by Brett Waring
Then the gunfighter got the surprise of his life. Without warning, he heard the unmistakable ‘thunk’ of a bullet smashing into flesh. The black staggered and almost immediately went down sideways. It was so fast that he only had one leg free of the stirrups when the black hit the ground and his right leg was pinned beneath the horse. He cried out aloud in pain and was grateful that the ground was tolerably soft here and free of rocks. The horse kicked and threshed in its death throes and, through his agony, Considine saw the blood-pulsing hole in its left chest. It registered with him that it was an almighty big wound and he still had no idea where the shot had come from. The sound of the gun that had fired it had been lost in the chaos of the horse crashing over and pinning him.
And, by hell, he was pinned! Well and truly. He couldn’t get his leg free. The black was breathing its last now and snorted once before lying still, its full weight anchoring him effectively. So effectively, that he couldn’t even get his six-gun free of its holster, for it, too, was pinned under the horse—one of the penalties for wearing the gun so low-slung. The butt and cartridge chamber dug into his thigh uncomfortably as he fought and strained, but couldn’t move his leg an inch.
He wiped sweat from his eyes and half-lifted his upper body off the ground to look over the body of the horse. The two riders were racing in now and he saw that one carried a rifle. Hell, he couldn’t have fired the shot that brought down the black, Considine thought. Not from nearly a mile off. Unless ... Unless it was a Sharps buffalo gun. He recollected someone in Socorro saying that the dead man’s brother was out hunting buffalo and would be mighty riled when he rode back and found out his kin had been gunned down by Considine. That would explain why it wasn’t a fully fledged posse after him; just the man’s kin, with maybe a friend tagging along. And that knowledge didn’t improve his situation any.
Considine struggled to sit up far enough to reach his rifle in the saddle scabbard, but it was just beyond his reach. Almost frantically, grunting aloud with his efforts, he tried to throw himself across the horse’s carcass so as to gain that extra few inches that would allow him to grab the rifle butt. But the strain was too much on his stomach and spine and the efforts crushed the breath from his lungs.
Panting, sweating, hurting, Considine turned his head as the riders raced in, skidded their mounts to a halt in a cloud of dust, then quit leather fast. They came swiftly towards him and he saw that the biggest man with the dirt-clogged beard was indeed carrying a Sharps model buffalo gun. The man stood over him and Considine could smell the buffalo blood and dung and rancid hides on him. Then the heavy barrel of the great Sharps swung ponderously and crashed against the side of his head. Through the bursting, whirling lights, and the thought that his head had been knocked clear off his shoulders, he heard a deep, snarling voice say:
“If you know any prayers, Considine, you’d best be sayin’ them. It could be your last chance! But don’t get the notion that you’re gonna die quick and easy. ’Cause you ain’t, you snake.”
Two – The Gunslinger
Clay Nash had heard the distant gunshot as he rode through the foothills of the range, just before they gave way to the miles of flats stretching down the Magdalena Trail to Socorro. He reined down on a rise and shaded his eyes as he stared out over the flats. There was a pall of dust hanging in the air out there but he couldn’t see anything because of a hillock of sand.
Nash unsheathed his rifle and levered a shell into the chamber. He lowered the hammer gently and then slid the Winchester back into the scabbard. He checked the loads in his six-gun, holstered the gun again, and started his horse forward at a lope. He swung to the left so that he could approach the hillock from its lowest side and, also, the ground was harder here and the bay’s hoofs didn’t lift so much dust. He figured if he could approach whatever was going on behind that hillock without announcing his arrival unduly, he had less chance of walking into trouble.
He wasn’t sure if there had been one or two gunshots.
The way the echo had slapped clear across the flats, it could have been one single shot or two almost blending together. Whatever it was, it had been a mighty big caliber gun; not the usual saddle carbine or rifle. That shot had come from a long-distance piece with the power of a cannon, like a Sharps, or Remington rolling-block, maybe one of the big new Marlins, though he figured it could be even heavier than that.
Nash reached the base of the hillock and dismounted. So far it seemed as if the small amount of dust the bay had lifted hadn’t been spotted. He took his rifle and left the horse with trailing reins as he climbed up the sandy slope, awkwardly.
He heard the voices before he reached the top.
A man laughed harshly. He said tauntingly, “How do you like that, huh, Considine? No? You’d rather have water to drink? Hell, and here I was figurin’ you were different to other men, like some kind of god walkin’ around. That’s why I reckoned you might like to try some sand instead of water!”
Again that harsh laughter and it was joined by that of a second man. Beneath these sounds, Nash heard the choking and coughing of a third man ... the hombre referred to as ‘Considine’, he reckoned.
“Hey, Luke,” said the second man’s voice, stifling his laugh. “He looks kind of cute with all that sand clingin’ to his face, like a mask. Maybe we should give him some more of that kind of treatment, huh?”
“Aw, I dunno. Mebbe. Me, I been thinkin’ that his hair’s awful long. Needs cuttin’ but I wouldn’t want to hack it up with my hunting knife and make a mess of things. Might be better if we sort of singe it off, huh? Barbers singe beards, so I reckon there ain’t no harm in tryin’ to singe a man’s hair. ’Course I might singe it a mite too much, but that’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
Again that double guffaw and the second man said, “I’ll scout around for somethin’ to build a fire, Luke.”
There was no sound, except an occasional cough from the man who was being taunted. Nash figured he had heard enough anyway. He stood up, eased back the hammer on the rifle and walked slowly to the top of the hillock, standing there against the hot sky, taking in the scene below as he swung the rifle barrel down.
There was the one called Considine pinned under a dead horse by his right leg. Standing over him were two other men, one big and filthy and bearded, the other smaller, leaner, but with a pinched, mean face that paled as he stopped dead in his tracks now, staring up at the towering silhouette of Nash. He started to drop a hand to his gun butt and Nash fired. The bullet seared the man’s wrist and he staggered back, cursing. The big man spun about and made a lunge for the heavy Sharps rifle propped against the dead horse. Nash triggered again and the lead kicked dust just in front of the man’s heavy boots. He stopped dead as Nash levered in a fresh shell and began walking slowly down the sand hill, gesturing with the rifle barrel and getting the two men standing side by side a little away from the pinned man.
Considine was still blowing and shaking sand from his mouth, nostrils and eyes. He blinked, trying to see who had been doing the shooting. He stared up at Nash as the tall Wells Fargo agent looked down at him.
“How you doin’?” Nash asked.
“I reckon maybe a mite better than I was a minute back,” Considine gasped.
Nash nodded slowly, raking the others with cold eyes. “You gents havin’ fun?”
The big man with the beard scowled. “No concern of yours, mister. Better keep your nose out of this.”
Nash flicked his cold gaze to the lean man who was dabbing at his bullet streaked hand with a kerchief. “You?”
The man nodded. “Yeah. Keep out of it!”
“Bit late for that. I’ve already bought in. I dunno the why of it, but I don’t like what I seen so far.”
“You don’t have to,” growled the bearded man. “Just ride on and we’ll say no more about it. It’s our business.”
Nash shook his head slowly. “You look like a buffalo hunter to me, mister, by them clothes and that Sharps. Guess you b
een out amongst the Injuns too long, and you’ve picked up some of their ways. You get some kind of kick out of torturing a man pinned down by a dead horse?”
“He killed my brother!” the bearded man snarled.
Nash raised quizzical eyebrows at Considine. The man managed to shrug his shoulders.
“True. But it was fair and square. Ask anyone in Socorro who seen it.”
“Fair and square or not, he killed him! And for that he pays!” the bearded man snapped angrily.
“Not this way,” Nash said, indicating the sand that had been dumped over Considine’s face and head. “Nor by burnin’ off his hair like I heard you say you was gonna do. Injun tricks. Any white man who stoops to them is a miserable son of a bitch and hardly worth the powder it’d take to blow him to hell.”
The bearded man and his lean companion were stiff now, tensed, the pinch-faced man glancing at the bearded one for a lead. The buffalo hunter’s black eyes were slitted down as he looked bleakly at Nash.
“You sure stick your nose all the way in once you start, mister!”
“Bad habit of mine.”
“Could get you killed.”
“Not by you.”
“Yeah! By me!”
The lean man cleared his throat noisily. “Listen, you dunno the full story and you dunno who I am, yet, either.”
“Nor am I interested,” Nash said, his eyes hard on the bearded man. “You’d better shuck them guns and climb aboard your horses and ride out before I change my mind.”
“No!” roared the big man, glaring at Considine who looked very tense in his awkward position. “By hell I don’t leave till he’s dead! Damn dead!”
And, without warning, the big man swept back his bloodstained buckskin jacket, hand streaking for his holstered Colt. Nash swung towards him and the lean man threw himself sideways, going for his own gun. The bearded man’s gun swept up in his hand as Nash fired and the rifle slug smashed into his chest and sent him staggering back to drop to one knee. Nash, too, dropped to one knee, levering as he spun, and the rifle roared a second time as the lean man triggered. The lead burned across Nash’s left cheek, leaving a short red streak there. His own bullet took the man in the neck and the lean body jerked and convulsed as Considine yelled:
“Look out!”
Nash spun back, throwing himself full length as the bearded man got off a wild shot, lifting his gun with both hands. He missed and Nash’s rifle roared again. This time the bullet hit the man in the face and when he went down he stayed there, with hardly a muscle twitching. Nash had another shell in the firing chamber as he stood up slowly, covering the man as he walked over and nudged him with a boot toe. He did not lower the hammer on the rifle until he had checked the lean man too, and made absolutely sure he was dead. Then he eased down the hammer and propped the Winchester beside the Sharps, resting it against the dead horse’s carcass.
Considine was looking at him sharply. “You’re a careful hombre.”
Nash grunted, walked around the horse, examining the man’s trapped leg.
“I’m much obliged to you. Name’s Considine.”
“Nash,” the Wells Fargo man said casually. “Clay Nash.”
“Well, Clay Nash, I guess I owe you my life. Them two weren’t aimin’ to make my passin’ easy.”
“So it seems. I’ll have to dig down under you. Can’t hope to move the horse. Reckon you got anythin’ broken?”
“Don’t think so. Banged up some, mebbe, but don’t feel any bones are busted. Got my gun pinned under me or they’d never have managed to get to me the way they did.”
Nash nodded and went to the saddlebags of the nearest horse. Judging by its size and the gear behind the cantle he reckoned it had belonged to the buffalo hunter. When he saw the scarred hide with the white lines crisscrossed through the hair, he knew he was right. This was the brave little animal that ‘ran the line’ of stampeding buffalo while the man shot into them from its back, placing his bullets behind the ear or into the spine, dropping the huge beasts one by one, and stringing them out across the plains. He found what he wanted; a blackened and battered iron skillet. Nash went back to where Considine lay and began to dig the sand away from beneath his trapped hip and leg. The sand was loose enough and likely this had saved the man from broken bones. He dug down fast but the horse’s dead weight began to settle, too, and Considine still couldn’t get his leg free.
Nash went to the dead men’s horses again, brought back their saddlebags and wedged these beneath the dead animal. He dug around Considine again and, though the carcass settled a little, this time, when he grabbed the man under the arms, he was able to work him out slowly. Considine clamped his lips tightly together, and helped as much as he could, but his leg and hip and foot were numbed and had been for a long time. Nash sweated and strained and once Considine let out a yell which he swiftly bit back. Then Nash gave one final heave and fell over flat on his back as the man abruptly came free.
He examined the man’s leg and hip and saw at once how the gun had come to be trapped. The man wore it down low with the cartridge belt slanting at a steep angle. He looked sharply at Considine but didn’t say anything. The man met his gaze with unwavering eyes that didn’t encourage questions.
Nash sat back on his haunches, thumbing his hat back off his head and absently rubbing at the bullet burn on his cheek as he spoke. “You’re lucky; that gun butt could’ve busted your hip. Guess you’ll have one almighty bruise and you might be limping for a spell, but otherwise, I reckon you can get on your feet as soon as the circulation starts flowing again.”
“Sooner the better,” Considine said, massaging his hip and thigh. He grimaced and looked at Nash steadily. “Much obliged. Nash. I won’t forget this.”
“Well, maybe I did the right thing and maybe I didn’t,” Nash said. “I’ve only got your word it was a fair shoot-out when you nailed that hombre’s brother. But there was no need for any man to get that kind of treatment from those hombres.”
The gunfighter looked steadily at Nash, “I said it was a fair fight and it was. I don’t have to lie, Nash.”
Nash stiffened slightly at the man’s words. There were deadly undertones there, warning him to step easy.
“Considine. Seems I’ve heard that name someplace.”
“Not around this territory,” the gunfighter told him. “I’m from the north.” He gestured to where Nash’s Winchester rested against the dead horse. “I see you’re a Wells Fargo man.”
“That’s right.”
“What? Express guard?”
“No. Investigator.”
Considine arched his eyebrows. “A lawman!”
“Not exactly. I don’t have any more legal rights than anyone else. I can’t go around arresting folks as such. I can bring in road agents, but I have to turn them over to the law. Wells Fargo can cut a lot of corners and kind of stretch our methods some, but, when you get right down to it, I’m just another hombre doin’ a job.”
Considine stared at him. “Could say that about anyone. I guess.”
“What could I say about you?” Nash asked flatly.
Considine smiled crookedly. “You couldn’t say anythin’ about me, ’cause you don’t know me. I’m a man who don’t say much about himself.”
“Well, I dunno about that. I figure you know how to use that gun you’re wearin’. Not only from the way you wear it, but because you killed that hombre’s brother in what you called a ‘fair shoot-out’. Sounds like a square-off to me.”
Considine’s eyes narrowed. “Leave it, Nash,” he warned quietly.
Nash held his gaze and then nodded slowly; it didn’t pay to pry into a man’s business if he didn’t want it that way. The Wells Fargo man stood up and stretched some of the kinks out of his muscles.
“Better try to stand,” he suggested and grabbed the gunfighter under the arms, heaving him upright.
Considine cursed and hopped around trying to keep his balance. He put his right foot gingerly on the grou
nd and held tightly to Nash as he gradually eased his weight onto it. He almost collapsed as the leg buckled, but after several more tries he was able to stand with Nash’s support. He took a couple of experimental steps and fell. Nash helped him back up and held his arm while he hobbled around for ten minutes or so, until he felt he was able to manage alone. His hip was giving him the trouble, where the gun had badly bruised him. But it would pass in a day or so, he figured.
Considine sat down on the rump of the dead horse and took out his Colt, blowing dust and sand from the action. Nash watched as the man expertly dismantled it and used a corner of his kerchief to get all the grit out of the works. He reached into the saddlebag on the dead horse and brought out a small can of oil. He flushed the gun thoroughly and wiped it over with another rag, then assembled it swiftly and expertly. He loaded it fast and stood up, balancing a little precariously.
Nash whistled softly as the gun suddenly seemed to leap into Considine’s right hand and blasted three times. Small stones disintegrated at each shot and, before the echoes had died across the flats, Considine had spilled out the three used shells and replaced them with cartridges from his belt loops. He grinned at Nash, slapping the gun butt as he holstered the Colt again.
“That feels a heap better,” he said.
Nash scratched gently at his bullet-burned cheek.
Considine chose the lean man’s mount to ride back into Socorro. Nash wasn’t quite sure why, but he had the feeling that there was something amusing in the choice, as far as Considine was concerned, leastways. But the gunfighter said little on the long ride back to Socorro.
They reached the town early the next morning and by that time, most of Considine’s limp had disappeared. They rode in from the southwest, out of the badlands, where the Magdalena Trail swung away to follow the Rio Grande north, and this took them into the plaza after only a short ride down a side street. Already people were moving about, on their way to work or opening stores and other businesses. Nash noticed that most of them stopped to stare as he and Considine rode into the plaza. At first he didn’t think it was any more than idle curiosity, but, after passing down a business block, he took more notice of the people’s faces.
