The .45 kicked in Dooley’s hand. The shot tore off the black hat still somehow seated atop Boone’s head. That caused Boone to flinch and his bullet just punched another hole in the sign, but this time the lead struck no letters, just ruined more of the painter’s job.
Boone dropped to the ground, rolled over, and Dooley squeezed the trigger again. A bullet from behind him tore through his vest. That one caused Dooley to drop into the dirt, but he kept his Colt in front of him, thumbed back the hammer, and sent another round that tore a small ditch in the ground where Harley Boone had been just a moment before. Dooley saw Boone’s boots as the gunman sprinted across the street. The .45 swung to his right, lifted, then stopped.
“Dooley!” Butch Sweeney yelled.
Dooley had to let Harley go. Hooves thundered behind him, so Dooley rolled onto his back. Two riders, bandannas pulled up over their faces, spurred a couple of paint horses down the street. Both had put reins into their mouths. One held a Henry rifle, the other a self-cocking revolver.
Dooley tried to remember how many rounds he had fired in his Colt.
A bullet spit up dirt right between his legs.
Dooley shot the man out of the saddle.
Butch worked his Winchester and sent a slug that caught the man in his face. Somehow, he just leaned back in the saddle, his boots still in the stirrups, and his arms flapping against the saddlebags as the horse carried his lifeless body down the street toward Leadville’s other bank.
Two more men came running down the streets, working their rifles.
The firing of guns reminded Dooley of Gettysburg. At least, the stories a bunch of old veterans, those who had worn the blue and those who had fought in the Confederacy, had told Dooley over the years.
Dooley went back onto the ground, rolled underneath the sign, and sprinted toward Butch, who had taken cover behind a water trough. He felt one slug clip his hair above his collar, and another sliced off the front of his hat brim. How the shot had managed to do that—clean as if a pair of scissors had done the job—Dooley could never figure out.
For that matter, he couldn’t figure out how he had managed to dive behind the water trough alive.
A bullet sent water splashing up and back into the trough.
Dooley had just enough time to catch his breath.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
And reload his Colt.
Sweating, Dooley used the ejector rod to push out the hot, smoking brass casings. Beside him, Butch Sweeney kept fishing cartridges out of his pants pockets and feeding those into the Winchester. Dooley thumbed in the last fresh shell, snapped the loading gate shut, and eared back the hammer on the Colt just as Butch worked the lever and pushed a live round into the carbine’s chamber.
“Four men down the street,” Butch said softly. “Plus that hard-rock in the store.”
Dooley was staring at the front door Harley Boone had kicked open. People streamed out of the store as if it were ablaze and ran down the boardwalk toward Leadville’s other bank, hands over their heads, screaming out in petrified voices: “Don’t shoot.” “We’re unarmed.” “Lord have mercy!” “For God’s sake, don’t gun us down!”
The last to leave was the owner, who glared at Dooley as he went the other way, turned the corner, and hurried down the street between the store and the bank, and the dead body near the stairs that led to Dooley’s office.
“You reckon Boone’s still in that store?” Butch asked.
Dooley shrugged.
Then out of Dooley’s view, but near the rear of the store, a shotgun roared. A voice followed: “That’ll teach you to shoot up my sign, you illiterate, art-hatin’ rogue!”
Dooley didn’t recognize the voice, but he knew who had fired that shotgun. Joe McCutcheon, that old sign-painter. But that was all McCutcheon planned on participating in this gunfight.
A moment later, a corner of the store’s new plate glass window smashed, a pistol roared, smoke and flame belched, and a bullet slammed in the hitching rain by the water trough, sending a few splinters into the air.
“Yeah,” Dooley said. “He’s still there.”
“Where’s the damned vigilantes when you need ’em?” Butch said.
That caused Dooley to turn to look at his young friend. “How in hell did you wind up in this fracas?” he asked.
Butch shrugged. He pressed his back against the trough and pulled up his legs, trying to make as small a target as possible. As far as Dooley could tell, they were all right for now. The four men down the street didn’t have a clear shot. Nor did Harley Boone from inside the general store.
At length, Butch sighed. “She come up to me this morning,” he said. Immediately, Dooley knew who she was. Julia Cooperman, married to that conniving, cheating, miserable cur George Miller. “Said she overheard George and Boone plotting something. She didn’t know what. Just asked me if I could get the vigilantes.”
“Did you?”
Butch grinned without any humor.
“Didn’t try. For all I knew, the vigilantes want you dead, too. Stage isn’t due to pull out till tomorrow, so I figured I had all morning to kill.” He laughed. “Kill. Didn’t mean it that way.”
“I know.”
Butch let out an even heavier sigh.
“You should’ve kept your nose clean, Butch,” Dooley said. “Stayed out of this. It wasn’t your fight.”
“You give me that deputy’s badge. And if I’d stayed out of this,” Butch said, “you’d be lying dead on this street.”
Another bullet punched a hole into the water trough. That shot came from down the street, and water began gurgling and pouring out the hole.
Dooley also let out a mirthless chuckle. “There’s still a pretty good chance I will be.”
“Will be what?”
Dooley shook his head and moved to the side of the trough. “Lying dead,” he explained, “on this street.”
Butch laughed. “Yeah. With company.”
Dooley saw a man in a big brown hat running down the street, crouched, carrying something that Dooley couldn’t quite place. Dooley rolled out, away from the trough, aimed, and let the Colt roar four times. Then he was rolling back behind the cover of the trough as bullets dug up holes where he had been just moments before. Those shots came from overhead. Butch Sweeney recognized that, and he pushed himself away from the trough, found the man atop a hotel, and the Winchester roared. The man turned sideways, slinging the rifle across the roof, and then Butch shot him again, and he crumpled over, fell to his knees, then across the roof, his legs out of view, his torso hanging down from the façade, arms dangling.
The man Dooley had shot at dived behind a cracker barrel. Dooley chanced a shot at him, knew he couldn’t hit him, but thought maybe it would make that fellow think long and hard before he tried to get around. Another man fired, and his slug tore off Butch’s hat. Dooley came up, trying to find the gunman, but Butch, unfazed by the rifle shot, found the killer first, and put him down with a bullet plumb center.
Both Dooley and Butch braced themselves against the water trough as bullets riddled the heavy wood. Shots came from the gent behind the cracker barrel, Harley Boone inside the general store, and the last man with the Winchester down the street. More water gurgled. Butch and Dooley caught their breath.
“How did you learn to shoot like that?” Dooley asked as both men began reloading their weapons.
“You taught me,” Butch answered.
“Liar,” Dooley said.
Butch cocked the rifle. He swallowed what little he could and wiped his brow, then brushed away his sweaty bangs. His hat lay crown down on the boardwalk, ruined by a bullet.
“Well,” Butch said after a bit, “I just keep telling myself that this ain’t no different than shooting wolves.”
“Yeah.” Dooley wondered if that could work for him. He bit his bottom lip, pulled back the hammer. “Only the ranches—meaning the good ones—they pay bounties for a wolf hide.”
“Might be some bo
unties on these wolves,” Butch said.
Dooley fought down the bile and shook his head. “Trust me, Butch. You don’t want to go down that path. Bounty hunting ain’t no life.”
“No offense.”
Dooley made himself smile. “None taken, pard.”
“Do you know where the last one with the rifle is?” Butch asked.
“Ironically,” Dooley told him, “he’s in the doorway to the county clerk’s office.”
“County clerk?”
“Yep.”
Butch worked the lever again. “Wouldn’t it be poetic if the county clerk caught an errant bullet?”
Dooley did not answer. “Miller’s probably givin’ that two-bit gunman instructions.”
He was mistaken. Because the instructions suddenly belted out from Harley Boone inside the store.
“Travis!” Boone yelled. “Get up and get ’em. Tom and me’ll cover ya!”
Bullets roared. A splinter nicked Dooley’s cheek. Dooley tried to rise up, chance a shot, or just catch a glimpse at whatever Harley Boone and the two hired killers named Travis and Tom had planned, but the gunfire was withering. Boone must have taken time to load all the Winchester, Henry, and Spencer rifles for sale in that store.
Butch made an attempt to stand, too, but a bullet grazed the upper part of his right arm. He groaned and fell, but he had seen enough.
“Dooley!” He pointed. “Guy behind the cracker barrel . . . He’s got . . . dynamite!”
Ignoring the bleeding arm, Butch grabbed the Winchester. Dooley rose, fired a shot that shattered more of the store’s plate glass window, and he saw the man, Travis, running from the corner of the bank toward Dooley, Butch, and the shot-all-to-pieces trough.
He didn’t know why he did it. Didn’t think about it. Didn’t even consider any other options. He just ran. In the open. Straight at the man carrying what appeared to be four sticks of dynamite in his right hand, the fuse hissing and humming and showering sparks that left black spots on Travis’s pink shirt.
Dooley shot again at the store, and fired toward the county clerk’s office. The man named Travis had just reached the shot-all-to-pieces sign. His mouth dropped open. He forgot about the dynamite he was carrying in his right hand and reached for his belted six-shooter with his left.
Dooley shot him in the chest. The dynamite dropped and he fell against the sign, the shards of wood ripping the back of his shirt as he landed with a thud on his hindquarters and rolled heavily onto his side.
A bullet from the store window burned the back of Dooley’s neck. A slug from the man with the rifle in the doorway to George Miller’s office grazed his left hand. Dooley dived, breaking his fall with his arms, rolled to his side, and sent another shot at the gunman down the street. He came up, and cut loose at Harley Boone, shattering more glass. Leaving the pistol in the dirt, he extended himself toward the dynamite, the fuse’s sparks drawing closer and closer to those deadly sticks.
The man with the rifle stepped out and drew a bead on Dooley. That’s when Butch Sweeney came up and let his Winchester roar. Two bullets caught the man in the side, and the rifle pitched from his side, as he staggered a few paces and dropped into a heap in the center of the street. Butch had turned now, bracing the Winchester’s stock against his hip and firing, levering, firing, levering, firing. He appeared to be yelling something, some primordial scream, that Dooley could not hear. The plate glass shattered like diamonds, and Dooley had come to his knees. He picked up the dynamite. He stood. He ran. And Dooley’s mouth had opened, and somewhere deep inside him, he answered or echoed or imitated Butch Sweeney’s rage-filled scream. He kept running, the dynamite in his hand, the burning fuse sounding louder and louder and louder.
He could see Harley Boone standing up now. His face whitening. His mouth open but no words coming out. The gunman recovered and brought up his revolver. Dooley saw the hammer fall, but no smoke, no flame exploded from the barrel. Dooley kept running. The fuse kept burning.
Inside the store, Harley Boone dropped the empty revolver. He reached for a rifle nearby, but must have remembered that he had shot that gun dry just moments ago.
All noise stopped. Dooley no longer screamed. Butch no longer screamed. His Winchester no longer fired, for it was empty, too. Even the burning fuse no longer reached Dooley’s ears.
Harley Boone turned to run, but tripped over something, stumbling to his knees. He tried to stand, but must have become frozen by fear. He looked through the ruined window of the general store. He stared in horror.
At last Dooley’s sense of hearing returned. From behind him, he heard Butch yelling at him. The words took an eternity to register.
“Dooley! Throw that damned bomb!”
Dooley did, just as he tripped over the shotgun he had dropped earlier in this gunfight from hell. He saw the smoking package, could make out each individual spark from the fuse, could even see the threads from the torn, ragged bandanna that had been used to tie the sticks together. He could see the frozen face of Harley Boone. The bomb sailed in slow motion, in perfect flight, at a perfect angle, through the hole in the front of the general store that once had been a new plate glass window.
Dooley heard Harley Boone’s scream.
Then he heard the blast, as heat and chunks of wood and parts of ax handles, and brass, and nails, and burning bolts of cotton rained all around him.
And, most likely, parts of Harley Boone, too.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Leadville’s fire department volunteers, turned out, proved to be a lot more reliable than the town’s vigilance committee.
Oh, the store was a total loss, but fires in towns like Leadville had been known to completely wipe out towns like Leadville. The bucket brigade and that fine, handsome fire engine arrived on the scene almost before Dooley had been helped to his feet by Butch Sweeney, who beat the smoldering clothes each wore and then watched the firemen in action before regaining their faculties and joining in to help combat the conflagration.
Hoses and handheld buckets splashed the sides of the neighboring buildings, including the bank across the street. Miners off work came with axes and shovels, and chopped at the burning structure or shoveled dirt into the inferno.
The neighboring building was lost, too, and the next two down the block were damaged, but the mayor, town council, and Dooley himself all bought the firefighters and the miners and the other volunteers whiskey and beer at the Silver Palace Saloon that night.
It took three baths for Dooley to get all the soot and gunpowder off him.
The next morning, however, Dooley found himself standing before the mayor, the vigilantes, and the town council. George Miller was there, too. So were the deputy U.S. marshal from Denver, Richard Blue, and the Denver Telegram lying little inkslinger, Paul Pinkerton.
“‘Murders on the Streets of Leadville,’” Paul Pinkerton said. “That’s what my headline will say in tomorrow’s Telegram.”
“It wasn’t murder,” Dooley said.
“Why wasn’t this man”—George Miller angrily pointed a finger at Butch Sweeney—“arrested for violating the town ordinance against carrying weapons in the city limits?”
“Butch?” Dooley shook his head. “He’s my deputy.” Now, he was so thankful he had given Butch that deputy’s badge—but warned him not to go around wearing it or showing it to most people—and had let the town council know he had hired Butch, at fifty bucks a month, which the council had reduced to twenty. The cheapskates.
“Since when?” Miller demanded.
“Mr. Sweeney,” the mayor said, “has been drawing a salary since late spring, I believe.”
“Which is a waste of our taxpaying citizens’ money,” Miller said. “Especially when we have a deputy federal lawman residing here for the time being.” Here, Miller waved his arm at the impressively dressed Richard Blue, who bowed and gave the gentlemen a slight smile.
Which vanished when Mr. Adam Wolfe, chief alderman for the vigilance committee, said: “I
didn’t see Marshal Blue or you, sir, Mr. Miller, combating those brigands who launched an assault on our great city yesterday.”
It took a while for Miller to recover, but he did. “I didn’t see you, Wolfe, out there in the thick of battle, either.”
“I, sir, was out of town at that time. And if you remember, Miller . . .”—he had dropped the Mr., which made Dooley think that maybe he had a friend in this room—“. . . we hired Marshal Monahan so we would have little need of vigilantes anymore.”
“If Leadville is to become respectable,” the mayor began, but Miller cut him off.
“I am not certain that yesterday’s bloodshed and destruction was an assault on our great city.” He mocked Wolfe’s description of the gunfight. “I think it was an assault on Dooley Monahan.”
Dooley started to say something like: It certainly felt that way to me, too, or maybe an indictment of the county clerk: Which you likely organized, you low-down cur. But he figured neither statement, no matter how true, would help his cause.
“Mr. Miller,” the mayor said, “Marshal Monahan and Deputy Sweeney deserve more than we can ever repay them. We do not know why those miscreants raided our fair city in another Northfield or St. Albans type of raid—the second such assault on this town—but they stopped the carnage.”
“They,” Miller interrupted. “Or let me just single out our town marshal, blew up a thriving business—completely destroyed the mercantile—left many other businesses in dire straits. Witnesses—as Mr. Pinkerton will be reporting in the Telegram—say they saw our great defender of Leadville hurl a horrible bomb of dynamite sticks into the once-thriving mercantile.”
“Which,” Wolfe said, “witnesses said a cold-blooded killer had lighted and was intent on doing ill will.”
“If our marshal had any shred of human decency, he would have thrown himself down on that bomb. Sacrificed himself for the good of mankind, for the survival of Leadville, and not blown a great business—and a loyal citizen of our town—to smithereens.”
“Are you calling Harley Boone a loyal citizen?” one of the councilmen bellowed.
Hang Him Twice Page 25
