by John Benteen
A tall young man just yanking down a Winchester from a peg on the wall, whirled, stared. “Hold it!” Sundance roared, Colt lined. The man froze.
“Howard!” Delia cried out. “Howard Fain!”
“Delia!” Fain exploded in surprise.
Sundance pushed the woman toward him. “It’s up to you!” he yelled at her, cramming fresh rounds in his Colt. “Fain, take care of her! We’re wiping out Barkalow and Strawn—”
Fain’s arm clamped around her. “Wait!” he yelled at Sundance.
But there was no time to wait. The half-breed spun, plunged out the door, slamming it behind him. The saloon next door roared with gunfire. He circled, dodged through an alley, reached its back door, slammed against it. The door gave and he was in a store room. He raced through that, broke out into the main bar room. Two bodies lay sprawled on the floor. Navajo gunfire was lacing through the windows. Beside them, when they could, Barkalow’s men, dazed, groggy, sought targets, returned the fire. Hearing the door open, one whirled, a tall man in a red shirt. He stared at Sundance, swung his gun in line. Sundance shot him in the belly and he fell writhing, kicking. He swung his aim, caught another in the back, and the man crumpled. Then the third man at the window, all at once aware of his presence, whirled.
Sundance’s heart kicked. It was Barkalow himself. The squat cowman looked at the half-breed as if a demon had sprung up from hell. “Damn you!” he roared and lined his gun and pulled the trigger. The weapon clicked on empty. Barkalow’s jaw dropped; then, before Sundance could shoot, he’d dived behind a bar.
Sundance knew what he was going for, kicked over a table, threw himself behind it. Barkalow fired one barrel of the sawed-off shotgun that was standard behind any Arizona bar and the table splintered as nine double-zero buckshot slammed into it, spraying Sundance with splinters. If it had been flimsy pine, not heavy oak, he’d have been chewed to bits. As it was, he dared not raise himself; Barkalow could not miss with the second barrel at this short range.
Then boots drummed on the floor. Sundance caught a glimpse of Barkalow scooping up a six-gun; with that in one hand, the shotgun in the other, dodging from behind the bar into the store room. Sundance gave him two minutes, followed. At the saloon’s back door he was in full view for just an instant; then he threw himself behind the jamb. The trick worked; Barkalow, in the alley, fired the shotgun’s second barrel. It sprayed the storeroom, and bottles smashed on shelves. But the buckshot missed the half-breed behind the door jamb and now Sundance leaped through the door. Barkalow had thrown away the shotgun, was dodging through the buildings of the town. Once Sundance snapped a shot, but Barkalow dodged behind the corner of a building just in time. Sundance cursed, ran after him, heard a near miss from Barkalow’s Colt whine by his ear. “Damn you, Sundance!” Barkalow’s voice screamed. “I had it all locked up, this basin, everything, until—” He fired another shot that plunked into adobe beside Sundance’s head. Then the half-breed caught a glimpse of him running on.
Vaguely he was aware that the whole town had become a battlefield, but this was his private fight. He remembered that whining saw and Barkalow’s grinning face—
And then his nostrils were rich with the fresh tang of pine wood newly cut and he was surrounded by heaps of planks and piles of logs. All the employees of the sawmill had taken cover, but the machinery itself still throbbed and roared as the band saw that replaced the one Strawn had broken blurred up and down, waiting for a log that would be a long time coming. He glimpsed Barkalow dodging behind a stack of great pine trunks; the man edged around them, snapped a shot at Sundance.
The half-breed hurled himself behind a stack of planks just in time. Panting, in that cover, he reloaded the Colt. It was an interval that Barkalow took advantage of. Sundance saw him break from cover, running toward the sawmill, beyond which an unharnessed team of mules, tied to a fence, fought their tethers, braying wildly. If Barkalow could make one of those mules and mount him ... Sundance slipped into the open, fired and missed.
Barkalow dived across the feed table of the mill, landed flat on his belly, partly shielded by the iron device. Between him and Sundance, the automatic hook that grabbed the logs, positioned them, moved futilely up and down, giving Barkalow additional cover. Barkalow fired a round, missed, then whirled and, keeping low, began to run toward the mules.
Sundance steadied his tired gun hand on his left wrist. He had barely a second before Barkalow made the cover of another pile of logs lying by the feed table. Both eyes open, he squeezed off the round. It went home, just before Barkalow made the cover of the wood. He saw the puff of dust from Barkalow’s right shoulder blade, saw the man lurch, fall, get unsteadily to his feet, gun hand dangling. Sundance fired again. This shot punched into Barkalow’s ribs. Barkalow turned, staring at Sundance blankly, a bullet in his entrails. He took a few lurching steps. Then his legs gave way, as he hit the feed table of the saw. He slumped across it, tried to rise. The steel hook, moving mechanically, came down and pinned him, points digging deep into flesh. Barkalow, still alive, blood dribbling from his mouth, fought it weakly.
But it was no use. Caught up in the machinery, he was carried remorselessly toward the saw, not lengthwise as Sundance had been, but crossways on the table. He had a single instant to realize what was happening, to raise his head, stare at the vibrating blade ahead. He screamed, a ghastly sound of terror cut off short as the blade bit through bone and flesh, and Sundance felt hot bile rise in his own throat as the two halves of Barkalow, released, fell in bloody messes, one on each side of the table.
Sundance turned away, leaning, legs weak, against a fragrant pile of lumber. What Barkalow had endured was nothing compared to what he had meant for Sundance that night that seemed now a decade ago. But it was still a hell of a way to die.
Sundance spat a yellow thickness from his throat, pushed new rounds into his Colt. That steadied him, and as he raised his head, he became aware that the gunfire in the town was tapering off. Only a sporadic shot sounded now and then. Somebody had won and somebody lost—and he was pretty sure it was not the Navajos who’d lost. But there was still Strawn to beware of. He forced himself to alertness as he left the cover of the wood.
Even so, the voice called his name before he saw the man. “Sundance.”
It was low, husky.
He whirled, gun up. But Beecher Strawn, standing there black-clad in an alley between two piles of two-by-fours held no gun in his hand. His face, beneath its black hair, was pale and smudged; his Colts in holster, hands dangling by their butts.
“I saw it,” Strawn said huskily. “Saw what happened to Barkalow. Hell, it was too damned good for him. A man that ain’t got the guts to do his own fighting ... ” He let out breath. “And your outfit won,” he said, a ring of weary surprise in his voice. “All those damned Indians that we never figured could fight like that—and then the townies takin’ us from behind. You hear? The shootin’s stopped. Almost.”
“Almost,” Sundance said. And he holstered his own Colt, as Strawn came forward until less than fifteen yards were between them.
Strawn tried to grin. “That’s right. We still got our bargain. And it’s damned important to me to take you. Nobody knows where I am or you are, and there are those two mules yonder. So I got a chance ... I could have shot you from ambush, you know, and ridden out clear.”
“But then you would never have known,” Sundance said, watching Strawn’s eyes. “You’d still be burnt-out inside.”
“That’s the way it feels,” Strawn said. “But taking you will change it. Anyhow—”
The eyes changed. That was the only sign he gave. Suddenly, magically, his right hand Colt was up and lined and cocked and ...
Sundance was hardly aware that he himself fired first. It was all so automatic, the result of years of practice. Thought was nothing, reflex everything, and he himself was oddly detached, could have been an observer looking on as the Colt bucked in his palm. Later, he would guess it was the fastest draw he h
ad ever made.
Strawn’s gun fired its round, too, but the impact of the heavy slug hitting him just as he squeezed the trigger threw it wild enough to miss. Sundance heard it rip by him, thud into logs behind.
Strawn opened his mouth. Blood poured from it. His eyes were wide. He tried to lift the gun for a second shot; could not. Then, with a bullet in his heart, he simply sat down awkwardly against the pile of lumber; and he was dead.
Sundance stared blankly at him, one more corpse meaning nothing now. Then he came alert, raised the Colt, whirled, as he heard footsteps.
He dropped the gun, though, when the half-dozen Navajos, led by Easy Dreamer, appeared from behind a pile of lumber. “Sundance!” Easy Dreamer blurted. “We have done it, we have taken them! Only Strawn—” Then he saw the black-clad figure on the ground.
“Barkalow’s over yonder,” Sundance said and jerked a thumb.
“Hiiyaa!” Easy Dreamer lowered his Winchester. “Then it is over.”
“Yeah,” Sundance said, and he leaned against a stack of timbers, bracing himself there for several minutes, before he accompanied the jubilant Navajos to the center of the town.
Eleven
The ranch house Tom Gannt had built for his wife and himself was large and spacious. Barkalow and his men had turned it into a boar’s nest of filth. While Sundance slept the clock around, somebody cleaned it out, and when he arose and dressed, after a hot bath, it had wholly changed.
At the kitchen table, he drank a quart of black coffee, gorged himself on steak, eggs, and biscuits. Howard Fain, across the table from him, also drank coffee and his voice was still full of excitement. “It was all we needed,” he said. “Just a little help, a little help from outside. Most of us were friends of Tom and Delia’s—” he looked at her as she brought the coffee pot from the stove “—and I’d already organized them, but there was nothing we could do with Strawn and Barkalow and all their gunmen looking down our throats. But when we knew that you’d taken the eastern half of the Basin, we got ready. And when you hit the town, we were waiting. We had two men wounded by mistake by your Navajos, but it’s nothing serious. Anyhow, we took those gunmen from behind and—”
“It was a good job you did,” Sundance said. “We were counting on you.”
“Yeah. Well.” Fain set down his coffee cup, looked from Sundance to Delia Gannt. “Well, I’ve been rattling on like a kid. There’s still a lot to do in town. And you two have affairs to settle.” He stood up, put on his hat. “Delia—”
“Howard.” She took his hand, looked up at him a moment. “Thanks. Thanks for everything.”
“Por nada. We’re just glad to have you back. Sundance ... ” Then he took his hand from hers, went out.
Delia turned to Sundance. “Jim? More coffee?”
“No, thanks.”
She poured a cup for herself, sat down across from him. “Well, what will you do now?”
“Rest a while,” he said. “Not long. Then I’ll be riding on.”
Her face shadowed. “Must you?” She gestured. “This is a good house. It was built to hold a man and a woman and last a long time. There’s the Basin and the Indians.” Something moved in her eyes. “Jim, please don’t go. Stay here. There’s everything you’ll ever want here; I know there is. You’ve saved it all and I want... to share it with you.”
“I already have a woman. I think I told you that. She’s in Washington, but she’ll be coming west again soon. We’ve been away from each other now too long while she worked there and I worked here for the Indians.”
“I see.” Delia lowered her head, stared into her cup. “But I’ll be lonely, so lonely without you.”
“I don’t think so,” Sundance said and lit a cigarette. “Didn’t you see the way Howard Fain looked at you? And he’s a hell of a lot of man. You won’t be lonely long, Delia. And besides, he’ll give you the help you need, make sure all your land titles are clear again and that you take title to Barkalow’s cattle, too.” He touched his pocket containing the draft for the rest of the money she had given him. “And me, I’ve got to head for Prescott, there’s a lot to do there. We had some Indians killed, and their deaths will have to be accounted for—a lot of accidents to report to the reservations. And there’ll be more needed to take their places, and I’ll pick out the best ones and get them permits so they can come here and join you, help you with the sheep. And you remember what I said: don’t let them overgraze the Basin.”
“I’ll remember,” she said. “And I’ll play fairly with them, give them everything Andrew promised.”
“If I hadn’t thought that,” Sundance said, “I wouldn’t have fought to get back your land.”
“Anyhow,” Delia said, “it just goes on and on, doesn’t it? For you, I mean. With the Indians.”
“They need the money. And I know how to earn it.”
Delia was silent for a moment. “Yes, it’s a big thing you’re doing and I won’t try to interfere. But—you’re not going right away? You did say you would rest a while?”
“Two or three days.”
She reached across the table, laid her hand on his, eyes lighting. “That’s better than nothing.”
Sundance laughed. Then he scraped back his chair, went around the table, pulled her up and to him. “Yeah,” he said, just before he kissed her. “A whole lot better.”
SUNDANCE 16
GUNBELT
By John Benteen
First published by Leisure Books in 1977
Copyright © 1977, 2017 by John Benteen
First Smashwords Edition: January 2017
Names, characters and incidents in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information or storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.
This is a Piccadilly Publishing Book
Cover image © 2016 by Tony Masero
Series Editor: Ben Bridges
Text © Piccadilly Publishing
Published by Arrangement with the Author Estate.
The Sundance Series by John Benteen
Overkill
Dead Man’s Canyon
Dakota Territory
Death in the Lava
Taps at Little Big Horn
The Bronco Trail
The Wild Stallions
Bring Me His Scalp!
The Pistoleros
The Ghost Dancers
War Party
Run for Cover
Blood on the Prairie
Riding Shotgun
Silent Enemy
Gunbelt
… And more to come!
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