Lincoln Hawk Series 1-3 Omnibus

by Scott Connor

  Frank swirled round to face Lincoln but Lincoln jumped to the side. A gunshot hurtled by his nose.

  He pressed against the wall and peppered the road with gunfire. Three men clutched their chests, as he fired his gun until all the chambers were empty.

  Frank leapt over the fallen bodies of Steadman and his men. His gun arced towards Lincoln, but he flinched from a shot that Sam blasted at him.

  Splinters drove into Lincoln’s cheek as Frank’s bullet ripped into the woodwork inches from his face. He leapt at Frank, hitting him in the midriff with his shoulder.

  Frank fell back a pace, but he squirmed from Lincoln’s grip and slugged his jaw.

  The force blasted Lincoln back against the wall for him to slide to the boardwalk. He expected gunfire to hit him, but only heard firing behind him. He leapt to his feet and swung round.

  Sam and Mason faced the ten remaining gang members, who stood lined across the road, their slickers pressed flat against their backs. Frank had his back to Lincoln, racing towards Sam and Mason.

  Mason swung his rifle towards Cody, his face dark with fury, but the line of men blasted their guns, the continuous fire like thunder. Mason and Sam danced back, their bodies twitching as redness burst across their chests.

  Lincoln leapt to Steadman’s body. He dragged Steadman’s gun from its holster, then rolled into the road as another long explosion of gunfire ripped into the wall above him.

  On his belly, Lincoln swung his gun round, firing in a continuous line across the gang. Half of the line of men ducked or scurried back, the other half folded, hands clawing at their ripped stomachs.

  With practiced skill, Lincoln slammed bullets into his gun and looked up. He faced the barrel of Frank’s gun and Frank’s grinning face.

  ‘You’re too late, Lincoln,’ Frank said.

  ‘What you going to do now?’ Lincoln rolled to his knees and widened his arms. ‘Killing a lawman is a serious offence. You won’t talk your way out of that.’

  ‘I get the carpetbag,’ Frank snarled. ‘You get death.’

  ‘The pathetic contents of that carpetbag aren’t enough to justify what you’ve lost.’ Lincoln widened his eyes. ‘And for the record, your jokes aren’t funny.’

  With his long coat blowing in the wind and his stance hunched, Frank narrowed his eyes.

  ‘So I’ve heard. Throw away your gun.’

  Without a choice, Lincoln did as Frank asked, but only threw it a yard to his right.

  ‘Shoot, scum.’ Lincoln gritted his teeth. ‘But they’ll never rest until they track you down.’

  Frank sneered. He edged to the side and kicked the gun further away. He flexed his arm.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said through clenched teeth, ‘not nice working with you.’

  Lincoln lifted his chin, ready to die with his eyes wide open, not face down in the dirt.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ a distant gravely voice said.

  Frank swirled round and faced the remaining five gang members.

  ‘Who said that?’

  Cody nodded towards the fallen coach.

  Astride the coach Whiskey Bob stood, his form gleaming in the half-light. He’d aimed Mason’s fancy gun at Frank. The barrel shook.

  With his eyes alive, Frank spun round.

  ‘You couldn’t shoot your own nose off,’ Frank said. ‘Shaun, you watch Lincoln for me. This should be good.’

  As Shaun aimed his gun at Lincoln, Cody strode into the center of the road.

  ‘Hey, smell man,’ Cody said. ‘The funny man isn’t in charge here. If you shoot anyone, you can have me.’

  The remaining gang members snickered.

  Frank turned to Cody. ‘Yeah, why not have a smelling competition, see who passes out first?’

  Cody spat on the ground. ‘This smell man has more guts than you have. Except his will stay on the inside when he dies. See, I am funnier than you are.’

  Whiskey Bob leapt from the coach, stumbling to his knees as he landed. For a moment he swayed, then staggered to his feet.

  He strode towards them in a passable attempt at a straight line. His battered rags shone in the night.

  Lincoln shrouded his eyes and used the distraction to judge distances to Frank, Cody and the other four remaining gang members.

  Frank grinned. ‘Go away. The saloon might be open.’

  Whiskey Bob stumbled to his knees, but kept his fancy gun pointed in the general direction of Frank.

  ‘All you people, step away from Lincoln.’

  Shaun turned his gun from Lincoln to aim it at Whiskey Bob.

  ‘Stop, Shaun!’ Cody said. ‘Let the smell man have his moment. We’ve got nothing else out of this.’

  ‘Big enough target for you?’ Frank said, with his arms held wide.

  Cody grinned. ‘Tell you what, funny man, when the smell man kills you, I won’t rest until I’ve avenged your death.’

  Whiskey Bob tottered to his feet and stumbled again.

  Lincoln winced. Whiskey Bob sure had courage in his whiskey-blasted mind, but this gesture was worthless unless he used the distraction.

  Lincoln glanced to the side, seeing the gun he’d taken from Steadman’s body. It lay only ten yards away.

  Beyond the gun was Mason’s body sprawled flat on its back, beside Sam’s body. Mason hadn’t fired his rifle after they came over the log pile, but Lincoln judged the gun as easier to get to than the rifle.

  He flexed his shoulders, ready to go for it at the right moment.

  ‘I’d never shoot a man with his hands away from his gun,’ Whiskey Bob said. ‘I’m not like you.’

  Whiskey Bob staggered another pace.

  ‘You know how to use that gun as much as a heifer can hold a flush poker hand,’ Frank said.

  Cody walked by Frank. ‘Leave the humor to me. I’ve just remembered why I need to kill you.’

  Lincoln noted the position of the gun, then rehearsed his actions of leap, roll and taking the gun in hand.

  Whiskey Bob stumbled another pace and swung to a standstill, twenty paces from Frank.

  ‘I’m ready when you are,’ he said.

  Whiskey Bob gulped back the burning in his throat that only whiskey could relieve. He flexed his shoulders and shook his head. Blood showered from his forehead and dripped on to his shoulders.

  Before him Frank dangled his hand above his holster.

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Frank said.

  Whiskey Bob gulped, wondering why he wanted Frank dead. Then an image of his dead brother flashed by him.

  ‘You killed my brother,’ he said.

  When Shaun and Cody laughed, Whiskey Bob gritted his teeth.

  ‘Who was he?’ Frank asked.

  ‘No one laughs at my brother . . . Patrick.’ A gnawing clawed at Whiskey Bob’s guts. ‘Or is it Adam?’

  Shaun raised his gun. ‘This wretch is no longer entertaining. Let’s go, Cody. It’s a long way to the state line.’

  Lincoln ran and leapt across the ground. He rolled over and came up with a gun faster than Whiskey Bob believed anyone could move. He steadied the weapon on Frank.

  ‘No one goes anywhere,’ Lincoln said.

  Frank whirled round to face Lincoln. ‘Oh great! The unloaded gun trick. If I remember right that worked six months ago. It won’t today.’

  Lincoln narrowed his eyes to slits. ‘You can’t count. The trick worked eight months ago and this gun is loaded.’

  ‘So,’ Frank said, ‘you’re holding us with one, maybe two bullets? There are six of us.’

  ‘And two of us,’ Whiskey Bob said.

  ‘One man with a bullet and another man with a smell,’ Frank said. ‘That isn’t much of a chance.’

  Whiskey Bob gulped. Mason’s gun shook in his loose grip.

  ‘That’s one insult too many,’ Whiskey Bob said. ‘Go for your gun.’

  Frank swirled round to face Whiskey Bob, turning his back on Lincoln.

  ‘All right, but I haven’t met your brother, unless he was an
old mule that I put out of its misery.’

  Cody spat on the ground. ‘Stop failing to be funny and shoot him.’

  As Whiskey Bob rubbed his face, he remembered the gun he held shooting his brother. Frank wasn’t in the saloon then, so he didn’t do it. But Lincoln wanted Frank dead and that was good enough for him.

  To stop him having to hold the fouled weapon Whiskey Bob thrust the gun into its holster. He scratched an insistent itch across his belly, then batted his hand away, a vague sadness filling him.

  Frank holstered his gun and squared up to him.

  ‘You can die. You smell like you’re dead anyway.’

  Whiskey Bob bit his hand until it stopped shaking, then flexed the fingers.

  ‘Get ready to join me.’

  Frank shuffled his feet and took a firm stance on the rutted ground.

  ‘You know what Lincoln’s fighting to defend, don’t you?’

  ‘Nope,’ Whiskey Bob mumbled.

  ‘Your pa was a crook. There’s no point in destroying the evidence. He’ll always have been a crook.’

  Seeing the carpetbag at Frank’s feet, he remembered Curt – an evil man, reveling in his control of everyone, Whiskey Bob included. He threw his holed hat to the ground.

  ‘Yup, my pa was evil and so was I. I intend to take the evidence in, not destroy it. I intend to let the world know what me and Curt did to Dust Creek.’

  ‘Your brain’s more pickled than I thought.’

  Warmth and sudden assurance filled Whiskey Bob’s body.

  ‘Pickled, yes, but I’d sooner let the truth be known about what my family did than live like you.’

  Smirking, Frank rolled his shoulders.

  ‘Time to end the talking,’ he said. ‘Take your gun whenever you choose. I hope you smell of whiskey when I fill you full of holes.’

  Whiskey Bob rubbed his shaking palms down his rags and smeared them through the blood that dripped from his head.

  ‘I’m ready, Patrick,’ he murmured.

  With a loud laugh, Frank threw back his head.

  ‘You’re enough to put me off whiskey for life.’

  As his sudden clarity faded, Whiskey Bob gulped. He ran his tongue over parched lips.

  ‘Now or never,’ he whispered.

  Whiskey Bob whirled his hand, the gun coming to hand as he fired in a continuous motion.

  Frank spun away as acrid smoke filled Whiskey Bob’s mind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lincoln turned from Whiskey Bob’s fight with Frank and blasted lead into Shaun’s chest.

  Shaun plummeted to the ground, hands clutching at the redness coating his yellow slicker.

  More lead ripped through the night air as Whiskey Bob sprinkled wild gunfire across everyone. Then he fell backwards in a heap.

  Lincoln swirled round. He blasted deadly gunfire twice more, but on the third finger twitch, the gun clattered with the hollow sound he usually avoided. He rolled to his knees.

  The gunfire had left only one man standing – Cody, his scarred face glinting in the moonlight.

  Somehow, Whiskey Bob had killed Frank. Lincoln bit back his irritation and leapt backwards. He landed on his shoulders, rolled to his knees, and scrambled towards Mason and his Winchester.

  Gunfire sounded. The earth before his questing hand plumed in small eruptions.

  ‘You are going nowhere,’ Cody said.

  Lincoln halted his scrambled dash and spun round to glare at Cody.

  ‘Just you and me, big man,’ Cody said. ‘Never expected that.’

  Lincoln winced. Through narrowed eyes, he glanced at Frank’s dead body.

  ‘Suppose you killed Frank, not Whiskey Bob?’

  Cody bared his yellow teeth. ‘Yup, he had to die. He annoyed me once too often with his idiotic chatter.’

  An empty gnawing blasted through Lincoln’s guts at Frank escaping his justice. He ground his teeth.

  ‘Should have left him to me. Frank was mine.’

  Laughing, Cody strode a pace towards Lincoln.

  ‘Perhaps, but today, you die and I get the carpetbag.’

  Cody’s foul air assailed Lincoln’s nostrils. Lincoln breathed deeply, searching for the crisp night air.

  ‘Don’t bother. The carpetbag is worthless.’

  Cody nodded at the carpetbag, lying near the log pile.

  ‘I’ve lost a gang that Mason Black took ten years to create. The carpetbag had better be worth my while.’

  Lincoln shrugged. ‘It only contains evidence that’ll incriminate men, many long dead, some just dead, of crimes nobody cares about any more. The carpetbag is only worth the few dollars you’ll get for a second-hand bag.’

  ‘I’ll determine that, later,’ Cody growled.

  ‘Then what’re you waiting for?’ Lincoln said.

  ‘Waiting for you to go for your rifle. I want to see you die scrabbling around on the ground. I’d like to get some fun from this.’

  From the corner of his eye, Lincoln glanced at his rifle, which lay close, but just out of reach. He set his weight on his left leg, his right leg thrust forward.

  ‘Go on. If you want to shoot a lawman, you’ll do it in cold blood, because that’s the sort of man you are.’

  ‘Now I know you’re going for the rifle.’ Cody lowered his gun and flashed his yellow grin, washing a wave of putrid breath over Lincoln. ‘And I’ll be ready.’

  ‘I’m doing nothing. Shoot me, instead of stinking me to death.’

  ‘All right. Say goodbye, dead man.’

  Cody raised his gun, aiming the barrel at Lincoln’s head. His eyes narrowed.

  With a lunge, Lincoln ripped the knife from his boot. He flung the knife with the same speed that he drew his gun.

  The blade shone like a silver bullet as it sped to Cody’s throat.

  As Cody fired, the knife hit. In an involuntary action his hand ripped up. His single gunshot whistled over Lincoln’s head.

  Cody dropped his gun and clutched his throat. He fell to his knees, blood cascading in a flood down his arms.

  Lincoln stood and walked down the road to stand over Cody.

  ‘That’s for Dave, knife man,’ Lincoln said.

  Cody twitched and floundered as his life poured into Hopetown’s dirt. His foul breath diminished with each gasp.

  As the air cleared, Lincoln turned from the body and strode to Frank’s body. With the toe of his boot, he pushed him on to his front. A hole in Frank’s forehead testified as to his fate.

  Lincoln wiped the boot on the ground.

  ‘Great shooting, Cody.’ Lincoln turned to Whiskey Bob’s body, a shining, stained heap in the road. ‘No, great shooting, Whiskey Bob.’

  Dismissing Frank, Lincoln swirled round. The bodies lay sprawled across the road. Some lay over each other and some lay flat and alone.

  Lincoln checked each man, confirming they were dead.

  He hefted his carpetbag. Someone in Abilene would confirm that this evidence proved Curt Polanski’s guilt and that Sheriff Harold Steadman had aided him.

  He hoped he’d be able to prove that Harold and Frank had conspired to bury the evidence and frame him in the process.

  Lincoln sighed. He always completed his missions, but this time, it didn’t feel worth the number people who’d died.

  Shaking his head, he strolled from the bodies. With a sigh, he swung by Sam. He knelt and patted his shoulder, lowering his head a moment.

  As he stood, he noticed that Mason twitched, although wide, red rents ripped his black shirt wide open. A hand grasped his neck, searching for his necktie.

  Lincoln knelt. ‘Be seeing you, dandy. Sorry your shirt got messed up.’

  Mason opened and closed his mouth, but he only produced strangulated gasps.

  Lincoln guessed what he said. He rested a hand on Mason’s shoulder.

  ‘Mason Black, under my authority as a US marshal, I hereby swear you in as my official deputy.’

  Mason gasped. He arched his back, then collapsed.
/>   For a moment Lincoln stayed kneeling, then stood.

  ‘The hell I do,’ he muttered.

  Someone gasped. Lincoln swirled round, slamming bullets into his gun, but none of the outlaws was moving.

  Then Lincoln sighed. The sound came from Whiskey Bob. Lincoln strode to him.

  As Lincoln leaned over Whiskey Bob, he breathed through his nose. He searched for where Frank had hit him, but he couldn’t tell, so much grime and shining filth clogged his rags.

  ‘How bad?’ he asked.

  Whiskey Bob raised his head, his eyes clearer than Lincoln had seen.

  ‘They didn’t get me. They were too busy sorting out their own quarrels. I think I passed out. The smell of gunfire makes me queasy.’

  ‘Should have known it takes more than gunfire to kill your sort.’ Lincoln pulled Whiskey Bob to his feet. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Abilene, I have a job to finish.’

  Whiskey Bob shook his bloodied head. The blood had now crusted into the general grime.

  ‘Correction, we have a job to finish.’

  Lincoln shrugged, avoiding the hint. ‘You know I have to take you in?’

  ‘Yup, but it don’t matter. I got the man who shot my brother.’

  Lincoln glanced across the road at the building opposite, noting the sign on the wall advertising Hopetown’s Quality Stables. He walked down the road towards the stables.

  ‘Yeah, even though you got Frank.’

  As Whiskey Bob shuffled along behind him, a chorus of stale and acrid odors rippled by Lincoln.

  ‘Who’s Frank?’

  Lincoln sighed and picked up his hat from the ground. He swung the carpetbag on to his shoulder.

  ‘Come on and quit the chat. I like quiet.’ Lincoln strode across the road. Without pausing, he threw open the stable doors. ‘Can you still ride a horse?’

  Whiskey Bob wiggled his hips. ‘I’ll try. It’s been a while.’

  Poised at the stable door, Lincoln sighed. ‘All right, Whiskey Bob Polanski. If you tell the full truth about what you did when Curt Polanski ruled Dust Creek, I’ll put in a good word for you, and you might live long enough to leave prison.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter, you know what? I don’t fancy whiskey.’ Whiskey Bob patted his rags. ‘And I could do with seeing Mason’s tailor.’