He got his answer a second later, when a shaky voice rose behind him. “H-hold it r-right there, Sheriff.”
Gibbon froze. He’d been so preoccupied with stopping Magnusson that he hadn’t thought to watch his back. Turning slowly, he confronted the man behind him. The stocky little easterner with the red muttonchops and rosy red cheeks held a revolver in both his shaking hands, the barrel aimed at Gibbon’s chest.
Swallowing, the man looked beyond Gibbon to Magnusson. “K-k-k-king, what should I d-do?”
Gibbon didn’t give Magnusson a chance to answer. He shot the little man in the chest, then brought his gun back around to Magnusson, who had turned but was not holding his revolver. Gibbon saw the Bisley lying about ten feet from the rancher, where he must have dropped it when the horse threw him.
Gibbon felt a grin shaping his mouth. He heard a gun crack and felt a bullet tear through his middle. As though clubbed with a two-by-four, he fell forward on his knees, struggling to keep his gun up.
Turning, he saw the little man lying on his side, still aiming his revolver at Gibbon. Smoke curled from the barrel. As the man thumbed back the hammer to fire again, Gibbon shot him through the forehead.
The easterner’s head jerked back with the force of the slug, then came forward and hit the ground. The shoulders quivered for only a moment.
Hearing footsteps, Gibbon turned his head forward. Magnusson was reaching for his Bisley. Gibbon squeezed off a shot but missed cleanly. His hand was shaking; he was going into shock. He thumbed back the hammer and squeezed the trigger again, but the hammer slapped the firing pin without igniting a shell.
He felt a heavy darkness brush over him like warm, wet tar. He was out of shells and out of luck. He gave an involuntary groan against the pain in his middle as he watched Magnusson straighten with the silver-plated pistol in his hand.
His lower jaw jutted angrily out from his face and his nostrils flared like a rabid dog’s.
“You bastard,” Gibbon muttered, his breath growing short. He felt drunk, and he chuckled silently at the thought. Here he was on his last leg, shot in the back by a chickenhearted little tinhorn, and sober as a Lutheran preacher.
Magnusson walked stiffly toward him, holding the Bisley out from his chest. Blood glistened on the right shoulder of his coat. He stopped near Gibbon and pressed the barrel to the sheriff’s forehead.
“You’re finished, Gibbon,” Magnusson growled.
“So are you, King,” Gibbon said before the gun barked.
CHAPTER 27
MARK TALBOT HAD just started tracking a whitetail buck when he sensed he was being followed.
He halted his horse on the buttes over a creek and turned his head in a slow circle squinting his eyes. He saw little but snow-dusted hogbacks and small, isolated cottonwood copses, a distant line of skeletal trees tracing the course of another creek. In the far distance, wind-sculpted sandstone monuments stood sentinel over the vast canvas of colorless winter landscape.
It was getting late in the afternoon and the high, dense clouds were turning sooty. The sun was an opalescent wash edging down the western sky.
Talbot appeared to be alone. Still, the hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up, and heeding such a warning had saved his life more times in the past than he cared to remember. He clucked to the horse and continued following the impressions the buck had left in the hard ground, periodically cutting his eyes around for trouble.
Having lost the tracks, he stopped by a flat boulder to try to recover them. He squinted his eyes at the tufts of frozen grass and lowered his head for a closer look.
Something shredded the air near his ear, whistling softly with a guttural edge. He felt the wind on his neck and recognized the sound of a lead ball ripping air.
A long gun boomed in the distance. Talbot had heard the reports of enough large-caliber rifles to know instantly, without having to ponder it, that this was a Big Fifty, accurate up to seven hundred yards.
He was out of the saddle and reaching for his carbine before the echo of the boom had died. He slapped the horse and ran for the ridge over the creek, found cover behind a boulder wedged precariously atop the steep grade.
Behind and below him the frozen creek curled in its brush-lined bed. Talbot considered it momentarily before returning his gaze to the open benches, from where he knew the Big Fifty had been fired.
More rifles popped thinly in the distance. They were carbines, like Talbot’s Winchester, and well out of range. It was the Big Fifty Talbot was worried about. Whoever had pulled its trigger had had enough time to reload the single-shot rifle and was no doubt worrying a bead on Talbot’s head at this very moment.
As if to confirm his suspicion, a ball shattered against the rock, spraying rock and lead in the grass like heavy rain. The boom followed half a second later. More rifles popped, and the popping was growing louder.
Talbot jerked a look around the rock and saw a man riding along the ridge to his right. Swinging around, he saw another man coming from the left. They were about a hundred yards away and closing. No doubt the man with the Big Fifty was straight out in the prairie somewhere, hunkered down behind a hogback.
Talbot jacked a shell in his Winchester, brought the rifle to his shoulder and squeezed off a shot at the man on his left, then turned and squeezed off another at the man on his right. One rider gave a yell and halted his horse to dismount and look for cover, but the other—a far bigger man—kept coming.
Talbot considered holding his ground and shooting it out, but he knew he’d be caught in a cross fire. With no time to spare—he could hear hooves beating the hard earth—he scrambled down the ridge to the brush along the creek, running hard. Tiny silvery birds rose from the brambles, screaming and wheeling toward the opposite ridge. Rifles cracked and lead ripped the air.
He ran deep into the cattails, sending the cotton billowing in all directions. He knew his attackers would be able to hear him thrashing in the weeds if he kept moving, so he stopped at the trunk of a dead cottonwood and hunkered down to scan the ridge behind him.
Three men sat three horses near the rock he’d used for cover. Talbot was too far away to make out distinguishing features, but he could tell from body shape and size that two of the men were Rag Donnelly and Randall Magnusson.. He didn’t recognize the other man, the man sporting the Big Fifty.
What he did recognize was the fact that all three men were riding for King Magnusson, and they had no doubt tracked Talbot here from his cabin. Which meant they’d tracked him to Jacy’s. Talbot felt a sudden, desperate urge to return to her ranch to make sure she hadn’t been harmed.
But first he had to deal with these three uglies.
He was trying to figure out how to do that when two of the riders rode down the ridge, leaving the third man—the man with the Big Fifty—alone on the ridgetop. Apparently Donnelly and young Magnusson were coming after him while the third man covered them from the ridge.
Talbot turned and headed up the creek through the heavy brush. Soon the man on the ridge started cutting loose with the big Sharps—one heavy blast after another. He couldn’t see Talbot in the weeds but that didn’t keep him from probing the creek bed with intermittent lead balls, making sure Talbot didn’t get too comfortable down there while the other two beat the brush for him.
After fifty tough yards, Talbot turned to watch and listen. He couldn’t see much but sky and the ridges on either side of the creek, rising above the bending weed tips, but he could hear the heavy boom of the Sharps and voices.
The occasional cries and calls lifted behind him about seventy-five yards, and they seemed to be spread apart by several dozen yards. There was the rustle and crack of heavy animals moving through brush, and Talbot knew Magnusson and Donnelly were beating the creek bed for him the way you’d beat the brush for whitetails or mountain lions.
Meanwhile, the man on the ridge was trying to flush him with the Sharps.
A slug whistled past Talbot’s ear and snapped a w
illow limb behind him. Talbot ducked suddenly and cursed. He shifted his gaze to the ridge. The man with the big gun rose from his prone shooting position and cupped his hands around his mouth. His voice carried on the crisp air.
“He’s ahead and left, sixty yards!”
The son of a bitch must have eyes like a hawk, Talbot grumbled to himself, turning and pushing his way through the brush.
Five minutes later the brush thinned and there was the creek—a wide, frozen horseshoe dusted with a thin, crusty layer of snow etched with animal tracks. On the other side stood a beaver house about five feet tall and seven feet long.
Talbot looked behind him. The man on the ridge was still shooting, but apparently he’d lost his target, for none of the recent slugs had landed near. Keeping his head low, Talbot ran out of the brush, slipping and sliding on the icy creek, boots crunching snow, and hunkered down on the far side of the beaver house.
A bullet tore into the house, snapping several of the carefully woven branches, and Talbot knew the man on the ridge had rediscovered him.
That’s okay, he thought. Send him over here.
He stood and yelled to the ridge, “Come on—send him over here! Tell ’em to come and get it!” Turning to the brush across the creek he shouted, “Come and get it, Rag! Come and get it, Randall! I’m waiting for you!”
Suddenly a horse burst out of the brush behind him, another whinnied across the creek, and Talbot realized they’d been moving around him and slowly tightening the circle.
“Eeee-ha!” Randall Magnusson yelled as he bore down on Talbot, trying to trample him.
Talbot swung around to shoot, but Magnusson’s horse bulled into him, knocking the rifle from his arms. Thrown back against the beaver house, he went for his revolver, but before his hand touched the grips Randall’s rifle cracked, belching fire and smoke, and the slug tore into the house a half inch right of Talbot’s face. The barrel hung there, only a few inches away, so instead of drawing his revolver, Talbot reached out and grabbed the rifle and pulled.
Randall came with it, landing with a cry on the root-webbed cutbank, his mount shrieking and kicking as it scrambled away.
Talbot crouched behind the beaver house just as Donnelly snapped off a shot. The slug barked into the house. Talbot stood, lifting Randall’s Winchester to his shoulder, and returned fire at Donnelly, who was too preoccupied with his prancing mount to take another shot.
The bullet caught the big foreman in the shoulder, pushing him back in the saddle. He gave a yell and fumbled for his reins, but the horse was bucking in earnest, slipping and sliding on the ice, and he fell heavily out of the saddle, cursing.
Turning sharply to his right, Talbot saw that Randall was lying on his back, his head propped against the weeds, a Colt revolver extended in his right hand. The barrel was aimed at Talbot’s head, and the trigger was locked back, ready to fire.
Time stopped, and Talbot saw the grim smile etched on the young man’s thick-lipped mug. Magnusson’s eyes were slits through which the frosty eyes reflected the dull winter light. The muzzle bore down on Talbot like the round, black yawn of eternity.
Randall licked his lips. “Your brother thought he was too good to beg for his life, so we made him kneel down and I shot him in the back of the head like a dog.” The smile widened. “Where do you want yours?”
Before Talbot could answer, a round black spot the size of a double eagle appeared on Randall’s forehead, just above his eyes. He was only vaguely aware of a rifle crack as the kid’s head snapped back and hit the ground with a thud. The Colt dropped from his hand. He gave no cry, no sound whatsoever. One leg spasmed for a few seconds, and that was all.
He’d obviously been shot, but by whom Talbot had no time to ponder, because Rag Donnelly suddenly slammed him to the ground with the full force of his body. Talbot went down hard on his side, Donnelly’s weight forcing the air from his lungs in one painful exhalation.
Then Donnelly was slamming his head against the ground and raging incoherently. Talbot kicked himself up with his legs. At the same time he laced his hands together and slammed them down hard on the foreman’s head. It wasn’t much of a blow, but it gave Talbot time to roll sideways and scramble to his feet.
Donnelly gained his own legs and, breathing heavily, threw off his gloves. His face was swollen and red, his hair atangle. Blood soaked the shoulder of his sheepskin.
“Come on, you son of a bitch!” he shrieked. “I’m gonna take you apart limb by limb and hear you howl like a stuck pig!”
Talbot threw down his own gloves and fisted his hands, crouching. They circled for several seconds, then Donnelly leaned in with a right hook. Talbot ducked and the blow went wild. Before Donnelly could regroup, Talbot landed a left cross, opening a two-inch gash on Donnelly’s cheek.
Brushing the back of his hand across the gash and growling like a wounded griz, Donnelly stepped back to consider the blood on his hand. Then he closed in again, swinging his right fist.
Again Talbot ducked, but before he could get his head back up and fade left, Donnelly caught his right brow dead-on with a crushing, ham-sized fist. Talbot staggered backward as the pain tore through his skull, and before he could regain his balance, Donnelly charged, bulling him over backward.
The foreman slammed Talbot’s face with three brain-numbing right jabs, then he reached down to his ankle and produced a stiletto. The slender blade came up under Talbot’s chin, and following the blade with his eyes, Talbot saw the naked woman etched in the tempered steel.
He reached up and grabbed Donnelly’s hand just before the blade pierced the tender skin over his jugular vein, and the naked woman twisted and turned as the two hands struggled for dominance.
Through gritted teeth, his eyes on the naked woman, Talbot grunted, “You always fight this fair, Rag?”
“Fuck you, Talbot … you’re a dead man.”
“Don’t … count … your … chickens …” Talbot funneled a sudden burst of adrenaline into the fist that held Donnelly’s, and the naked woman turned suddenly away from him, as though twirled by an invisible partner, and plunged head first into Donnelly’s leathery, whisker-bristled throat.
Ruby blood gushed over the hilt and onto the handle, covering Talbot’s hand. Donnelly opened his mouth to speak but only blood issued. His body stiffened. As he faded sideways, turning onto his back, he clutched at the blade with both hands. He pressed his back to the frozen ground and struggled feebly with the deep-set blade, kicking his feet, stark terror in his eyes.
Then his hands fell to his chest, his face turned to the side, and the light faded from his gaze.
Talbot pushed himself to his feet carefully, trying to quash the pounding in his head. Sensing someone near, he turned quickly, ready to defend himself once again.
Jacy stood behind the beaver house, where a faint deer trail opened onto the creek. She held a rifle across her chest and she was looking at the body of Randall Magnusson lying several feet away, blood dripping from the black hole in his forehead.
Realizing that she had been the one who’d shot Randall, probably from the ridge behind them, opposite the man with the Big Fifty, Talbot watched her take three stiff steps toward the body, lower the rifle barrel, and blow another hole through young Magnusson’s face.
“That son of a bitch,” she said.
Talbot didn’t know what to say. He just stood there, watching her with Donnelly’s gore on his hands.
“Are you all right?” he said finally.
She turned suddenly away from Magnusson’s inert body, ran to Talbot, and threw her arms around his neck, sobbing. He couldn’t hold her because of the blood on his hands but he pressed his cheek to hers, said in her ear, “I’m so sorry, Jacy. I led them right to your cabin. I just didn’t think they’d be after me so soon.”
“Those sons of bitches,” she sobbed, her face buried in his shoulder. “The one shooting from the ridge … he took off when he saw me … he was the one that shot Gordon and Mrs. Sanderson.�
��
“Oh, Jesus. Are you okay?”
She nodded. “They just roughed me up a little.” She lifted her head and looked into his face through slitted, teary eyes. “They burned your cabin,” she cried, studying him.
He stared back at her, feeling numb, his heart quickening. “How do you know?”
She indicated Magnusson and Donnelly with a tip of her head. “They said so. I saw smoke that way when I left to find you.”
Talbot looked off, setting his jaw so tight that his teeth ached. By now, the ranch would be no more than rubble. Magnusson had left him with little but the shirt on his back. Fuming, he looked at the dead bodies, wishing he could resurrect them and kill them all over again.
Maybe he couldn’t work miracles, but he sure as hell could fix the head honcho’s flint but good. He’d kill Magnusson—now, today—or die trying.
He knelt down and rubbed his gory hands in the weeds and snow. “Go home and stay there,” he said tightly.
“I’m coming with you.”
“No.”
“I’ll get my horse,” she said, turning.
“I said no,” he called after her.
She turned around sharply, long hair flying. Her green eyes were bright with fire. “You say no because I’m a girl, but you get something straight, mister—Magnusson is into me for as much he’s into you, and girl or not, I’m calling his note due. Are you with me?”
He studied her, a tender expression growing on his face. In the vast desert of his loneliness, sorrow, and rage, she was the one bright thing.
He sighed and shook his head fatefully, tried a smile. “I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be against you,” he said.
Then he watched her turn and stomp off through the weeds, thoroughly in love with her.
CHAPTER 28
IT WAS TOO cold and too late in the day to be this far from home, and Homer Rinski knew better. He just didn’t care. What he had on his mind would not be stymied by such earthly concerns as fading light and plummeting temperatures.
Dakota Kill Page 23
