ve been shoved around too much today,” Clint said.
Bower held up his hands and stepped forward again. “Fine, but let’s take this inside. There’s too many folks checked into this hotel, and I don’t want to conduct business where any of them can hear.”
Mark opened the door all the way so Clint and Bower could enter. The room looked similar to Bower’s, except for the half-empty bottle of whiskey sitting next to a basin filled with bloody water. “Unless you fell off your horse and landed on a rock,” Mark said, “my guess is you crossed paths with the same man I did.”
“Tall guy who could have taken a hit from a train?” Clint asked.
Mark grinned and displayed a bloody set of teeth. “That’s the one.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“I went to get a look at the barn that burned down,” Mark explained. “It didn’t look like anyone was killed, so I thought the fire was just an accident. When I was looking around inside, that big fellow cornered me. At first, I didn’t think he was going to be a problem. He didn’t even have a gun.”
Bower swore under his breath. “I shouldn’t have let you go on your own. I should’ve been there.”
“No offense,” Clint said, “but I doubt you would’ve done much good if you were there. That is, unless you’re in the habit of shooting first and asking questions later.”
Bower shrugged and shook his head. “Either one of you would have stood a better chance if you weren’t alone.”
“And either one of us could have insisted that you come along,” Clint added. “So it’s all of our fault. Go on with what you were saying, Mark.”
“There’s not much else to say. He walked up to me and I started asking him a few questions. Just as I was getting suspicious, he grabbed hold of me and knocked me around so bad that I could barely move.”
“Do you think he was the man we were after?” Bower asked. “There’s plenty of crazy men living out on their own.”
“He was the one,” Mark replied. “He said he knew we’d been after him and that we weren’t about to take him in.”
“Did he ask for your badge?” Clint asked.
Mark lowered his head and nodded. “Yeah,” he said shamefully. “And he got it, too.”
“Don’t feel so bad,” Clint told him. “He got mine, too.”
“You don’t have a badge,” Bower pointed out.
“Henry gave me one to help make things easier for me. Turns out it was worse than raw meat hanging around my neck.”
Bower shook his head and grumbled, “Henry’s not going to like this one bit. Not only did we find this killer and let him get away, we let him take two Texas Ranger badges in the process. Those badges can be put to some mighty bad purposes, you know.”
Clint looked at the young lawman and silenced him with a glare. “I know,” he said. “But that big fellow won’t have those badges for long. I intend on taking them back as soon as I can.”
“Sure. If we ever catch up to him. He’s got to be miles away by now.”
“He didn’t go anywhere,” Clint said under his breath.
“And what’s going to stop him?” Mark asked. “I don’t mean any offense either, but none of us did much good by standing in his way.”
Nodding as much as his aching head would allow, Clint said, “Which is exactly why he won’t go anywhere just yet.”
“You think he’s gonna start another fire?” Mark asked.
Clint kept nodding. “After what I’ve heard and seen of this killer, he won’t be happy just lighting up an abandoned barn. I’d wager he’s got something else planned that’ll harm plenty more than just some field mice. He’s also feeling pretty good about himself right about now.”
“Hell,” Mark grunted. “If I’d put a beating on someone like the one I got, I’d be feeling damn near untouchable.”
“Which is why he’s still gonna do his business here, and he’s probably going to do it real soon.”
Glancing between the other two, Bower asked, “Are either of you in any condition to help catch him or should I go fetch Henry?”
“I’d die rather than crawl into a hole and lick my wounds so that asshole can do what he pleases,” Clint said.
Mark winced and spit out some blood before climbing back to his feet. “Where do we start?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
Clint’s first priority was to get back on his feet and moving at a fairly steady pace. After a few attempts where he was forced to take a moment or two to catch his breath, he got familiar enough with his pain to make it work for him. Every wince was a spur in his side and every stumble was turned into a forward step.
Once he was on the street with the other Rangers beside him, Clint thought about the question Mark had asked before they’d left. While pondering where they should start looking for the big man, Clint did some thinking as to where the man could be headed. Before too long, that line of thought lifted Clint’s eyes upward.
“It won’t be dark for a while yet,” Clint said.
Bower looked up as well, but didn’t seem to know why he was doing it. “What’s that matter?”
“Unless you know otherwise, I’d say this man doesn’t set a fire unless it’s dark or close to it,” Clint replied.
“How can you say that for certain?”
Clint shrugged. “He likes fire, and fire looks a lot more impressive at night than during the day.”
Looking at his partner with a wary smile on his face, Mark said, “I didn’t think of that because I got my head kicked in. What’s your excuse?”
“Keep up the smart-ass comments and you’ll get it kicked in again.”
“We have a bit of time to kill,” Clint said. “I could use a drink. How about you?”
“I’ve never needed a drink more than I do right now,” Mark grumbled.
Bower stepped between them and pointed toward a saloon at the nearest corner. “I’m buying.”
Clint wasn’t about to refuse an offer like that, so he and the two Texas Rangers stepped into the saloon and ordered their drinks. Although Mark went straight for the whiskey to take the edge off his pain, Clint ordered a beer and a cup of water.
A few sips of beer helped dull the agony that filled Clint’s body, but it was the water that truly felt heaven-sent. The cold water trickled down his throat, making him wince and sigh in relief at the same time. It may not have chased away as much pain as whiskey might have, but it cleared up his vision and brought his wits right back to where they needed to be.
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