A Good Day for a Massacre

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Staying low, he scuttled over to the front window as more bullets smashed through it to screech through the saloon and slam into walls or tables or chairs. He dropped to a knee to the right of the broken front window and pressed his shoulder against the wall, pumping a fresh round into his Winchester’s action.

  Outside, someone shouted. Another man shouted as though in reply. Then the shooting out there picked up. A veritable fusillade of lead came hurling through the mostly broken-out front window, breaking out what was left of the glass and hammering the bar and the back wall at the rear of the room.

  “Get low, Deputy!” Slash shouted.

  Lisa rolled down to her right shoulder and lay taut against the floor, holding that arm over her head as broken glass peppered her.

  “What the hell’s goin’ on?” Slash yelled above the din at Pecos.

  Also crouching low against the wall on the window’s far side, Pecos yelled, “If I had to venture a guess, I’d say they mean business!”

  “I think one or two are giving another one cover!”

  “You think?”

  Edging a careful glance around the window frame, Slash spied a blur of fast movement out on the boardwalk fronting the saloon, to his left.

  “Pecos, the door!” he bellowed.

  Right on cue, the door burst open, and a big man heaved himself through the opening, turning toward Pecos and Slash, gritting his teeth, and raising the rifle in his hands. Slash started to bring up his own Winchester, but not before Pecos, who’d swung toward the door, tripped both triggers of his appropriately nicknamed gut-shredder.

  Ka-boooomm!

  The whole building leaped as the rifleman was hurled off his feet and straight back against the wall behind him, his violent meeting with the wall sounding almost as loud as Pecos’s twelve-gauge.

  Dropping his rifle, what was left of the intruder sagged straight down to the floor. He looked at what little was left of his chest and belly, through the bloody threads of his rain slicker. He gave a weary sigh and, extending his legs straight out before him, slid sideways along the wall to pile up on his left shoulder, already as dead as a post.

  “I’ll be damned if you didn’t call that one right!” Pecos bellowed at Slash.

  Slash glanced out the window into the snowy dimness of the approaching evening, noting that the gunfire out there had suddenly stopped—a dirge of silence of sorts for the fallen intruder. “I usually do.”

  “Just ’cause I don’t have time to argue the point don’t mean I concede it,” Pecos muttered, already plucking the smoking wads out of the coach gun’s tubes.

  Slash snaked his Winchester through the window’s bottom right corner. He could see the two men on the other side of the street—the two who must have been covering for the dead man now leaking his life out in front of the door.

  One crouched behind a rain barrel. The other was hunkered down behind a pile of moldering gray food crates. Pecos could see only brief glimpses of both men’s hat crowns and mostly concealed bodies, but he could hear them conferring in low tones between wind gusts.

  The one crouching behind the rain barrel, to the left of the other one, suddenly snaked his rifle over the top of the barrel, aiming toward the saloon. Slash planted a bead on him quickly and squeezed the Winchester’s trigger.

  The man flinched as flames lapped from his own rifle. He jerked back violently then, switching his rifle to his left hand, scrambled to his feet, turning and hurrying toward a corner of the mercantile behind him.

  Slash drew his head back behind the window frame, for he’d seen the other man, hunkered down behind the crates, drawing a bead on him. That bullet sawed through the glassless window to thud ominously into the saloon’s rear wall.

  Slash glanced out the window to see the man he’d wounded start around the mercantile’s left front corner. Again, Slash drew another hasty bead and fired. The bullet drilled through the fleeing killer’s left ear, spewing blood out the other side of his head. The man staggered sideways as though badly drunk, widening his legs as he fought desperately to get his boots beneath him.

  He was out of luck. He was already dead. His brain just hadn’t told his feet yet. It did in the following seconds, though, for Slash saw the man drop in the trash-strewn lot beside the mercantile as he, Slash, turned his attention to the man hunkered behind the crates.

  At the same time, Pecos fired his Russian .44 at the man, out the window to Slash’s left. Both bullets merely chewed wood from the crates as the man himself retreated back into the break between the two buildings beside him.

  Slash jerked with a start when he became aware of a presence beside him, just off his left shoulder. “Jesus, Mary, an’ Joseph, darlin’—you gave me a start!”

  Holding her Bisley .44 barrel up in her right hand, Lisa peered outside and then at the man slumped at the base of the opposite wall, just inside the open door through which snowflakes swirled to melt on the blood spilled there. “You two old scalawags still got some wood in your firebox,” she observed.

  She glanced at Slash. He thought for a few seconds there she was actually going to smile.

  “There’s a spark or two,” Slash allowed. “You ready to go to work?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You and Pecos keep an eye on the window here. Shoot at anything that moves—’ceptin’ me, of course.” He gave a dark snort. “I’m gonna head out the back and see if I can get around the other two, try to get ’em in a whipsaw.”

  Slash moved to the back of the room, keeping to the left wall. When he got to the back, he crouched, in case anyone shot into the building from the front, and pushed through a door nearly directly behind the bar. Through the door was a small storage area—gray, dingy in the weak light coming through a small rear window, and empty save for the scuttling of a mouse or a rat.

  He made for the back door, unlatched it, cracked it, and looked around carefully. Seeing no one in the near vicinity, he stepped through the door and closed it behind him. The snow was still falling—large but widely scattered flakes. It changed suddenly from near dusk to a sudden sunrise, and the clouds parted, vivid lemon rays angling down from a break in the otherwise purple sky.

  Weird weather, but not all that weird, really, for the high country.

  The sun disappeared as quickly as it had shone itself, then reappeared again in another break in the clouds, directly over the mountain to the west, where the mine lay.

  Slash moved along the rear of the saloon to the north. At the far end, he stopped and edged a cautious peek around the corner toward the front. There was a ten-yard, trash-littered gap, soggy with wet snow, between the saloon and the next building beyond.

  The gap was empty. Slash was about to cross it to the next building when a rifle began barking in the distance. The shots sounded as though they were coming from the area fronting the saloon.

  Another gun—a pistol—began answering the first reports. That was probably Lisa shooting out of the saloon’s front window. There were the rocketing thunderclaps, one after another, of Pecos’s gut-shredder, and Slash knew the two surviving killers—or at least one of them—were making another assault.

  Pecos and Lisa were holding him off.

  Slash waited till the sun disappeared again, purple cloud shadows swirling around him, then ran across the gap to the rear of the next building—a small, boxlike building that had likely been a “hog pen,” or a doxy’s crib in which to entertain her clients. The miners had likely given her plenty of business, way out here.

  Slash continued to the crib’s far end. He cast another glance around the corner, then jerked his head back behind the crib again, his heart thudding.

  A man was walking along the side of the crib, heading toward Slash. Slash didn’t think he’d seen him, for when Slash had looked along the crib, the man had had his head turned to peer back over his shoulder toward the front. He’d had two pistols in his hands, and he’d been holding them barrel up, hammers cocked.

  Slas
h set his rifle down against the crib. He drew the Colt from his left hip, quietly clicked the hammer back. He raised the barrel, drew a deep breath.

  He was about to step around the corner of the crib to confront the man trying to steal up on him, but then he stopped, blinked as he reconsidered the move. He dropped to a knee. He removed his hat. He tossed the hat high in the air and snaked his gun around the corner while tilting his head to aim down the barrel.

  He was glad he’d changed strategy.

  His opponent had stopped six feet away. He was waiting for Slash. He’d either heard him or glimpsed him. But he was waiting, all right. Now, having seen the hat and expecting Slash’s head to be where it would have been if he hadn’t taken a knee, the man stretched his lips back from his teeth and triggered both his pistols straight out from his shoulders.

  From close range, the .45s sounded nearly as loud as Pecos’s sawed-off.

  The stabbing flames, as well as the bullets, caromed over Slash’s head.

  Instantly, the killer saw his mistake. He glanced at Slash’s hat, just then landing on a snowy sage tuft. The man’s jubilant snarl turned in a flash to deep chagrin and bright-eyed horror. He dropped his lower jaw and lowered his terror-stricken eyes to Slash, grinning up at him, aiming down the barrel of his own cocked .44.

  The killer, a medium-tall man with a chaw-stained yellow mustache and chin whiskers, cocked his guns again and tried to jerk them down.

  Before he could do that, much less squeeze a trigger, he was dropping to his knees outside the pearly gates and beseeching ole St. Pete for hallowed passage, which likely wouldn’t come. In fact, even as Slash lowered his smoking Colt and watched the killer hit the slushy ground on his back, blood geysering from the dead center of his chest, Slash thought he could hear ole Pete’s hysterical laughter up there amidst the golden clouds.

  A rifle cracked in the distance.

  It was followed by the thunder of Pecos’s cannon.

  A man screamed. Slash hurried through the gap toward the main street. He spied movement on his right—a man running toward him, but on the other side of the street. His hat was off, and his oilskin flapped wildly as he ran, stumbling, dropping to a knee and then running again, only to stumble and fall.

  A tall figure, murky in the jostling purple shadows, moved toward the fallen man. The fallen man bellowed an angry curse, then, twisting around to face the man walking toward him, clawed a pistol from a holster on his hip.

  The tall figure stopped about ten feet from the fallen man. The shotgun in Pecos’s hands thundered, blossoming orange flames.

  The head of the fallen man slammed back against the ground. He moved his arms and legs, like a bug on a pin, and then his head rolled to one side and the rest of him lay still.

  Pecos looked up toward Slash. The tall ex-cutthroat broke his shotgun and began plucking out the spent shells. A gust of snow-laden wind blew clouds over him, and he disappeared in the stormy, high-mountain murk.

  CHAPTER 37

  “There you go, little girl,” Gerta said, slamming a tin plate down on the table before Hattie. “A plate of beans for you. Now that Daddy and I have eaten, you can eat, too. You eat last. After we’ve dined. Consider it a privilege you don’t deserve!”

  Gerta was crouched over Hattie, the fat woman’s mannish face only six inches from Hattie’s. Gerta had the flat, menacing eyes of a wild dog.

  “Th-thank you,” Hattie said, cowering from the explosive woman’s anger.

  Gerta kept her head close to Hattie’s, staring at her as though she wanted to shove her hand down her throat, rip out her beating heart, and eat it right there before her helpless, trussed-up prey.

  Hattie stared down at the steaming plate. There weren’t many beans on it, and no bread to go with it.

  That was just fine. Hattie wasn’t one bit hungry. She hated the fear she felt toward this animal-like woman glaring down at her from six inches away, but there it was.

  “I suppose,” Gerta said, spitting the words out like prune pits, “you think I should untie your hands so you can eat!”

  Hattie swallowed. “I guess I don’t see how I could eat otherwise.”

  “Well, I sure as hell am not going to feed you like a baby—now, am I?” Gerta slammed her pudgy fist down on the table beside Hattie, making the plate leap.

  Hattie leaped in her chair, startled and terrified. “No . . . no, I don’t suppose you would do that, Gerta.”

  “You’re right—I wouldn’t!”

  Gerta stepped away to grab a skinning knife off the table, from the far end, near the dry sink, where she’d cut ham to cook with the beans. Her own plate as well as Daddy’s plate remained on the table. There were also the remains of a grainy loaf of bread and some cheese.

  A hurricane lamp hung over the table by a rope attached to a nail in a rafter. The table was lit in a watery, bleached-out light, leaving the rest of the kitchen and the large house beyond it in deep, mysterious darkness. Hattie could hear Daddy and several men talking outside in the yard, not far from the front door, which was closed now against the high-mountain chill.

  Hattie sensed the men’s and Gerta’s nervousness about the men they’d sent up to the mine. Hattie shared the same apprehension. Not for the Spanish Bit men, of course, but for Slash and Pecos. Were they up there? Had they run into the Spanish Bit riders?

  Were they still alive?

  Hattie was more than a little apprehensive about her own fate as well. Her ankles were tied tightly together beneath her hide-bottom chair. Her wrists were just as snugly tied behind her back. She felt like a lamb trussed up for butchering. As if her predicament wasn’t bad enough, Gerta acted as though she couldn’t wait to kill her and would do so in a heartbeat if Hattie merely looked at her wrong.

  Gerta moved back toward Hattie with the skinning knife. She stepped around behind Hattie, standing behind the young Pinkerton for several seconds. Hattie’s skin crawled. She could hear Gerta breathing back there; she could see the woman’s shadow angling back over her left shoulder. But she couldn’t see the woman herself.

  Hattie gritted her teeth, felt her stomach tighten, wondering if the skinning knife was about to be stuck in her back.

  “What’s the matter?” Gerta asked in her dull, toneless voice. “Scared?”

  Hattie didn’t say anything.

  “Huh?” Gerta asked, louder, even more belligerently. “You scared?”

  “Yes, yes, Gerta, I’m scared. Of course, I’m scared.”

  “Good,” Gerta said, sounding delighted but still angry. “You should be scared!”

  Hattie felt Gerta saw through the ropes binding her hands behind her back. She squeezed her eyes shut in dread. She was sure the woman was going to cut her, to make her pay for some perceived slight.

  She was surprised when her hands came free without a nick. Gerta stepped up beside her and slammed the knife into the table, where it quivered wildly before dwindling to stillness.

  “There you go. Eat your beans.” Gerta moved around the table and picked up the old Spencer rifle she’d leaned against a ceiling support post, within easy reach of the chair she’d been sitting in when she and the man called Greenleaf, or “Daddy,” had eaten supper. “I’m gonna go outside an’ confer with Daddy.”

  Hattie saw her eyes flick toward the knife embedded in the center of the table, within Hattie’s reach. Gerta’s mouth corners betrayed a fleeting humor, challenging Hattie to pull the knife out of the table. The woman opened the door and clomped out. Daddy had just come up on the porch.

  “Any sign of the men?” Gerta asked him.

  “Not yet, honey.”

  “Soon, though—don’t you think, Daddy?”

  “If they’re going to ride back tonight, I’d think they’d be back soon, honey. But there’s a chance they dealt with what they had to deal with up there, and they decided to spend the night. I saw clouds up there on the mountain. Likely snow on the trail, and that’s a dangerous trail down over them rocks.”

/>   “You don’t suppose we have to worry they’d run off with the gold—do you, Daddy?” Gerta asked.

  “No, no. Our men are loyal. We pay them well, give them plenty of time to sow their wild oats in Mexico and California. Besides”—Daddy chuckled—“they know our reputations well enough to know that if they ever tried such a thing, we’d stalk them to the ends of the earth to get our reckoning.”

  Gerta laughed her weird, snickering, snorting laugh. “Ain’t that the truth, Daddy?”

  The door opened suddenly, and Daddy ducked through it. Hattie jerked with a start. She’d been sitting in her chair, staring at the beans on her plate, not eating, listening to the conversation out on the porch. Now she felt vaguely sheepish as she sat there, not having touched her supper.

  “Hey, now—that won’t do, Gerta,” Daddy admonished his daughter, pointing at the knife embedded in the table. “That simply won’t do! What’re you tryin’ to do—get that poor girl killed? Leavin’ such a temptation as that, an’ her hands untied!”

  Daddy stomped over to the table, pulled the knife out of the heavy oak plank, and threw it onto a shelf. Swinging back toward Gerta, he scowled at her, browbeating her. She stood to Hattie’s left, off the end of the table, pooching her lips out guiltily.

  Finally, Daddy chuckled, shook his head. “You’re up to your old, crazy tricks again—aren’t you, honey? Always got badness on your mind. Poison mean you are, deep down.”

  “Just like you, Daddy, I reckon.” Gerta smiled, her full, pale cheeks reddening with pride.

  “I reckon so, I reckon so.” Daddy chuckled.

  “What’re we gonna do with her, Daddy? Once the trouble up there on the mountain’s been taken care of.”

  “Well, then, I reckon we won’t need her anymore.”

  Gerta’s breathing seemed to quicken. Her eyes glittered as she stared at Daddy, her lips spreading another delighted smile. She looked like a snake with the prospect of a rabbit supper making its rattles quake.

  “Too bad.” Daddy came over and stared down at Hattie. He slid her hair back from her cheek, appraised her with his dull, dark-brown gaze, which was impossible to read.