The big gundown

by J. A. Johnstone

  “It’s me, Elena,” The Kid whispered back to her.

  “Señor Morgan!” She hurried to him. “Señor Morgan, I was about to come to your room. You must leave this place! I just overheard those men Terhune and Cranston talking to the colonel, outside in the compound. They do not trust you. They are trying to persuade him that you should be made a prisoner and killed tomorrow along with the man Sheffield. I think the colonel is going to agree with them!”

  The Kid bit back a curse. It looked like he was going to be rushed into action after all, whether he was prepared or not.

  “All right,” he said. “You have to tell me where Señora Sheffield is being held. We’ll get her and take her with us.”

  Elena hesitated, then said, “Why? That will just anger Colonel Black even more and make him pursue you and kill you.”

  “I can’t leave her here, Elena.”

  “I heard you earlier today. I heard the two of you talking. She is more to you than a friend.”

  The Kid’s jaw tightened. Elena was jealous, all right. That was just about the last thing in the world he needed.

  “Listen to me,” he told her. He reached out and rested his hands on her shoulders for emphasis. “Just because Señora Sheffield would like for there to be more between us doesn’t mean that there is, or ever will be. I don’t want her like that. I just want her to be safe.”

  “You give me your word on this, Señor Morgan…Kid?”

  “Of course.”

  You should feel real proud of yourself, he thought. Leading on a blind girl so she would help him escape from a band of vicious outlaws. But she wanted to get away from them, too, he reminded himself. More than likely she had suffered at their hands, as well as at the hands of Señora Lopez.

  “All right,” she whispered. “I will show you.”

  She took his hand and led him out of the dining room, through the door to the kitchen. Another passage branched off from it, and after a moment they were in almost utter darkness. The Kid could barely make out the lightness of Elena’s gown. She moved with easy confidence, completely at home in the darkness.

  After a few moments, The Kid saw another patch of light ahead of them. They were reaching a turn in the tunnel. Elena paused and put her mouth close to his ear.

  “The colonel’s quarters are back here, and so is the room where the señora is being kept. We must be very quiet. The colonel is not here. He is with the men in the compound, but Señora Lopez is here, and she has a gun.”

  The Kid didn’t like the sound of that. A gunshot would bring trouble in a hurry, and plenty of it.

  “I will tell her that the colonel is looking for her,” Elena went on. “You stay here, and when she comes around the corner you can take hold of her and strangle her. Do not let go until she is dead.”

  The casual way Elena said that made The Kid’s eyebrows rise in surprise. For all her gentleness, she could be ruthless, too. He supposed she’d had to learn to be in order to survive.

  “Go ahead,” The Kid told her. He had no intention of choking Señora Lopez to death, but Elena didn’t have to know that.

  He put his back against the stone wall of the passage and waited while Elena’s slippered feet whispered around the corner. A moment later, he heard soft voices as she talked with Señora Lopez. The Kid couldn’t make out the words, but he thought the Indian woman sounded angry. She was still muttering under her breath as she approached the bend in the tunnel. Her footsteps were much heavier than Elena’s. The light grew brighter from the lantern she carried. The Kid held his breath as she came around the corner.

  She stepped right past him without seeing him at first. Then she caught sight of him from the corner of her eye, and turned toward him, her mouth opened to yell.

  Before she could make a sound, The Kid hit her. It was a short, sharp punch with enough power behind it to stun the woman and make her eyes roll up in their sockets. The Kid grabbed the lantern as it slid out of her hand. Señora Lopez fell to her knees and rolled onto her side.

  The Kid placed the lantern on the floor of the tunnel and went to work swiftly. He tore strips of cloth from the woman’s long skirt and used them to bind her wrists behind her back. He tied her ankles together as well to keep her from moving around. Then he used another piece of cloth as a gag, working it into her mouth and tying it in place with one of the strips. When he was finished, he lifted her and leaned her against the wall in a sitting position.

  Her eyelids flickered open, and she glared at him with murderous intensity as she made muffled sounds through the gag. The Kid was glad he couldn’t hear what she was saying to him.

  He slipped his Colt from its holster and told Señora Lopez, “Settle down, or I’ll tap you with the barrel of this gun and knock you out again.”

  She continued to glare at him, but at least she stopped making so much racket. He stepped around the corner where he could still keep an eye on her and motioned to Elena before he remembered that that didn’t do a bit of good.

  “Elena,” he called softly. “Elena, get Señora Sheffield, and let’s get out of here.”

  For a moment, the girl didn’t move, and The Kid thought she might have changed her mind about taking Glory with them. But then Elena reached out and fumbled for a second with the door latch. Such awkwardness was unusual for her, but she probably hadn’t had to unlock the door of a room where a prisoner was being held all that often, if ever.

  The latch slid back, and Elena opened the door. “Señora Sheffield,” she said. “Come. We must leave this place.”

  The Kid heard Glory ask from inside the room, “What’s going on here?” She sounded suspicious, like she wasn’t inclined to trust Elena, and The Kid supposed he couldn’t blame her for that. Glory had no way of knowing that Elena was on their side.

  He took a step along the hallway, past the corner, and called, “Glory! Come on! It’s The Kid!”

  Glory appeared in the doorway, wearing a green silk gown that Black must have had on hand for her. She stared at him and said, “Kid!”

  Then her eyes widened as she glanced past him, and she added, “Look out!”

  The Kid whirled around. Somehow, Señora Lopez had gotten to her feet, and her hands were free. The faint candlelight glinted on the short blade of the knife in her hand. The Kid realized that it must have been hidden in her dress, somewhere she could reach it. He hadn’t searched her.

  She dropped the knife, reached into a pocket, and pulled out a short-barreled pistol. As she swung the gun up The Kid lunged toward her, closing his left hand around the pistol’s cylinder so it wouldn’t fire and shoving it to the side while he struck her with the barrel of the Colt in his right hand. The blow drove her against the wall. She slid down it, out cold.

  Glory and Elena hurried up behind The Kid. “I told you you should kill her,” Elena said.

  “I don’t kill in cold blood,” he snapped, which wasn’t exactly true. He had, but only under the most extreme provocation.

  He shoved the thought of his wife’s death out of his mind. He didn’t need any distractions. He took hold of Glory’s bare upper arm and went on, “There’s a way out of here. Elena will show you. I’ll get some supplies together as quickly as I can and follow you. We’ll meet on top of the Red Skull.”

  “The-the what?”

  “The big rock on top of the cliff. That’s where the stairs come out. Wait for me there…but if you hear shooting down here, then the two of you get as far away from here as you can, as fast as you can. If you can figure out what direction Titusville is, head for it. You should run into Sheffield and his men on the way.”

  “You mean you want us to leave you here, Kid?” Glory shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

  “Nor can I, señor,” Elena put in.

  “Maybe you won’t have to.” The Kid smiled. “Maybe we’ll be lucky—”

  The Kid knew better than to tempt fate by saying something like that. No sooner were the words out of his mouth than a heavy roar sound
ed somewhere outside, followed by a wave of gunfire.

  Chapter 33

  Glory threw her arms around The Kid’s neck in terror. “Oh, my God! What was that?”

  “Sounded like one of those cannon,” he replied as he disengaged himself from her frantic grip. “From the sound of the gunshots, I’d say the colonel’s found himself with a battle on his hands sooner than he expected.”

  “But-but how?”

  The Kid was convinced that Sheffield, Bateman, and the others had found Colonel Black’s stronghold and launched a surprise attack on it in the middle of the night. That was the only explanation that made any sense.

  “We’ll worry about that later,” he told Glory. “For now, I want to get you and Elena to someplace safe. Elena, can you take Señora Sheffield up those stairs?”

  Elena looked like she didn’t care much for the idea, but she nodded. “Sí, señor. You will come to us?”

  “As soon as I can,” The Kid promised.

  He picked up the lantern and the pistol Señora Lopez had dropped and hustled the two women along the hallway to the dining room, leaving the Indian woman where she was. When they got there, the sound of shots from outside was even louder. The Kid went to the section of wall where the door was hidden and pressed on the beam as he had seen Elena do earlier. The latch clicked, and the door popped open. He swung it back the rest of the way and handed the lantern to Glory, along with the little pistol.

  “I’ll be along as soon as I can,” he told them. “Good luck.”

  Glory looked like she wanted to fling her arms around his neck again, but her hands were full. She settled for saying, “Good luck to you, Kid.”

  Elena hugged The Kid instead. “Vaya con Dios, Señor Morgan,” she said.

  Glory frowned at the embrace, then followed Elena up the stairs. The Kid watched until they had made the first turn around the spiral and gone out of sight before he hurried toward the front of the stronghold.

  He had heard only the one round from the cannon and was surprised that the other big guns hadn’t been brought into action. Maybe the attackers had picked off the gunners and their steady fire was keeping any of the other outlaws from reaching the cannon. He was headed for the door leading into the compound when it burst open and the two owlhoot lieutenants named Harkins and Brill burst in, each with a gun in his hand.

  “Morgan!” Brill exclaimed. “You seen that woman you brought in?”

  “Mrs. Sheffield?” The Kid said.

  Brill jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah. The colonel ordered me and Harkins to stay with her and watch over her, to make sure that nothin’ happens to her.”

  “What’s going on out there?”

  Harkins said, “All hell’s breakin’ loose, that’s what’s goin’ on! Somebody snuck up on us and opened fire. Must be Sheffield and his men, somehow.”

  “The cannon by the south guard tower got one shot off,” Brill put in, “but then the fellas mannin’ it went down, and any time somebody else tries to get to it, rifle fire forces ’em back.”

  “What about the other two cannon?” The Kid asked. “Are they loaded?”

  “Yeah, ready to fire. The men in those gun crews are dead, too, though. The sons o’ bitches got sharpshooters on top of the Red Skull! They swept the parapets clean. We have a few men left in the guard towers, but everybody else has had to hole up in the cabins.”

  Harkins said, “What about the woman, damn it? Tell us where she is, Morgan.”

  “Gone,” The Kid said. By now Glory and Elena were probably halfway up the stairs. They would have a surprise waiting for them when they got to the top. Edward Sheffield himself might be up there, although The Kid sort of doubted it. He figured the tycoon would hang back, out of the line of fire. Bateman might well be on top of the Red Skull, though, directing the attack on the outlaw stronghold.

  Harkins and Brill stared at The Kid. “What do you mean, gone?” Brill demanded.

  “Escaped.”

  “The hell you say!” Brill’s face suddenly twisted with anger. “You let her go! I never did trust you, you son of a bitch! Cranston and Terhune were tryin’ to get the colonel to kill you, and I reckon he should have!”

  “We’ll take care of that right now!” Harkins yelled.

  Their guns jerked up.

  But in the second it took for them to lift their weapons, The Kid’s Colt spewed flaming death, roaring and bucking twice in his hand. The bullets smashed into the outlaws and drove them backward with looks of shock and pain on their faces. They collapsed, their blood welling out onto the woven rug. The Kid stepped forward and kicked their guns out of reach before they could try again to shoot him.

  Swiftly, with practiced ease, he thumbed three cartridges from the loops on his gunbelt and replaced the two rounds he had just fired, plus slipping a bullet into the chamber he normally kept empty for the hammer to rest on. In the midst of this hornets’ nest of enemies, he wanted a full deck from which to deal.

  Snapping the cylinder closed, he stepped past the two dead owlhoots and hurried to the door. He looked out, saw lanterns burning in the guard towers and casting their light across the compound. Muzzle flashes lit up the darkness like crimson flowers blooming in the shadows. Some of the men in the towers fired out into the valley where a frontal attack was going on, while others directed their fire toward the riflemen on top of the cliff. Other shots came from the cabins. The air was full of whining, buzzing lead.

  The Kid’s gaze was drawn back to the cannon mounted in the center of the parapet, with bodies sprawled around it. Brill had said that the big gun by the south tower had been fired, which meant that the other two were still loaded, charged, and ready to wreak havoc.

  “Fall back! Fall back!”

  The shouted command came from Colonel Black, who led a retreat from the cabins. The outlaws charged out, firing as they ran toward the sanctuary under the cliff. Some of them fell, but most of them made it.

  “Colonel!” The Kid called as the men rushed into the stronghold.

  “Lieutenant Morgan!” Gideon Black had a bloody gash on his cheek where a bullet had grazed him, but other than that he seemed unharmed. “What happened to Harkins and Brill?”

  “A couple of stray bullets got them, right after they ran in here looking for Mrs. Sheffield.”

  Cranston came up behind the colonel. “He’s lying! I’ll bet he shot them!”

  “He’s a damn traitor!” Terhune added.

  For a second, The Kid thought Black believed them. Quickly, he said, “If I was a traitor, Colonel, I wouldn’t volunteer to go out there and touch off those cannon, now would I?”

  Black frowned. “It’s sure death to try for those cannon, Lieutenant.”

  “I can do it,” The Kid declared. “Just give me a chance.”

  Black hesitated, then made up his mind and nodded abruptly. “If you move fast enough, you might be able to reach the parapet. Take a torch with you, so you can fire the cannon as soon as you get there. But Lieutenant…I don’t think you’ll survive this gallant effort.”

  “Let me worry about that, Colonel.”

  All The Kid really intended to do was get the hell out of there and reach Sheffield’s forces. Then Bateman and the rest of the hired guns could finish off Black and his men. The Kid had hoped to pull the trigger on the renegade colonel himself, so that he could see Black die for what he had done to the Williams family, but as long as Black was blown straight to hell, that was all that really mattered.

  “The cannon are lined up on the enemy forces,” Black said. “If you could manage to fire them both, that would blow holes in their line and we could launch a counterattack. You’d give us a chance, at least, Lieutenant.”

  The Kid nodded, eager to be gone from that den of snakes. He hoped that Glory and Elena had reached the top of the stairs and would tell whoever was up there that he was on their side. Maybe they would hold their fire when they saw it was him making a break for it.

  “Godspeed, Lieutenant,�
� Black said.

  “I still don’t trust him,” Cranston murmured.

  The Kid went to the door. Someone thrust a blazing torch in his hand. He waited for a slight lull in the firing, then burst out into the compound, running for the wall as fast as he could. He planned to go up to the parapet and over the wall, figuring that would be faster and easier than opening the gates.

  Even over the crackle of rifle fire, he heard Glory cry, “Don’t shoot! It’s The Kid!”

  Bless her heart, he thought as the shots suddenly died away. She had seen him from up there and recognized him.

  In the sudden eerie silence he reached the base of the stairs that led up to the parapet. Inside the stronghold, Colonel Black figured out what the cease-fire meant. As The Kid started up the stairs, he heard Black shout, “Kill him! Kill Morgan!”

  Shots roared out again, but now they were coming from the house-under-the-cliff. Bullets whipped past The Kid, so close he felt their hot breath. He reached the top of the stairs and lunged toward the wall, but shards of adobe flew into the air as a hail of slugs chewed up the top of it. If he tried to climb over, it would be sure death. Instead, The Kid flung himself down into the closest cover—the narrow space between the cannon and the wall.

  He was pinned down, but at least the cannon and the carriage on which it rested provided some decent cover. Bullets ricocheted off the cannon’s barrel and thudded into the carriage.

  The Kid’s eyes widened as the parapet suddenly shifted underneath him. He heard a loud crack. The supports underneath it had been hit by a lot of the bullets flying around, and the cannon was really heavy. Another beam cracked. The damage was causing the parapet to give way under the tremendous weight of the big gun.

  “Son of a—” The Kid began, but that was all he got out before the parapet fell out from under him and the cannon with a splintering crash. The cannon leaned backward and toppled over, so that the barrel pointed straight up into the air for a second before it crashed on its side, pointing toward the cliff at a slight angle, the broken carriage and parapet wreckage underneath it. The Kid landed on top of it in a shower of debris. The fall wasn’t that far, but it was enough to stun him for a second even though he managed to hold on to the still-burning torch.