The Killing Shot

by Johnny D. Boggs

  “Where’s Miguel’s Saloon?” Reilly asked.

  Pardo jerked a thumb to the south.

  Reilly started, but hurried over to Dunlap.

  “Now what are you doing?” Pardo cried out.

  Reilly didn’t answer. He unloosened the bandana around Dunlap’s neck, rolled it up, and used it to gag the unconscious deputy. He saw the Smith & Wesson beside the tree, and snatched it up, shoved it into his waistband, too.

  “I rattled his brains long enough that he’ll be sleeping through September,” Pardo said with irritation. “Come on, Mac, we’d best light a shuck.”

  Ignoring him, Reilly removed his bandana, and tied the deputy’s hands behind his back, then dashed over to McCutcheon. He snapped the manacles on the marshal’s wrists, and gagged him with his own bandana. Then, Reilly laughed, thinking, Yeah, they’ll really believe that note on that cigarette paper now.

  Shaking his head, he hurried over to the three outlaws waiting for him.

  “Let’s vamoose,” Pardo said, and led the way.

  The clawing of an out-of-tune banjo, accompanied by an equally wretched fiddle, rose above the din of voices and the clinking of glasses inside Miguel’s Saloon. Darkness was coming fast, and the glow of light seeping through the glass looked inviting. But not as inviting as the dozen or more horses crowding the hitching posts in front of the single-story adobe structure bookended by an assayer’s office and a vacant building with a FOR RENT sign nailed to the door.

  A man in duck trousers and a muslin shirt stood in front of the doors to Miguel’s place, discussing with a raven-haired woman in a frilly dress, when not fondling her, the cost of a trip to the woman’s crib behind the saloon. From the corner of a café, Pardo and Reilly watched, growing impatient, until finally, the woman, giggling, grabbed the man’s hand and led him to the alley that separated the saloon from the assayer’s office.

  Reilly studied the streets. He found another saloon six or seven doors down, heard piano music coming from that one, but saw no one on the streets or boardwalks. A door opened and closed, and a man in a black broadcloth suit stood down the street. He locked the door, strode off northward, turned a corner, and was gone.

  Laughter exploded out of Miguel’s Saloon.

  Reilly looked at the horses.

  “I see my mount next to yours,” Reilly said in a dry whisper.

  “Didn’t have time to find the livery,” Pardo explained.

  “You want to keep them?”

  “Hell, no. I’m going for that blood bay on the far end.”

  Reilly’s gaze fell on Pardo’s roan, or rather, the Evans repeater sheathed in the saddle scabbard.

  “Reckon I’ll take yours, then,” he said.

  Pardo giggled. “I must like you, Mac, letting you steal my horse.”

  Reilly turned, nodding at Swede Iverson. “You think you can sneak up with us, grab the reins to that dun mare on the far side yonder, and lead it down the street till we reach this corner?”

  The nod Swede Iverson gave didn’t suggest complete confidence.

  “Muzzle her while you walk,” Reilly said. He looked at Gene Peck. “You take the bay next to the dun. Keep him quiet.”

  Peck gave a nervous nod.

  The banjo and fiddle music stopped. An empty bottle flew out of the door, amid more laughter.

  “I’d hate to be the county treasurer when he gets Miguel’s bill,” Reilly whispered.

  Pardo grinned. “I’d hate to be you or me when we sneak up to steal them horses.” He almost doubled over laughing, and when he straightened, he stared at Reilly and said, “Because I ain’t told you something that’s mighty important.”

  Frowning, Reilly asked, his voice strained, “What’s that?”

  “The scout of that posse, Yavapai Joe, he’s in that saloon, too. Was, anyway, when them law dogs and me took our leave.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, he ain’t the drinking kind.” Pardo chuckled. “He was in that saloon, next to that window yonder, sipping coffee and eating mutton. I wonder how our heads will look next to Luke Willett’s nailed to a corral post by that livery.”

  Wiping his clammy hands on his dusty pants, Reilly started for Pardo’s roan, whispering, “Let’s find out.”

  He realized his mistake when Pardo took off to his left and Peck and Iverson went to his right. Pardo’s roan was tethered right in front of the open doorway, yet Reilly kept moving. Briefly, he wondered if he could draw the Smith & Wesson or Bulldog and cut down Pardo. But what good would that do? The posse would come out, and drunk as they were, they’d start shooting. And what of Dagmar and Blanche, back in camp in the Dragoon Mountains? No, Reilly realized, he would need to think of something better, something that wouldn’t likely get him killed.

  Pardo, making a beeline, reached the dun first and was already leading it down the street when Reilly eased to the roan’s side. Rubbing its side gently, muttering a few soothing sounds, Reilly slipped between the roan and a bay mare. He could see Iverson and Peck loosening the reins to their horses. He looked at the window, but the table where the Yavapai tracker had been sitting, according to Pardo, looked empty. Reilly had worked his way to the roan’s neck, continued to rub it with his left hand, and reached for the reins wrapped around the rail.

  The batwing doors pounded open, and a man staggered outside, trying to light a pipe. His eyes detected Reilly, and he practically fell onto the hitching rail, catching himself with both hands, pushing himself back up, grinning.

  “¿Hombre, qué pasa?” he asked. He wasn’t Mexican, but an American with a thick mustache and beard. His breath reeked of tequila. He didn’t seem aware that he’d dropped both match and pipe. Reilly looked over his shoulders into the saloon. No one seemed to notice, or hear. They were too busy watching a woman dance across the bar.

  “Did you hear, hombre, that we caught Luke Willett? The Yavapai.” He guffawed, and slapped Reilly’s shoulder. “He cut off old Luke’s head, he did. I seen him. With my own eyes.” He nodded for emphasis. “Shot the son of a bitch, too. That injun’s mean. Meaner than…” He struggled to find a word.

  Reilly smiled at the drunk, and looked into the window. The table remained vacant. Maybe the Yavapai was in front of the bar with everybody else, watching a fat-legged woman do the cancan.

  “Marshal M-M-Mc—the marshal,” the drunk said, “he nailed it to a corral post in front of Garland’s Livery. Want to see it, hombre? The flies shouldn’t be so bad, not this time a night.”

  A horse snorted. The drunk weaved, then fell against the bay mare, which shied away, snorted, and kicked. Slowly the drunk righted himself, as his eyes focused on three men leading three horses down the street.

  “Damnation,” the man said, “what the hell is that squirt doing with Zeke’s mount?”

  Reilly jerked the Smith & Wesson and clubbed the drunk’s head, caught him at the shoulders, and eased him onto the ground. He shot a look inside, gathered the reins, and pulled the roan out.

  “Hey, Carl!” a voice called from inside the saloon. “What the hell’s keeping you?”

  He didn’t know if Carl was the man he’d just buffaloed, didn’t care. Instead of leading the roan down the street, Reilly grabbed the horn and swung into the saddle, keeping the Smith & Wesson in his right hand. He heard footsteps, heard the squeaking of the batwing doors, heard a voice call out, “What the hell’s going on?”

  Ahead of him, Pardo had mounted the dun, and Gene and Iverson were climbing into their saddles. Reilly touched the spurs to the roan’s sides and felt the powerful horse explode into a gallop. He was chasing the dust raised by Pardo, Iverson, and Peck when a bullet sliced his left rein.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Once he had rounded the corner, Reilly jerked on the one rein he still held, pulling the powerful roan to a stop. Instantly, he swung off the saddle, shoved the Smith & Wesson into his waistband, and drew the Evans from the scabbard. He let the rein fall to the ground, knowing, or, rather, hoping, tha
t Jim Pardo had trained this horse not to run during a gun battle. A quick look down the darkened street revealed nothing. Pardo and the two men he, Reilly McGivern, had helped free, were long gone.

  Levering a round into the chamber, he ejected a .44 shell—Pardo had kept a live round under the hammer—and caught it, sticking it into his vest pocket. He ducked underneath a hitching rail, stepped onto the boardwalk, and peered around the corner. The light from the saloon gave him plenty of targets as men wandered out of the doorway. A few drunkenly attempted to mount their horses.

  Reilly took aim and cut loose with the Evans.

  His first shot took off a man’s bowler hat as he wheeled around a buckskin. The man dived into the water trough, and the horse galloped down the street. His second shot kicked up dust at the feet of another bay a man in a Mexican sombrero was trying to mount, sending the man rolling over and flattening horse apples, and the horse loping after the buckskin.

  Shouts and curses erupted from the crowd. The man emerged from the water trough, clawing for a revolver, and falling to the other side. Reilly drilled the trough with a .44 slug.

  Off to Reilly’s left, someone turned up a lantern in a second-story room and opened a window. Reilly spun, aimed, and broke a pane of glass, heard a curse. After that, he turned back toward the saloon. A bullet thudded into the wood frame near his head, but, unfazed, Reilly pulled the trigger. He saw the Yavapai cocking a Winchester, silhouetted in front of the door. Reilly’s bullet clipped the doorway behind him. His next shot carved a furrow across the warped plank at the Indian’s feet. His third chased the Indian as he dived through the batwing doors. His fourth, fifth, and sixth shots punched holes in the swinging doors.

  His eyes burned from the gunshots. A shout came behind him, and Reilly turned and sent two rounds after a man waving, of all things, a broom. The man took off running down an alley. He left the broom in the street.

  The stink of sulfur filled the air. Reilly dropped to a knee.

  The roan horse stood patiently waiting.

  Reilly jacked another round into the Evans and kept firing, shattering the saloon’s window, throwing up dust at the throwing feet of the tethered horses, and slamming into ends of the hitching rails. A couple of shots came flying, but by now the drunks were leaping through the busted glass or diving to the ground. Two managed to crawl underneath the saloon’s doors. One of those, the man who had taken a bath in the water trough, left a trail of water behind him.

  Horses screamed. Reilly kept firing.

  He thought of Ruby Pardo. The woman sure knew how to fix a rifle. He’d give her that much. The Evans had never fired truer, and this time, it didn’t jam.

  The string of horses to his left pulled the hitching rail off its posts, and the horses thundered away from Reilly’s gunshots. Another horse, a big dun, jerked free, rearing, and somersaulted in the dust, gathered its feet, stumbled, regained its feet, and took off.

  “Hey!”

  Reilly spun around, jacked another round into the Evans, fired from his hips at a man on the other side of the street. The man managed one shot, which busted a pane of glass to Reilly’s left; then he dived inside a door. Reilly took careful aim and fired two more rounds into the café.

  Lights began appearing in various windows. Somewhere, a bell tolled.

  He looked back at the saloon. All of the horses had scattered. A few men chanced potshots, without really aiming, and Reilly figured he had bought enough time. He fired twice more at the saloon, once at the second-story window, and a final shot in the open doorway, then grabbed the reins—the one the bullet had clipped had shortened it only four inches, could have taken off some of Reilly’s fingers—leaped into the saddle, pounding the roan’s flanks with the hot rifle barrel, and galloped down the street.

  He rode east out of town, following the road, hoping he was following Jim Pardo. A couple of miles out of town, he saw the faint glow of a cigarette and slowed the roan to a trot, reining up when he spotted Pardo, sitting in the saddle, grinning, a Colt in his hand.

  “Sounded like a war back there,” he said as Reilly reined in. Swede Iverson and Gene Peck sat nervously behind Pardo, eager to run.

  “Thanks for your help,” Reilly said sarcastically. He realized he still held the Evans, and now took time to shove it into the scabbard.

  Pardo took a final drag on his smoke and flicked the cigarette into the darkness. “I never got the habit of risking my neck, Mac.”

  “At least you waited for me,” Reilly said.

  “’Cause I’ve taken a liking to you.”

  “We’d best raise dust,” Reilly said. “I ran off their horses, but they’ll have a posse on our trail muy pronto.” He glanced skyward. “And that moon’ll rise in an hour or so. Be light as day out here.”

  With a nod, Pardo holstered his Colt, and gestured at Peck and Iverson. “Let’s vamanos,” he said, and raked the sides of the blood bay he had stolen with his spurs.

  They galloped on east for two or three more miles, then turned south, not stopping, barely slowing, until they reached Smith’s Mill on the eastern banks of the Hassayampa, where they traded in their winded mounts for fresh horses, all brown, almost a matched set. There Reilly reloaded the Evans, finding he had only five rounds left, plus the one bullet he’d stuck in his vest pocket. He started to fetch that round, but something inside told him to save it, so he did. The Scotsman at the mill didn’t bother asking for bills of sale for the horses he was getting, and didn’t offer any for the ones he was trading, but he did warn them: “Best take it easy with these horses. Nearest settlement’s Phoenix.”

  An hour south, they picked their way east into the rocky hills, letting the full moon light their saguaro-and boulder-lined path. Peck and Iverson rode point, and Reilly rode alongside Pardo.

  Exhausted, Reilly had almost let the clopping of hoofs on the hard stones lull him into sleep, when Pardo’s voice suddenly jerked him awake.

  “I heard a good story at Miguel’s Saloon,” Pardo was saying.

  After he stifled a yawn, and rubbed his eyes, Reilly asked, “What was it?”

  “The town law, McCutcheon…I forgets his first name.”

  “Thaddeus,” Reilly said.

  Pardo turned and stared. “You got a good memory, Mac.”

  Reilly shrugged.

  Pardo looked ahead. “Anyway, Marshal Thaddeus McCutcheon says a lot of folks in Wickenburg say the Hassayampa flows backward. That’s cause it’s underground.” He snorted. “If it ain’t just dry.”

  “That’s a fine story,” Reilly said.

  “No, Mac. That ain’t all of it. Because the river flows backward, them Wickenburg folks say that if you drink from it, you’ll never tell the truth again.” He cackled, and slapped his thigh.

  “Reckon you’ve partook of water from the Hassayampa,” Reilly said.

  “Now, Mac,” Pardo said, “that ain’t very polite of you.” He laughed again, though, and pushed back his hat. “Can’t wait to tell Ma that one. She’ll love it.”

  Reilly felt a wry smile cut across his face. “I need to thank your mother, too, for fixing—” He stopped himself. He had almost said my Evans. “Fixing your rifle. That Evans is a good-shooting weapon.”

  “Well, why don’t you draw it, and put a round between that gent’s shoulder blades?” Pardo jutted his jaw in the general direction of the gambler-turned-stagecoach bandit, Gene Peck.

  A knot formed deep in Reilly’s gut. His throat felt dry.

  “I’m not in the habit of shooting a man in the back,” he said.

  “Call his name,” Pardo said, “and when he turns around, you can shoot him in his head.” He tapped a finger above his nose. “Right about there.”

  “I don’t think so, Jim.”

  “Why not?”

  Reilly shrugged. “You could have left him back chained to that mesquite tree.”

  “Yeah, but he might have sang out. Not that it mattered, not how things turned out. But he might have been irked at
us, what with him getting left behind on two jailbreaks.” He shook his head, and pointed again at Peck. “I don’t think I have no need of that fellow. Kill him.”

  “No.” Firmly.

  Pardo turned again, studying Reilly. “You’re soft, Mac. And me, being so kindhearted, letting you carry that fast-shooting Evans, and them two other guns you taken off them Wickenburg laws.”

  “We might have need of those guns,” Reilly said.

  Pardo snorted and shook his head. “I don’t think that posse is gonna catch up with us. Ain’t heard a sound behind us since we left town.”

  “They spoke highly of that Yavapai tracker,” Reilly informed him.

  Another snort. “Injun.”

  “Indians make good trackers,” Reilly said casually. “The way they talk in Wickenburg, he might be able to trail us all the way back to the Dragoons.”

  “Yeah.” Pardo sounded irritated. “Maybe I should have rode back when you held off them boys. Maybe I could have put a bullet in that injun’s head.” He tapped his forehead again. “Right there.”

  Silence. They crested a hill, picked their way down a rocky slope. Somewhere to the north, coyotes sang out their melodious yips.

  “I miss Ma,” Pardo said softly after a while. “Worried about her.”

  “She’s tough,” Reilly said. “She can take care of herself.”

  Pardo, however, was shaking his head. “She said something before we left, Mac. I said something about me having to kill Wade Chaucer, eventually, and she said, ‘Not if I kill him first.’”

  Reilly shot Pardo a quizzical look. “You planning on killing Chaucer?”

  He answered first with a shrug, then looked over at Reilly. “I’ll have to, one of these days. Or Chaucer’ll kill me, though that ain’t likely. Now Wade Chaucer, he wouldn’t have no…um…no…revulsion…” He nodded with satisfaction at the word he had chosen. “No, sir, he wouldn’t have no revulsion at the thought of shooting that Peck fellow in his back. Why, if I’d turn my back on Chaucer long enough…” He grinned, but his face saddened.