Showdown On the Hogback (1991) (17 page)

"We'll take two men and the right side of the street, which means the livery stable, the St. James and the Mustang."

Kedrick glanced over at Laine. "Pit," he said, "if you run into Allison or Ketchum, better leave "em alone. We don't want 'em."

Laine's face was grave. "I ain't huntin"

"em," he said grimly, "but if they want it, they can have it."

The parties rode into town and swung down on their respective sides of the street. Laredo grinned at Kedrick, but his eyes were sober. "Nobody wants to cross Laine today," he said quietly.

"The man's in a killin" mood. It's his sister."

"Wonder what will happen when they meet?"

"I hope they don't," Shad said, "she's a right pretty sort of gal, only money crazy."

The two men with them stood hesitant, waiting for orders. Both were farmers. One carried a Spencer .56, the other a shotgun. Shad glanced at them.

"Let these hombres cover the street, Tom," he suggested. "You take the St. James, an' I'll take the stable."

Kedrick hesitated. "All right," he agreed finally. "But take no chances, boy."

Laredo grinned and waved a negligent hand and walked through the wide door of the stable. Inside, he paused, cold and seemingly careless, actually as poised and deadly as a coiled rattler.

He had already seen Abe Mixus' sorrel pony and guessed the two drygulchers were in town. He walked on in a step and saw the barrel of a rifle push through the hay.

He lunged right and dove into a stall, drawing his gun as he went, and ran full tilt into the other
Mixus!
Their bodies smashed together, and Mixus, caught off balance, went down and rolled over. He came up clawing for a gun. Laredo kicked the gun from under his hand and sent it spinning into the wide open space between the rows of stalls.

With a kind of whining cry, Bean Mixus sprang after it, slid to his knees, and got up, turning.

Laredo Shad stood tall and dark, just within the stall, and as Mixus turned like a cornered rat and swung his gun around, Laredo Shad fined, his two shots slamming loud in the stillness of the huge barn. Bean Mixus fell dead.

The rifle bellowed, and a shot ripped the stall stanchion near his head. Laredo lunged into the open, firing twice more at the stack of straw. The rifle jerked and then thundered again, but the shot went wild. Laredo dove under the loft where Abe Mixus was concealed and fired two more shots through the roof over his head where he guessed the killer would be lying.

Switching his guns, he holstered the empty one and waited. The roof creaked some distance away, and he began to stalk the escaping Mixus, slipping from stall to stall. Suddenly, a back door creaked and a broad path of light shot into the darkness of the stable. Laredo lunged to follow-too late. The farmer outside with the shotgun was the man Sloan. As Abe Mixus lunged through the door to escape, they came face to face, at no more than twenty feet of distance. Abe had his rifle at his hip, and he fired. The shot ripped through the water trough beside Sloan, and the farmer squeezed off the left-hand barrel of his shotgun.

The solid core of shot hit Mixus in the shoulder and neck, knocking him back against the side of the door, his long face drawn and terror stricken, his neck and shoulder a mass of blood that seemed to well from a huge wound. He fought to get his gun up, but Sloan stepped around, remembering Bob McLennon's death and the deaths of Steelman and Slagle. The other barrel thundered, and a sharp blast of flame stabbed at Abe Mixus. Smashed and dead, the killer sagged against the doorjamb, his old hat falling free, his face pillowed in the gray, blood-mixed dust.

Silence hung heavy in the wake of the shots.

Into that silence Laredo Shad spoke. "Hold it, Sloan!" He stepped through the door, taking no glance at the fallen man. "The other one won't hang, either," he said. "They were both inside."

The two men drew aside, Sloan's face gray and sick. He had never killed a man before and wanted never to again. He tried to roll a smoke, but his fingers trembled. Shad took the paper and tobacco from him and rolled it. The farmer looked up, shamefaced. "Guess I'm yellow," he said.

"That sort of got me."

The Texan looked at him gloomily.

"Let's hope it always does," he said. He handed him the cigarette. "Try this," he told him. "It will make you feel better.

Wonder how Kedrick's cumin'?" "Ain't heard nothin'!"

Pit Laine stood in a door across the street.

"Everythin' all right?" he called.

"Yeah," the other farmer called back, "only you don't have to look for the Mixus boys no more. They ain't gonna be around. his Captain Tom Kedrick had walked up the street and turned into the door of the St.

James Hotel. The wide lobby was still, a hollow shell, smelling faintly of old tobacco fumes and leather. The wrinkled clerk looked up and shook his head. "Quiet today," he said. "Nobody around.

Ain't been no shootin in days."

Guns thundered from down the street, then again and again.

Then there was silence and then the two solid blasts of the shotgun.

Both men listened, and no further sound came. A moment later Pit Laine called out and the farmer answered. The clerk nodded. "Same town," he said. "Last couple of days I been wonderin' if I wasn't back in Ohio. Awful quiet lately," he said, "awful quiet."

Tom Kedrick walked down the hall and out the back door. He went down the weathered steps and stopped on the grass behind the building. There was an old rusty pump there, and the sun was hot on the backs of the buildings. He walked over to the pump and worked the handle. It protested, whining and groaning at the unaccustomed work and finally, despairing of rest, threw up a thick core of water that splashed in the wooden tub. When he had pumped for several minutes Kedrick held the gourd dipper under the pump and let it fill. The water was clear and very cold. He drank greedily, rested and then drank again.

Far up the backs of the buildings, at the opposite end of town, a man was swinging an ax.

Kedrick could see the flash of light on the blade and see the ax strike home, and a moment later the sound would come to him. He watched and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and started along in back of the buildings toward the Mustang.

He moved with extreme care, going steadily, yet with every sense alert. He wore his .44

Russians and liked the feel of them, ready to his hands. The back door of the Mustang was long unpainted and blistered by many hot suns.

He glanced at the hinges and saw they were rusty. The door would squeak. Then he saw the outside stair leading to the second floor, and turning, he mounted the stairs on tiptoe, easing through that door and walking down the hall.

In the saloon below, Fessenden had eliminated half a bottle of whiskey without destroying the deadening sense of futility that had come over him. He picked up a stack of cards and riffled them skillfully through his fingers, and there was no lack of deftness there. Whatever effect the whiskey had had, it was not on his hands.

Irritated, he slammed the cards down and stared at the bartender. "Wish Dornie'd get back," he said for the tenth time. was I want to leave this town.

She don't feel right today."

He had heard the shots down the street, but had not moved from the bar. "Some drunk cowhand," he said irritably.

"You better look," the bartender suggested, hoping for no fights in the saloon. "It might be some of your outfit. his "I got no outfit," Fess replied shortly. "I'm fed up. That stunt out there to Yellow Butte drove me off that range.

I'll have no more of it."

He heard the footsteps coming down the hall from upstairs and listened to their even cadence. He glanced up, grinning. "Sounds like an Army man. Listen!"

Realization of what he had said came over him, and the grin left his face. He straightened, resting his palms on the bar. For a long moment, he stared into the bartender's eyes. "I knew it! I knew that hombre would-was He tossed off his drink. "Aw, I didn't want to leave town anyway!"

He turned, moving back from the bar. He stood spraddlelegged, like a huge grizzly, his big hands swinging at his hips, his eyes glinting upward at the balcony and the hall that gave onto it. The steps ceased, and Tom Kedrick stood there, staring down at him.

Neither man spoke for a full minute, while suspense gripped the watchers, and then it was Fessenden who broke the silence. "You lookin' for me, Kedrick?"

"For any of your crowd. Where's Shaw? And Keith?"

"Keith's dead. Shaw killed him back up on the Salt after you whipped us in the canyon. I dunno where he is now."

Silence fell once more, and the two men studied each other. "You were among them at Chimney Rock, Fessenden,"

Kedrick said. "That was an ambush--drygulcher's stunt, Fess." Kedrick took another step forward. Then he sidestepped down the first step of the stairs that ran along the back wall until about six steps from the bottom. Then, after walking across a landing, he came down facing the room.

Fessenden stood there, swaying slightly on his thick, muscular legs, his brutal jaw and head thrust forward. "Aw, hell!" he said, and grabbed iron. His guns fairly leaped from their holsters spouting flame. A bullet smashed the top of the newel-post at the head of the stairs and then ricocheted into the wall. Another punctured a hole just behind Kedrick's shoulder. Tom Kedrick stepped down another step and then fired. His bullet turned Fessenden, and Kedrick ran lightly down four steps while Fessenden smashed two shots at him.

Kedrick dove headlong for the landing, brought up hard against the wall, and smashed another shot at the big man. It knocked a leg from under him and he rolled over on his feet, colliding with the bar.

He had been hit twice, but he was cold sober and deadly. He braced himself and with his left hand clinging to the bar, lifted his right and thumbed back the hammer.

Kedrick fired two quick shots with his left gun.

One ripped a furrow down the bar and hit Fessenden below the breast bone, a jagged, tearing piece of metal when it struck.

Fessenden fired again, but the bullet went wild, and his sixth shot was fired in desperation as he swung up his lefthand gun, dropping the right into his holster. Taking his time, feeling his life's blood running out of him, he braced himself there and took the gun over into his right hand. He was deliberate and calm. "Pour me a drink," he said.

The bartender, lying flat on his face behind the bar, made no move. Tom Kedrick stood on the edge of the landing now, staring at Fessendo-not. The big gunman had been hit three times, through the shoulder, the leg and the chest, and he. still stood there, gun in hand, ponderous and invulnerable. The gun came up, and Fessenden seemed to lean forward with it. was I wish you was Dornie," he said.

Kedrick triggered. The shot nailed Fessenden through the chest again. The big man took a fast step back and then another. His gun slipped from his hand; and he grabbed a glass standing on the bar. "Gimme a drink!" he demanded. Blood bubbled at his lips.

Tom Kedrick came down the steps, his gun ready in his hand and walked toward Fessenden.

Holding his gun level and low down with his right hand, Kedrick picked up the bottle with his left and filled the empty glass. Then he pulled over another glass and poured one for himself.

Fessenden stared at him. "You're a good man, Kedrick," he said, shaping the words patiently.

"I'm a good man, too-on the wrong side."

"I'll drink to that." Kedrick lifted his glass. They clicked them, and Fessenden grinned crookedly over his.

"You watch that Dornie," he advised, "he's rattler-mean." The words stumbled from his mouth and he frowned, lifting the glass. He downed his drink, choked on it, and started to hold out his big hand to Kedrick. Then he fell flat on his face.

Holstering his gun, Tom Kedrick leaned over and gripped the big right hand. Fessenden grinned and died.

Chapter
15

Connie Duane had reached Mustang only a short time before the survivors of the fight at Yellow Butte began to arrive. Restless, after the leaving of the men for their return to the squatters' town, she had begun to think of what lay ahead, of Fred Ransome and the impending investigation and of her uncle's part in it.

All his papers as well as many of her own remained under lock in the gray stone house in Mustang, but if she was to get her own money back from Burwick or was to clear any part of the blame from her uncle, she knew it must be done with those papers. Mounting her horse she left the camp beyond the rim and striking the Old Mormon Trail, headed south. She was on that trail when the sun lifted, and she heard the distant sound of shots.

Turning from the trail she reined her horse into the bed of Salt Creek and rode south, passing the point where only a short time later Loren Keith was to meet his death at the hands of Dornie Shaw.

Once in town, she believed, she would be safe, and she doubted if anyone would be left in the gray house unless it was Burwick, and she knew that he
rarely
left his chair.

Arriving in Mustang, she rode quickly up the street and then cut over behind the stone house and dismounted. She went into the house through the back door and went very quietly. Actually, she need not have bothered, for Alton Burwick was not there. Making her way up the old stairs, she unlocked the door to the apartment she had shared with her uncle and closed the door behind her.