She kissed him quickly, slipped out of the window and dropped to the roof below, light and quick.
No doubt about it, Blade thought, she’s a girl in a million.
He saw her reach the wall and disappear behind it. A few seconds later the two men ran into view. One of them ran into a shot from Blade. The second man jumped back in time to evade Blade’s second shot.
The men outside were either afraid of Draper or they were light-headed. They rushed the doorway. The first man tripped on the iron grill that lay in his path. As he measured his length on the floor, Blade fired. The second man stumbled over him and was a sitting duck for the next shot. One of them, Blade never knew which, tried to hit him, but the shot went a foot wide. Blade’s last shot brought a yell of terror and one of the men dragged himself out of the room into the cover of the hall.
‘Christ,’ he heard Draper bellow, ‘he’s one man. One stinking man. His gun’s empty, go get him and earn your pay.’
‘The only pay we’ll get out of this, Draper,’ said a man, ‘is a bullet in the guts.’
Blade was thumbing fresh rounds into his gun. Draper shouted: ‘The room’s empty. Go in there and cut ‘em down from the window.’
His gun fully loaded, Blade dropped flat on the floor and fired at an angle across the entrance to the right. At once he rolled quickly to the right and drove two shots to the left. He knew he still held the initiative. If he let up for a moment, he was a goner. His three shots created pandemonium. Another man fell down the stairs. One ran off down the hall. Not a shot came back in return. He wondered if Draper was still outside.
He listened. He thought he could hear a man’s rasping breath, but he could not be sure. Rising, he went silent-footed to the window and, crouching down, looked out. The corner of his eye caught a slight movement. Resting his gun wrist on the sill he drove a shot at the man creeping bent over in the moonlight. The shot turned him violently and he staggered. Then he was getting back out of sight, dragging his left foot.
Blade made his one mistake with that shot. He knew the risk he took and he had to make it to prevent the man from reaching Charity. But he gave his position away to a man at the doorway to the room. He heard the gun thunder and something smashed into him from behind. It drove his face against the adobe. He fell back into the room.
Even as he hit the floor, his mind was screaming: Line your gun up on the door.
He rolled over on to his belly, pushed his gun out on a straight arm. Something pale moved. He took it for a shirt-front and thumbed and fired at once.
A man shrieked as high-pitched as a woman.
Another man said: ‘This is a goddam slaughterhouse. Count me out, Draper.’
‘You yellow bastard,’ Draper yelled. ‘I don’t need trash like you.’ There came the sound of a man running. A gun went off in the hall. The footsteps stopped and a body hit the floor.
A massive relief flooded through Blade. At long last, he was getting somewhere. He rolled very carefully to the far corner of the room and reloaded the gun. That made him just about out of shells. He stood up and went silently to the window. He went out of that window quiet as a mouse.
Nineteen
Draper was listening.
An awful possibility came to him. Was he really alone outside this room? Had Blade actually cut down or scared off all his men? It didn’t seem possible. Maybe, though. They were only hired men and this bastard Blade was a dedicated man and Draper knew from experience that they were the worst of all to face. But all a man needed to combat them was cunning and iron in the soul. And no man, he told himself, had more iron than he.
‘If you are any kind of a man, Blade,’ he said, ‘you’ll step out and face me.’
Silence.
‘Come out, you yellow-bellied son-of-a-bitch,’ Draper said. ‘I know you’re there. If you don’t come out, I’ll come in there and finish you like a dog.’
More silence.
Suddenly, Draper felt utterly foolish. Maybe he was the only living soul left in the house. Again he was aghast at the thought that one man had defeated him and his bunch of case-hardened experienced gunmen. It seemed all against the laws of life.
He stepped forward on soft feet and stood in the doorway, gun ready. Nothing happened. He found that he was sweating profusely.
My God, he thought, this bastard has me scared.
That thought braced him remarkably. He turned and descended the stairs, picking his way carefully past the dead man sprawled there. He went out into the patio intending to make his way to the rear of the house. That was the way Blade had gone. The girl would maybe be with him. He would find them both and kill them. That would not save his plans, which were now all utterly wrecked, but it would give him a profound personal satisfaction. With those two dead, he could close the account and move on to something more promising, in some sphere where there were no men like Blade.
He walked under the archway and along the side of the house. At the corner of the house, he stopped. In front of him was the crumbling adobe wall. Anybody who fled the house would use that as a natural cover. On silent feet, he went tippy-toe towards it, being careful not to tread on something that would give his presence away.
He walked around the edge of the wall.
Sudden joy burst in him. There was the girl crouched down.
He pointed his gun at her and said conversationally: ‘At least I shall have the satisfaction of killing Blade’s pride and joy, my dear.’
The girl said with a horrible calm: ‘You shoot me, mister, and I’ll lay a forty-five slug clean through your brisket.’
‘And I shall put a bullet through your head,’ said Blade’s voice from behind him.
Draper was never a man who did not know his own mind, but in that moment an enormous doubt seized him. Which of these two was the greater danger? He decided that it was Blade with his phenomenal speed.
So Draper chose. If he had to go, he would take Blade with him.
He turned and struck out with his hand for where he thought Blade’s gun was. His movement was incredibly fast, but it failed. It failed because Blade’s gun was not where he thought it to be. He found out very quickly exactly where it was and that was at the base of his skull.
He gave a low cry and pitched back almost into Charity’s arms.
The girl said: ‘I don’t want him.’
Blade said: ‘But you’ve got him – all the way back to the American border.’
George McMasters strolled up.
‘Where did all the bad men go?’ he asked dryly.
‘Thataway,’ said Charity.
McMasters laughed – ‘That alcalde ain’t going to be best pleased. There’s corpses ’most every place.’
In fact, now the guns had stopped, people began to appear, among them the alcalde.
‘Por Dios,’ he cried, ‘this will bring the Rurales down on us wholesale. Go I beg you, with God, before it happens.’
It is on record that that is what they did. They rode through the night for the Border and took with them a sullen and morose villain in the form of one Milton Draper. It is amusing to note the style of the man, Blade. He never did actually smuggle Draper illegally across the international line. It so happened that Draper managed to escape within sight of the Border. Unfortunately for him, the path of escape open to him lay to the north, so north he went.
However, he was no sooner on United States’ soil that he ran into a body of armed men under the command of Samson Rule, who was at the time United States marshal for the territory of Arizona. Having neither guns nor ammunition, Draper could make no more than a token resistance. He stood trial in Tucson the following month. In the dock with him were sundry opportunists such as Lionel Binns and Miley Alpert who had failed to take advantage of the going while it was good. If they had not had a good lawyer, they would all probably have hanged. Instead they served a long term in Yuma jail.
As for Blade and Charity, they were not seen around Tucson for some time. McMasters ca
me in to town and informed the governor that they had both ridden off into the sunset, as you might say.
‘George,’ said General Dimsdale, T would like to reward Blade in some way that he’ll never forget.’ McMasters smiled.
‘Governor,’ he said, ‘I reckon Charity Clayton will reward him in a way he’ll never forget.’
The general looked a little surprised and shocked. Finally, however, he nodded and said: ‘Lucky old Blade.’
BLADE 2: THE TUCSON CONSPIRACY
By Matt Chisholm
First published by Hamlyn Books in 1978
Copyright © 1978, 2018 by Matt Chisholm
First SMASHWORDS Edition: March 2018
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Cover Art by Edward Martin
Series Editor: Mike Stotter
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author’s Agent.
About the Author
Peter Christopher Watts
(19 December 1919 — 30 November 1983)
Is the author of more than 150 novels, is better known by his pen names of “Matt Chisholm” and “Cy James”. He published his first western novel under the Matt Chisholm name in 1958 (Halfbreed). He began writing the “McAllister” series in 1963 with The Hard Men, and that series ran to 35 novels. He followed that up with the “Storm” series. And used the Cy James name for his “Spur” series.
More on PETER WATTS
But the adventure doesn’t end here …
Join us for more first-class, action-packed books.
Regular updates feature on our website and blog
The Adventures continue…
Issuing new and classic fiction from Yesterday and Today!
More on Matt Chisholm
Blade 2 Page 15
