A Good Day for a Massacre

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Slash and Pecos looked at each other. They silently communicated the same knowledge: no mining had been done here in years.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?” Pecos asked above the wind as fast-moving clouds slid ghostly shadows around them. Some of the clouds tore on the roofs of the bunkhouses and on the top of the old stamping mill. “A ranch that don’t look like it’s really a ranch an’ a mine that ain’t been functional in a coon’s age.”

  “And still a good twenty or thirty men from the Spanish Bit showin’ up in Honeysuckle every weekend to stomp with their tails up,” Slash added. “Curious. Downright curious as a five-legged cat.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Shaking his head in befuddlement, Slash glanced around at the compound of the Spanish Bit Mine.

  His gaze held on a two-story building just ahead and on his left. It had been obscured by a large pile of trash—old brown bottles and rusted airtight tins layered by tumbleweeds likely blown up from the lower valley.

  The single word SALOON was stretched across the building’s front story in large, badly faded green letters. It was the only building whose windows hadn’t been boarded. At least the ones on the lower story. Or, if they’d been boarded, the boards had been removed. Slash thought it might be a reflection of the sunlight off the large main, first-story window, but there appeared to be a lamp burning inside.

  “Let’s check that place out,” he said, jerking his chin toward the saloon.

  “If you’re thirsty, I got a bottle in my saddlebags,” Pecos quipped as he booted his own mount toward one of the two wooden hitchracks fronting the old watering hole.

  The two former cutthroats dismounted, tossed their reins over the rack, and stepped up onto the badly rotted boardwalk fronting the saloon. The saloon had a regular wooden door, not batwings. Slash tripped the steel latch and was surprised when the door swung free in its frame.

  He arched a brow at Pecos, who swung his shotgun, which hung down his back, around to his chest, gripping the savage gut-shredder in both hands.

  “If there’s trouble, step aside, pard. You don’t wanna catch my buck in your back, though it ain’t the least of what you deserve.”

  Slash stuck his tongue out at him, then slid one of his Colts from its holster and cocked it. He opened the door and strode quickly into the saloon. He stepped to the left, Pecos to the right, both men extending their guns out before them.

  They looked around.

  There were a half-dozen tables and chairs just ahead of them and a crude bar with plank shelving flanking it beyond the tables and chairs. A lamp burned where it hung from a ceiling support post in the middle of the room. A stairway ran up the right wall, off the right end of the bar. Dust and cobwebs were everywhere, though someone had recently tried to give the place a cursory sweeping. A broom and dustpan stood against the wall to Slash’s left. The pan was filled with dust and a mummified rat skeleton.

  Slash sniffed. “Cigar smoke,” he whispered, puzzled.

  “There.” Pecos dropped his chin.

  Slash followed his gaze to a table ten feet ahead. A half-full whiskey bottle stood on the table. Two hands of cards lay facedown on the table, the bottle between them. A shot glass stood near each of the card hands. One glass was empty, the other a third full.

  Near one of the card hands was an ashtray in which a slender, black cigarillo burned. The gray smoke curled lazily upward into the saloon’s musty air.

  A man’s head and upper torso darted up from behind the bar, on the bar’s right end. A half a blink later, another man’s head and upper torso darted up from behind the bar’s left end.

  “Down, Slash!” Pecos bellowed.

  “I see ’em!”

  As Pecos dropped to a knee behind the gamblers’ table, Slash dove over a table to his left.

  The two men behind the bar snapped rifles to their shoulders, and both of those rifles spoke at nearly the same time, one round pounding into the table behind which Pecos cowered. The slug shattered the half-full shot glass and blew cards in all directions.

  The other shooter flung a bullet into the back of the chair behind which Slash just then hit the floor. As the chair flew violently back over his legs, Slash rolled up off his left shoulder and raised his six-shooter toward the man cocking his rifle behind the bar’s left side. Just as his opponent aimed down his barrel at Slash, Slash triggered his Colt.

  The man’s hat went flying back off his head and into the dusty, mostly empty shelves behind him. The man’s rifle crashed, the slug flying wide and plunking into the front wall behind Slash.

  The man cursed sharply and pulled his head down behind the bar.

  Pecos aimed his gut-shredder over the top of the gamblers’ table and filled the room with thunder. Buckshot peppered the bar and blasted several empty shelves off the wall behind it, evoking a shrill yell from the rifle-wielding devil on that end of the bar.

  “One o’ these rannies has a cannon!” the man screamed to his friend, both men hunkered down behind the bar.

  “I seen it,” his friend said in a high voice pinched with anxiety. “But he’s only got one more load!”

  “Plenty more in my pocket, friend!” Pecos fired verbally back. “Besides, twelve-gauge buck don’t see that spindly bar as no obstacle at all. No, sir—not at all!”

  Pecos filled the room with thunder again.

  A shrill, agonized scream rose from the bar’s right side. It was followed by the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

  Pecos whooped victoriously as he broke his smoking barn-blaster open and plucked the spent shells from the tubes.

  The other man, on the bar’s left side, jerked his head and rifle over the bar top, but before he could get a shot off at Pecos, Slash triggered his Colt twice. The man cursed and drew his head back down behind the bar, but not before one of Slash’s slugs had cut a nasty furrow across the man’s left cheek and the other had grazed his shoulder. Slash kept firing, giving Pecos time to reload his cannon, carving gouts of wood out of the bar and keeping the shooter pinned down.

  When Slash’s pistol clicked on an empty chamber, he holstered it and reached for the other one. He’d only gotten it half-raised before Pecos gave another raucous yell and loosed an ear-rattling thunderclap again, blowing a large, ragged-edged hole in the front of the bar.

  Pecos whooped again, shriller this time, and wreaked havoc with his second barrel.

  Another ragged hole was blasted through the front of the bar, two feet to the right of the first one.

  “Oh!” the man behind the bar cried. “Ah, Jesus—stop! Help! Please! Help!”

  Slash looked at Pecos through the chalky cloud of powder smoke wafting around them. “You think you got him?”

  Pecos shrugged as he broke the coach gun again. “Sounds like it.”

  “Yeah.” Slash heaved himself to his feet, wincing from the bruising he’d taken when he’d hit the floor after throwing himself around like a man half his age. He kicked a chair out of his way in frustration and lifted his head to cast a cautious gaze over the bar. “It sounds like it. But . . .”

  The man behind the bar cursed. “Stop! Stop it, now—you hear? You got me! I’m done!”

  “You sure about that?” Slash called.

  “Yesss!” The man’s voice broke, and he sucked a breath through gritted teeth.

  Pecos clicked his freshly reloaded shotgun closed. “Want me to send another wad through the bar, Slash?”

  “Noooo!” screeched the man behind the bar. He was breathing hard. It sounded like he was flopping around like a landed fish.

  Slash looked at Pecos and held his hand up, palm out. Holding his second Colt in his right hand, he moved quietly around the end of the bar. He jerked his head for a quick look behind the bar, drew it back, just in case the second bushwhacker was playing possum, then took another look.

  The man was down, all right. He hadn’t been faking his misery. The blast had taken him in his upper left chest. A couple of pellets had struck his
narrow, dimpled chin. Blood trickled down his chin and his neck. Wood slivers from the bar were embedded in his cheeks and neck.

  He lay parallel to the bar, boots near Pecos, head lying near the lifeless heap of his partner. This man had short black hair and a black mustache. A three-or four-day growth of beard stubble shadowed his lean, angular face. He wore denims, a wool shirt, suspenders, and a deerskin jacket with hammered silver conchos for buttons.

  Two guns were holstered on his hips. His Winchester lay on the floor between him and his dead partner.

  “What’s your name, friend?” Slash asked.

  The man stared up at him through glassy, chocolate-brown eyes. He was breathing hard, and he was losing blood fast. “Ken . . . Kentucky Dade.”

  “What are you doin’ here, an’ why’d you bushwhack us, Kentucky Dade?”

  The man curled a nostril and hardened his jaws. “Go to hell!”

  Slash chuckled. “You’re halfway there, you bush-whackin’ idjit!”

  As Pecos walked over to the bar, then hoisted himself onto it, leaning toward the back wall so he could see Kentucky Dade on the floor, Slash walked up to Dade and knelt down beside him.

  “I can make your journey to the smoking gates a lot more painful it needs to be, Kentucky.” Slash poked the barrel of his Colt into one of the holes carved by Pecos’s gut-shredder.

  Kentucky Dade howled, lifting his chin and gritting his teeth. “Oh, sweet merciful Jesus . . . please don’t do that!”

  Slash pulled the pistol barrel out of the hole. “What are you doin’ here, an’ why’d you bushwhack us, Kentucky?”

  Pecos looked at the front door, for both he and Slash were aware that if two men were here, others could be on the lurk, as well. Turning back to Kentucky Dade, Pecos said, “Might as well tell us. You’re done, Kentucky. Finished. You don’t owe no one a damn thing. Why should your pards get to spend all that money when you’re as dead as last year’s Thanksgiving turkey?”

  Dade looked from him to Slash. He licked his trembling lips. “We’re here . . . we’re here to guard the . . . the . . . gold.” He’d said that last word as though it were poison on his tongue.

  “How many of you are there?”

  “Here?” Dade said. “Just me and Cheshire.” He rolled his eyes to indicate his dead poker buddy.

  Slash stared grimly down at the dying man. “Where’s the rest of you?”

  “At the ranch.” Dade’s voice was growing thick and rheumy, and his breathing was slowing. His eyes were turning glassier as death stole up on him.

  “Where’s the gold?” Pecos asked.

  “At . . . at the mine.” Dade winced as a pain spasm racked him. “Just . . . j-just behind the door.” He winced again and writhed. “Pl . . . please . . . just leave me now to . . . die in peace.”

  But he died right there and then. There didn’t appear anything peaceful about it. He jerked. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, his chin lifted, and he stopped moving. A last, rattling breath rippled through his lips.

  Slash looked at Pecos, his own eyes round and bright. Could Kentucky Dade have been telling the truth? Could it be that easy? Could the gold really be here, within a few hundred yards?

  “I think we’d best get up to the mine, partner,” Pecos said through a big, toothy grin.

  “Me, too.” Slash hurried out from behind the bar. He holstered the Colt, pulled the other one, and began reloading. “We’d best take it easy, though. He could be leadin’ us into a trap.”

  “Ah, hell,” Pecos said. “He was dyin’. He knew he was. He didn’t have no reason to lie and let his pards walk away with all that gold just as he was shakin’ hands with Ole Scratch.”

  “Yeah, well, just the same,” Slash said, punching the last bullet into the sixth chamber, flicking the Colt’s loading gate closed and spinning the wheel. “Let’s take ’er easy.”

  Slash stepped slowly out onto the saloon’s boardwalk. Pecos came out behind him, holding his shotgun straight out in front of him. Seeing no one around—there was only the wind and windblown grit and bouncing tumbleweeds and the clouds tearing on the top of the mountain—Slash stepped off the boardwalk and slid his rifle from its scabbard.

  “Let’s walk.” He racked a round into his Winchester’s action and off-cocked the hammer. “Make us smaller targets than ridin’.”

  “You know I don’t like to walk no further than the privy, but I reckon you got a point for a change.”

  Looking around carefully, they moved out away from the saloon. They crossed what passed for a street, headed around behind the mercantile, which was all boarded up and listing in the wind like a gale-battered ship, and started up the mountain, following a switchbacking trail. Shingles from the dilapidated buildings blew around them, one almost striking Pecos, who cursed and pulled his hat down tighter on his head.

  Wind-battered, keeping their heads down, but also looking around cautiously, they climbed the trail. They were huffing and puffing and blinking grit from their eyes by the time they made it around the giant tailing and stood before the portal. A door was framed inside the portal, mounted on square-hewn timbers. It appeared to be a thick door of heavy lumber. A padlock secured it.

  Slash cursed.

  “Don’t get your bloomers in a twist.” Pecos grinned and held up the twelve-gauge.

  “The others might hear the blast.”

  “If they didn’t hear the blasts in the saloon, I doubt they’ll hear this. Especially in this wind.”

  “All right—if you think your double-aught buck can blast through heavy-gauge steel.”

  “There you go insulting Mister Richards again.” Richards was the company that had manufactured Pecos’s beloved shotgun.

  “Nothin’ personal.”

  Slash stepped back and poked two fingers in his ears as Pecos raised the double-bore, aiming at the stout steel lock.

  The gun roared like an exploding dragon. The lock and the hasp simply disappeared. In their place was a large, round hole in the door.

  “Now,” Pecos said, grinning proudly. “Don’t you feel bad about doubting Mister Richards?”

  “Oh, shut up.”

  Pecos shook his head wearily. “You don’t got a grateful bone in your body, do you?”

  Slash stuck his hand into the hole, grabbing the door and pulling. The door swung heavily open, and a breath like that of a grizzly bear pushed against Slash. At least, the breath of a bear that had dined on bat guano and mushrooms. There was also the smell of solid rock as well as the lingering cordite stench from the blast.

  Slash and Pecos stood staring side by side into the broad hole in the mountain. Timbers framed the chasm, holding the mountain back, preventing cave-ins. The light penetrated only for twenty feet or so.

  Slowly, Slash and Pecos walked into the mine, looking around.

  They’d started walking just beyond where the light penetrated when Pecos stopped suddenly. “There.” He pointed.

  Slash squinted into the shadows. “Where?”

  Pecos walked forward and dropped to a knee beside two strongboxes sitting side by side at the base of the mine’s right wall. Pecos patted one of the boxes and smiled up at Slash. “Right here.”

  Slash walked forward. He recognized the box that the robbers had stolen out of the freight wagon. “There was no lock on it. There wasn’t a lock on either box.”

  “Open it.”

  Pecos lifted the hasp and pulled up the lid. “Well, I’ll be—” He stopped when a shadow slid over his right shoulder, obscuring the box. “Slash, would you please get out of my light?”

  Slash’s voice was tense as he said, “I’m not in your light.”

  Pecos looked over his shoulder, and his heart skipped a beat. Slash had seen it, too. Him, rather. The man walking slowly toward them, silhouetted against the light from the open door behind him.

  The man walked a little uncertainly, holding his left arm taut against his right side. He held a rifle straight out from his right hip.

/>   He continued forward, a man-shaped silhouette, until gray light reflected off the mine’s chipped and gouged walls shone in his chocolate eyes, pinched with both pain and humor.

  Kentucky Dade stopped six feet away from Slash and Pecos. He wheezed out a laugh, seemed to strangle on it for a second, the rifle quivering in his shaky right hand. “You should see the look on your faces!” he choked out, like some slow-dying crow that had somehow found humor in his bitter end.

  CHAPTER 34

  “What you got there, honey?” yelled a distant male voice.

  Hattie, still in the wagon, still with the fetid burlap bag over her head, cocked an ear to listen.

  To her right, only a couple feet away, the stout woman, Gerta, shouted, “We got us some trouble all wrapped up in this purty little package out here, Daddy! I think we best confer over it!”

  Hattie winced. Gerta’s toneless voice was grating as well as predatory. Its loudness also made her throbbing head throb harder.

  “Purty little package, eh?” returned the man in the distance. “Well, bring the package on in here, then. Gettin’ cold out there, an’ I already got me a chill in my old bones!”

  In the distance, boots clomped and scraped across wood. In her mind’s eye, Hattie saw the man who’d yelled—an older gent, judging by the brittle rasp in his voice—step off a porch and into a house. There was the thud of a door closing behind him.

  “Cobb,” Gerta said.

  Brusquely, big hands grabbed Hattie and pulled her out of the wagon. She gave a groaning start as the man hefted her in his arms, then tossed her up over his shoulder, like she was nothing more than a bag of potatoes.

  “Rest of you fellas,” said the man carrying Hattie, “off-load the wagon into the supply shed.”

  “You got it, Cobb,” said a man nearby. Hattie could sense—even smell—several men standing around the wagon. She could smell cigarette smoke, hear the plop of chaw being spat into the dirt.