“Listen to me.” The guard strode closer to the cell, angry again rather than amused. “I don’t have to do a damn thing.” He lifted the hand from his gun and used it to point an accusing finger at the prisoners. “This is your own damn fault, so you’re just gonna have to—”
Matt lunged, reaching through the bars to seize the outlaw’s wrist. He jerked the man toward the bars and used his other hand to bring up the Smith & Wesson. He jammed the .32’s short barrel between the man’s teeth just as the outlaw opened his mouth to yell. Some of those teeth broke under the impact.
With their faces only inches apart and the barred door between them, Matt said, “I’ll bet if I pulled the trigger right now, your head would muffle the shot so much those other fellas out in the office wouldn’t even hear it.”
The outlaw’s eyes bulged from a combination of surprise, pain, and fear. His life hung in a delicate balance, and he knew it.
“Now here’s what you’re going to do.” Matt’s voice was low enough that the other outlaws couldn’t hear it. “You’re going to call your friends in here. Tell them to bring the keys because that soup poisoned us and we’re dying. We’re important hostages, and the doctor wouldn’t like it if we all died.”
“You got that?” Preacher added.
The guard managed to nod, although it wasn’t easy with the gun shoved in his mouth.
“If you yell and try to warn them, you’ll die,” Matt went on. “You may ruin our plans and keep us from escaping, but you won’t know one way or the other because you’ll be dead. Do what you’re told and there’s a chance that you might live through this.” He paused to let that sink in on the outlaw’s brain, then went on. “I’m taking the gun out now. You know what to do. Live or die, it’s your choice.”
He pulled the gun back. A mixture of blood and spit dribbled from the guard’s mouth. He stood with his jaw hanging open for a few seconds, breathing hard. Then he swallowed and called thickly through the open door into the office, “Bass! Crandall! Get in here, and bring the keys! These . . . these prisoners are all dyin’. We gotta do something!”
Curses and rapid footsteps sounded. The other two outlaws rushed into the cell block, one of them carrying the key ring, and as Preacher and Matt had hoped, they hadn’t taken the time to grab the shotguns. Their revolvers were holstered, too. They skidded to a stop as they found themselves looking down the barrels of the .32s.
A third gun was aimed at them, as well. Monte Carson had reached through the bars and plucked the first guard’s Colt from its holster. His finger was taut on the trigger as he pointed the weapon at the other two outlaws.
“Don’t yell, and don’t reach for your guns,” Matt warned them. “You’ll be dead before you hit the floor if you do.”
Since the first man was disarmed, Matt let go of him. He stepped back, groaned, and held a hand to his ruined mouth.
“Carter, you idiot,” one of the other men said. “What the hell have you done?”
“I . . . I didn’t have any choice,” Carter said. “They were gonna kill me.”
“What do you think the doctor’s gonna do when he finds out about this?”
Carter’s eyes had been wide and scared. At that thought, they fairly bulged out of their sockets. Whatever fate might await him at the hands of Dr. Jonas Trask obviously terrified him more than anything else in the world.
Matt and Preacher could never have predicted what happened next.
Carter lurched in front of the other two guards, shielding them with his own body, and croaked, “Kill them!”
Chapter 57
The other two guards clawed at their guns.
Matt didn’t like the idea of killing an unarmed man, but he knew that with Carter in the way, the outlaws would use him for cover and might have time to wipe out the men in the cell. He targeted the shouting Carter first and sent a .32 slug into the man’s left eye. The bullet popped the orb and bored on into Carter’s brain, instantly ending his life. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.
“Everybody get down!” Preacher yelled.
The gun thunder was deafening in the cell block as everybody opened up at once.
Bullets whined off the bars and ricocheted around the room. Matt felt the wind-rip of a slug passing within inches of his ear. The Smith & Wesson in his hand cracked spitefully as he triggered it, as did the gun Preacher held. The louder roar of .45s added to the terrible racket.
The two outlaws staggered back against the stone wall behind them as bullets pounded into their bodies. Bloodstains bloomed like crimson flowers on their clothes. As death claimed them, the guns slipped from their fingers and thudded to the floor. One man slid down the wall, leaving a gory stain on the stone. The other pitched forward loosely and let go of the key ring as he toppled. The keys clattered toward the cell, stopping just short of it.
Gunsmoke was thick in the air, stinging eyes and noses. The guns fell silent, but clamorous echoes still rebounded from the thick walls.
Matt had emptied the .32. He jammed it behind his belt and dropped to one knee as he reached through the bars. He stretched his hand toward the keys but couldn’t quite reach them.
“We got to get out of here,” Preacher said. “Them shots’ll make the rest of those varmints come arunnin’.”
“I know,” Matt grunted as he strained against the bars and tried to get just a little more extension on his arm. His fingers still couldn’t quite reach the key ring.
“I’ve got one round left in this gun,” Monte Carson announced.
“I’m empty. Still got that little knife, though.” Preacher took the dagger out and handed it to Matt. “Try that.”
The knife proved to be just what Matt needed. He held the end of the handle and hooked the tip of the blade into the key ring to pull it closer.
A second later, he was on his feet with the ring in his hand. Carson took it from him and thrust the right key in the lock. A twist of the key and they were free.
The question was how long they would stay that way.
The first thing to do was get out of the jail. They couldn’t afford to get trapped in there again. A siege would end only one way. They needed to be out where they could move around if they were going to have any chance.
As Carson unlocked the other cells to release the rest of the townspeople, Matt and Preacher hurried into the sheriff’s office. They grabbed Winchesters from the rack of rifles and shotguns on the wall and stuffed their pockets full of cartridges from a box Matt found in the desk. He dumped a box of shotgun shells on the desk and told the men to help themselves to the scatterguns in the rack.
Only a couple minutes had passed since the shots died out in the cell block, but he was worried that was already too long. He blew out the lamp, plunging the office into darkness, and went to the window to look out.
The street appeared to be deserted. How was that possible, he wondered? Could it be that the rest of the outlaws hadn’t heard the shooting from the jail? He couldn’t bring himself to believe that.
They had the opportunity to get away. They had to seize it. Besides, they couldn’t stay there....
“Is everybody armed?” he asked the men crowding into the office.
He got a round of agreements in return.
“All right, we’re getting out of here. I’ll lead the way. If any shooting starts, hunt some cover and fight back the best you can.”
Curley said, “I’ll be glad to get some of those varmints in my sights. They got a lot to answer for.”
A couple townsmen lifted the bar from the door. Matt levered a round into the Winchester’s firing chamber, twisted the knob, threw the door open, and charged out onto the boardwalk, crouching low to make himself a smaller target.
Nothing happened.
He stopped a few yards into the street and turned from side to side, ready to open fire if he needed to. Big Rock remained quiet and peaceful.
The newly released prisoners couldn’t take it anymore. They poured out o
f the office onto the boardwalk and into the street, despite Preacher’s warning. “Hold on a minute, dang it—”
Matt knew why the old mountain man was upset. It had to be a trap. That was the only explanation that made sense. Major Pike or someone else among the outlaws had reacted quickly to the shooting in the jail and had set up an ambush.
That thought raced through Matt’s brain at the same instant as Preacher shouted, and all of it was too late. With a crash like the world ending, dozens of guns went off. A deadly hailstorm of lead ripped through the former prisoners. Men cried out in pain and went down.
Albert Pike was in the room he had taken at the hotel, reading one of Jonas’s books. He knew that his mind was nowhere near the same level as Trask’s, but he tried to educate himself so he could at least vaguely grasp what Trask was talking about most of the time.
That particular volume was about how you could tell what a man’s personality and capabilities were by studying the shape of his skull and the bumps on it. That seemed a little crazy, but Trask had been saying for a long time that the key to everything about a man could be found in the brain. He believed that if you could study the brains of men with shared characteristics, you would be able to see the similarities in them. Since the brain rested inside the skull, Pike thought maybe there was something to the theory in the book he was reading....
Gunshots made him lift his head and slam the book closed. Nothing theoretical about guns going off. That was real, and Pike knew exactly what it meant. Somebody in Big Rock was fighting back.
He had been expecting it. In fact, he welcomed it. There was no better way to kill the spirit of a conquered people once and for all than to let them have a moment of hope . . . and then crush it utterly and completely.
He might have to kill half the town tonight, Pike thought as he stood up. If he did, the half that was left would never give him any trouble again.
He was buckling on his gun belt when somebody pounded on the door. Pike called for the man to come in.
“Major, there’s been a jailbreak,” Cully reported breathlessly as he stood in the doorway.
“I’m not surprised.” Pike clapped his flat-crowned hat on his head. “What’s being done about it?”
“We held our fire until they all came out into the street, then opened up on ’em.”
Pike nodded in curt approval. It was a good tactic, the sort of thing he might have ordered himself if he had been on hand.
“Did it work?”
“We got some of ’em. The others took cover. It’s settled down into quite a fight.”
“One that we’ll win,” Pike declared. He shrugged into his coat. “Come on.”
Matt threw the Winchester to his shoulder and fired the rifle as fast as he could work its lever, swinging the barrel from left to right and spraying bullets at the muzzle flashes from the darkened buildings across the street. Something hot kissed his cheek, leaving behind a streak of fiery pain.
Bullets would be getting even closer if he didn’t move.
He lunged to the side and broke into a zigzagging run, continuing to fire the rifle as he dashed for cover. Spotting a water trough, he threw himself full-length behind it. He squirmed forward until he could thrust the Winchester’s barrel around the end of the trough and return the outlaws’ fire from there.
Preacher ran along the boardwalk until he reached a rain barrel not far from Matt’s position, kneeling behind it and firing over the top. Matt looked back along the street toward the jail and saw several dark forms sprawled in the dirt in front of the building. Those men had been chopped down in the first volley and hadn’t been able to make it to cover.
The others had scattered and were putting up a fight from various places along the street where they had taken shelter. Shots were coming from the jail, so Matt knew some of the men had made it back inside. He didn’t see Monte Carson and Curley, but there was no time to check on them. He had bigger problems to worry about.
“Preacher, they’re going to try to get behind us!” Matt called to the old mountain man as both of them paused to reload their rifles. “There are too many of them!”
“Damned if I don’t know it!” Preacher replied. He jacked the rifle’s lever, then thumbed one more cartridge through the loading gate. “I’m gonna fade back and see if I can fight a delayin’ action in the alleys.”
“Be careful.”
“We done gone way past the time for that!” Preacher turned and ran for the nearest alley. Bullets from across the street chewed splinters from the boardwalk and the posts that held up the awning over it.
He never broke stride, though, as Matt watched the old-timer disappear into the black maw at the mouth of the alley, so he probably wasn’t hit. He seemed to have a guardian angel watching over him, although he would have scoffed at that idea.
If it was true, that guardian angel had his work cut out for him. Only a few seconds after Preacher disappeared into the alley, a thunderous fusillade of gunshots erupted back there.
Chapter 58
Smoke was on his way to the jail when he heard a brief flurry of gunshots from that direction. He didn’t know what was behind the sudden violence, but it wouldn’t surprise him if Matt and Preacher were mixed up in it somehow. They seemed to find trouble wherever they went.
I’m a fine one to talk, he thought with a faint smile as he hurried toward the jail. He still stayed behind cover as much as he could, not wanting the outlaws to realize he was in town until he found out what was going on.
More guns began to boom—a lot more. It was a full-fledged battle. He was more convinced that he was going to locate Matt and Preacher very soon.
He was behind the building next to the jail when half a dozen men suddenly rounded the corner of a building up ahead and charged into the alley. At the same instant, a running figure burst into view from the narrow opening beside the jail. In the moonlight, Smoke got a good look at the newcomer. The man was clean-shaven and wasn’t wearing the usual buckskins, but Smoke knew him right away as Preacher.
Unfortunately, the old mountain man was between Smoke and the outlaws who were bristling with guns.
Smoke called, “Hit the dirt!” as he drew his Colt with smooth, eye-blurring speed.
Preacher threw himself to the ground. The rifle in his hands was spitting fire and lead even before he landed. Smoke’s gun roared at the same time. The outlaws were trying to bring their guns into action, but only a couple got shots off before bullets scythed into them.
The light wasn’t very good for shooting, but there had never been men any more deadly accurate than Smoke Jensen and the old-timer called Preacher. Slugs thudded into flesh, smashed bone, ripped through veins and arteries and vital organs. In the time it took for a heart to beat twice, all six outlaws went down.
Preacher scrambled to his feet and exclaimed, “Smoke! Is that you, boy?”
“It’s me, Preacher,” Smoke said as he began to reload with swift efficiency. He didn’t have to think about what he was doing. The movements came to him automatically.
Preacher was doing the same with the Winchester. He told Smoke, “It’s good to see you. We got a mite of a problem on our hands.”
“Three or four dozen killers out to shoot you to pieces?”
“Yeah, that’s about the size of it. We was tryin’ to break outta jail without raisin’ a ruckus, but I reckon you can hear how that done turned out.”
“Where’s Matt? Is he all right?”
Preacher jerked his head toward the main street. “He was fine last I seen of him.”
“How about Monte Carson?”
“Yeah, he—Behind you, Smoke!”
Smoke whirled and dropped to one knee as Preacher stepped up beside him and lifted the rifle. Smoke hadn’t holstered his Colt, so he just shot at the four hardcases who were about to open fire on them. At the same time, Preacher cranked off three rounds from the Winchester.
The four would-be killers died without firing a shot.
&n
bsp; A shotgun boomed behind them. Smoke and Preacher spun toward the sound. Smoke’s finger was taut on the trigger, but he held off as he saw a small, chubby figure holding a Greener. A few feet away, one of the original six outlaws Smoke and Preacher had shot it out with was sliding down the wall, his chest a bloody ruin from the load of buckshot it had received.
“I thought all them was dead!” Preacher exclaimed.
“Looks like we didn’t finish them all off,” Smoke drawled, “but that hombre sure did.”
The man with the shotgun stepped closer, grinning.
Preacher said, “Loo, is that you?”
“When I heard all the shooting, I knew you were enjoying that Chinese soup I brought you,” Loo Chung How said. “I thought you might need a hand, so I got my old varmint gun and came to help.”
“As if you hadn’t risked enough already,” Preacher muttered. “You sure got here at the right time.” He turned to Smoke. “I’ll explain all this here later, Smoke, but right now this is a new pard o’ mine named Loo Chung How.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Loo,” Smoke said with a nod. “Things back here seem to have quieted down. Let’s go see if we can find Matt.”
Cully followed Pike downstairs and out through the lobby. The major could tell that Cully was holding himself back a little to keep from getting ahead of him. The limp didn’t slow him down much, but it was always there.
It would have been much worse if not for what Jonas had done for him, however. Pike knew that and would always be loyal to Trask and would fight to help him achieve his goals. He would die for the man if it came down to that.
But it wasn’t going to tonight, Pike told himself. Whatever was happening on the streets of Big Rock, he was confident that he and his men could handle it.
Muzzle flashes spurted on both sides of the street. Pike drew his gun as he strode forward.
Beside him, Cully said, “Be careful, Major. We don’t want to find ourselves in that crossfire.”
Brotherhood of Evil Page 24
