White Lightning

by Lyle Brandt

  Out into the daylight, Main Street looked normal as he turned toward his hotel. It wouldn’t take long, packing. He’d be ready within twenty minutes, then required to sit around and wait for Berringer, but it was better than another hour in the saloon with Oates and Johnson. Put those two together with some beer, you couldn’t shut them up.

  My pals, he thought and had to smile, despite himself.

  Just one more trip related to the case, and he could let it go. Move on to something different.

  Or just move on?

  Leaving was still an option, but he couldn’t think of anyplace to go, offhand. Something to think about while he was shadowing Frank Berringer to Fort Supply, and maybe ducking soldiers who were spoiling for a fight.

  The gunman liked his chances of surviving, but that didn’t matter to the men who paid his salary. He had a job to do, and they expected him to follow through on it, regardless of the risk involved. They weren’t the kind of people you could cheat and walk away from it, unless you planned to spend the rest of what life you had left watching your back.

  He’d chosen a rooftop across from the federal courthouse, secure in the knowledge that few—if any—people check the high ground while they’re strolling through a town, eyeing shop windows, meeting friends along the way, or simply tending to their normal business. No one thinks about the sky above unless it’s thundering or raining on their heads.

  His weapon was a Winchester Model 1886 rifle, chambered for powerful .45-70 Government rounds whose 300-grain bullets traveled at 1,600 feet per second, striking with 1,700 foot-pounds of destructive energy. The gunman had those figures memorized, since killing was his business and he always used the most efficient tool for any given job.

  Today, he would be firing from a range of fifty yards, with gravity to help him put his rounds on target. One should do it, but he’d have the time for two shots, anyway, before the pigeon’s escorts worked out where the fire was coming from. There’d never been a man he couldn’t kill with two shots. Most took only one—or on occasion, when he had to do it quietly, a blade between the ribs.

  Getting away when he was done would be a challenge, but the gunman had taken precautions. He had a fast horse tied behind the building that would serve him as a sniper’s roost, and his pockets were filled with spare rounds for his rifle. Aside from the long gun, he carried two pistols—a Colt M1892 Army and Navy revolver chambered for .38 Long Colt rounds, and a brand-new weapon made by Hugo Borchardt in Germany. The Borchardt C-93 was a peculiar-looking gun, described in its brochure as “self-loading,” and carried eight rounds of 7.65-millimeter ammunition—equivalent to .32 caliber—in a detachable butt-loaded box magazine. A practiced hand could empty those eight rounds within two seconds flat, and nothing in their way was safe.

  And if all else failed, he also carried six half sticks of dynamite with two-inch fuses.

  It all came down to waiting now, watching the courthouse and the street below until the marshals made their move. He’d have one chance to nail his target from the roof, and failing that…what? Flee the town and hope that he could meet the prison wagon on its way to Fort Supply? Or later, on the road to Leavenworth with half a dozen soldiers riding escort?

  No.

  He had one chance to do it right and get away. Maybe. Between the money he’d been offered for the killing and the fear or what would surely happen to him if he failed, the gunman had no choice. Do this, and he would be a hero to the men who mattered, all the way from Little Rock to Washington, DC. Fail and he would barely be a memory.

  The gunman checked his pocket watch and saw that it was nearly one o’clock. As if on cue, the prison wagon made its creaking way along Main Street, two horses pulling it, a deputy of middle age atop the driver’s seat, the metal cage behind him empty for the moment.

  Not for long.

  It stopped before the courthouse, driver waiting, and another pair of marshals came outside to have a look around. Armed as they were, they must expect a problem—or at least suspect that someone might attempt to shut their captive’s mouth for good.

  And they were right.

  The gunman raised his Winchester, its wood and metal warm from basking in the sun, and eased its hammer back.

  Slade led Frank Berringer out of his basement cell with shackles and manacles clanking, walking slowly to accommodate the prisoner’s shuffling gait. Although he’d been rushed through the process of arraignment, plea, and sentencing, Berringer had the look of someone who had been in custody for weeks. Forlorn, with shoulders slumped, feet dragging even more than ankle chains required, he struggled up the concrete steps with Slade beside him and emerged into bright daylight like a blind cave dweller.

  “I suppose you’re happy now,” he said to Slade, as they began to cross the courtyard, on their way to Main Street and the wagon that would transport Berringer to Leavenworth, two hundred fifty miles away.

  “Happy? How do you figure that?” asked Slade.

  “To see me like this. Humbled and disgraced.”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Slade responded. “You disgraced yourself. It wasn’t something done to you.”

  “And so justice is served!” Berringer sneered at the idea.

  “Think so?” Slade asked. “I would’ve said that called for hanging.”

  He could see the wagon now, Dutch Ingram on the driver’s seat, Fred Sykes holding the door open in back. Berringer started to reply, mouth opening, but then it kept on going, yawning into something from a nightmare as his skull exploded, spraying blood and tissue in a warm, wet cloud. Some of it spattered Slade, smearing the right side of his face, before his ears picked up the crack of gunfire from somewhere across the street.

  You never hear the shot…

  For Berringer, at least, the old saying was true. Slade let the nearly headless body drop, focused on spotting where the rifleman had fired from. He could see a puff of smoke just dissipating at the cornice of a rooftop catty-corner from the courthouse. The Hotel Deluxe, four stories tall, with a commanding view of Main Street, a figure barely glimpsed up there, just ducking out of sight.

  Slade called a warning out to Sykes and Ingram, as he ran toward the hotel. “Sniper! Top of the Deluxe! Get help and cut him off! We need him breathing!”

  It became a blur from there, Slade running with his pistol drawn and people watching from the sidewalks, some faces that he recognized, distorted now by shock at what they’d witnessed seconds earlier. He didn’t bother shouting at them to find cover. It was clear the rifleman had come to do a job and wasn’t on a mindless shooting spree.

  Halfway across Main Street, still watching the hotel’s rooftop, Slade saw a small object detach itself and tumble toward him, trailing smoke. It barely registered until the cut-down stick of dynamite touched down and detonated, smoke and dust enveloping the street scene as a thunderclap hammered Slade’s eardrums, slamming him to earth.

  He struggled to his feet again, Colt still in hand, and almost got his balance back before a second charge exploded within twenty feet of him. There was no shrapnel from the blast, just dirt and grit that peppered Slade and briefly blinded him, some of it sticking to the fresh blood on his face and giving him the aspect of a scarecrow dipped in mud.

  Ears ringing, sleeving filth out of his eyes, Slade stumble-jogged to the hotel and paused a moment at the entrance to an alleyway beside it. If the rifleman was still above him, tossing dynamite into the street, it meant he hadn’t climbed down yet. Slade had a chance to catch him if he didn’t stall too long or let his sudden dizziness betray him.

  Mouthing a curse he couldn’t hear, Slade started down the alley, wishing that he had his shotgun. It would be a neat trick, taking Berringer’s assassin without killing him—but that was not to say Slade couldn’t wound him if he had to, trusting Dr. Abernathy to repair whatever damage might be suffered in the process. All he needed was a captive fit to talk, say who had sent him, fix his boss up with a necktie party.

  As
for Berringer…well, it was justice of a sort. Slade wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over his passing.

  Not unless he let the killer slip away.

  The rifleman was in a hurry, but he didn’t panic. He’d already caused enough confusion on the street below to buy himself some time. The quickest member of the team escorting Berringer was likely down and out, a double blast of dynamite enough to stun him if it hadn’t shaken loose his brains.

  And it was time to go, before the other lawmen managed to get organized, call reinforcements, block his exit from the prairie town. Anxiety was foreign to his makeup, but he felt the sense of urgency that made him run across the hotel’s flat rooftop, hanging his rifle on its sling across his shoulder as he started down a wooden ladder mounted to the wall.

  His horse whickered below him, as if urging him to hurry. Rung by rung, he clambered down the ladder, hoping no civilian with a gun and misplaced strain of heroism would attempt to stop him when he reached the ground. The money he’d been paid covered one death, and while the shooter had no qualms about raising the toll, he didn’t kill for free if it could be avoided.

  Anyway, another shot would draw pursuers to him like a swarm of flies to dung.

  His left foot came to rest on solid ground, immediately followed by his right. He started for his stallion and had nearly reached it when a hoarse and winded voice behind him ordered, “Stop right there!”

  He couldn’t clear the rifle fast enough to aim and fire it, so he pulled the Colt instead, spinning around and triggering a shot when it had barely cleared its holster. The revolver’s double-action trigger saved a crucial second for him, and he didn’t bother aiming. Barely even saw his target, truth be told, before the first slug cleared his pistol’s muzzle.

  He was fast—but not quite fast enough. His adversary had arrived with gun in hand, no time at all wasted on drawing, and his bullet ripped into the sniper’s shoulder, spinning him around to crumple on all fours.

  Make that all threes, since his right arm was numb and useless, pain just starting to send signals from the epicenter of his mangled shoulder. He could see the Colt revolver where he’d dropped it, but his right hand wouldn’t answer orders from his brain. Behind him, cautiously approaching, his opponent warned, “Stay down!”

  “Yes, sir!” the gunman answered, grinning fiercely through the pain. And as he spoke, his left hand slid inside his jacket, fingers seeking out the Borchardt C-93 in its snug shoulder holster. It was an awkward kind of draw, backward and upside down, but he’d rehearsed it, knowing you could never tell what might occur when there was gun work to be done.

  The pistol had a safety lever on the left side of its frame, a hedge against an accidental discharge, and it took some fumbling to release it with his left hand, but the shooter got it done. He covered the procedure with a groan he didn’t have to fake, slumped forward to disguise the twisting movement of his one good arm, and eased the Borchardt free of clinging leather.

  Footsteps told him that his enemy was drawing closer. Perfect. It would spare him aiming. He could drop the lawman, climb aboard his horse, and get the hell away from there before he bled out in the dust.

  And then what?

  One thing at a time.

  Rising, turning with a snarl of pain and rage, the gunman sprayed his target with a burst of rapid fire—or would have, if the lawman had been standing where he’d been a moment earlier. He’d moved, though, ducking to the left and crouching low, six-gun extended in a steady grip. Before the shooter could correct his aim and swing the Borchardt pistol leftward, the marshal fired again—to kill, this time.

  His bullet drilled the gunman’s chest, lifted him off his knees, and tossed him over on his back. It should have hurt, but didn’t, numbness gripping him, the semiautomatic weapon slipping from his hand. Impossibly, the sky revolved above him, clouds spinning for him alone like soapy water swirling down a drainpipe.

  This is how it ends? he asked himself.

  And died.

  “We don’t know who he was,” Slade told Judge Dennison. “No papers on him. Nothing in his saddle bags but ammunition and provisions for the trail.”

  “And money?” asked the judge.

  “A hundred dollars, more or less. Not much, to sacrifice himself that way.”

  “I’m guessing he was promised more,” said Dennison. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a bank account somewhere, considerably fatter than it was before he took the job.”

  “I don’t see how we’ll ever find that, either, when we’ve got no name to start with,” Slade replied.

  “Sounds damn near hopeless,” Dennison acknowledged.

  “And the people Berringer gave up? What happens now, to them?” Slade asked.

  “They’ll have attorneys standing by to challenge the indictments. I suspect they’ll win, under the confrontation clause.”

  “How’s that?” asked Slade.

  “The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution,” Dennison explained. “Anyone accused of a crime has the absolute right to confront and cross-examine his accusers. It’s fundamental.”

  “Even when they have him murdered?”

  “That’s the rub,” said Dennison. “We don’t know who the killer is—or was—much less who hired him. Lacking evidence, it’s just a heap of speculation.”

  “I’d have called it common sense,” Slade said.

  “Which isn’t evidence. We can’t go into court with an opinion, unsupported by a single solid fact.”

  “So it was all for nothing?”

  “On the contrary. You cracked the moonshine ring and found Bill Tanner’s killers. You cleaned out a nest of filth at Fort Supply, for which the army may or may not thank you, and you’ve helped the Cherokees.”

  Too late for Little Wolf, Slade thought. “It doesn’t feel like much,” he said.

  “Look on the bright side,” Dennison suggested. “If they’d killed you on their first try, Rafferty would still be riding high. His friends would still be looking forward to their payday.”

  “As it is, they just go on about their business, looking for another way to steal,” Slade said.

  “Don’t be so sure. The BIA will likely fire Berringer’s boss, for the appearance that it’s cleaning house, if nothing else.”

  “There’s still the senator,” said Slade.

  “Who’s up for reelection in another year. Maybe the people will remember and decide to clean their own house.”

  “Will they even know about the charges?” Slade inquired.

  Dennison smiled. “As luck would have it, I have friends in Little Rock. One of them manages the Arkansas Gazette. I wouldn’t be surprised if he could get a feature out of this. Maybe a series.”

  “That’s something, anyway.”

  “You need some rest, Jack. Take a couple days and let yourself unwind. If anything comes up—”

  “You know where to find me,” Slade said, already on his feet and moving toward the door.

  “I do, indeed.”

  The desk clerk back at Slade’s hotel looked like a man with something on his mind, but if there was, he kept it to himself. Slade put it down to gun-smoke syndrome, the attraction some folks felt toward killing even though the act itself repulsed them. You could see it on the faces of spectators at a shooting, morbid curiosity that verged on sick excitement. Or, he may have just had gas from eating too much barbecue at Colter’s Café, down the street.

  Slade climbed the stairs, fatigue weighting his feet, wondering whether Lo Ming’s laundry could could cleanse his shirt and vest of Berringer’s bloodstains. Something to think about, but not this afternoon. He reached the second-story landing, turned down toward his room, and stopped dead in his tracks at sight of Faith Connover, standing in the hallway by his numbered door.

  Slade felt his mouth go dry, his mind go blank. His legs felt wooden as he moved along the corridor, trying to think if he remembered how to smile.

  “Clerk didn’t tell me I had company,” he said. />
  “I asked him not to warn you,” Faith replied.

  “Afraid I’d come up shooting?” Slade’s pulse hammered as the stupid joke fell flat.

  “More like afraid you’d turn around and run,” she said.

  “Not likely.”

  “Jack, we need to talk.”

  “Okay. You know—”

  “Me first,” she interrupted him. “I’m pregnant.”