By the Neck

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Wolfbait barked, “Now, Nosey!” In the same moment, he spun as if he were twenty and not well-north of sixty, dropped to his left knee, raised his right arm steady with the gun, and sent a pair of slugs into the man’s chest a finger snap’s worth of time before the Mexican did the same to him. “You’re the ninth.”

  The Mexican’s eyes explained everything he was going through. From wide surprise that broadened into realization, then squinting as the pain of the bullets clanged gongs of doom in his meager brain, rallying the man’s death knell. Or at least that’s what went through Nosey’s mind as he watched in the span of two, perhaps three seconds, as the swarthy would-be killer’s face transformed from the living to the standing dead.

  The Mexican’s arm that held the long pistol aloft, dropped as if he were wielding an axe poorly. The hand twitched and the revolver slipped from his grasp and lay at his feet. His knees buckled, first the left then the right, and he seemed to collapse on himself like a stack of playing cards someone had pulled out starting from the bottom.

  The last thing he did was flop backward in the dirt, one leg tucked beneath him in a most uncomfortable-looking manner, his spur’s rowel spinning one last time.

  Wolfbait looked from the dead man to his left, to the slack-jawed Nosey Parker standing beside him. “I see you didn’t do as I told you, you whelp!”

  “I’m not a child, Wolfbait. And I didn’t want to leave you in the clutches of that madman.” He folded his arms and looked back toward the forest.

  “Good way to get yourself dead. Now get down.” With that, Wolfbait tugged the younger man down to a crouching position. “Gunfire usually draws the curious, and some of them might not be happy to see what I did.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “Good. Now, I didn’t say I don’t appreciate your willingness to die on my behalf, boy. But can we agree that I have a few years on you?” He looked at Nosey, who finally looked at him.

  “Yes,” said Nosey, sighing.

  “Fine. Then can we also agree that because of those years, I might have some hunk of brains about me that you haven’t yet figured out how to accumulate?”

  Nosey’s brows drew in tight. “I’m not sure what that means, but I’m tired of crouching down here and talking in whispers, so I will agree with you. From here on out, and forever, if that will appease you, Wolfbait.”

  The old man smiled. “I’m not saying you’re smart, or even clever, but I will allow that you might have promise. Might be we’ll all be glad one day that you weren’t eaten as a baby . . . while your bones were soft.”

  “My God, Wolfbait, I—” Nosey looked at his companion, saw the smirk there, and smiled himself. “You are a man of many surprises.”

  “Yep,” said Wolfbait, glancing up and down the street. “And I’m also tired of talking about nothing. Now, when I say it’s safe, you dart out there and grab that revolver. And strip off his gun belt, too. We’ll have need of the ammunition.” Wolfbait looked toward the main street, then at the mercantile. “Okay, do it now, boy—I got you covered!”

  Nosey pulled in a deep breath, then bent even lower and, glancing both ways as if he were crossing a street in Boston busy with carriage traffic, he low-walked out to the sprawled Mexican. Despite the fact that he knew the man had to be dead, Nosey wasn’t fully committed to the notion. He dropped to his knees at the man’s side, but felt drawn up inside, tight like a coil of rope. What if the Mexican was playing a game with them? What if it was some sort of pistolero’s ruse?

  “Hurry up, dammit!”

  Nosey glanced back at Wolfbait, licked his lips, and snatched up the gun. He noticed it was on full cock. He swung it toward Wolfbait. “Do I—”

  For the second time in the past few minutes his companion belied his age by dropping flat to the ground. “Aim that at the sky, boy! Now!”

  Nosey shook his head at the old man’s nervous ways. The gun bucked in his hand and sent a bullet somewhat skyward. “Oh!” he said when he regained control of the heavy, lurching thing. “Where will that land?” He raised his free hand and clapped it on his head.

  “Stupid boy! Get over here and stop being stupid!”

  Nosey did as Wolfbait had ordered and joined the man crouching behind the barrels. On seeing Wolfbait’s gritted teeth nested in that full, straggly beard, he chose to keep mum about the man calling him stupid twice in one breath. Even if it was redundant.

  It seemed to them that the shouting up the lane had ceased a moment, but only for a moment. It resumed louder and bolder. Shouts volleyed back and forth across the street, and though he couldn’t make out the words, he did think that one of the voices sounded like Rollie’s.

  Both men knew the big flaw in their plan would be when they became exposed as they emerged from out behind the stacks of logs and rough lumber Chauncey had been amassing close to the site of his hotel that was slow in progress. But there was no choice. They had to get to the saloon. Gut instinct told them their friends needed help.

  The future hotel lay north of The Last Drop by a half-dozen lots. Between Chauncey’s Folly, as some folks in town had begun calling the hotel, and the saloon sat two cabins. One was storage for spare drilling and blasting equipment, the other was the village stable with a corral out back. Only two horses currently resided in the little corral. They belonged to Chauncey, a sturdy team that pulled his freight wagon for stock runs.

  As the two men catfooted forward, Nosey did his best to not let Wolfbait straggle behind, in part because the older man cursed him with each wheezing, crouched step forward they took. But also because Wolfbait had a six-gun and had proven he most definitely bore the skill to use it.

  Ahead, they spied the tent set up behind the slowly emerging new version of The Last Drop saloon, but near the temporary residence of Rollie and Pops, they saw no sign of activity.

  Wolfbait squinted his eyes, said, “There!” and pointed a gnarled old finger toward the half-built saloon.

  Nosey nodded. He saw it, too. A slight movement of someone inside.

  Wolfbait spoke again, whispered the same word, and pointed. “There.”

  Nosey followed the old man’s sightline and saw Rollie shimmying out the back, from under the floor of the saloon.

  “Smart,” said Wolfbait. “Else they’d be pinned down in there.”

  “But that means Pops is in the bar.”

  Wolfbait nodded. “Got to see if we can help somehow.”

  “I don’t think so, boys.”

  Neither man had to turn to know the voice behind them wasn’t that of someone they knew. And then they heard the throaty, metal clicks of a hammer pulling back.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The shooting began at cock’s crow. Rollie had been tugging up his braces on his return from the privy to the rear of the tent that had for the previous weeks doubled as their temporary saloon and living quarters. He’d glanced southward along Main Street toward the hardware shop and the eatery and saw two men rein up and dismount in a hurry between those businesses.

  He’d seen another riding in from the southwest trail, and saw higher up, southeastward along the thinly treed ridgetop skirting the downtown, the flickering passage of at least a half-dozen riders moving steady. He thought, too, he saw long guns balanced upright on riders’ thighs. This was no early-morning arrival of hopeful newcomers seeking diggings.

  Rollie spun, tugging up his second brace. “Pops! Hell with the coffee—we have company. A lot of it.” He didn’t stop to explain further. He knew Pops would understand the meaning of his barked words and do what he needed to.

  In two steps, Rollie was at his cot. He flipped it up and did the same with the lid of his battered wooden chest. He snatched out two boxes of shells, and, though he knew it was there, he slid his hand down to brush the Schofield at his side. As he strode from the partitioned room at the back of the tent that served as his and Pops’ living quarters, he snatched up his Winchester rifle.

  By then, Pops had his prize Greener cradled
in his arms, his pipe puffing up a chimneylike cloud—Rollie noticed Pops always puffed harder when something exciting was about to happen—and had his Colt revolver on his waist.

  He followed Rollie out the front of the tent toward the raw wood skeleton of the emerging saloon between the tent and the street. They were rounding the front corner, and Rollie was about to speak as he motioned toward the ridge and the south end of Main Street, when a gunshot cracked the silent morning air. It came from their left, across the street and up on the tumbledown hillside flanking the town proper. That meant they were exposed.

  As they flattened against the new saloon’s gappy north wall, a second shot ripped into boards above their heads. They didn’t need more convincing. They catfooted low back the way they’d come and made it around the back corner of the structure as another bullet chewed a furrow in the stout corner timber.

  “Dammit!” growled Rollie. “Putting holes in our new building.”

  “That all we have to worry about?” said Pops, eyeing the street through the length of the unfinished structure.

  Rollie ignored the crack and told Pops what he had seen moments before. He was almost done when a deep, shouting voice from up on the opposite hillside shouted, “Hello the bar! We have your town all but surrounded. Everybody here has either been run off or taken prisoner. If you don’t do as we say, we will commence shooting each and every one of these fine folks in the head. Between the eyes, I do believe.”

  “Gee,” said Pops, “I wonder who he’s after?”

  Rollie growled and squinted around the corner of the building toward the hillside. This was not how he had expected to begin his day.

  “Before you shout your own challenge back, I suggest we put something between them and us, like a half-built building. I feel naked out here.” Pops cut to his right and laid Lil’ Miss Mess Maker on the floor before him. He hoisted himself trough the gap that would become a double back door for the saloon. They’d designed it like that to make it easier to move stock in and out.

  Rollie grumbled, then said, “Better than the tent, I guess.”

  “Oh, feel free to hole up in the tent. I aim to take cover behind as much thick wood as I can.” Pops glanced up the hill behind the saloon while he said it.

  Rollie did, too, while he climbed in after Pops. “I don’t think they’d have time to get up there yet. But then again, what do I know? I didn’t even know they were in town.”

  “Heck, we don’t even know who they are.”

  “The only thing we do know is that they want my hide,” said Rollie, sneering. He bent low and hustled to the front of the building, then crouched beneath a window hole in the nearly complete front wall. Gaps showed between the vertical planks because they’d not yet nailed up battens on the outside.

  “You out there!” he shouted. He’d never liked the sound of his voice while shouting and had rarely raised his voice in a shout throughout his life.

  “Good start,” said Pops, eyebrows raised. He nodded once, urging Rollie on.

  Rollie sighed.

  The big booming voice from before said, “Yeah?”

  “Who do you want?”

  “Don’t be stupid, old man! We want Stoneface Finnegan. Might be you. Come on out!”

  “And if he doesn’t?” Rollie already knew the answer, they’d said as much a few minutes before. He was stalling, buying time, but he doubted it was going to work.

  “Then we’ll commence the killing!”

  Rollie waited, leaning against the wall, aware that a bullet could gnaw its way through and into him any second.

  “Well?” came the voice from across the road.

  That gave Rollie hope. They might be a little desperate after all, or maybe a little hesitant to shoot innocents. It wasn’t much of a hope, but a sliver was better than nothing.

  “How do I know you have anybody hostage?”

  There was a long moment’s pause, during which neither Pops nor Rollie breathed. If they heard a scream or shout followed by a gunshot, the invaders had called Rollie’s bluff and shot an innocent townsperson.

  The man’s voice boomed out once more. “Ha! You best believe it, mister. Before we shoot somebody, maybe that big goober at the restaurant—good pie, by the way—I think we’ll open this ball with a little fun! Boys? Let ’em fly!”

  No sooner had he said that than shots from what sounded like all directions filled the air of Boar Gulch. And from the sound of where they were landing, every bullet in the world was directed at the half-clothed skeleton of The Last Drop. Wood splintered and cracked and chips flew. Shouts that sounded a whole lot like the cackles of laughter punched through the air when there were pauses between gunshots.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “You still think this was a good idea, Pops?” Rollie forced the grim words through gritted teeth as he peered around a stack of planking waiting to be nailed in place on the improved saloon. He wasn’t so certain that would happen now. At the very least, if they lived through this fusillade, they’d have to replace half the lumber already nailed up.

  “Now,” Pops ducked low, whacking his chin on the floor of the half-built saloon as a bullet zipped through where his forehead had been. “Which of my excellent ideas are you referring to?”

  Another bullet chewed a furrow in the honeyed wood of the pine plank beside Rollie’s head. He smelled the tang of pitch and wished he was out riding Cap in some far-off forest, with no two-legged predators dogging his trail. “The notion that I should stay in Boar Gulch . . .” He snaked the Schofield around the base of the stack and cranked off two shots in the general direction of the diseased devils who had them—and the entire town—pinned down.

  “And?” Pops glanced at his partner a dozen feet to his left.

  “Instead of pulling up stakes and leading these—whoever they are—away from innocent folk!”

  “Innocent? In the Gulch?” Pops laughed and refilled the wheel on his Colt. “We need a plan, Rollie. Can’t sit here all day and wait to get picked off. One of them’s bound to be cutting a wide loop around town right now.”

  “I know. I figured as much—they’ll be coming in on us from behind. Trouble is,” he gritted his teeth and scooched lower as another bullet shattered a pitchy knot a foot to his left. “I don’t see a way to get out of here that doesn’t involve stomping fast across the wide open all around us.”

  Rollie considered the situation. By now the miners in the outlying cabins would be curious and ambling their way to town on all the little feeder trials and lanes that leached outward from the beating heart that was Boar Gulch’s Main Street.

  “Nosey got anything more on him than that two-shot you gave him?”

  Pops nodded. “Supposed to. I told him to take the scattergun from the tent.”

  “Good.”

  “Unless he didn’t remember to take it with him.”

  “Oh. Well, if he has it, he can’t miss with that thing.”

  “Don’t be so certain. That kid can write up a storm and ask more questions than the good Lord has answers for, but I never saw anybody as poor a shot as Nosey Parker.”

  Rollie nodded. “Hopefully he’s with Wolfbait. He might be old and cranky, but he’s a solid shot.”

  “Yep, can’t run worth a bean, but he’s a decent shot.”

  The men sat quiet for a moment longer, each considering a course of action—any would do now that they were pinned down. It was embarrassing enough without being able to help another blessed soul in town.

  “Maybe the mayor has a plan!” Pops didn’t laugh after he said it.

  Rollie looked over at him and that’s when Pops laughed. Rollie couldn’t help himself. He shook his head and smiled. “How many do you think are out there waiting on us?”

  “Hard to tell,” said Pops. “But from the angle and direction of the shots so far, I’d say three, maybe four. Spread out, likely from behind the big rock, then from the slope north of it.”

  Rollie nodded in agreement. “And so
uth?” He squinted southward through a gap in the plank.

  “Could be holed up in Geoff the Scot’s fine dining establishment.”

  “That means they’re eating all the pie. Dammit. Not much I like about that surly Geoff, but he can make a mean pie.”

  “That’s a fact. Be a shame to lose a man with such a talent.”

  “That’s it. I’m done with this foolishness. If I’m what they want, there’s no need for the town to suffer for it.” He shoved up onto his left knee, wincing at the pain from crouching for the past hour.

  “Rollie, no! That’s what they want!” Pops was too far away to wrestle his bullheaded pard to a standstill, so he threw a scrap of wood at him. The ragged nub end of plank caught Rollie in the leg.

  “Hey!”

  “Stay put. Has to be a smarter way out of this than getting shot!”

  Another bullet whistled in and chewed a furrow in the floor behind them. Rollie glanced at it. “Hey.”

  Pops looked at him. “You said that already.”

  “I don’t see nail heads on that flooring back there where the bar’s going to go.”

  “If we ever get this thing built! But yeah, now you mention it, that doesn’t surprise me. I believe Nosey was responsible for that task yesterday. You thinking what I’m thinking you’re thinking?”

  Rollie shrugged. “You’re starting to sound like Wolfbait. I’m going to scoot back there, pry up a couple of those boards, and squirm my way down through. Should be far enough back that they can’t see under from the front.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ll crawl underneath and head for the outhouse.”

  Pops laughed. “You have to go that bad?”

  “Yeah, and when I’m done I’ll try to make it up the hill and—”

  “And?”

  Rollie shoved himself backward, lugging a wide plank before him as a scant shield. “And I’ll figure it out once I get up there!”

  “No offense, Rollie, but you aren’t as fast or as flexible as a man thinking of doing that ought to be. Let me do it.”