The Outlaws of Salty's Notch

by Will Keen

  Chapter Twenty

  When Paladin slowly and cautiously slipped inside he entered a blackened wasteland. The stink of charred wood stung the nostrils. Boots crunched through wooden debris, tinkled through the broken glass of fallen, shattered chandeliers. The slightest movement kicked up fine grey ash. It settled on clothes, hands, face, coated the inside of nostrils.

  The wide, once magnificent staircase lay ahead of him. Looking beyond that towards the back of the house Paladin saw the tall figure of Brad Corrigan. The marshal’s six-gun was out. He’d fired the shots that had pulled a startled Rodriguez off the balcony, sent the signal to Paladin. Now he came crunching through the rubble towards the bounty hunter.

  Paladin touched his lips with a finger, then pointed upwards. Corrigan shook his head.

  ‘There’s no sense in keeping quiet,’ he shouted. ‘That Mex killer knows we’re here. He’s going to sit tight up there, let us do the hard, dangerous work.’

  Softly, Paladin said, ‘You know this place. Any other stairs?’

  ‘Sure,’ Corrigan said, lowering his voice. ‘At the back of the house. The servants used those.’

  ‘So we split up.’

  ‘Only way.’

  ‘You go up the back stairs. Make plenty of noise.’

  ‘And draw his fire?’ Corrigan grinned. ‘I can see why you survived for so long.’

  ‘We time it so we reach the next floor together.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Corrigan nodded. For a second he looked pensively at Paladin. Then he took a couple of steps to the side. The stairway turned back on itself between each floor. Corrigan peered up the stair well.

  ‘You hear me, Rodriguez?’ he yelled.

  ‘Of a certainty.’ The voice was mocking.

  ‘I’m the Brad Corrigan you’re lookin’ for. The tall feller wearing the badge; you had me in a stranglehold – remember? You’re wrong about me: I’ve never been to Mexico in my life. But you murdered a couple of my friends, so you keep that gun ready because I’m coming up the back stairs.’

  Then, with a wink at Paladin he walked over to the main staircase.

  You crafty sonofabitch, Paladin thought, and grinned wryly. He watched as Corrigan reached the foot of the staircase, stopped and looked back. Paladin held up a hand: ‘Wait there,’ he mouthed. Then he lifted his six-gun, raised one finger, and hoped the marshal understood that one shot would be the signal to start climbing.

  Then Paladin ran for the rear of the house.

  There, the much narrower back stairs were at the end of a short passageway, tucked away in an alcove. Paladin looked upwards, listened. Then he aimed high and fired a single shot. In the confines of that narrow passageway the detonation was deafening. Without waiting for the reverberations to fade, he ran up the stairs.

  Most of the doors and whole sections of the walls had been destroyed by the fire. In those yawning, open spaces thus created, sound carried. As Paladin clattered upwards he could hear the thump of Corrigan’s boots hammering up the main staircase. Rodriguez was up there waiting. He would hear two men, but if he’d listened to Corrigan his six-gun would be pointed at the dark opening of the back stairs.

  If luck’s on my side, Paladin thought wildly, Corrigan’s long legs will carry him up faster and he’ll shoot the Mexican in the back before he blows me back down these stairs. And if I make sure that happens by slowing down now I can make damn sure of living to see another day. . . .

  Gritting his teeth he dumped that cowardly notion where it belonged, took the last few steps at breakneck speed and exploded out on to the first-floor landing.

  It was wide, flooded with light from the big window. The sun was a golden orb about to drop behind the tall trees. Its glare was dazzling. Then that glare was matched by the flame from the muzzle of a six-gun. Guillermo Rodriguez was a black, silhouetted shape. He had placed himself in front of the window. To look at that slim form was to look directly into the setting sun’s glare.

  The shot cracked, echoed from the smoke-blackened walls. Seemingly without separation it was followed by a second. At the top of the main staircase, Brad Corrigan reeled to the side. One hand grabbed for the ornate bannisters. The other was clapped to his chest. Then his legs buckled. He fell backwards, hitting the stairs with his shoulders. Out of sight, the splintering thunder of his fall was sickening.

  God damn that Mex, Paladin thought, he wasn’t for one second taken in by Corrigan’s shouted warning about back stairs.

  Teeth bared, the marshal’s fall a fading echo in his ears, Paladin fired three blind shots into the window’s dazzling glare. At the black shape. At Guillermo Rodriguez.

  But Rodriguez had gone.

  In the fleeting second when Paladin had flashed a sideways glance at the falling marshal, the Mexican had slipped away up the next flight of stairs. Paladin was faced with another climb. This time he was on his own. He would be stepping out on to another blackened landing, but looking into the yawning muzzle of the same deadly six-gun.

  A ghostly voice, feeble but clearly coming from a man far from dead, drifted up the stair well.

  ‘Why do trapped men always flee upwards?’ And then Brad Corrigan laughed hoarsely, the sound rasping across bare walls. ‘I’m living proof that Mexican’s a born loser with nowhere to hide, Paladin. Go get the sonofabitch.’

  Relief flooded through Paladin, but the marshal’s shouted encouragement did nothing to quell his fears. If there was a man with nowhere to hide, it was not Rodriguez. To reach him, Paladin had to climb the wide, open staircase. If he made it in one piece, he had no idea of the layout of the upper floor. He would again be exposed, walking naked into the unknown.

  Did he have a choice?

  It was true that the longer Rodriguez waited the more the tension would rise, the more the Mexican’s nerves would fray, and frayed nerves led to fatal mistakes. But Paladin knew that if he put off going up that final staircase for too long, his nerve would break. He would turn tail, walk away. Rodriguez would have won without firing another shot – and that could not be allowed to happen.

  So the only question was did he creep up step by step in a stealthy approach, or launch a desperate storming assault into a deadly hail of bullets?

  Paladin shook his head irritably. He took a deep, shaky breath, reloaded his Colt, cocked the weapon. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, opened them again and hit the stairs at a run. His boots pounded on the bare wood. The double-back halfway up slowed him and he used a stiff left arm to push himself away from the wall and around the bend. Above him a blaze of light from the setting sun was flooding through the front window. He reached the second-floor landing in one final, breathless bound and flung himself bodily to one side. Expecting a bullet he would never hear to rip through his chest, his back, he rolled. He finished up with his back against a wall. His six-gun was up, levelled, seeking out the Mexican.

  The landing was bathed in evening light.

  It was empty.

  Paladin banged his head back against the wall in frustration, touched his damp forehead with the six-gun’s foresight, took a moment to settle his ragged breathing. Then he used a hand for leverage and sprang to his feet.

  Footprints in the soot coating the floor led from the stairs to the French windows from which all glass had been exploded by the fire. Paladin rushed through them and out on to the balcony. He grabbed the rail and craned out precariously. He was in time to see Rodriguez hang by his fingertips from the lower balcony, then drop to the lawn.

  The Mexican hit the grass hard, staggered, then regained his balance. Paladin fired at the running figure once, twice, but missed; a man shooting at a depressed angle must always aim deliberately low. Paladin had been too hasty; both his shots had screamed over the Mexican’s head.

  Rodriguez was lithe and fleet of foot. He ran for the side of the house. His horse would be hitched in the stable yard. Certain that he had done his job and meted out rough justice on the man who killed his mother, he would cross the Bowman-Laing bridge and r
ide flat out for Texas.

  And Paladin’s horse was tied to a tree a good hundred yards away.

  ‘Damn it to hell,’ Paladin swore, and quickly weighed his options. Wait for Rodriguez to come riding around from the stables, and try to shoot him out of the saddle? Or run for his own horse now and be ready to give chase?

  The shot was too risky. Paladin spun and tore back into the house. He hammered down the stairs two at a time. Corrigan was on the first landing, shoulder bloody, sitting against the wall with his legs outstretched. He grinned weakly, flapped a hand. Paladin rushed by and continued on down, pushing hard off the walls at the turns. He pounded along the echoing hall and clattered down the steps. Rodriguez came tearing around the corner and on to the grass. Clods of dark earth flew from the hoofs of his racing horse. The Mexican’s colourful sombrero was flying from its neck cord. His bared teeth were white in the now fading light.

  Again Paladin tried to down the man. He stood with braced legs, holding the Colt .45 in both hands. But now he was faced with a fast-moving target. He fired twice. Both shots missed the fleeing Mexican, hissing into the tall trees. At the next squeeze of the trigger the hammer clicked on on a spent cartridge.

  Swearing coarsely, then wisely curbing his fury to save breath, Paladin began to run.

  He was no more than halfway to the trees where his horse was tethered when he heard a terrible tearing and splintering of wood. It was followed by a loud, fearful yell, and a huge splash.

  The damn bridge has gone, Paladin thought wildly. He broke into a flat-out sprint. When he reached his horse it was straining back against the tether, ears pricked, eyes showing their whites. Paladin said something soothing. Then he dragged his Winchester from its saddle-boot and ran for the creek.

  The sun had almost gone. The encircling stands of tall trees cast long shadows. Rodriguez’s horse was thrusting itself back up the steep bank, rippling muscles streaming water. It made the top, stood trembling, stirrups swinging loosely. Paladin touched the wet horse, strode to the timber steps leading on to the Bowman-Laing bridge.

  But there was no bridge.

  It had collapsed under the weight of Rodriguez’s horse. The Mexican had taken it too fast. He had reached halfway. Then one of his horse’s hoofs had broken through a rotten board. Rodriguez had gone down with his horse into deep water. The splintered remains of the ancient creek crossing hung from both banks, the jagged ends of broken timber trailing in the water.

  Rodriguez was clinging desperately to a thin, overhanging branch. His knuckles were white. The current was not strong, but he was some way out from the bank and out of his depth. The thin branch could not support his weight. Every now and then he went under. When he surfaced his sleek black hair was flattened to his head. His eyes were wild, staring, but when he spoke his voice was without fear.

  ‘I cannot swim,’ he said.

  ‘I had your bullet in my back all those years ago when you dumped me in the Red. Swimming was difficult.’

  ‘But you are here now and so I ask you—’

  ‘Corrigan’s alive.’

  ‘No es importante, I—’

  The branch dipped and he went under again. This time when he surfaced his nostrils were flared and there was a distant look in his eyes. Inside his clenched, white-knuckled fist the bark was stripping from the green branch.

  ‘Por favor,’ he said without emotion. ‘Por favor, Señor Paladin. . . .’

  Paladin dropped the rifle and stepped carefully down the slippery bank. He pulled his folding knife from his pocket. The way he was turned, the knife was hidden from Rodriguez. Paladin thumbed open the blade. He looked down at the cold steel. He closed his eyes for an instant, swallowed the choking feeling in his throat; listened to the rushing of the water, the liquid sounds of a man drowning in silent stoicism.

  Then he opened his eyes, bent down and with a single stroke of the razor-sharp blade he severed the taut branch.