“What about those two who skedaddled off to the other side of the street?” Lefty said. “What was that all about?”
“Yeah,” said Fleming. “And it sounded like one of the women over across the way called something out to ’em. Who was that?”
“How the hell do I know?” growled Mason. “They’re Estarde’s men; he can explain what they’re up to when he gets here.”
Fleming scowled suspiciously. “Well, I don’t like the idea of havin’ some of ’em over there on that side—especially considerin’ what else is over there.”
“Seems to me that havin’ ’em over there where they can work in behind those troublemakers in that old store could turn out to be a big advantage to us,” Mason told him. “You ever think of that?”
Fleming still didn’t look convinced. “Only as long as you’re sure we can trust this greaser buddy of yours not to be playin’ both sides against the middle.”
* * *
In his peripheral vision, Josh had seen his longtime friend and partner go down. By the way Charlie flew back and as hard as he hit the floor, Josh knew it must be bad.
“Charlie?” He spoke the name as both a question and as a cry of alarm.
“Go to him,” Cleo urged. She held out her hands. “Leave me the rifle. I know how to use it; I’ll keep them pinned down across the way.”
Josh hesitated. The thought crossed his mind that she might also turn it on him. But locking gazes and peering deep into her eyes, even if only for a brief and intense moment, told him she wasn’t prepared to do that.
Pushing the rifle into her hands, he said, “Stay low. Don’t waste bullets.”
A moment later, he was on his knees beside the fallen Charlie. Somewhat to Josh’s surprise, Kate was already there, also on her knees, her hands tugging open Charlie’s shirtfront, trying to get at the wound that was issuing thick spurts of blood.
Charlie’s eyes were glassy and he was breathing in short, rapid gasps. “Aw hell, pard, they got me good. I . . . I think I’m a goner.”
“Don’t say that!” Josh insisted. “You hold on, you hear? You try to relax and let us get this bleedin’ stopped and you’ll be okay. You’re gonna be okay, you hear?”
Kate had his shirt opened but was having trouble ripping away some of the already blood-soaked material that she intended to use as wadding to apply to the wound in order to try and stop the bleeding.
“I don’t think the bullet went through,” she said breathlessly. “If we can just put on enough pressure to close the front . . .”
Josh tore furiously at the shirt fabric, ripping away a long strip of it.
Charlie’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a moment but then rolled to gaze up at Kate. In a thick-sounding voice, he said, “I sure am sorry I got you into this, Miss Kate. I . . . I really meant to protect you and treat you better than . . . I never figured . . . I . . .”
His words trailed off and his gasping ceased.
Leaning his full weight down on the wadded piece of shirt he was holding over the bullet hole, Josh felt his old friend’s body go completely limp and still.
“Charlie! Damn you, don’t you die on me!” Josh choked back a sob. “You can’t give up. We got plans!”
Kate rocked back on her heels. Her shoulders sagged. After a moment she reached out and put one hand on Josh’s shoulder as he continued to lean down and press hard with both hands on the wound that had now stopped pumping blood. “It’s no use. He’s gone,” she said as gently as she could.
Josh’s head continued to hang down for a long moment and Kate could feel a trembling in his shoulders. Suddenly his face lifted. Tears glittered in his eyes as they looked past her and swept in a wide arc over the shadowy rear area of the old store. In a voice revitalized by urgency, he said, “Those two that broke to this side of the street—we can’t let them get in behind us or we’ll all be done for!”
“The ones over in the hotel ain’t doing nothing right now,” Cleo called from the window. “I can hold them back if they try anything. You see to the back, Josh.”
“No!” Kate immediately protested. “Those two men will help us. They came this way because I called. It’s the marshal and one of his deputies from Buffalo Peak. They’re here for Cleo and me, don’t you see?”
“I see that don’t make ’em good news for me,” said Josh.
“Better than those hardcases across the way,” Kate told him. “At the very least, I guarantee they won’t try to gun you on sight. Not unless you give them no choice.”
“Who are these skunks across the street?” Cleo said. “And who’s the new bunch that just showed up? Somebody in that old hotel seemed to recognize them, almost be expecting them.”
“I don’t know any of that,” Kate said, getting exasperated. “I just know the two men who broke to this side are Marshal McQueen and Deputy Hendricks from back home. And I know they’ll fight to keep us safe from whoever the rest are.”
Josh shook his head. “That don’t wash. They rode in with that other bunch. And all the others scurried to join the men shooting against us—the men who killed Charlie!”
“You’re a little late with your questions, hombre,” came a new voice, a strong, commanding one issued from the deepening shadows at the back of the room. Simultaneously, out of those same shadows, the face and form of Firestick stepped into view with his Winchester Yellowboy leveled on Josh’s belly. “You should’ve found time to look for some answers before you got in such a hurry to start fillin’ the street outside with lead. And you’d better hope I don’t get to feelin’ just as itchy.”
Josh held motionless as this apparition came forward. He realized too late that, in his haste to come to Charlie’s aid, he not only had handed his rifle to Cleo but had also left the Colt she’d reloaded for him lying on the floor by the window.
Behind Firestick, Moosejaw also appeared, moving with the same ghostly silence. He, too, held his rifle at the ready.
Kate rose to her feet with an uncertain smile. “Thank God you’re here,” she said. “But before anybody gets too itchy for more shooting, we need to have an understanding about some things.”
CHAPTER 52
While Firestick and Moosejaw were joining up with those gathered in the old store, Estarde and his men had threaded their way in through the rear of the abandoned hotel and were being welcomed by Vic Mason.
The friendliness being exhibited by Mason, however, hardly cut both ways. “What the hell is this?” Estarde demanded to know. “You greet me and my men with bullets flying through the air and shout for us to duck around the back way like cowering thieves?”
“Please. Please accept my sincerest apologies,” Mason pleaded. “This unexpected trouble broke out only moments before your arrival. I had no time to send word to warn you.”
But Estarde was far from placated. “I am fighting a war in my own country. I did not come all this way to fight another in order to conduct a simple business transaction.”
“I understand. Believe me, I do. If you’ll just let me explain the nature of this problem, then we can—”
Estarde made a slashing motion with his hand. “I do not need an explanation of your problem. I only need the guns you have promised. I am even willing to forget the fact that my men and I have been shot at.” The colonel slapped the sash around his waist in which was wrapped a pouch containing silver coins. The coins clinked effectively. “I have the payment, you have the guns. We make a simple exchange and then my men and I ride away and leave you to your problem . . . as, I assure you, we will be returning to plenty of our own.”
“Now wait just a minute, buster,” Fleming tried to cut in. “I don’t know who the hell you think—”
Mason fired him a scathing look. “Damn it, Fleming, shut up! I’m handling this.”
“With amigos like this one,” Estarde said, raking Fleming with his own hard look, “I am not surprised you have unexpected problems, Señor Mason. He is the kind who will always add such. The kind you
should cut away like the poison from a snake bite—before he infects your entire crew.”
Fleming started to take a step toward the colonel. “Aw, come on, Vic, you can’t expect me to—”
This time it was Lefty who stopped him, clamping a hand on his shoulder and jerking him back. “Shut the hell up, you fool,” he rasped. “Else I’ll start carving on that poison myself.”
Now Estarde’s eyes bored directly into Mason. “Are you in charge here, or have I foolishly entered into a deal with a pack of snarling wolf pups lacking a true leader?” Behind him, his four flinty-eyed rebel fighters shifted into poised postures.
“Now just a damn minute!” Mason barked. He returned Estarde’s hard glare. “Yes, I’m in charge of this outfit. I told you, we had an unexpected flare-up of trouble just minutes before you showed up. We’ve been waiting here for damn near a week. If you’d’ve gotten across the border when you were supposed to, then we all would have come and gone before those troublemakers across the street ever came into the picture. So, no matter who’s in charge, by God, things don’t always go according to plan!”
Estarde appeared to relent, but only slightly. “Very well. What is done is done. But we are both here now and your trouble—whatever its nature—seems temporarily quieted down. That means there is nothing preventing us from completing our transaction.” He pulled the fat coin pouch from his sash and plopped it on the top of a gutted old desk that stood close by where the two men were facing one another. “There is your payment. Let me and my men examine some of the merchandise. If we are satisfied, you may take possession of this, we will take the guns, and then we will be on our way.”
Mason licked his lips. His eyes fell to the bulging pouch, lingered there a long moment, then lifted slowly. “There’s a slight problem,” he said, much of the forcefulness that had been there only a minute ago now missing from his tone. “The crates containing your guns and ammunition, you see . . . are across the street in that old store where the men who shot at you are holed up.”
* * *
“That’s the pure craziest thing I ever heard tell,” marveled Firestick. “Grabbin’ a couple women off the streets of a town and haulin’ ’em to some remote place, in the belief you could prove to be the husband of their dreams. Holy buckets of thunderation, not even the loneliest, looniest old mountain man removed from civilization for years at a time ever came up with anything wilder than that.”
Josh remained seated beside Charlie’s corpse, now covered by a tarp pulled from the packhorse. His head was hung low, and when he spoke it was in a barely audible mumble. “When you say it out loud like that, it sounds like an awful crazy notion. Pure crazy, like you said. But somehow it didn’t seem so at the time, not when we first planned it out and set it in motion . . . But you don’t need to rub it in any deeper. Charlie’s dead and the women we meant to protect and impress we’ve put in bad danger. And me, at best, I’m headed for a long jail stretch. Makes it pretty clear how bad we messed up.”
Still at the window, where she was continuing to keep an eye on things across the street, Cleo looked around and said softly, “You may have done some wrong things, but you never meant no harm. Not really.”
“Maybe not,” Firestick growled. “But that don’t make a helluva lot of difference. Smack between gunrunners and Mexican revolutionaries ain’t a healthy place to be.”
“But you rode in with the revolutionaries . . . you had become friends with them,” Kate pointed out. “Doesn’t that count for something?”
“Maybe I need to make that whole thing a little clearer,” Firestick said. “Yeah, me and Moosejaw made friends with the rebels . . . by lyin’ to ’em about who we are and pretendin’ we wanted to hire out our guns to their cause. So what that’s gonna count for, I expect, is when they find out we were only stringin’ ’em along, they’ll likely be all the more pissed off.”
“On the other hand,” said Moosejaw from a shadowy corner at the rear of the store where he’d been doing some poking around before the light faded completely, “I might have come across a little something that will make a difference in dealing with Colonel Estarde.”
He stepped forward into a band of pale light. In each hand he held a shiny repeating rifle. “I found these in a corner back there. Half a dozen crates of ’em—maybe a hundred rifles and plenty of cartridges to go with ’em.”
* * *
“It was an easier spot to unload our pack animals,” Mason was explaining defensively. “And the small, uncluttered old store was better for pushing the crates in toward the back, where they’d be in the shade and out of the dust for however long we were going to be here. Who the hell knew anybody else was going to show up like this?”
“Complication?” echoed Estarde. “You think ‘complication’ covers a mess such as this?”
“Look, there’s only two rundown cowboys and a couple of women over there,” Mason said. “It’s not that big a deal. The guns are shoved toward the back; they probably don’t even realize they’re there.”
“If it is not a ‘big deal,’” said Estarde, sneering openly, “how is it that only two cowboys and women are holding off you and your men at all? Why are they not already gunned down like the interfering rabble they are?”
“They were a little quicker on the trigger than we expected and managed to make it to cover in that building before we could finish ’em,” Mason answered.
“But I did finish one,” spoke up Beaudine. “Leastways, I saw him fall back from the window and none of ’em have done any shooting since.”
“And besides,” added Lefty, “you’ve got two of your men somewhere over on that side of the street, Colonel. If they work in behind, we’ll have those troublemakers in a box for sure. Like Mason says, then it ought not be a big deal to finish ’em off.”
“Except it would mean putting some of my men at risk, involving them in your fight. As I said, we already have a fight—a war—on our hands. We did not come here for more conflict.” Estarde scowled fiercely. “Nevertheless, my men are over there . . .”
One of the colonel’s men spoke up, making a quick remark in Spanish.
Estarde’s scowl deepened. “Sí. Just before my men went to that side of the street, a woman called out. Did anyone hear what she said, understand what it meant?”
“No,” said Mason with a shake of his head, “we’ve been wondering the same thing.”
Sighing raggedly, Estarde edged forward toward one of the windows. “It appears I have no choice but to involve myself and my men.” He paused and glared at Mason. “But it is going to cost you. If my men and I have to fight to take possession of the guns, it stands to reason that should affect the previously established price.”
Mason tried to hold his eyes, but couldn’t. He rasped, “Let’s just get this the hell over with.”
CHAPTER 53
“Hey, amigos! McQueen and Hendricks! Can you hear me?”
Firestick edged to a corner of the window previously occupied by Charlie. “We hear you just fine, Colonel. How y’all doin’ over there?”
There was a long pause as Estarde, discerning that Firestick’s voice was clearly coming from inside the store where the “troublemakers” were holed up, took time to try and process what that meant.
“Amigos . . . I do not understand. You are there with the men who shot at you?”
“Kind of a surprisin’ development, I know. But yeah, that’s pretty much what it amounts to,” Firestick called back.
“Have you defeated them? Or are you saying you have joined them?”
“Neither one, exactly. But from your way of lookin’ at it, you’d probably say we’ve joined ’em. It gets kinda complicated.”
Estarde barked an epithet in Spanish.
“But let’s quit nibblin’ around the edges and get to the middle of the pie,” Firestick went on. “What we got here is what a lot of folks call a Mexican standoff. No offense. In other words, you got something I want and I got something you want�
��without a clear way for either of us gettin’ what it is we’re after.”
“I disagree, amigo,” came back Estarde. “I have nine men over here with me. You have four, maybe only three, and a couple of women. The way for me to get what I want seems very clear—although very costly to you, if you insist on making it difficult.”
“Yeah, your outfit could no doubt overpower mine. But it’d damn well cost you, too, and you know it. And I don’t mean just in lives.” Firestick paused to let those listening wonder a minute before he hit them with the rest of it. “These rifles over here—your whole purpose for makin’ this trip, the thing that’s so important to your cause, your revolution—are sittin’ in a weathered, dried-out old building that will go up like a tinderbox if flame was set to it . . . and that’s exactly what I’m prepared to do at the first sign of an attack from any of your crew. This building will burn so fast and so hot those guns will melt like butter and the ammunition will explode uselessly.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” Estarde exclaimed. “It would gain you nothing—you would still end up dead, butchered, your women—”
“We’d be dead either way!” Firestick cut him off. “And you can bet we’d make certain our women didn’t stay alive to end up in the hands of rapists and butchers. But the only thing you care about—the guns—they would be dead, too.”
“The guns must live,” Estarde insisted, his voice strained. “The freedom of my long-suffering people . . .”
“If you’re willin’ to make a deal,” said Firestick, “there’s a way for you to still get the rifles, at no risk to your men.”
“How can this be?”
“You see, when I told you me and my friend did gun work, it wasn’t a lie. I just neglected to mention that we did it from behind badges. So turn the gunrunners over to us. Let us take them—and the women—away from here. I’ll see to it the gunrunners face charges and get a fair trial for the crimes they committed to get their hands on those rifles. While I’m busy with them, my back is bound to be turned. You should have all the time you need to grab the rifles and make it back across the border before I notice what you’re up to or have any chance to try and stop you.”
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