‘I want to go out back, Pa?’
‘When we goin’, Pa?’
‘Huh, Pa, when, Pa?’
The irritating drone finally reached the short-temper of one of the card-players, who threw his hand down on the table with an audible snap, clearing his throat and gobbing at a filthy, overflowing spittoon. Missing it.
‘For Jesus Christ’s sake, Mister. Shut the fuckin’ mouth of that screechin’ kid!’
‘What?’
‘I said get him to shut the fuck up!’
‘There is a lady present,’ said the father, pompously, obviously used to putting down men of the lower classes. It might have worked well enough on Beacon Hill but at Hobson’s Hole it didn’t mean a thing.
‘I see her, but she’s keepin’ her fuckin’ mouth fuckin’ shut so I’m not complainin’ about her.’
‘If you don’t guard your tongue then …’
Crow sighed to himself. Knowing what was going to happen and not feeling much like doing a thing about it. Part of Crow’s character was that he didn’t suffer fools very gladly. Truth was, he didn’t generally suffer them at all.
The man at the table kicked back his chair, standing unsteadily up. He was in his early twenties, with a lean look to him. A small moustache sprouted beneath his nose and he carried a Peacemaker low on his right hip. A touch too low, Crow thought.
‘I guess you and me’s got some sort of argument, Mister,’ he said, threateningly.
‘Don’t let him talk to you like that, Pa. You won’t, will you, Pa?’
‘Keep out of this, Arthur,’ said his father, also beginning to stand.
Crow poured himself another shot from the bottle on his table, settling himself back. Wondering vaguely if there was any law around the settlement, and deciding immediately that there probably wasn’t. The barkeep was also fight-wise and he had begun stolidly to move glasses and bottles from the shelves behind the counter, stacking them neatly out of sight and out of the way of any lead that might start flying around.
‘You come from out East?’
‘It is my business why I am here.’
‘Sure. That wife of yours looks like she’s not feelin’ so good.’
One of the other card-players also stood up. A Mexican with a mouth filled to overflowing with gold teeth that sparkled and gleamed as he bowed to the woman, holding his sombrero, rimmed with tinkling silver coins, across his body.
Crow watched him from hooded eyes. It was common knowledge along the frontier in the South that when a Mex held his hat like that it was a fair bet he was getting ready to draw his gun behind it. For the first time Crow noticed that the Easterner was wearing a pair of guns. Nice looking, matched Colts, with what appeared to be fancy silver inlay on the butts. They looked like they had never been drawn in anger, neat and oiled as when he bought them from some smart store in Boston.
‘The lady is pretty, no?’
The woman turned away, blushing furiously, her hands knotting in her lap with nerves at suddenly becoming the centre of attraction. Her husband looked angrily at the short Mexican.
‘You would do well to keep your filthy observations to yourself. In a dago country it might be agreeable to talk to your nigger whores like that. But not to my wife, if you please.’
‘What if he don’t please, Mister?’ asked the third of the players, standing to join his two friends. ‘I guess that Garcia here might not please at all, and where does that leave you?’
This was the leader. Crow recognized that. Taller and broader than the boy or the Mex, aged about thirty. With the weatherworn look of a man who’s been around some. The gun was the ubiquitous Peacemaker, but it wasn’t a fancy rig, or tied too low on the thigh. It was a clean, simple model, the butt polished from use, in a cutaway holster.
‘Listen here, gentlemen,’ said the Easterner, just beginning to recognize that whatever money and position he might have back home didn’t count a lot out in the middle of nowhere.
‘Seems she is missing a good man with him,’ said the Mexican, still smiling at the woman.
‘Maybe we ought to show her how to do it right and proper,’ leered the younger man. ‘Just take her out yonder and show her. What about it, Jay?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Don’t let them, Richard,’ said the woman, tension making her voice harsh.
‘Why don’t we all have a drink and forget about this small …’
‘Why don’t you stick that drink up your ass? Your fuckin’ brats are a pain, Mister, and you done insulted us all with your fuckin’ high and mighty ways. We don’t take to that, do we?’ The other two nodded. ‘And I guess better’n a drink is goin’ to be me and my friends here kind of honorin’ your good lady wife by layin’ her.’
‘You dog! I’ll …’ stammered the man, reaching clumsily for the pair of pistols. In the shadows, Crow narrowed his eyes, waiting for the crack of gunfire.
But the Easterner was so slow that it was easy for the Mexican to move the sombrero and show the gun in his hand. And for the young man to stoop and draw in a fluid, easy movement. The leader of the trio never moved, beyond taking a half step to one side, eyes watching Crow, just warning him that he knew he was there. Crow acknowledged that with a half-wave of his hand. Shrugging off any responsibility or involvement.
And he wasn’t involved at all.
He didn’t have any reason to be.
‘Oh, sweet Jesus. Please, gentlemen.’ The man had gone sheet-white, his hands falling to his sides. His sons sat frozen, seeing their father facing death and the woman covered her eyes with her fingers.
The tableau didn’t change for several seconds. The young man and the Mexican grinning at each other at the ease with which they’d won, and there wasn’t any doubt in anyone’s mind that they had certainly won.
‘You done a foolish thing there, Easterner,’ said the boy.
‘Sure. We could shoot you and nobody say nothing. You draw first, no?’
‘But you threatened me.’ Suddenly he caught sight of the silent figure of Crow. ‘You, sir. You must have seen and heard what happened.’
‘I saw you try and go for your pistols before they did,’ replied Crow, honestly.
‘Then you are as bad as they.’
‘Go out back, lady. There’s a kind of shed there. Get your clothes off and wait for us.’
The woman looked at the leader of them as though she had been stricken with deafness. ‘You cannot … cannot mean what you say?’
‘We mean it, lady. You got just five seconds then Garcia and the kid here are going to each put a bullet in your husband’s belly. Five seconds later in your oldest boy and then the other kid. We don’t joke about fucking, lady.’
The Navaho behind the bar stood still, knowing from long experience that in a razored situation like this one the first man to move might be the first one to collect a bullet.
‘I’ll pay you if you let us all go. We only got stuck here because a guide ran off and left us. As soon as we can find someone else to guide us into the mountains then we’ll go. Please leave us alone.’
‘How much?’ asked the leader.
‘Hundred dollars each.’
‘You got that much?’
‘Of course I have. And more.’
Crow sighed again. If ever he’d seen a man eager to get his wife raped and his whole family butchered then this was the one. If he’d just sat down and had a drink and kept quiet, there was a fair chance that the three would have taken their pleasure of the woman a few times and then maybe left them all alone. But he’d just opened his mouth in the biggest way, revealing that he was carrying a sizable sum of money.
‘I’ll pay you two hundred dollars each to let us be,’
‘You’ll pay six hundred dollars, Mister?’ asked Crow quietly.
All of a sudden he had himself a reason to get involved in the action.
Chapter Three
Six hundred dollars would help get him to San Francisco and give him a good few day
s there. Balanced against that was the possibility of getting himself killed. But to a man like Crow, death was always at your shoulder, or in the next arroyo, or waiting cold-voiced in the shadows of a frontier town.
All three men turned incredulously towards him as he sat motionless in the darkness. It was the Mexican who spoke first, voicing all their disbelief.
‘You said something, Señor?’
‘I spoke to the gentleman there, friend,’ replied the shootist.
‘He ain’t your friend and I ain’t your friend and Jay here ain’t your damned friend neither.’
Both men held guns on him, but neither had them pointed right at him. It was just that they were trying to keep the Easterner covered at the same time, and they really couldn’t believe that this one man was going to call them all out.
‘Please,’ said the Easterner, desperation naked in his voice. ‘I’m carrying a lot better than a thousand dollars in coin, and …’
‘Mister,’ said Crow, wearily, ‘I guess I’ve never met a man so damned eager to set a bullet between his own teeth.’
‘You can sit there still and easy and nobody’ll say a word,’ said Jay. ‘Looks like you’re our kind, and it don’t do for us to jump at each other’s throat.’
‘I’m not your kind,’ replied Crow.
‘I’ll cut you for a straight fifth of what this son of a bitch has.’
‘And you can get a chance at the señora,’ added Garcia.
‘Less’n them boys is more to your line of fuckin’,’ sneered the younger man. ‘Though they seem uglier than sin to me, not havin’ that sort of taste.’
‘Six hundred dollars to save you from these men? Is that it?’
‘Yes. Anything.’
Crow smiled in the shadows. ‘Been offered a lot, but never anything like this. Man shouldn’t be that rash. Suppose I take you up on it one fine day.’
‘You really figure to try and take us all?’ asked the leader, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘That just don’t signify.’
‘Six hundred. Seven hundred and fifty.’
‘Maybe I should just sit here and see how high you’re goin’ to go,’ said Crow.
‘You sure have a nerve, Mister,’ said the young man. ‘Sit there with that soft voice and tell us you’re goin’ to save that flabby bastard and his whore of a fuckin’ wife.’
‘Help us get out of this infernal place of heat and rock and death,’ said the woman, her voice making everyone look at her.
Crow took the chance to allow his right hand to slip from the tabletop and rest comfortably just above the cut-down butt of the Purdey in its deep holster.
‘Infernal’s a good word for here, Ma’am,’ he said, nodding to her.
‘Why?’
‘I spent some time with the Paiutes hereabouts. They call it “Tomesha”, this valley.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Means the place where the land’s on fire. Good enough name.’
‘I do not believe this,’ sighed Jay. ‘I’m here with two good men, both with drawn guns, ready to kill these four. And you sit there like a teacher learnin’ snot-nose brats about history and that. Sayin’ you’re goin’ to take us all. All three!’
‘I’ve just agreed a deal here,’ said Crow.
‘You figure you got a pistol that’ll wipe us all three away before we can gun you down?’ asked the youngest of the trio.
‘No.’
‘Then you blow your cheeks and puff us all away out of the door?’ laughed the Mexican.
Crow didn’t know about them. They weren’t just ordinary killers or bounty hunters. Not three of them together. That sort of man stayed alone, or rarely in pairs. Never three of them. So they must be a loose gang, looking for ways of making some money with as little work as possible. Some rustling maybe. Or a small robbery. And they certainly wouldn’t shrink from killing.
The tall Jay looked as though he might be useful, but taken together they weren’t that good. They were cocky and careless. Over-confident that this single man seated at the corner table ten paces from them was just bluffing.
The three of them stood close together, bunched in a way that no top shootists would ever stand, giving such an easy target. In the dim light at the corner of the saloon Crow thumbed back the twin hammers of the sawn-down gun.
‘If you’re aiming to stop us doing what we plan, then I figure you ought to be making yourself some kind of move, Mister? I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Didn’t throw it. I’m called Crow.’
‘A black bird, Pa,’ exclaimed the younger son of the family, for no reason that Crow could see at that moment.
But he didn’t bother to wonder why he’d said it, or why his father looked so shocked at the words. What he did bother about was that everyone turned to look at the teenager.
For someone with reflexes as keen as Crow, it was more than enough chance.
Beneath the scarred top of the table, he gripped the scattergun, still in its holster, tilting it forwards. Bracing his wrist against the back of his chair to give it the support he knew it would need the moment his finger squeezed the twin triggers.
The double boom was strangely muffled, though it took all of Crow’s great strength to avoid the gun kicking clean out of his grasp. Smoke billowed from under the table, momentarily obscuring the trio of men. He heard a scream, from the woman, he thought, and then immediately on top of that came yells and cries of shock and agony. As the smoke cleared he saw just how devastating the shots had been.
All three men were down, kicking at each other in a tangled welter of blood. At such a close range it would have been impossible to have missed such a fine target and Crow thought again how right he was to wear the Purdey, unsporting though it might be.
Even as he stood up he dropped the smoking gun and drew the Colt from the back of his belt, cocking it and aiming at the floored men. Though it seemed that all three were out of the fight, Crow hadn’t lived to be thirty by taking chances.
Jay, the leader, was nearest, his right leg virtually severed above the knee, the whiteness of the shattered femur visible through the pulsing blood. He was lying half on his side, face contorted with pain, but even through that dreadful wound he was trying to draw his own handgun, fumbling for it.
Crow shot him once between the eyes, the impact of the forty-five making the back of the man’s head buck hard against the sodden planking. The bullet burst out taking a fist-sized chunk of skull with it, leaking his brains into the spreading pool of crimson.
‘Madre de Dios!’ screamed the Mexican, one hand still absurdly holding the tinkling sombrero. Rolling backwards and forwards, knees drawn up to his chest.
He seemed the least wounded, though the shot from the Purdey had broken both legs just above the calf, some of the lead starring upwards to strike him in the groin and lower belly.
Just as Crow aimed and fired the pistol Garcia heaved himself backwards, the bullet plowing a bloody furrow across his temple, knocking him out and giving him an easier end than most of his life deserved. The second shot killed him immediately, hitting him just above the left ear as he lay on one side.
‘Fuckin’ bastard!’ screamed the boy, scrabbling in the slick blood for his own gun, failing to reach it by a clear eighteen inches.
‘It’s over, son,’ said Crow quietly.
‘Let me kill him,’ yelped the fat Easterner, appearing from nowhere with his matching pistols cocked ready in his chubby fists.
‘No.’ said Crow.
‘Why the Hell not?’
‘You’re paying me for this.’
‘Don’t let that fuckin’ cockless bastard shoot me, you son of a bitch killer,’ moaned the young man, eyes staring up at Crow.
The shot had hit him higher than the rest, because he had been slightly the furthest away. The front of his shirt from chest to belt was torn apart and soaked through with bright blood. His pistol had been sent flying from his fist and he was weaponless.
And that was the way that Crow liked to see an enemy. There were few braver men than Crow, yet nobody hated heroics more. His idea for a good fight would be one where he held all the aces and the opposition none. Living wasn’t a game with rules. You killed quickest or you gotten killed yourself. It was truly as simple as that.
A mortally wounded boy with no guns was about what Crow liked.
‘It’s over,’ he repeated, leveling the pistol at the defiant face.
‘Don’t let him, Pa,’ whined the younger boy. ‘You do it.’
‘Touch the trigger and I’ll break your arms off.’ warned Crow, the softness of his voice making the threat somehow more credible.
And the Easterner recognized it for a promise rather than an empty threat and he reluctantly holstered his fancy irons.
‘Thanks friend,’ said the kid, trying to force a grin.
‘I surely ain’t your friend, son,’ replied Crow pulling on the narrow trigger of the Colt for the fourth and last time, killing him instantly.
‘They’re all dead, dearest,’ said the fat man, patting his sobbing wife on the shoulder.
‘I’ll take another beer,’ called Crow to the Indian bartender who had just reappeared from the floor. ‘And I’ll take six hundred dollars from you, Mister.’
‘Of course. Of course. By God, but that was the most unbelievable thing! have ever been privileged to witness. Unbelievable.’
‘Six hundred dollars,’ repeated Crow, reloading the pistol and then walking to pick up the dropped scattergun, breaking it to empty the cartridges, thumbing in two new charges. Clicking it shut and sliding it back into his holster.
‘You’ll get it. Every red cent, Mr. … Crow wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That your first name?’ asked the fatter of the sons.
‘Yeah. And the second. Just Crow.’
‘The black bird, Pa,’ he squeaked, ‘Like that’s some kind of sign from the Almighty that Mr. Crow’s goin’ to help us find the …’
A sudden angry slap across the face stopped him, standing speechless, staring at his father with the red marks of fingers livid on his cheeks.
‘I didn’t … Mr. Crow,’ stammered the Easterner. ‘There’s things that … would you be a guide for us?’
Bodyguard Page 2
