by Rusty Davis
Wood glared at Rachel. “Only one way Kane could have got ’em. Dunno how, but she knows, too. We’ve got to get rid of her, all of ’em.”
Brewer seemed nonplussed.
“Then we shall deal with this since we are conveniently here. There are children in the house, or somewhere nearby. Find them and bring them. We shall conclude our business here and depart.”
He turned to Rachel and, grabbing her by the arm, pulled her out of the house to the yard in front.
“So many accidents happen here, Mrs. Wilkins. Your poor foreman walked into a bullet when he thought he was going to talk about something he should have kept to himself. Jared should have minded his own business. He thought we would let him into the business when he connected all the clues, even with that Kruger business, but he was too unreliable. It was such a good stroke of luck that his death was so quickly forgotten, but, then again, you would hardly have wanted it differently, would you? All that guilt wasted!”
Rachel frowned.
“You never guessed?” Brewer threw his head back and roared a full-throated laugh. “The joke is so truly and terribly on you.”
“Jared’s death was a tragic accident,” she said.
“Oh, no, it was not! You and your daughter should have talked. Someone you’ll never guess was there watching. He told me about your argument. Of course we knew your husband was drinking too much. His abusiveness was part of his weakness, so he had to die. Some said it would even be a blessing for you. Hardly! Extraordinary luck the way it turned out. Our man was here the same night that you fought with your husband, although we now understand that may have been more often than we thought at the time.
“We all know what happened. Your daughter fired her rifle, but she was not the only one shooting at targets that night. You were all too caught up in your argument to see and hear it clearly. After the shooting, the rest was easy. You were both so guilty, nobody said a word. You protected us better than we ever thought. They only found one hole in your husband, so no one asked any questions, and no one was any wiser to what really happened.”
Brewer shook his head and mumbled about luck.
“When he told me what happened, I knew we were clear. Then Kane arrived. He would not listen and refused even the common-sense alternative of riding away when we made it clear he was not wanted.”
Noises.
“Hurry up with those children, Wood! How much trouble can they be?”
A gunshot answered his question. Rachel hoped it was Kane, firing while still out of range. She craned her neck to see.
Brewer looked around as well. A gun fired from near the barn. Loud, angry voices. Now Rachel could see Kane trying to guide the horse with his legs while firing with his left hand. She figured the shots were going wide, but Brewer would not know how terrible a shot Kane really was these days.
Brewer made a quick decision. He started running for his horse. Rachel moved to follow. Brewer started to turn. He pulled a small revolver from the pocket of his coat and pointed it at her.
“Mama!”
Rachel stopped, more from Libby’s cry than the wavering gun in Brewer’s hand. Brewer now ran away beyond her reach, sure of his escape, but he no longer mattered. Rachel started running toward Libby and Jeremiah, who were trying to wrestle Wood’s gun out of his hands. A shot kicked up dirt at Wood’s feet.
Don’t hit the children, Kane, she thought as she ran toward them.
The shot scared the children more than Wood. Their holds on him weakened, and he threw them off. He ran past Rachel and was in the saddle and at full gallop before she could do a thing. Soon Wood was heading west after firing two quick shots in Kane’s direction.
Kane let them go. He had realized that, while he could sometimes hit a target with a gun left-handed while standing, on the back of a horse, it would only happen through chance. If Wood had fired back or turned to brace him, he would have had no hope of coming out of it alive. His bluff was the best card he had.
“What kept you?” she said, after she told him what passed between Brewer and Wood.
He had asked about gold thefts. Greene had downplayed it and tried to tell Kane they were nothing, but then the fort’s commander overheard, by chance. By the time the commander was done talking to Kane, the day was well gone.
“Greene wasn’t in on it. Some fella—name I didn’t get—lit out while I was there. Greene was tired, discouraged, and lazy. Only saw what he felt like seeing. He passed off everything he heard as just talk. Fort tried to cover its tracks, but Sherman is not going to be a happy man.”
To make matters worse, Kane missed a sign on the trail, which delayed him almost too much.
“I found the trail they used for the gold,” he said. “I think. Saw a marker, then another. Followed them a bit; then I realized time was getting away from me.”
Libby and Jeremiah seized upon their status as rescued heroes. They recounted at least five times in succession the way they defended their mother until they had received about all the gratitude they were likely to get with the promise of extra dessert tiding them over until then.
“What do we do now, Kane?” Rachel asked. “By my count, we have a wounded sheriff, a woman, and two children against about—what did you say? thirty Riders and their friends in the town and whatever other friends they have that we do not yet know about.”
“How many men you got left?”
“About a dozen. Some of the hands that Jared signed last fall left when he died. The men who are left are cowboys, Kane, not gunfighters. I don’t want them hurt. I don’t think they are an army.”
“Get a bunch of them together. Get to Rakeheart. Wait at the church. Not sure how this plays out, but I want you near, and I don’t want you alone.”
“Kane?”
“Time to end it, Rachel. We wait, and one fine day they all show up here, and the kids can’t get away. Not sure you can run far enough and fast enough. Settle it now. If we act fast enough, they won’t expect it. If we don’t, we don’t stand a chance.”
Kane looked down one more time upon Rakeheart.
He had galloped most of the way from Rachel’s ranch but wanted to have one look to plan what he was going to do next.
He thought of how much had changed since the first time he and Tecumseh had stood upon the hill overlooking the town. Then it was nothing more than a collection of buildings. Meaningless. Never again.
Rachel had a point that he could not win a showdown or a battle. There were enough dead people already, and he did not want to add to the list. Folks like Pete Haliburton might be willing to take revenge, but what could they really do?
If it came right down to it, he had no idea who in Rakeheart would side with him and who with the town leaders who had been fooling them all so well. He needed to think straight more than shoot straight and be ready for the final piece of the puzzle he knew was out there but knew he had not yet found.
Eloise Brewer was agitated at her unexpected company.
“Frank will not be home for some time,” she said. “I am not sure it is proper for a married woman to host a man without the presence of her husband.”
Part of Kane hated to do what came next.
“Because he will hurt you again?”
She recoiled. “How can you . . .”
“Do not tire me with lies, Mrs. Brewer,” he said. “Mae mentioned your visit. I added up what it meant; she believes you only came from kindness and not from experience. Tillie Weatherspoon saw another piece of the puzzle. I know you are being beaten. I am not here to continue your misery but end it.”
“How can you do that?” she challenged. “I heard them talking. You are not even the sheriff any longer.”
“Where are they meeting? I know they are. I can end this. This place, this Wyoming place, don’t give a man power to hurt someone else because she’s a woman. Man doesn’t have the courage to face up to it.”
“Noonan’s—or whatever they will call it. How do you know?”
“I do not ask for easy, Mr. Kane. I ask for a day when I do not hurt to be alive. Mae said you were good to her. What else do you want?”
“Your husband has a desk here. Where? I need what’s in it. Is it locked?”
“No,” she replied. “He is very regular in his habits. He told me that it would never be locked, because I was never to look, and I never have.”
“Then I will.”
Kane rifled the drawers until he found a small book. Dates and amounts. Best of all, names. A banker kept track of money. Everyone’s money, even in banks that were in Denver. The book went into the pocket of his jacket.
“When is he home?”
“An hour.”
“Then you have one hour to decide if you want to be here when he finds his desk has been touched, if, in fact, he comes home. I do not think you do. I think this thing I’m going to do sets you free, but I know if you don’t have a husband, you don’t have money, so I don’t know if what I’m going to do is a good thing or bad, but it’s the only thing I know how to do. If your husband has cash stashed away any place in the house, if I were you I’d find it before I leave.”
She was trying to think.
“I would bet Tillie Witherspoon would help you,” he said. “She is giving shelter to a young woman who may be dead by now for all I know. I think you could get cubs away from a bear easier than anyone could get to you inside of her shop.”
“Oh, the girl from the stable. Frank does not like her, or either of them.” She thought. “Frank does not like Tillie, either. He calls her a meddler who always has to have her opinion heard.”
Kane felt the press of time.
“I shall leave you to decide, Mrs. Brewer. I hope the choice you make will lead you to someplace that is happier and safer.”
Kane walked to the church. Afternoon was fading as the August day drew to a close. He noted with satisfaction as he waited outside that Eloise Brewer had gone down the street in the direction of Tillie Witherspoon’s shop.
He went in. The church was empty. The preacher was with somebody, he guessed. The man’s horse had been tied outside earlier. He shrugged. Somebody needed Siegel.
Kane had never been what he called a religious man, but there were too many lives bound up in the next few hours for a man to want all that weight on himself.
He thought about what to say and how to say it. Then he recalled a phrase from the days when Aunt Amelia read the Bible at dinner.
“I never had to worry about nobody before, God, and, whatever it is, I don’t want to lose none of ’em I am trying to protect, so keep them safe somehow. I don’t know how, but You do, and let them kids grow up in some better world and some better place. And those I’m responsible for, maybe they can know I tried to help ’em and tried to do right, and I guess we better get it done, God, ’cuz nobody else can or, if they can, they won’t.”
He paused.
“And if it’s time, it’s time. Don’t matter. Much. Keep Rachel safe and them kids. ’Specially Libby.”
In the time he had been inside, dimness had begun to spread. They would gather at Noonan’s. He undid the bandage on his right arm. It would hurt more, but he could use it a bit easier. After tonight, it wouldn’t matter.
Wasn’t a snake in the world could live long when you cut off the head. Tonight, he was the knife.
Rachel and her men had not yet arrived, but it did not matter. They would soon. She would know what to do. She was smarter than all of them.
The Last Chance smelled good as he walked past. Coffee would have been nice.
Later.
He could see the early traces of the sunset’s colors reflected in the window of Conroy’s shop. The street was empty. Were they at Noonan’s? Had Eloise Brewer tipped them off? He would find out in a minute.
Dozens of times in his weary weeks in Rakeheart, he had felt that he did not know what he was supposed to do, or where he was supposed to turn. Not tonight.
How many times had all the fine words in the books come down to a man with a gun and the will to use it? He wondered, if Sherman knew it all, what he would say. Smoke and cuss and cuss and smoke and make them quiver at the sound of his hacksaw voice. Sherman would outlast them all.
The piano was audible now. Be a mercy to shoot the thing. He looked up toward the east, where the growing darkness gathered behind the curve of the street, where he had ridden in and met a young woman who would never be young again, unless she died that way.
He had unconsciously come to stand where the Riders had delivered their beating. He’d like to settle that score. Business first. Personal would have to wait.
He looked behind, around. No one. Touched his hat. “Sleep gentle, Rachel. Best this way.”
He turned to the doorway and the lamps beyond it.
“God bless, Libby.”
He touched the butt of the Colt in his right holster with a hand that had been useless far too long. It hurt, but it felt like a man becoming whole. Tapped the Remington with the fingertips of his left. Both loaded. Both ready.
A round of male laughter emerged from the saloon.
Time.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They were there. Brewer, Gallagher, Jeffries, Conroy.
Kane’s slow footsteps across the warped, bare wood of the rough pine planks were drowned in conversation and music when he started his walk to the far end of the bar but became audible as the talk and music faded and died.
Jeffries reached in his jacket. Kane did not care for the formalities of life. No waiting to find out if a man meant well or not. Not today. Not these four. Not ever.
The Remington fired. Jeffries went down with a bullet in his leg as the small pistol he was reaching for clattered along the floor. A miracle. Kane had aimed for the man, although it had been the other leg. The smile that mocked his own shooting flared and passed.
He walked. Red faces. Gallagher and Conroy radiated shame; Brewer, defiance. Fear? None. Instinct said he was missing something. No Riders.
He had walked the town enough to know.
Amid men trying to move out of the way of the gunfire, a figure by the door caught Kane’s attention and held it. If trumpets blow when fools see the truth, they were drowning out the wind right now.
Kane glanced at the floor, where misshapen circles radiating out from the bar marked the places liquid had slopped from the glass the man by the doorway had taken to the table. Now he sat, almost beyond notice, clearly waiting for the drama to take its course before he took a role. He would get his chance.
Play it out.
“Gentlemen.” Kane was fifteen feet from them. Nobody could miss at this distance.
“I can explain everything,” Brewer began.
“Kane, all of this is a misunderstanding,” blustered Conroy.
Gallagher looked down. Jeffries, stung more than injured, glared back from the floor, where the bullet to his left calf had sent him.
Now was the gamble. He would take it.
“I know it all, gentlemen,” Kane said. “All of it. The gold, all of it. Funny thing, when Sherman sent me out here because Wilkins got killed—man dotes on those fellas who marched to the sea—he was raving about gold and such, and I half ignored it. Man’s gonna be real happy when I tell him how you corrupted someone at the fort. Real happy. Hear you eat every day or so in federal prison. Hope that’s not true.”
Kane watched their eyes. They were waiting. It wasn’t over yet.
“This is what we are going to do. Any of you with a weapon, set it on the bar. You got one chance to do this. You put a hand in a pocket, I will assume you are going for a gun, and I will shoot you the way I did Jeffries.”
The hands complied; their eyes braced for the next step. Kane walked closer. Closer. He had to be close. It had to look right. Their faces mingled fear and tension. They were watching the Remington in his hand
. Eight feet away.
Then Gallagher’s eyes showed hope. They flicked to his left. Brewer’s, too, but faster. Back quickly.
Kane turned. The first bullet shattered a window as Halloran’s first shot hit one of the men behind Kane. The second bullet hit Halloran in the right shoulder. He drew the Colt as Halloran’s second shot went wide. Kane fired both guns, almost not caring where the lead went, as everything he was seeing was filtered in a white haze of pain. Men were diving from tables to the floor. More windows shattered.
Halloran staggered. The gun in his hand was waving in the direction of Kane as it wobbled. Halloran put a second hand to steady the wobbly arm.
Kane looked over his left shoulder to see what was behind him. Gallagher was down. Brewer had grasped a pistol on the bar. He was waving it in Kane’s direction, then jerked it toward the doorway, then back toward Kane. Kane turned toward him, then saw Halloran moving as well.
The guns all went off together as an explosion sounded behind Kane. A hot blast rushed past his face. Something stung. Glass flew across the saloon as what seemed like every bottle behind the bar shattered. Brewer was thrown hard against the bar, then slipped down with a gaping wound in his chest.
Kane wiped the blood off of his right cheek as he glanced at the doorway, where Rachel stood holding her shotgun. Wisps of smoke came from both barrels. Her face was drawn and tense as her eyes met his.
“Jared gave me solid slugs, not just buckshot, in case I needed them. I thought we needed them now.” She was staring at the smashed glass and bleeding wreckage that were the results of her blast.
Kane nodded in acknowledgement, then looked over at Brewer. The banker was already dead. Halloran’s shot at Kane had gone wide. Kane’s shot at Halloran put the man on the floor. He wondered whether a bullet or a fragment of a bottle had cut his face. No matter. Still alive was all that counted when the guns stopped.
Conroy, unharmed, was pale. He raised his shaking hands as he got up from the floor, where Jeffries was bleeding and whining. “Don’t shoot. Please. Please. Please,” he whimpered.
Kane walked quickly to Halloran. Three bullets. One in the shoulder, one in the chest, one in the guts. He took the gun from Halloran’s hand as he knelt.
