C. Box - Cold Wind

Nate shook his head. “Thanks for the offer, Merle, but this is all mine.”

“Really, I want to help. Do you think it was The Five? Did they finally get a bead on you?”

Nate reached up and scratched his chin. “It wasn’t professional. It wasn’t The Five, Merle. They were just sloppy amateurs and they left evidence behind. That only makes it worse. It’s just a matter of time before I find them.”

“You got names?” Merle asked. “Locations?”

“Not yet, but I’ve got fingerprints and DNA. I need to get them analyzed and I’ll have my boys do that. What I don’t know yet is who put them up to it and why. And who gave them my location. That bothers me.”

“It wasn’t me, Nate,” Merle said. “If it was, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here now.”

Nate nodded.

“Hell, that girl took advantage of me. What a disappointment, you know?” Merle moaned. “Turned out she wanted me around as muscle so she could intimidate her sister into moving off the family ranch so she could move in. It was complicated as hell, but my gal left the place a long time ago and wanted to come back and claim it. Once I found out what the deal was about, I slunk back to Kaycee with my tail between my legs. That’s when I saw what happened to your place while I was gone. When I saw the wreckage. I thought they’d killed you. I was so damned happy when you called me. Women,” Merle said sadly. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em.”

“Not all of them anyway,” Nate said.

Merle looked up sharply. “One of them was a woman?”

“That’s what my sources tell me,” Nate said. “She wasn’t the shooter, but she may have put them up to it.”

“No name on her, either?”

“I’ve got a good idea who it is,” Nate said.

They drove up the mountainside in Merle’s Power Wagon with the box on the bench seat between them. The road leveled on a long plateau of short grass and knuckles of rock that stretched out flat several miles as if the terrain were gathering its strength before thrusting upward into the Salt River Range. An old barbed-wire fence stretched out parallel to the road.

Nate picked up the box and hefted it in his hands. Heavy, and not quite right.

“This isn’t a.454 Casull,” Nate said, looking over at Merle. “I thought we talked about the right weapon.”

“Jesus,” Merle said. “You can tell by the weight ?”

“Couple of ounces different,” Nate said. “Lighter.”

Merle whistled. Then: “You amaze me. You’re right; it’s not a.454. Seems Freedom Arms has a new model, and I thought you might want to give it a try.”

Nate frowned back, perturbed.

“Tell you what,” Merle said. “If you don’t like it, I’ll take it back for a.454 this afternoon and get the scope swapped. But at least make an informed decision.”

“What new model?” Nate asked.

“It’s called a.500 Wyoming Express,” Merle said. “Stainless steel five-shot revolver, just like what you’re used to, only bigger: fifty cal. A little over three pounds without the scope. It’s got a Model 83 chassis just like the.454 so it should feel the same in your hand. Seven-and-a-half-inch barrel. Shoots 1.765-inch belted cartridges at 35,000 psi. Twice the power of a.44 magnum. The belted cartridge allows them to cut down a little on the cylinder weight.”

Nate raised his eyebrows in appreciation.

“It’s not as fast as your.454,” Merle said, “but the knockdown power is greater. The.454 has a TKO of 30, while the.500 goes 39. And according to the man who sold it to me, it’s like getting hit by a freight train as opposed to a car. It’ll knock down a moose or a cape buffalo or a grizzly like nothing else. The penetration is incredible. The bullets just blow through flesh and bone and are rarely ever recovered afterward, which is an attribute I thought you might appreciate.”

Nate nodded. He liked that. “Range?”

“Five-hundred-yard capability,” Merle said, “but it’s most effective within a hundred.

“In the right hands,” he winked at Nate, “and with an adjustable scope, accurate one-thousand-yard shots are not impossible. Plus at close range, one could, you know, knock out a bulldozer.

“Hell,” Merle said, “you’re Nate Romanowski . You’ve got the rep. You’ve got to have the baddest gun known to man or beast.”

Nate said, “I’m getting interested.”

He liked the way it felt in his hand, loved its balance and weight. Large Merle stood behind him, silent, letting him get acquainted with the weapon. Nate kneaded it with his hands, spun it on his finger through the trigger guard, checked out the scope, then opened the cylinder.

He was well practiced with the model. He loaded one large shell, rotated the cylinder past an empty hole, then loaded the next three rounds. The idea was to leave the firing pin resting on the skipped cylinder for safety. Then he raised it like an extension of his right arm and cupped his left hand under his right. He kept both eyes open and cocked it with his left thumb. The snick-snick sound of rotating steel cylinder was tight and sweet, he thought.

The fence they stood next to had warped wooden posts spaced every ten feet. He counted out fifteen posts from where he stood-fifty yards-and fired. The concussion was tremendous and it seemed like the air around them had been sucked away for a second. Large Merle cried out, “Jesus Christ! My ears. give a guy some warning.”

The post was split cleanly down the middle. A wisp of smoke and dust rose from the top of the post. The barbed wire strands sang up and down the fence from the impact.

Nate smiled grimly. “A different attitude than the.454,” he said more to himself than Merle. “The.454 is snappy compared to this. The.500 pushes straight back like a mule kick.”

Then he counted out fifteen more posts and blew the top off one at a hundred yards. He let the gun kick back over his left shoulder near his ear, and as he leveled it, he thumbed the hammer on the down stroke. Another heavy boom, and a post a hundred fifty yards away shattered into splinters. He calculated, aimed down the fence line, and fired his last round.

“My God,” Large Merle said, taking his fingers out of his ears. “But you missed the last one.”

“No,” Nate said, “look farther down. At two-fifty.”

The post at two hundred fifty yards was blown cleanly in two, and the top half sagged near the bottom half, held aloft by the strands of wire stapled to it.

“It doesn’t need to be said, but that’s some shooting.”

“Then why say it?” Nate asked. “You did well, Merle. This will do the job. How much?”

“The.500 WE retails for twenty-three hundred dollars without the scope,” Large Merle said. “The shells alone cost three dollars each, so keep that in mind. But given the circumstances, you owe me exactly nothing.”

Nate said, “I don’t like being obligated.”

“Given the circumstances,” Merle said again, “it’s the least I can do. I really liked Alisha, you know. I know how you felt about her.”

Nate said, “Let’s not talk about her, please.” And he raised the weapon and aimed it between Merle’s eyes.

“Tell me again you didn’t know a thing about the people who killed her,” Nate said without inflection.

Merle’s eyes got huge. He was close enough he could no doubt see the half-inch round of bronzed lead seated in the long, dark end of the barrel and no doubt envisioned what it would do to his head.

“I didn’t know a thing,” Merle whispered.

“Okay,” Nate said, letting the hammer down easy and slipping the weapon into his new shoulder holster. “Just needed to make sure.”

Large Merle collapsed back on the grille of his pickup as if his legs had lost their strength. He put a big paw over his heart. He said, “I wish you wouldn’t do things like that.”