“Ah, McBride, my friend, you are alive,” the bandit said. “This is good news for Guerrero.”
“How long have I been unconscious?” McBride asked.
“Not long.” Guerrero shrugged. “Maybe an hour. Maybe two.”
“Bear!” McBride tried to struggle to his feet, but the room spun around him and he sank back into the chair, helped by the bandit’s hand on his shoulder.
“Sit still,” Guerrero said. “It is all over for your friend. There’s nothing you can do for him now.”
Anger flared in McBride, the fact of Bear’s death a knife in his heart. “You hanged him, you son of a—”
“I had no hand in that! Rentzin and his brothers hanged the old man. I will shoot a man, yes, but hang him?” Guerrero opened his shirt collar. A livid white scar circled his brown throat. “I know what it’s like to be hanged, McBride. I was lucky. The merciful angels broke the rope and saved me.” He shook his head sadly. “There were no angels at the creek today, I think.”
“Why are you here, Guerrero? I hardly think you’re concerned about my welfare.”
“I came to say good bye to an old friend.” The bandit smiled. “Ransom Rentzin will kill you tomorrow and that will not be good for you.”
McBride’s smile was bitter. “My plan was that you and Rentzin would kill each other.”
“And that was a good plan, McBride.” Guerrero tapped his temple with a forefinger. “A very clever plan.”
“Then what went wrong?”
The bandit shrugged. “When I saw how many men Rentzin had, I did not want to fight him so bad anymore, so first we had a parley. He told me I was his good friend and that we should join forces and take all the gold from the Elliot house. He said to me, ‘I know there’s a woman in the house with a buffalo gun, but she can’t shoot all of us. Why, if we lose two or three or even a dozen, it only means more gold for you and me.’ Like yours, McBride, it was a clever plan and I thought, well, why not?”
“Angel,” McBride said, “you’ve sold your soul to the devil.”
“Not so fast. After your friend was hanged, I thought about many things and asked the holy saints for help. They told me to ride away from this place and leave Miss Elliot alone. ‘She has always been good to you, Angel,’ they told me. ‘She lets you keep the rents you collect and warns you when the law is near.’
“I heed the holy saints, so my men and I will not take part in the attack tomorrow.”
“You could stop it,” McBride said. He raised his head, winced against the pain and smiled at the fat lady who had placed a cup of coffee in front of him.
Guerrero’s constant grin faded to a frown. “I could try, but I would lose all my compadres. I am a great bandit, this is true, but my men and I, except for Papan, are no match for Rentzin and his gunmen. This I know, McBride, though it pains Guerrero deeply to say it.”
McBride tried his coffee. It was hot and sweet, the way he liked it, and it helped him feel a little better. “There is no gold in the Elliot house.”
Guerrero’s smile returned. “Ah, McBride, you are trying to protect your ladylove, I think. Everyone knows the house is stuffed to the rafters with gold.”
“Any gold there was is long gone. Allison Elliot’s father spent it all trying to turn this dung heap into a great city where he could play king of the castle. Well, it didn’t work out that way.”
The bandit rubbed his chin. “No gold, huh? McBride, you would not lie to Guerrero about such a serious matter?”
“There is no gold and the woman up there in the house is my prisoner. She has murdered many people and I intend to bring her to justice.”
The bandit looked shocked. “I have heard a rumor of such things, but never believed it.”
“Believe it.”
Angel Guerrero rose to his feet. “I have told Ransom Rentzin that I will not attack the house. He says he doesn’t care, that he has men enough and it will mean all the more gold for him.” He put his hand on McBride’s shoulder, looking into his eyes. “I will attend your funeral tomorrow and then ride on.” The bandit grinned. “If you are mistaken and there is gold, perhaps there is a place on the trail where I can wait in ambush and take it from him.”
“Why does Rentzin want to kill me? I didn’t shoot his brother.”
“That is easy. You are the man who killed Hack Burns, so Rentzin will kill you. That is how reputations are made.”
“Good. Give me a gun and six feet of ground and he can try for it.”
Guerrero shook his head. “Alas, my friend, that is not how it will be. Rentzin is no fool. He knows you might outdraw and kill him. No, he will just shoot you and ride away from here.”
“Murder me, in other words.”
“Yes, hard words, but true.”
Guerrero stepped to the door, then stopped. “Be of good cheer, McBride,” he said. “Tomorrow I will say many prayers for you and the angels will carry you to heaven.”
“Like they did Bear?”
“I did not say any prayers for Bear Miller.” Guerrero shrugged. “He did not own a prosperous cantina in Suicide.”
After the bandit left, McBride rose and walked to the front door, the two women anxiously fluttering around him. He stepped outside where a couple of Rentzin’s men were standing.
“Back inside, McBride,” one of the men snarled. “Ransom will deal with you real soon.” The other man grinned. “He aims to hang you next to your friend.”
“Good for him,” McBride said.
“I wonder if you’ll be as brave when ol’ Ransom comes a-callin’. He was gonna hang you tomorrow, but changed his mind on account of how you broke his brother Reuben’s nose. Right now good ol’ Rube is sharpening his knife. He figures on turning you into a steer afore you get hung.”
The gunman’s grin grew wider. “McBride, best you try to make your peace with your Maker if’n you and him are on speaking terms.”
Chapter 36
John McBride had hoped to prosper as owner of the El Coyote Azul, but now the cantina had become his prison. How soon would Rentzin and his men come for him?
He checked out every wall of the building and the roof. But the place had been built solid, with Apache attacks in mind. Watching his restless prowling, the two fat women looked at McBride with a mix of dread and apprehension. They could not have failed to hear Rentzin’s men talking to him outside. They may not have understood the language, but they probably guessed at its drift.
Something bad, muy malo, was about to happen to their patron. That much they knew.
Down the street at the saloon the Rentzin gunmen were getting roaring drunk, working themselves up before the hanging. Somebody was playing “Barb’ry Ellen” on the piano and a few voices were raised in drunken song.
There was still an hour or two of daylight left, but the afternoon was already darkening. Menacing black clouds hung low over the rooftops of the town and a cold wind whispered the promise of winter.
McBride, fearing for the two women, had sent them home after he came inside, though they had loudly and tearfully protested. He sat at a table in the gloom of the cantina, prepared to sell his life as dearly as he could, his only weapon the chair he sat on and the broken bottle that lay near his right hand.
He heard the wind and in his mind’s eye saw Bear’s body swinging down by the creek, the roped branch creaking, the rustling leaves of the cottonwoods the old scout’s only requiem. Bear had not died clean, but if by some miracle McBride survived, he vowed to bury him decent.
The calico cat had been weaving around his feet and he gently picked up the little animal and carried it into the kitchen. When the fight started it could easily get hurt. He stepped back into the cantina, picked up the bottle and chair and crossed the floor. When they came for him he’d put his back to the wall and make his fight.
Outside a man said something—and a woman laughed. Another man muttered words and the woman laughed again, a high-pitched cackle, coarse and common. McBride heard a scuffl
e of feet and a man’s voice, this time hoarse, thick with lust, demanding that the woman come to him.
The curtain parted and the woman stepped inside, her crimson lips parted in a smile. Joan Whitehead had undone the front of her dress, revealing the rounded tops of her breasts.
She pirouetted, laughing, her skirt flaring. McBride’s two guards followed her inside, their eyes hot. “Me first, Jake,” one said, his moist mouth open. “I’m the oldest.”
“The hell with you.” The younger man grinned. “I’m the fastest.”
He died with those words on his lips.
The Deringer that suddenly leaped into the woman’s hand roared and a small, red rose appeared between the young gunman’s eyes. As his companion fell, the older man went for his Colt. He was still to clear leather when Joan Whitehead’s second bullet hit him square in the chest.
“Get out, McBride!” she yelled. “Now!”
“What about you?”
“Leave me!”
Men were shouting down by the saloon. McBride stepped around the two bodies and ran into the ashy murk of the dying afternoon. He sprinted to the rear of the cantina, ran between scattered shacks and cabins, then into the grassy edge of the prairie. Bullets scarred the air around him and each breath tore out of his chest in an agonized, labored gasp. He glanced behind him and saw men shooting at him. He wasn’t going to make it.
A bullet kicked up dirt at his feet as McBride angled toward a narrow arroyo, its base overgrown with brush and stands of prickly pear. A dull, gray haze on the horizon was all that was left of the sun as he plunged into the brush, trying to lose himself in shadow.
Whiskey saved him—the forty-rod Rentzin’s men had drunk in the saloon. The gunmen were in no condition to cross broken ground in growing darkness. It had shaped up to be fun to drag a cowering wretch out of the cantina and hang him. But chasing down a strong, dangerous man like McBride in a wilderness where a threat lurked in every shadow and bush was a different matter entirely.
McBride inched farther into the arroyo. He heard Ransom Rentzin curse his men, followed by a sharp crack and the cry of a woman in pain. Rentzin was taking his rage out on Joan Whitehead. A few moments passed; then a gun roared, the blast reverberating through the dreary chasms of the evening.
McBride clenched his fists, his jaw set as he was swept by a terrible, violent anger. That single shot meant Mrs. Whitehead was dead. But she would not go unavenged. As yet he didn’t know how, but he was going to kill Ransom Rentzin…and he’d make sure the man knew he was dying and the reason for it.
Weather changes without warning in the Guadalupe Mountains country. Shortly after midnight the black storm clouds slid across the sky, unveiling scattered stars and a horned moon. Around McBride the coyotes sang their mournful sonata to the night and farther away an owl anxiously repeated its question to the darkness.
McBride left the arroyo and, wary of the moonlight, kept to the gloom of the prairie as he made his way past the rear of the town’s buildings toward the creek. He had no plan in mind. Reduced to a primitive fight for survival, he thought only of finding safe haven well away from the prying eyes of Rentzin’s gunmen—and of paying his last respects to a dead old man.
Because of the sleet and rain, the creek was running fast, busily bouncing over its rocky bottom. The moonlight had turned the leaves of the cottonwoods to the color of smoke and touched the water with rippling bands of silver.
As McBride approached, two unlikely Madonnas stood at the base of a tree, a body at their feet. The heads and shoulders of the fat ladies were covered with black lace mantillas, the mourning veils of Mexican women.
Without a word, McBride kneeled beside Bear. He removed the noose from the old man’s neck, the end of the rope frayed from a knife cut, and took him in his arms. Gently, almost tenderly, he lifted Bear from the ground. The faces of the women were in shadow. They were silent, patient, unwilling to hurry either the living or the dead.
McBride nodded and the women turned and walked toward the settlement.
Their cabin lay at the edge of town, close to the creek. One of the women opened the door and McBride carried Bear’s body inside. The table had been cleared except for a basin of water and a pile of clean white rags.
By gestures, the fat ladies indicated that McBride should lay the body on the table. He did and then stepped back. They moved beside Bear and began to remove his buckskins.
McBride did not care to wait. The last thing he wanted was to see the old scout naked, without dignity. The women would not mind his nakedness as they washed his body, but it was not a thing a man should see. He reached out, squeezed Bear’s cold hand, then stepped to the door.
“¡Espera!”
One of the women held up her hand. She walked quickly to a dresser and returned with a short-barreled Colt that she held out to McBride. “Esto es para usted,” she whispered.
McBride took the gun. The woman gave him a fragile smile. “Vaya con Dios, mi amigo.”
McBride walked outside and the door closed behind him. One of the women was sobbing. Were the tears for Bear or for him? He did not know.
Chapter 37
John McBride spent the night by the creek. At first light he rose, arched a kink out of his back, then checked the Colt. All six chambers were loaded. He made his way back into town, staying well away from the street. The sky was ablaze with color, gold clouds slowly moving across a backdrop of pale scarlet ribboned with jade. The air was cool and smelled clean, like the newly washed hair of a beautiful woman, and the wind was light, blowing from the south.
McBride held the heavy Colt in his right hand, his thumb ready on the hammer spur. He stepped behind a tar-paper shack with a collapsed roof and looked around him. There was no sound and nothing moved.
He calculated that, not counting his brothers, Rentzin had at least ten men left, unless Reuben’s broken nose would keep him out of a fight, and that he doubted. It was thirteen against one…and those were long odds to buck. The very thought of it set McBride’s stomach to churning.
His eyes moved to the hill. There was no sign of life at the Elliot house, but he noticed that the turret room window was open. Did Allison somehow know that Rentzin planned to attack the place? In a town like Suicide, anything was possible.
Another shack stood behind the saloon, closer to the street. McBride was about to make his way there when he heard Rentzin speaking, his voice followed by the loud guffaws of his gunmen.
McBride strained to hear.
“Remember what I said, boys. I want that house torn apart, plank by plank to the foundations if need be, until we find the gold.”
Another cheer went up from Rentzin’s men. It seemed to McBride that they had assembled outside the saloon.
“And boys, if anybody gets in your way up there, man, woman or child, kill them.”
“You can count on us to do that, boss!” a man yelled.
The others laughed and cheered.
“There’s enough gold in the house to keep you men in whiskey and women for the rest of your lives,” Rentzin hollered, a grin in his voice. “Now, let’s go! The faster we get it done, the faster we all become rich men!”
McBride heard another resounding shout of approval, then the departing rumble of men in excited conversation.
He crossed a few yards of open ground and fetched up behind the saloon. He saw Rentzin and his gunmen already fanned out, climbing the hill.
McBride had left Allison with the Sharps. He glanced up at the turret window. Would she shoot? Then he realized she had nothing to defend. There was no gold.
McBride left the cover of the saloon and stepped out into the street. There was no sign of Guerrero and his bandits. McKay was standing outside his store with Nathan Levy and Clyde Kaleen, their eyes on the hill.
Levy saw McBride and called out, “Can you stop them, Marshal?”
McBride shook his head.
Levy opened his mouth to speak again, but McKay scowled him into silence.<
br />
Ransom Rentzin had reached the front door of the house. He drew his gun and urged his men to follow him inside. McBride saw that Reuben, a bandage over his nose, was with them.
The gunmen rushed into the house. A few moments of quiet followed; then came the sound of breaking glass and splintering furniture. A love seat crashed through an upstairs window, followed by a potted plant and then a chair.
Rentzin was making good on his promise to tear the house apart.
McBride walked toward the base of the hill. He was almost there when he looked up and saw Allison at the turret room window. For a single moment their eyes met; then Allison turned on her heel and walked into the room.
A second ticked past…then two…. McBride was at the base of the hill. Excited shouts came from inside the house, followed by the shattering noise of paneled walls being ripped apart. One by one the windows were being broken….
An instant later the Elliot house exploded with a noise like thunder.
A brilliant mass of flame erupted on the hill. The walls of the house were blown apart and the entire roof, with its turret rooms, rose twenty feet into the air before crashing downward into a boiling cauldron of orange and scarlet fire. A thick column of black smoke rose into the sky as the building blazed. Inside, men screamed, but only for a few agonized moments. Then all fell silent, but for the crack and snap of burning beams and the sudden roar of a rising wind that fanned the fluttering flames into a glaring, crimson furnace.
McBride stood rooted to the spot, watching the inferno, the flames dancing in his eyes. This was what hell must be like, he thought, fire, screams, the blood-colored realm of the damned.
Now he remembered the kegs in Allison Elliot’s basement. He’d been looking for a man, not barrels, and hadn’t examined them. Allison, or maybe she and her father, had it all figured. If things went bad for them and they faced being brought to justice for the many murders they’d committed, they would not go meekly to the gallows. The house basement was crammed with gunpowder and when the time came they would use it to dictate the terms of their dying.
Shadow of the Gun Page 21
