A Good Day for a Massacre

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  Hattie was glad it was. She had a feeling the evil she might see behind those eyes, lying raw as freshly ground beef inside the man’s cold soul, would turn her inside out with fear. Gerta wore her evil on her sleeve. Daddy’s was tucked away inside him, concealed and disguised maybe even to himself, which would likely make its manifestation all the more surprising and horrifying.

  These were bad people. Hattie had known bad people before, back in Chicago, where she’d been plying her Pinkerton skills before being sent out here on this job running down the gold thieves. But now she realized she really hadn’t known what bad was. At least, she hadn’t known before she’d met Daddy and Gerta.

  Now she was getting a nice big double dose of the knowledge. She hoped she’d live to use it.

  “Yes, too bad,” Daddy said again with a weary sigh, letting Hattie’s hair flop back against her cheek. He looked at Gerta and said with a devilish, faintly mocking edge, “Such a pretty, pretty girl. Have you ever seen a young woman more beautiful, honey?”

  Gerta’s cheeks flushed again, this time with raw hatred. Her eyes narrowed at Hattie as she said, “Oh, I don’t think she’s all that purty, Daddy. At least, she ain’t gonna be nearly so purty when I’m finished with her!”

  She rose up and down on the toes of her stovepipe boots.

  Daddy chuckled, bemused by his daughter, in whom he obviously saw so much of himself. He stretched, yawned, and pulled his baggy canvas trousers up his broad, bony hips. “I’m tired. The men are gonna stay up, keepin’ an eye out for possible trouble.” He glanced at Hattie. “In case there are any more Pinkerton agents lurking around this end of the valley. Me, I’m old an’ tired. I’m gonna hit the old mattress sack.”

  “I’ll stay awake, too, Daddy,” Gerta said. She walked around to the other side of the table and plopped down in the chair across from Hattie. She scowled over the table at the young Pinkerton and said, “I’m gonna stay awake all night long, keeping careful watch on the Pink here.”

  “Don’t kill her, honey,” Daddy admonished. “Not until I say you can. Hear?”

  “Don’t I always do as you say, Daddy?”

  Daddy chuckled, walked over, bent down, and pressed his lips to Gerta’s greasy head. He squeezed her shoulder, looked at Hattie, gave her a lewd wink that put ice in her blood, then swung around to the stairs and climbed up into the second story.

  Gerta leaned back in her chair and rested her rifle across her lap. “Go ahead an’ eat,” she ordered. “We don’t let food go to waste around here, little girl!”

  * * *

  Hattie choked the beans down.

  She didn’t see that she had a choice. Anyway, she needed sustenance. It would likely be a long night and an even longer day tomorrow. Or maybe not all that long. If Slash and Pecos were dead, Hattie would likely soon follow the old cutthroats to her own unmarked grave.

  Still, she needed to eat. Anxiety had used up her energy, and she needed to replace it, in case she needed it again.

  She was glad she did eat the beans. It turned out she needed the energy, after all. Gerta didn’t stay awake long. In fact, after only about a half hour of sitting in the chair across from Hattie, glaring at her stonily, Gerta’s eyes grew heavy. Soon her chin was sagging to her chest, and she was snoring. She sat like that, waking briefly from time to time, but mostly sitting there with her head sagging or wobbling around on her shoulders, snoring almost as loudly as Slash and Pecos had snored in camp.

  While Gerta slept, Hattie worked on the ropes binding her wrists. She worked on them off and on all night long, taking short breaks to rest. Gerta had tied the ropes tightly around Hattie’s wrists, but Hattie worked on them, moving her hands around steadily, trying to loosen the knots, which she did by increments so small as to be almost unnoticeable during any given hour.

  By dawn, she was exhausted from her efforts. Her wrists were raw and bloody, and they burned. She had, however, loosened the ropes enough to make her hopeful that, if the snoring Gerta, and Daddy, also snoring in the second story, would keep on snoring for another hour, she might be able to free herself and make her escape. She doubted she could make it through the barrier of tough nuts on patrol around the ranch, whom she’d heard milling in the yard from time to time all night, but she had no choice but to try.

  Hattie Friendly was not one to give up, even when the odds were piled high against her.

  She gave a rare curse, however, when, about a half hour later, Daddy stopped snoring in the room above her. The old man grunted and mumbled to himself. Hattie heard the creaking of a bed and the chirp of a floorboard as the old man rose and then the pounding as he stomped into his boots.

  Gerta heard the pounding in the ceiling and snapped her own head up with a loud, “Wha . . . ?” She jerked up her rifle, squeezing it in her hands and glaring suspiciously across the table at Hattie. “Wha . . . what are you up to, little girl?”

  Daddy came thundering down the stairs. “Horses . . .”

  “What’s goin’ on, Daddy?” Gerta asked, looking around anxiously.

  Hattie looked around, too, as she heard hooves thudding and men shouting.

  “Sounds like we’re under attack!” Daddy gained the bottom of the stairs and pulled an old-model Winchester rifle off two pegs in the kitchen’s front wall, then, pumping a round into the breech, walked over to the window to the right of the door. Gerta rose and hurried to the window and stood gazing out into the yard with her father.

  Beyond them, Hattie saw several horses just then ride into the yard, galloping around from behind the house, on the right side. Hattie couldn’t tell how many horses there were—maybe a half-dozen or so. None appeared to be carrying riders.

  No. That wasn’t right, she saw as she turned her head this way and that to see around Daddy and Gerta standing in the window before her. The horses were carrying riders, all right. Only the riders were tied belly down across their saddles. They were wrapped in yellow oilskins that only partly concealed them. Their heads and arms flopped down the near sides of the saddles, fingers nearly brushing the ground.

  The yellow rain slickers were thickly spotted with blood. In fact, some looked more red than yellow.

  “What do you think, Daddy?” Gerta asked softly.

  “I think . . . I think that don’t look too good, honey.” Daddy placed a comforting hand on Gerta’s broad back and said, “You stay here with our hostage. I’m gonna go out and see what in God’s name is goin’ on.”

  “Be careful, Daddy,” Gerta urged as the old man opened the door, stepped out onto the porch, and drew the door closed behind him.

  Staring out into the yard, where the seven horses had stopped near the front of the house, the Spanish Bit men milling around them cautiously, talking anxiously amongst themselves, Gerta turned her head to cast Hattie a threatening glare over her shoulder.

  When she turned her head back toward the window, Hattie let a satisfied little half-smile tug at her mouth.

  Hattie saw Daddy step over to the porch rail and stare down into the yard at the horses and the dead men tied across their saddles. The Spanish Bit outlaws had formed a ragged semicircle to one side of the horses. Holding his rifle in front of him, high across his chest, Daddy told one of the men to stop standing around ogling the dead men and to check them out.

  One of the men—a big, fat-bellied man with long, curly red hair and a thick, curly red beard—stepped up to a chestnut horse. With his gloved left hand, he drew up the head of the dead man before him, by its hair, and crouched to stare into the slack-jawed face.

  Hattie saw two open eyes staring in death at the red-bearded man.

  The red-bearded man turned to Daddy and said, “Cobb.”

  Daddy cursed.

  The red-bearded man walked over to another dead man, drew the man’s head up by its hair and said, “Henshaw.”

  Again, Daddy cursed.

  The red-bearded man walked over to the next dead man and pulled the man’s head up by its long, silver-blond h
air. The red-bearded man froze as the man whose head he’d just pulled up formed an angry scowl and said, “Ow—stop pullin’ my hair, you heedless son of a three-legged coot!”

  Hattie’s eyes widened in shock as she saw the dead man pull a short but savage-looking shotgun down from his right shoulder, from beneath the rain slicker, and shove it toward the red-bearded man’s man fat belly. The red-bearded man only stared down at the double-bore cannon in hang-jawed shock, apparently unable, as was Hattie, to wrap his mind around a dead man wielding a shotgun.

  The shotgun roared like near thunder, and the fat, red-bearded man went flying straight back into two other men as though he’d been lassoed from behind. Then Hattie’s mind went blank from shock for a second or two—a second or two during which all hell broke loose.

  CHAPTER 38

  Ten minutes earlier, Slash had removed his hat and edged a look around the side of a lumber pile, ancient and moldering, toward the back of the Spanish Bit barn.

  A man stood out there smoking a cigarette. He was a bit hard to see, as it wasn’t quite dawn, but a little light was filtering into the valley now—enough to temper the darkness so Slash could see with some detail a few feet around him. He could smell the smoke from the man’s cigarette.

  The smell made Slash want one, though of course he wouldn’t be taking the time to hammer another nail in his coffin anytime soon. He had some big fish to fry, many a man to kill . . .

  The man keeping watch was maybe ten feet from Slash, who hadn’t expected him to be out there. He’d figured on only one man being in the barn, manning the Gatling gun in the loft, but he’d been wrong. The man in the loft had been smart enough to post a man outside the rear of the barn to watch his flank.

  Last night, during their long, wet night together in the saloon up at the mine compound, Lisa had filled Slash and Pecos in on what she knew about the Spanish Bit headquarters, where Hattie was being held. If they hadn’t killed her by now, that was. Slash didn’t think they had. They’d assume she wasn’t the only one on their trail, and they’d want to use her for leverage.

  What Lisa had told Slash and Pecos about had included the Gatling gun. She’d spied it both times she’d ridden down as close to the ranch as she’d dared come and risk being seen. Knowing now what she knew about the ranch and the mine—that they were both merely cover for a very lucrative gold-stealing operation—she was sure the outlaws had the machine gun manned in the loft all the time.

  It was damn sure being manned now, Slash thought, or this man wouldn’t be out here. The killers sensed trouble was coming. They’d know trouble was coming in a few minutes, when the horses hauling the seven dead men would gallop into the yard.

  Slash and Pecos had captured the dead men’s horses last night. Very early this morning, they’d tied the dead men over their saddles, wrapped in their rain slickers. They’d tied all the dead men over the horses except one. Pecos had taken that man’s place. At this very moment, Pecos and Lisa were likely driving the horses down from the mountain toward the ranch.

  Again, Slash edged a glance around the lumber pile. The man was still out there, smoking a quirley and humming to himself a little nervously. He was tall and thin, with long, brown hair under a shabby black opera hat. He wore spectacles with one dark lens, likely a bum eye. A Henry rifle rested on his right shoulder. He was smoking the quirley and sort of prancing around just outside the half-open barn door, nervous and chilly and tired after the long, cold night’s vigil trying to stay awake.

  Slash knew how the man felt. He himself had it worse.

  After circling around to the north of the ranch, he’d tied his horse in a shallow wash and crawled practically half a mile to the lumber pile here on the ranch yard’s north edge. The ground was frosty and damp, so he himself was frosty and damp; he resisted the urge to shiver.

  Slash regarded the smoking picket once more, sizing up the situation. His hand strayed to the big bowie knife sheathed on the right side of his cartridge belt. Time to see if his aim was as good as it used to be. Back in his younger days, he’d obsessively practiced throwing the big knife, killing time in outlaw camp or just needing something to do between jobs, between carouses and parlor girls.

  Now, however, having become a respectable businessman, he hadn’t practiced with the bowie in some time.

  He saw no other plan here than the bowie, however. He needed to dispatch the picket as quietly as possible. He was about to find out how rusty he was . . .

  Slash slid the knife from its sheath. He looked at the smoking picket again. The man had just turned to press his back against the barn wall as he stared straight out from the barn to the north. The track of his gaze was maybe fifteen feet to Slash’s right. Slash needed him to turn directly at Slash, to help ensure a sound bowie strike.

  Gripping the bowie in his gloved right hand, Slash gave a low whistle.

  Frowning, the man pushed away from the barn and turned toward Slash, letting the quirley drop from between his fingers and bringing the Henry down from his shoulder. Slash flung the bowie from behind his own right shoulder, watched it turn end over end in the air, forming an arc. As it began its descent, it turned end over end once more before the pointed tip embedded itself with a crunching thud in the picket’s upper right chest.

  A miss! Slash had been aiming for the heart!

  He’d likely only punctured the man’s lung . . .

  The man stumbled backward against the barn with a heavy thud. He dropped the rifle and grunted and flung his left hand toward the bowie’s handle. At the same time, he looked around with pain-bright eyes. He saw Slash running toward him.

  Sliding down the barn wall, he opened his mouth to yell but only loosed a gurgling grunt before Slash silenced him forever with a decisive blow from his Winchester’s brass-plated butt.

  Slash watched the man sag to the ground and roll onto a shoulder, eyes rolling back in his head. Slash drew a breath, held it, looking around, half-expecting someone to have heard the commotion and come running.

  “Hey, Bishop,” a man called from somewhere above Slash, from inside the barn, “what the hell you doin’ down there? Rasslin’ a rabid barn cat?”

  Slash’s heart thudded. He could feel the throb in his temples. Had he just gotten himself killed—and likely his partner, not to mention Lisa Ingram and Hattie Friendly?

  “Hey, get your butt up here, will you?” said the man in the barn loft. “I gotta pee like a Prussian plow horse!”

  “Okay, okay!” Slash said, brushing a fist across his mouth to disguise his voice.

  He reached down to wrap his right hand around the bowie’s handle. He placed his left foot against the man’s arm and pulled the blade free with a wet sucking, grinding sound.

  “Hurry up, dammit—quit playin’ with yourself down there!”

  “Comin’!” Slash gave the bowie’s blade a cursory cleaning on his victim’s coat. Sheathing the knife, he stepped into the barn and peered around, frowning into the heavy shadows.

  Where is the ladder to the loft?

  He looked around quickly, striding down the barn’s main alley, breathless with anxiety.

  “What the hell are you doin’, Bishop?” yelled the man in the loft. “I told you, I’m about to bust my seams up here!”

  Rungs, rungs. Slash was looking for wooden ladder rungs . . .

  There!

  Quickly, he ran to the outside wall. He climbed quickly with one hand, holding his rifle in his other hand. He poked his head above the loft floor and peered toward the front of the loft. The Gatling gunner was perched on a milking stool before the Gatling gun, the brass canister aimed down into the yard through the open loft doors.

  The gunner twisted around to look back toward Slash. “Jesus—about time!” He rose from the stool, pulled his pants up higher on his lean hips.

  He was in the late twenties, with a thick shock of sandy blond hair curving down over his left eyebrow. He also wore a heavy, quilted elk-hide coat against the chill. Doffing hi
s hat and brushing a hand quickly back through his hair, he began walking toward Slash across the loft. The only hay up here was some musty, leftover old stuff strewn across the floor.

  Slash was still on the ladder, his hips level with the loft floor. He set his rifle on the floor to his right and quickly slid the bowie from its sheath.

  The man walking toward him stopped abruptly.

  He blinked. Slash could barely see his face in the loft’s darkness. The man was silhouetted against the two, big open doors that were filled with the milky light of the fast-approaching dawn. Outside, birds were chirping.

  Hooves thudded—a handful of horses coming fast.

  The man had heard the horses right after he’d seen that the man in the loft with him was not who he’d thought he was. He turned his head to his left, listening as the horses entered the yard and set the Spanish Bit men to yelling exclamations.

  He whipped his head back toward Slash, his right hand reaching for the revolver holstered on his right hip, on the outside of his coat. Slash threw the bowie. It flashed in the pearl light as it tumbled through the air.

  Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo . . .

  The point of the blade hit its intended target with a resolute thump.

  The man stopped abruptly and looked down at the bowie’s hide-wrapped handle protruding from his chest. “Oh,” he said on a heavy sigh.

  Outside the horses had stopped. That meant that Pecos was going to need Slash at the Gatling gun within a minute . . .

  Slash stood facing the Gatling gunner, who swiped his hand toward the revolver once more. Missing it, he reached for it again. This time he wrapped his hand around the gun’s walnut grips.

  “No, no, no, no,” Slash said, heart racing. Keeping his voice low, he said, “You’re dead. Fall!”

  He started to bring his rifle up but knew he couldn’t use it without alerting the men in the yard, now likely circling the horses and Pecos, that something was up.

  Slash cursed and strode quickly to the man with the knife in his chest. The man was slowly sliding his revolver from its holster. Slash couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man before him, fifteen feet away, had a foot-length blade in his chest, likely in his heart, and he was still trying with what appeared some success to draw his revolver!