“I’m not going to sit here waiting for him to come looking for us, hermano,” Juanito said. “Not if he’s over there shooting more of our friends.”
Emmett reached out and gripped his brother-in-law’s arm. “You’re right, but let me go. You stay here. Geneve already lost Sikes. She doesn’t need you shot all to hell and back.”
Juanito met Emmett’s gaze, then flicked his eyes toward Li.
Emmett understood. And he had no intention of leaving Li to face widowhood before the age of twenty.
Juanito was good in a fight—steady as an oak and not half-bad with a lead pusher. Fact was, however, Emmett was better. A lot better. Faster, though not in the way most men might think. He saw things, sensed things. Then got his Colt out and pointed, quick enough that his first bullet was usually sufficient.
He’d finish this. No more innocent folk shaking hands with Saint Peter.
He shifted his gun rig.
“Li, why don’t you get behind that last pew?” he said, his voice level. “Stay down for a minute.”
She hesitated a beat, the corners of her mouth tugging downward.
He tried to force a soft, reassuring smile. Doubting its efficacy, he let it go.
With a subtle nod, Li drew her six-gun and started for the rearmost bench.
Emmett turned to his brother-in-law. “Juanito,” he said, “when I say go, fling that door open, then scoot for cover. Let’s see what we’ve got out there.”
As Juanito got into place, Emmett centered himself about eight feet back, ready to fire away or throw himself to the side, depending on what awaited them outside.
Hand on the knob, Juanito said, “You ready, hermano?”
Emmett gestured. “Do it.”
Juanito slung open the door. But instead of taking shelter and covering Emmett, he dashed right on out into the street, raising the coach gun’s butt to his shoulder as he went.
“Dammit!” Emmett breathed, starting after his brother-in-law.
He’d taken only a step when someone shattered Doc Simons’s front window glass with a rifle barrel and unleashed a shot at them.
Juanito returned fire immediately—one well-aimed blast that blew out the remaining panes in the lower half of the window.
“Hold it where you are, you murderers,” someone yelled from inside the doc’s house. Warren Livingston’s voice.
Juanito never broke his stride. He continued up onto the doc’s front porch, pausing only when he’d gotten himself into place, back to the wall, between the front door and the blown-out window.
Emmett kept moving, as well—past the other front window to the tight alley between Doc Simons’s place and the bakery next door.
“You murderers just killed another officer of the law,” Livingston called out. “All bets are off now, you hear? I see you, I smoke you.”
From the front corner of the house, Emmett signaled urgently for Juanito to wait and not kick in the door. Livingston might have the doc or VanDorn right inside, ready to take a gut full of buckshot for him.
Juanito, catching his breath, nodded.
“Yep. There are witnesses,” Livingston called out. “You shot my new deputy. And look over there across the street. Folks saw you do it.”
Emmett stole a glance toward the meat market and the dry goods store. Sure enough, from the boardwalk across the way, half a dozen citizens gawked cautiously at the drama unfolding at Doc Simons’s place.
He shook his head. New deputy, huh? Likely some poor, weak-minded soul so gullible he couldn’t see through a barbed wire fence. Somebody whose only value to Livingston was to take a bullet in front of the gallery.
Swiping a glimpse down the alley to be sure no one was sneaking up behind him, Emmett decided he could deliver a line every bit as well as Livingston could—only he wouldn’t be acting. He called out, “What do you want, Livingston, you back shooter? Are you gonna kill the doc and the wounded Texas Ranger in there with him? Add them to your tally, then try to hang that on us, too?”
“Hang it on you?” Livingston snorted. “You’ve been after blood ever since you showed up in El Paso—blood and other folks’ money and property.”
Emmett’s pulse pounded. That lying son of a—
Forget talking. Forget trying to win the crowd across the street.
“Doc,” he called, “are you and Jack OK in there?”
“He shot me in the foot, Emmett.” Doc Simons’s answer came from somewhere deep in the house—some back room.
“Shut up, Doc,” Livingston said, derision in his voice.
“What about VanDorn?”
“It’s only Livingston in here, and—” The doc’s words were cut short by a pair of thuds inside. Sounded like somebody hit the wall, then the floor.
Only Livingston? Emmett readied himself to signal Juanito and proceed with storming the front door when out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a commotion over near the meat market.
Li! Emmett’s heart lurched. What was she doing?
“Hey, fella! Where you goin’?” A curly wolf up on the boardwalk across the way had his gun out, aimed directly at her. “You stop right there before I blow a hole clean through you.”
She was out in the street, her back to the folks up on the meat market porch, the hem of her duster flapping lazily in the hot, dry breeze. She raised her hands slowly but still hung on to the Colt Lightning she had already drawn.
The hombre on the boardwalk must’ve caught sight of the dark, braided queue that hung down from beneath her Stetson because the next words that spilled from his mouth were, “They got ’em a dad-blamed Injun on their side.”
Only seconds ago Warren Livingston had commanded every last ounce of Emmett’s attention. Now—aside from a hazy awareness that Livingston would surely plug him in the back the moment he broke off to go snatch Li from trouble—he no longer gave two hoots about what happened to the outlaw deputy.
“Drop the gun,” the hombre on the boardwalk bellowed at Li.
She held stock still.
Emmett felt needles down his spine and out to his fingertips. Not only did the lanky gunman in front of the meat market have Li in his sights, but out in the street where she was, Livingston could easily take a shot at her, too. Anytime he pleased.
“I said drop it, or so help me, I’ll shoot you dead, you damn Injun.” The fellow shifted his free hand.
The move wasn’t lost on Emmett. A gun fanner—likely as not to pull his shot off target. Not much of a break, but he’d take it.
With a quick, emphatic wave, he signaled Juanito to go on and hit the doc’s front door. At the same time, he lit out for the hombre aiming at Li.
Long strides notwithstanding, he kept his Colt leveled at the curly wolf on the boardwalk.
A good thirty yards yet to cover. He heard the doc’s door crash open.
“Get your smoke wagon off my wife, mister,” Emmett said, plenty loud enough.
If this gun fanner moved so much as a thumb, Emmett resolved to drop him on the spot. He refused to let Li die as senselessly as Gabriela had.
He felt Li’s eyes on him as he slowed to a determined walk.
The fellow on the boardwalk hesitated but didn’t lower his weapon. “Wife?”
“You heard me,” Emmett said, heart drumming, Colt squared on the gun fanner. “Now pull in your horns. You don’t look like the type to shoot a woman.”
Fact was, this lanky, leather-leggin’d cur looked like the type who’d shoot just about anybody for little or no cause.
Ten yards more, and he’d have Li shielded.
“Woman or not, she’s an outlaw. You’re all dad-blamed outlaws.” The gun fanner’s free hand started forward.
Emmett squeezed the trigger. The percussive pop of his .44 echoed through the streets.
The lanky gunman toppled onto
the boardwalk and lay there, walleyed.
Evidently losing the only dog they had in this fight, the small band of onlookers fled into the meat market and the dry goods store.
Li rushed to Emmett.
No sooner had the two touched than another shot rang out, this one from over by the doc’s place.
Both of them ducked instinctively.
The bullet didn’t hit Emmett but passed close enough to raise a blister. He spun.
There was Livingston in the narrow cross street, a revolver in each hand, strutting calmly toward them. He must have slipped out Doc Simons’s back door while everyone was preoccupied with the hubbub over here.
So where was Juanito?
Livingston fired again. He nicked Emmett’s vest, right above where he’d been shot the other night.
It felt odd, as though time had stopped dead still the world over. Meanwhile, Emmett’s eyes and ears took in every minute detail of this mad, frozen moment.
This muchacho, Livingston—he was good. Skilled and deceptive.
Emmett stepped in front of Li. Felt the heft of the Colt in his hand yet felt no weight at all. He sighted on the miniscule brass shield pinned to Livingston’s chest yet took no real aim at all. Exhaled. Pulled the trigger.
The familiar kick and bang came in close succession, followed by the waft of gun smoke.
The outlaw deputy’s revolvers both came up.
Juanito appeared at the back corner of the doc’s house. Careful.
Emmett thumbed back his hammer again. He sensed Li at his side. Heard her Lightning discharge.
Livingston’s body pitched, first this way, then that.
Still trapped inside that single, nightmare-clear sliver of time, Emmett gave the trigger another squeeze.
Li, too, fired again.
Livingston was on his knees, broncoing forward. Both revolvers flared in his outstretched hands.
Li hissed in air between her teeth, then Livingston landed on his face in the dust.
And time suddenly resumed its ordinary, relentless pulse.
Rotating in place, Emmett scanned the street for further danger. Juanito approached Livingston, keeping the business end of the still-smoking coach gun fixed on the outlaw deputy. Folks round about pressed themselves to their window glasses, gawking wide eyed. But no one else was in the street.
“Look,” Li said.
Emmett’s stomach tightened. Holding her Lightning in one slender hand, she showed him her holster with the other. One of Livingston’s bullets had ripped away a nickel-sized chunk of the gun leather.
Her hat, lying in the dusty street behind them, was also bullet-torn.
He threw his arms around her and pulled her close. Yet again, life and death—mere seconds, mere inches.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
A week later, Emmett entered Carlson’s Leather Goods to find Li and Geneve sitting at the small table near the window. Juanito leaned against the sales counter, and Matthew Carlson stood in the curtained doorway that led back to his workshop.
Li offered Emmett a welcoming smile. He smiled back and, for the umpteenth time, thanked the good Lord for not letting that gun fanner send her to an early grave out in front of Doc Simons’s place. She’d only been trying to help, the best she knew how. She was new to all this, and he hadn’t spelled much out to her ahead of time. Then again—he glanced at Juanito—his brother-in-law had dashed out on them, going hell for leather. As soon as that happened, any kind of plan there might have been had gone out the window.
“Evenin’, Emmett.” Carlson snatched him from his ruminations.
“Matthew,” Emmett said, tipping his head. “Saludos to everyone from Jack VanDorn. And from Doc Simons, too.”
“How are they?” Juanito asked.
“Quite a sight to see—Doc getting around under his own steam, albeit gingerly, taking fine care of both Jack and himself. Refuses a lick of help. Chipper outlook, too.”
“And Jack? He’s improving?”
“He may be done with rangering, but I think he’ll come through OK. He’s talking about heading up to the Panhandle, doing what he can to help out around his brother’s ranch.”
Emmett paused and planted a kiss on top of Li’s head.
“So when do we head back to San Antonio?” Juanito glanced at Geneve as he asked.
Before Emmett could answer, the door swung open, and in walked a grizzly of a man, perhaps as old as forty. He pulled off his sweat-stained Boss of the Plains hat, ran his fingers through his thick, ash-blond hair, and returned the Stetson to its resting place. He was followed by a younger, thinner man wearing a broad-brimmed sombrero and a bandolier over one shoulder.
“Carlson,” the big fellow said. He nodded to Geneve and Li. “Ladies.” He turned to Emmett. “You must be Strong.”
Emmett noted the star on the fellow’s dusty brown vest. “And you must be Sheriff Crawford.”
“All day long.” A wry grin peeked from behind the sheriff’s full mustache and thick beard.
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Emmett said. And he was. He wanted to set the record straight and move on with his name untarnished.
“Sorry I wasn’t here to help keep the peace once we lost Marshal Perry,” Crawford said. “By the way, this is one of my deputies, Diego Portillo.”
Portillo doffed his hat in acknowledgment of the ladies.
“I was told that you were heading down to San Elizario, Sheriff,” Emmett said.
Crawford ambled to the end of the sales counter and propped himself against it. “That’s where Diego and I just rode in from. Spent the better part of the day visiting with the town marshal down thataway.”
“I trust he showed you around the Singeltons’ hotel. And the livery.”
Sheriff Crawford nodded. “He did. I spoke with the housekeeper there, too. She showed me everything from the hotel register to the blood-stained bed out back.”
“So when should we expect a trial?”
That question turned Li’s head toward the sheriff.
Crawford pursed his lips. “I’m gonna let the El Paso town council answer that for you.”
“Got any idea when?”
“They’d like to see you right now.” He gestured toward Juanito. “You and your brother-in-law.” Then his gaze settled on Li. “And your wife, too.”
While no one had accused Li of having any part in the robbery of Franklin Taft—the incident that started this whole episode—she had been part of the death match in the street in front of Doc Simons’s place. Fact was, she’d put a window in Warren Livingston’s skull. Emmett feared that whatever applied to him and Juanito now applied pretty much the same to Li.
“Is this an arrest?” she asked.
“It shouldn’t be,” Crawford said. “As far as I’ve been able to find out, all the deaths over at the Wild Hog the other night are attributable to ‘Three-Finger’ Ned Cage and the out-o’-towners that rode in with him.”
“And those down in San Elizario?” Emmett said.
“Seems to me they all point to Taft’s former lookout man.”
“Clive Mackey?”
“I believe so.”
Though Emmett had suspected the lookout man from the outset, he shook his head. “Ned Cage killed Mackey even before trying to draw me into the Wild Hog.” He eyed Geneve.
She nodded. “That’s right, Sheriff.”
“If not Mackey himself,” the sheriff said, “then his compadres. Same gang.”
“Not Warren Livingston?” Emmett knew the late deputy was at the heart of it all. Proving it, however, was the sticky point. Livingston had covered his tracks well.
But if he wanted to walk away from this whole affair free and clear—him, Li, and Juanito, too—he’d have to prove it.
Given Carlson’s recollections about Livingston
and Mackey’s longtime friendship, the dying outlaw’s accusation down in San Elizario, and what Li had seen of the former deputy back during the shoot-out at the Wild Hog, Emmett was dead sure—Warren Livingston was as guilty as the Staked Plains were inhospitable. And the way the son-of-a-gun had played to the gallery over at Doc Simons’s place, sacrificing that poor, feather-headed barber in the process, Emmett was ready to spit nails.
Sheriff Crawford glanced at the shop owner then turned back to Emmett. “I wish I could simply wave my hand and clear you folks of this whole mess.”
“But you can’t.”
He shook his woolly head. “Only one last thing I can think of before it all goes to the town council and then—in all likelihood—to the judge.”
“And what’s that?”
Crawford stood upright and hitched up his gun belt. “Up till now, nobody’s come up with the money that was supposed to have been stolen from Franklin Taft, have they?”
Emmett shrugged. “You’d know that better than we would.”
“I figured it would be long gone, by now,” Juanito said. “All divided up between those that robbed Taft.”
“Maybe so,” the sheriff said. “No sign of it anywhere we’ve looked.”
“Including Livingston’s house or room—wherever he used to stay?” Emmett said.
“Or Clive Mackey’s place?” Juanito added.
“Found nothing in either place. However”—the sheriff’s gaze returned to the leatherworker—“Matthew reminded me of one more place to look.”
Everyone turned to the leatherworker, who promptly folded his arms on top of his display counter. “Clive Mackey and Warren Livingston both grew up not far outside of town,” he said. “Down by the river. The Mackey place ain’t there no more. But the old Livingston farmhouse is still out there. You might wanna go give it a thorough once-over.”
“Anybody live out there now?” Emmett asked.
Carlson chuckled. “Some nester, maybe. But that old adobe ain’t fit for any kind of proper habitation.”
Strong Suspicions (Emmett Strong Westerns Book 2) Page 29
