Live by the West, Die by the West

by William W. Johnstone

  * * *

  Gage and Del had led the party safely past the gunmen on the ridges. An hour later they were deep in the timber and feeling better. It was tough going, carrying Beans on the stretcher, but by switching up bearers every fifteen minutes, they made good time.

  Dawn found them miles from the Circle Double C. But instead of following Cord’s orders, Del had changed directions and was heading toward Gibson. He had not done it autocratically, but had called for a vote during a rest period. The vote had been unanimous: head for town.

  By midafternoon they were only a few miles from town, a very tired and footsore group.

  Late in the afternoon, they came staggering up the main street of Gibson. People rushed out of stores and saloons and houses to stand and stare at the muddy group.

  “Them wimmin’s wearin’ men’s britches!” a man called from a saloon. “Lord have mercy. Would you look at that.”

  Gage quickly explained what had taken place and why they were here, Dooley listening carefully.

  Rod stood on the boardwalk and stared at the group, his eyes bugged out. Parnell felt the eyes on him and turned, his hot gaze locking with Rod’s disbelieving eyes. Parnell slipped the thongs from his blasters and walked toward the young man.

  “I ain’t skirred of you!” Rod shouted.

  “Good,” Parnell said, still walking. “A man should face death with no fear.”

  “Huh! It ain’t me that’s gonna die.”

  “Then make your play,” Parnell said, and with that he became a western man.

  Rod’s hands grabbed for iron.

  Parnell’s blaster roared, and Rod was very nearly cut in two by the heavy charge. It turned him around and tossed him through the window and into the café, landing him on a table, completely ruining the appetite of those having an early supper.

  Beans had been keeping a good eye on Dooley; a good eye and his gun. Crazy as Dooley might be, he wasn’t about to do anything with Beans holding a bead on him.

  Dooley stood up slowly and held out his hand as he walked up to Gage. With a look of amazement on his face, Gage took the offered hand.

  “You got a good woman, Gage. I hope you treat her better than I did.” He turned to Liz and handed her the receipt from the stage agent. “Money from the sale of the cattle is over yonder in the safe. I’m thinkin’ straight now, Liz. But I don’t know how long it’s gonna last. So I’ll keep this short. Them boys of ourn took after me. They’re crazy. And they got to be stopped. I sired them, so it’s on my shoulders to stop them.” Then, unexpectedly, and totally out of character for him, he took off his hat and kissed Liz on the cheek.

  “Thank you for some good years, Liz.” He turned around, walked to his horse, and swung into the saddle, pointing the nose of the horse toward the Circle Double C.

  “Well, I’ll just be damned!” Gage said. “I’d have bet ever’ dollar I owned—which ain’t that many—that he was gonna start shootin.’”

  Liz handed him the receipt. “Here, darling. You’ll be handling the money matters from now on. You might as well become accustomed to it.”

  “Yes, dear,” the grizzled foreman said meekly. Then he squared his shoulders. “All right, boys, we got unfinished business to take care of. Let’s find some cayuses and get to it.”

  Their aches and pains and sore feet forgotten, the men checked their guns and turned toward the hitchrails, lined with horses. “We’re takin’ these,” Del said. “Anybody got any objections, state ’em now.”

  No one had any objections.

  Hans rode up on a huge horse at least twenty hands high. He had belted on a pistol and carried a rifle in one big paw. “I ride vit you,” he rumbled. “Friends of mine dey are, too.”

  Horace came rattling up in a buggy, a rifle in the boot and a holstered pistol on the seat beside him. “I’m with you, boys.”

  More than a dozen other townspeople came riding up and driving up in buggies and buckboards, all of them heavily armed.

  “We’re with you!” one called. “We’re tired of this. So let’s ride and clean it out.”

  “Let’s go, boys!” Parnell yelled.

  “Oohhh!” Rita cooed. “He’s so manly!”

  “Don’t swoon, child,” her mother warned. “The street’s too muddy.”

  Del leaned out of the saddle and kissed Fae right on the mouth, right in front of God and everybody.

  Parnell thought that was a good idea and did the same with Rita.

  The hurdy-gurdy girls, hanging out of windows and lining the boardwalks, all applauded.

  Olga and Hilda giggled.

  Gage leaned over and gave Liz a good long smack while the onlookers cheered.

  Then they were gone in a pounding of hooves, slinging mud all over anyone standing close.

  * * *

  Dooley rode slowly back to his ranch. He looked at the buckshot-blasted bed and shook his head. Then he fixed a pot of coffee and poured a cup, taking it out to sit on the front porch. He had a hunch his boys would be returning to the ranch for the money they thought was still in the safe.

  He would be waiting for them.

  * * *

  “I don’t like it,” Jason told Lanny, with Cat standing close. “Something’s wrong down there. I feel it.”

  “I got the same feeling,” Cat spoke. “But I got it last night while we was hittin’ them. It just seemed like to me they was holdin’ back.”

  Lanny snapped his fingers. “That’s it! Them women and probably a few of the men walked out durin’ the rain. Damn them! This ain’t good, boys.”

  Cat looked uneasily toward the road.

  Jason caught the glance. “Relax, Cat. There ain’t that many people in town who gives a damn what happens out here.” Then he smiled. “The town,” he said simply.

  Lanny stood up from his squat. “We’ve throwed a short loop out here, boys. Our plans is busted. But the town is standin’ wide open for the takin’.”

  But Cat, older and more experienced in the outlaw trade, was dubious. “There ain’t nobody ever treed no western town, Lanny. We done lost twenty-five or so men by the gun. Them crazy Hanks boys left nearabouts an hour ago.”

  “Nobody ever tried it with seventy-five-eighty men afore, neither. Not that I know of. ’Sides, all we’ve lost is the punks and tinhorns and hangers-on.”

  “He’s got a point,” Jason said.

  “Let’s ride!”

  * * *

  Dooley Hanks sat on his front porch, drinking coffee. When he saw his sons ride up, he stood up and slipped the thongs from the hammers of his guns. The madness had once more taken possession of his sick mind, leaving him with but one thought: to kill these traitor sons of his.

  He drained his coffee mug and set the mug on the porch railing. He was ready.

  The boys rode up to the hitchrail and dismounted. They were muddy and unshaven and stank like bears after rolling in rotten meat.

  “If you boys come for the money, you’re out of luck,” Dooley called. “I give it to your momma. Seen her in town hour or so back.”

  The boys had recovered from their initial shock at seeing their father alive. They pushed through the fence gate and stood in the yard, facing their father on the porch. The boys spread out, about five feet apart.

  “You a damn lie, you crazy old coot!” Sonny called. “She’s over to Cord’s place. Trapped with the rest of them.”

  “Sorry, boys.” Dooley’s voice was calm. “But some of ’em busted out and walked into town, carrying the Moab Kid on a stretcher. Now they’s got some townspeople behind ’em and is headin’ back to Cord’s place. Your little game is all shot to hell.”

  Sonny, Bud, and Conrad exchanged glances. Seems like everything that had happened the last several days had turned sour.

  “Aw, hell, Daddy!” Bud said, forcing a grin. “We knowed you wasn’t in that there bed. We was just a-funnin’ with you, that’s all. It was just a joke that we made up between us.”

  “Yeah, Daddy,” Sonny
said. “What’s the matter, cain’t you take a joke no more?”

  “Lyin’ scum!” Dooley’s words were hard, verbally tossed at his sons. “And you knowed who raped your sister, too, didn’t you?”

  The boys stood in the yard, sullen looks on their dirty and unshaved faces.

  “Didn’t you?” the father screamed the question at them. “Damn you, answer me!”

  “So what if we did?” Sonny asked. “It don’t make no difference now, do it?”

  A deadly calm had taken Dooley. “No, it doesn’t, Sonny. It’s all over.”

  “Whut you mean, Daddy?” Conrad asked. “Whut you fixin’ to do?”

  “Something that I’m not very proud of,” the father said. “But it’s something that I have to do.”

  Bud was the first to put it together. “You can’t take us, Daddy. You pretty good with a gun, but you slow. So don’t do nothing stupid.”

  “The most stupid thing I ever done was not takin’ a horsewhip to you boys’ butts about five times a day, commencin’ when you was just pups. It’s all my fault, but it’s done got out of hand. It’s too late. Better this than a hangman’s noose.”

  “I think you done slipped your cinches agin, Pa,” his oldest told him. “You best go lay down; git you a bottle of hooch and ponder on this some. ’Cause if you drag iron with us, you shore gonna die this day.”

  Dooley shot him. He gave no warning. He had faced men before, and knew what had to be done, so he did it. His slug struck Sonny in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the muddy yard.

  Bud grabbed iron and shot his father, the bullet twisting Dooley, almost knocking him off his boots. Dooley dragged his left-hand gun and got off a shot, hitting his middle son in the leg and slamming the young man back against the picket fence, tearing down a section of it. The horses at the hitchrail panicked, breaking loose and running from the ugly scene of battle.

  Conrad got lead in his father before the man turned his guns loose on his youngest boy. Conrad felt a double hammer-blow slam into his belly, the lead twisting and ripping. He began screaming and cursing the man who had fathered him. Raising his gun, the boy shot his father in the belly.

  But still Dooley would not go down.

  Blood streaming from his chest and face, the crazed man took another round from his second son. Dooley raised his pistol and shot the young man between the eyes.

  As the light began to dim in Dooley’s eyes, he stumbled from the porch and fell to the muddy earth. He picked up one of Sonny’s guns just as the gut-shot boy eared back the hammer on his Colt and shot his father in the belly. Dooley jammed the pistol into the young man’s chest and emptied it.

  Dooley fell back, the sounds of the pale rider’s horse coming closer.

  “Daddy!” Conrad called, his words very dim. “Help me, Daddy. It hurts so bad!”

  The ghost rider galloped up just in time to see Dooley stretch his arm out and close his fingers around Conrad’s hand. “We’ll ride out together, boy.”

  The pale rider tossed his shroud.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “They’re pullin’ out!” Lujan yelled from the loft.

  Smoke was up and running for his horse as the men streamed out of the bunkhouse, all heading for the barn.

  “Why?” Reno asked.

  “That damn crazy Del led ’em into town!” Cord said, grinning. “We got help on the way. Bet on it.”

  In the saddle, Smoke said, “That means the town is gonna get hit. That’s the only thing I can figure out of this move.”

  “Let’s go, boys!” Cord yelled the orders. “They’ll hit that town like an army.”

  The men waited for a few minutes, to be sure the outlaws had really pulled out, then mounted up and headed for town. They met the rescue party halfway between the ranch and Gibson.

  Smoke quickly explained and the men tore out for Gibson.

  * * *

  “There she is, boys,” Lanny pointed toward the fast-growing town. “We hit them hard, fast, grab the money, and get gone.”

  “I gotta have me a woman,” one of Cat Jennings’s men said. “I can’t stand it no more.”

  “Mills,” Cat said disgustedly. “You best start thinkin’ with your brain instead of that other part. You can always find you a woman.”

  “A woman,” Mills said, his eyes bright with his inner cruelty.

  “Let’s go.” Jason spurred his horse.

  Some seventy strong, the outlaws hit the town at a full gallop, firing at anything that came into sight. They rampaged through on the first pass, leaving several dead in the muddy main street and that many more wounded, crawling for cover.

  At the end of the street, the men broke up into gangs and began looting the stores and terrorizing the citizens. Mills blundered into Hans’s café and eyeballed Hilda.

  “You a fat pig, but you’ll do,” he told the woman, walking toward her.

  Hilda threw a full pot of boiling coffee into the man’s face.

  Screaming his pain and almost blind, Mills stumbled around the café, crashing into tables and chairs, both hands covering his scalded face.

  Olga ran from the upstairs, carrying two shotguns. She tossed one to Hilda and eared back the hammers of her own, leveling the double-barrel twelve-gauge at Mills. She gave him both barrels of buckshot. The outlaw was slung out the window and died on the boardwalk.

  Mills’s buddy and cohort in evil, Barton, ran into the café, both pistols drawn. He ran right into an almost solid wall of buckshot. The charges blew him out of one boot and sent him sailing out of the café, off the boardwalk, and into a hitchrail. Barton did a backflip and landed dead in the mud.

  Hilda and Olga picked up his dropped pistols and reloaded their shotguns, waiting for another turkey to come gobbling in.

  Harriet and her hurdy-gurdy girls had armed themselves and already had accounted for half a dozen outlaws, the bodies littering the floor of the saloon and the boardwalk out front a clear warning to others not to mess with these short-skirted and painted ladies.

  The smithy, a veteran of the War Between the States and several Indian campaigns, stood in his shop with a Spencer. 52 and emptied several saddles before the outlaws decided there was nothing of value in a blacksmith shop anyway.

  Some of Dad Estes’s men had charged the general store and laid a pistol upside Walt Hillery’s head, knocking the man unconscious. They then grabbed his sour-faced wife, Leah, dragging her to the storeroom and having their way with her.

  Leah’s screaming brought Liz and Alice and Fae on the run, the women armed with pistols and rifles. Sandi and Rita were at the doctor’s office with the wounded men.

  Fae leveled her .45 at a man with his britches down around his boots and shot him in the head just as Alice and Liz began pulling the trigger and levering the action, clearing the storeroom of nasties.

  Liz tossed a blanket over the still-squalling and kicking and pig-snorting Leah and gave her a look of disgust. “They must have been hard up,” she told the shopkeeper.

  Leah stopped hollering long enough to spit at the woman. She stopped spitting when Liz balled her right hand into a fist and started toward her.

  “You wouldn’t dare!” Leah hissed.

  “Maybe you’d like to bet a broken jaw on it?” Liz challenged.

  Leah pulled the blanket over her head, leaving her bony feet sticking out the other end.

  The agent at the stagecoach line had worked his way up the ladder: starting first as a hostler, then a driver, then as a guard on big money shipments from the gold fields. He didn’t think this stop would be in operation long, but damned if a bunch of outlaws were going to strip his safe.

  When some of No-Count George Victor’s bunch shot the lock off the door, the agent was waiting behind the counter, with several loaded rifles and shotguns and pistols. With him were his hostler and two passengers waiting for the stage, all heavily armed.

  The first two outlaws to step through the door were shot dead, dying on their fe
et, riddled with bullet holes. Another tried to ride his horse through the big window. The animal, already frightened by all the wild shooting, resisted and bolted, running up the boardwalk. The outlaw, just able to hang on, caught his head on the side of an awning and left the saddle, missing most of his jaw.

  Beans was sitting next to an open window of the doctor’s office, a rifle in his very capable hands. He emptied half a dozen saddles.

  And Charlie Starr was calmly walking up the boardwalk, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. He was looking for Cat Jennings. One of Cat’s men, a disgustingly evil fellow who went by the name of Wheeler, saw Charlie and leveled his pistol at him.

  Charlie drilled him between the eyes with one well-placed shot and kept on walking.

  A bullet slammed into Charlie’s side and turned him around. He grinned through the pain. Doc Adair had seen the lump pushing out of Charlie’s side and their eyes had met in the office.

  “Cancer,” Charlie had told him.

  Charlie lifted his Peacemaker, and another outlaw went on that one-way journey toward the day he would make his peace with his Maker.

  “Cat!” Charlie called, and the outlaw wheeled his horse around.

  Charlie shot him out of the saddle.

  Cat came up with his hands full of Colts, the hate shining in his eyes.

  Charlie took two more rounds, both of them in the belly, but the old gunfighter stayed on his feet and took his time, carefully placing his shots. Cat soaked up the lead and kept on shooting.

  Charlie border-rolled his second gun just as he was going to his knees in the muddy street. He could hear the thunder of hooves and something else, too: singing. It sounded like a mighty choir was singing him Home.

  Charlie lifted his Peacemaker and shot Cat Jennings twice in the head. Propped up on one elbow, the old gunfighter had enough strength to make sure Cat was dead, then slumped to the ground.

  Hardrock and Silver Jim and Pistol LeRoux had seen Charlie go down, and they screamed their rage as they jumped off their horse, their hands full of guns.