Elmore Leonard: Gunsights

Did he say something? Mention Sonora?

Maurice could see all the hired manhunters waiting down there at the edge of the scrub. There was sky behind Sundeen's head and shoulders.

He said, “Your first, Moon, then your friend. Where is he at?”

“He doesn't come right now,” Moon said, “you'll never see him again.”

This took place in moments, right before Maurice's eyes. Bren Early was somewhere behind him in the yard. Maurice wanted to turn around, but couldn't take his eyes off Sundeen…or Moon, he could see by shifting his eyes a little. He wanted to call out Bren Early's name, get him over here. But at this moment there was an awful silence. Two armed men facing each other. Was there a signal? Men shot each other from a distance or sneaked up or came into a place shooting if one wanted to kill another. Did this happen? Maybe it did, for it was certainly happening now, Maurice thinking: Before your very eyes.

Sundeen said, “Your move.”

Maurice saw Moon's right hand cross his body.

He saw Sundeen's right hand with a revolver in it. Like that. He saw the glint of sunlight on gun metal.

He heard an explosion, a heavy, hard report and a quick cocking lever action in the echo…to his left, where Kate Moon stood holding the big Henry rifle at her shoulder…and Sundeen was stumbling back, firing with a shocked look on his face, firing wildly again as Moon extended his revolver and fired and Kate fired the Henry, the two of them hammering Sundeen with .44's and that was the end of him. There was a silence. Sundeen lay on his back with his arms and legs spread out.

Maurice heard voices, someone in the yard calling out, running this way. He saw Kate lower the Henry and look at her husband, first with concern, then beginning to smile faintly. Moon looked over at his wife, not smiling but with a calm expression. Moon shook his head then. Maurice turned to see Bren Early coming with a matched .44 Russian in each hand.

Bren saying, “You got him?…You got him!” At the wall now, pointing a revolver down the slope and yelling at his men, his Apaches and Mexicans and pair of old cavalrymen, “Now! Pour it into'em, boys!”

Moon turned away. Bren looked at him, a dumb, bewildered expression.

“We got to finish it!” All excited.

Moon shook his head. “You're too late for your glory.” He looked at his wife. “When did it happen?”

Kate said, “I think it was over before it started.”

“I guess so.” Moon said then, “You shoot good for a little girl.”

She said, “I wasn't gonna see you die for no reason.”

Bren looked at them, from Moon to Kate and back. His gaze moved to Sundeen stretched face up on the bare ground and beyond him to the men standing in the scrub, Bren full of desperate energy brought to a halt.

“His people are still there…look.”

But with little conviction in his tone. A last, toolate call to battle.

Remember it, Maurice thought. All of it:

Bo Catlett sitting on the wall, lighting a cigar. The other cavalry veteran leaning against it, his back to the scene of battle.

The Mimbre Apaches-gone. Where? Just gone. The Mexican farmers and the young one with the sword, moving away, walking off past the newsmen and the bill-show dude standing on the porch.

Moon gazing in that direction-

He said, “Well, we've paid up and lived to tell about it.”

The bill-show man in buckskins was coming out toward them now, getting important-looking papers out of his pocket.

Moon watched him. He said to Bren, “It wouldn't hurt to travel, see the sights, would it?”

Kate shook her head, resigned or admiring or both. She said to Moon, “You're the sights. You and your partner.”

Maurice Dumas got out his notebook and started writing it all down as fast as he could.