Montana Gundown

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank wasn’t the only one with sharp senses and instincts, though. The gunman, who wore a buckskin shirt and a brown hat with a rounded crown and turquoise-studded band, must have picked up some sort of warning. He threw the cigarette down and spun around, clawing at the holstered revolver on his hip.

  Frank didn’t want the man to get a shot off, because that might warn the bushwhackers on the ridge that something was wrong down here. He sprang forward and lifted the rifle, lashing out with the stock. He drove the Winchester’s butt into the middle of the guard’s face and felt bone crunch under the blow’s impact. The man fell back against the tree and dropped the gun that he had just yanked from leather. Frank pulled back the rifle and hit him again.

  The guard slid down the tree trunk until he was sitting against it. Then he slowly toppled onto his side and lay there motionless. Frank kicked the man’s gun out of reach and knelt to see if he was dead.

  The guard had breathed his last. Frank figured that bone shards from the crushing blows had penetrated his brain. Even though the rifle butt had battered the man’s face out of shape, Frank recognized him.

  This was Vince Cotter, one of Brady’s men. And the last time Frank had seen him, Cotter had been struggling with Katie Storm in the kitchen of the Feed Barn.

  Finding Cotter here, watching over the horses, was more evidence supporting Frank’s theory of what had happened. Cotter and the other two gunmen must have taken Faye and Katie back to the B Star. Probably they had never even come close to the line shack with the prisoners. And chances were, Faye and Katie were locked up in the ranch house right now ... and had been when Frank and the others were there earlier.

  If Frank had had any doubts about Laura’s involvement with this murderous scheme, they were gone now.

  And Cotter was dead, which was good riddance as far as Frank was concerned. He left the gunman where he had fallen and hurried back to Salty.

  “What did you find?” the old-timer asked anxiously.

  Frank told him, then added with a grim smile, “That’s one down. More than a dozen to go, though.”

  “Shoot, we’ve got ’em outnumbered,” Salty said. “The dang varmints just don’t know it yet!”

  Chapter 29

  They left Goldy and the pinto with the killers’ horses and started climbing the slope to the crest of the ridge. Dog went with them, staying close to Frank now instead of ranging ahead, as the big cur often did.

  Gunshots continued to echo in the late afternoon air, which was a good sign as far as Frank was concerned. Silence now would mean that all the men from the Boxed E had been wiped out.

  The gunshots also served to guide Frank and Salty once they reached the top. By following the nearest reports, they located one of Brady’s men stretched out on top of a slab of rock as he fired down at the line shack. Frank and Salty were about fifty feet above him.

  Frank knelt and lined his sights on the man’s back, but his finger didn’t press the Winchester’s trigger. Salty leaned close and whispered, “You don’t want to drill the son of a buck in the back, do you, even though he’s got it comin’?”

  “I never have cared for back-shooting,” Frank said.

  “We can fix that.”

  Before Frank could say anything else, Salty reached down, plucked a fist-sized rock from the ground, and chucked it at the gunman. The rock thudded hard into the man’s back and made him jump and yelp. He rolled over, bringing his rifle around with him, and as he spotted Frank and Salty, his eyes widened in surprise and he tried to swing the repeater’s barrel into line.

  Frank’s Winchester cracked. The hired killer jerked as the slug hit the tab of his tobacco sack hanging from his shirt pocket and bored on into his heart. The man arched his back in a death spasm, then slumped flat on the rock slab again with his arms outstretched at his sides.

  “There you go,” Salty said. “You didn’t have to shoot him in the back. I call that a fair fight.”

  Frank didn’t ... but it was close enough considering the sort of men they were dealing with.

  With the battle going on around the line shack, Frank didn’t think one extra shot would be noticed, and it would be a while before Brady and his men realized that no more bullets were coming from this position. That’s what Frank was counting on, anyway.

  “Let’s go,” he told Salty quietly, and they moved on to locate the next gunman.

  Again the sound of gunshots guided them. They weren’t going to be able to get to this man as easily, though. Instead of lying out in the open, he was concealed in a thicket of trees and brush. Frank couldn’t get a clear shot at him from above.

  “I’m going to have to go down there,” he told Salty.

  “With all them pine needles on the ground, you’re gonna have a hard time gettin’ close to him without makin’ some racket,” the old-timer warned.

  Frank nodded and said, “I know, but I don’t see any other way to do it.”

  “Well, be careful. I’m a tough old bird, but I ain’t gonna be any match for this whole gang o’ killers all by my lonesome.”

  “Don’t worry,” Frank said with a smile. He handed Salty his Winchester. “Here, hang on to this for me.”

  “What’re you gonna—” Salty began, then stopped as Frank drew the knife from the sheath on his belt. “Oh.”

  Frank had never been particularly fond of knife-fighting, but for a quiet, close-range weapon, it was hard to beat a blade.

  He moved into the trees and began his stealthy approach, relying on the continued banging of gunshots to cover up any small sounds he made. He could hear the carpet of pine needles rustling under his feet, but he hoped the gunman couldn’t.

  So far he hadn’t gotten a good look at the man. All he had seen was a rifle barrel thrusting out from the brush. What if this was Brady he was sneaking up on, Frank asked himself? Could he drive eight inches of cold steel into his own son’s back, or cut his throat if it came down to that?

  Frank had no doubt that if the tables were turned, Brady would kill him without hesitation. Brady would probably even enjoy it.

  The boy had chosen his own trail, Frank told himself. And innocent lives were at risk. If that was Brady hidden in the trees ... well, father and son would each have to take his own risk, that was all there was to it.

  Frank pressed his back to a tree trunk and slid around the pine. He caught a glimpse of a denim-clad leg through the undergrowth about ten feet ahead of him. The whipcrack of a rifle shot nearby confirmed it. He was almost on top of the bushwhacker.

  Branches and creepers clawed at him as he forced his way through the thicket. One of the branches caught on his shirt and suddenly snapped with a sharp crack. The unnatural sound caused the hidden gunman to exclaim in surprise.

  Lowering his head, Frank bulled his way through the brush and came out in the little open space where the killer had taken cover. The man had twisted around with the rifle in his hands, and he got a shot off as Frank charged him. The slug whined past Frank’s ear. He thrust the knife out, aiming to bury it in the man’s chest.

  But the gunman was fast, too, and he blocked the thrust with his Winchester. Metal rang against metal as the rifle barrel clashed with the knife and knocked the blade aside. The knife flew out of Frank’s hand.

  He was too close to stop, but also too close for the gunman to use his rifle again. Frank rammed his shoulder against the man’s torso and drove him backward against a tree trunk. The man’s head hit the tree hard and bounced off, but even though he seemed stunned, he didn’t stop fighting. He tried to ram the Winchester’s muzzle under Frank’s chin. Frank jerked his head out of the way just in time, but the sight still scraped his jaw.

  He got his hand on the barrel and wrenched it aside. It was hot from firing, but he hung on anyway. At the same time he drove his other fist into the gunman’s midsection. The man’s breath puffed out in Frank’s face, bringing with it the smell of rotting teeth.

  The man lowered his head and tried to butt Frank i
n the face. They wrestled back and forth in the brush for a moment, until Frank’s ankle tangled in a tree root. His balance deserted him and he fell, pulling the gunman down with him.

  The struggle continued on the ground. The undergrowth was so thick they couldn’t roll back and forth very much, but they wound up with Frank on the bottom and the hired killer on top, trying to get his hands around Frank’s throat with the obvious intention of choking the life out of him.

  From the corner of Frank’s eye, he saw the late afternoon sun glint redly on something lying in the pine needles to his right. He slapped his hand down over there and felt the handle of the knife he had dropped. His fingers closed around the grip. Just as the gunman got his hands on Frank’s throat and started trying to dig in his thumbs, Frank shoved the blade in under the man’s ribs, angling it up so the point pierced the heart.

  The man’s eyes widened in pain and shock. He still tried to crush Frank’s windpipe with his thumbs, but his strength was leaving him too fast. Frank ripped the knife out and drove it in again, this time opening a wound that gushed blood hotly over his hand. He grabbed the man’s shirt with his other hand and heaved him away to the side.

  The gunman landed on his back and gasped out the last few breaths of his life. Blood trickled from his mouth. A violent shudder went through him, and he lay still after that as his wide-open eyes began to glaze over.

  Frank rolled onto his side and pushed himself up. He cleaned the blade on the dead man’s shirt and slid it back into its sheath. Then he climbed to his feet, picked up his hat, which had fallen off during the fight, and made his way out of the thicket to rejoin Salty.

  A grin wreathed the old-timer’s whiskery face when he saw Frank coming.

  “I was startin’ to worry a mite,” he said. “You’d been gone a while, and I could see that brush wavin’ around down there like there was a grizzle bear in it goin’ after the honey in a beehive!”

  “I’m fine,” Frank said. He wiped away a small trickle of blood from the scratch on his jaw that the rifle sight had opened up. “Let’s see if we can whittle down those odds a little more.”

  From where they were now, they could see the puffs of powdersmoke marking the locations of the other bushwhackers on this side of the pasture. Six more men were pouring lead down at the line shack.

  Frank wished he could see into the shack. He wanted to know how many of the Boxed E men were left alive. He was especially worried about Embry, Hal, and Gage Carlin because he had grown closer to those three than any of the others during his time in the valley. But he didn’t want to see any of them wounded or dying, and when he looked down into the pasture at the sprawled bodies of the men who had fallen in the first volley, anger burned inside him.

  Brady Morgan and Gaius Baldridge had a lot to answer for. And as far as Brady was concerned ... Frank wasn’t even going to think of the killer as his son anymore. Brady was just an accident of blood, a vicious murderer who had to be dealt with.

  The next ambusher knelt in a cluster of small boulders just below the ridge crest, with open, rocky ground around him. Frank and Salty couldn’t approach him without being seen. Like it or not, there was no way to dispose of this man without shooting him down with no warning. Frank stole a little closer, crouched behind a tree, and lifted the Winchester to his shoulder to draw a bead. He squinted over the rifle barrel and settled his sights on the side of the man’s neck.

  The Winchester bucked against his shoulder as it cracked.

  Frank had aimed for a killing shot that would sever the man’s spine and drop him straight down like a sack of rocks. Instead, the gunman shifted slightly just as Frank squeezed the trigger, and the slug ripped through the front part of his throat, missing the backbone. Pain sent the man lurching to his feet. He let out a strangled cry as a stream of crimson fountained from his torn neck a good ten feet in front of him. He pawed at his throat, trying futilely to stem the flood, but only for a second before he collapsed.

  “Lord have mercy,” Salty breathed.

  “Come on,” Frank said. There was no mercy on B Star range today.

  There was more proof of that only an instant later, as Salty cried out and stumbled. Frank caught the old-timer’s arm and kept him from falling, but as he steadied Salty he saw the red stain spreading on the side of the checkered shirt.

  “Dagnab it!” Salty gasped. “I’m hit!”

  Before Frank could check and see how bad it was, more bullets began to whine around his head like angry bees.

  Chapter 30

  With bullets whipping around them, Frank had no choice but to tackle Salty and knock the old man off his feet, even though Salty was wounded.

  There was a deadfall not far away where a large pine tree had toppled over, possibly after being struck by lightning in a storm.

  Frank didn’t care why the tree had fallen; he just wanted to get behind it.

  More bullets smacked into the ground around him and kicked up rock chips as he started dragging Salty toward the deadfall. A few yards away, Dog whined as if he wanted to help.

  “Hunt, Dog!” Frank ordered the big cur. Like a streak, Dog bounded away, which got him out of the immediate line of fire. That was Frank’s intention, but at the same time he had unleashed a dangerous force up here on the ridge. Dog would assume that anyone he encountered other than Frank or Salty was an enemy, and he would react accordingly.

  And because of that, some of Brady’s gunmen were in for a heap of trouble.

  Somehow Frank managed to get Salty behind the fallen tree without either of them getting hit again. Frank lay there catching his breath for a few seconds while more bullets thudded into the thick trunk that shielded them. When his heart wasn’t pounding quite so hard in his chest, he turned to Salty to see just how badly the old-timer was hurt.

  Salty seemed to have passed out, but his chest was rising and falling rapidly and Frank could hear the breath rasping in the old-timer’s throat. After pulling up the bloody shirt, Frank saw that a bullet had plowed a shallow furrow across Salty’s side. The wound was messy but not life-threatening, especially if Salty got some medical attention in the reasonably near future. Blood still welled from the crease, so Frank took out his bandana, folded it into a thick pad, and used Salty’s belt to bind it into place over the wound.

  With that done, Frank turned his attention to the problem of who had ventilated the old-timer and tried their best to kill him, too. He supposed the defenders in the line shack could have spotted the two of them, mistaken them for some of Brady’s men, and opened fire. Frank didn’t think that was likely, however. The angle of the shots that had buzzed around his head seemed wrong, and so did the trajectory of the bullet that had struck Salty.

  No, he decided, those shots had come from the bushwhackers on the other ridge, the one on the far side of the pasture. Somebody over there must have seen that gunman lurch to his feet with blood spouting from his neck and figured out that there were enemies on this ridge. After that it would have been just a matter of waiting for Frank and Salty to show themselves ...

  Frank had hoped to get rid of more of the hired killers before his and Salty’s presence was discovered. That hope was dashed now. Not only that, he was going to have to carry on alone from here, since Salty was wounded too badly to fight.

  More bullets continued to smack into the log from time to time, but the bushwhackers on the other ridge weren’t concentrating their fire on it anymore. They must have figured out that Frank and Salty were pinned down here and had returned to trying to smoke out the defenders in the line shack. Those occasional shots were just to keep Frank and Salty honest and force them to keep their heads down.

  Salty let out a groan as his eyes flickered open. “What ... what in blazes happened?” he managed to ask as he looked over at Frank through watery eyes.

  “One of the varmints winged you,” Frank explained. “You’ve got a crease in your side. It’s bled some, but you’ll be all right.”

  “I didn’t thin
k ... they even knew we was over here!”

  “They didn’t at first,” Frank said. “I figure they must have spotted that fella who died so spectacularly, and that made them look for us.”

  Salty licked his lips and looked around. “Where’s ... Dog? The mangy son ... didn’t get hit ... did he?”

  “I sent him hunting,” Frank said grimly.

  “Good!” Salty croaked. “I hope he chews up ... a whole passel o’ them skunks. Just hope he don’t ... catch hydrophobia from ’em!”

  Frank chuckled. Salty had lost some blood, but none of his spirit.

  “I’ve got my bandana tied over the crease to slow down the bleeding,” he said. “This deadfall is good cover, so I reckon you’ll be all right here.”

  “Now wait ...just a dang minute! You sound like ... you’re plannin’ on leavin’ me here.”

  “Not much else I can do,” Frank said. “You’ve lost enough blood that you’re too weak to keep going.”

  “Dang it! I reckon that’s ... my decision to make ... not yours.” Salty tried to push himself up on an elbow, but with a groan, he slumped down again. “Son of a gun! Maybe ... you’re right.”

  “Sorry. I know how you hate to miss out on a good scrap.”

  “That’s the ... dadgummed truth.” Salty reached out and clutched at Frank’s sleeve. “You’re gonna ... keep tryin’ to rescue those fellas ... who’re holed up down there?”

  “Yeah. I reckon I’m the only chance they’ve got.”

  “You listen to me ... Frank.” Salty paused, and Frank leaned closer. The old-timer rasped, “If you come up against ... Brady ... don’t you hesitate ... don’t you think about nothin’ else ... except gunnin’ the buzzard. ’Cause he’s got it comin’, Frank ... you know he does ... and his life ain’t worth a thing ... compared to yours.”

  “You just take it easy, Salty,” Frank said. “Don’t worry yourself.”

  “You mind ... what I done told you!” Salty looked around again. “Where’s my ... rifle?”