Микки Спиллейн - Last Stage to Hell Junction

“Whatever you say, Blaine,” Reese said. Smiling, eyes glittering, the older Randabaugh obviously relished the idea that his competition for Hargrave’s approval would soon be removed from the gang — and that he might be the one doing the removing, was all the sweeter...

Randy, so hangdog this morning from last night’s trashing and humiliation, had come alive, the blond boy smiling and holding his .45 with its barrel in the air, as if about to fire the starting shot on a race.

And it was a race of sorts — which of them could get to York first without getting themselves killed...

But Hargrave had something else in mind for himself and Juanita. Muttering, he said, “Son of a bitch always did have a lean and hungry look...”

Reese frowned. “What, Blaine?”

“Nothing. Get to it. Enjoy yourselves. Surviving this is the prize now, because our hostages are lost to us.”

Caleb York was positioned behind Doc Miller’s buckboard, which remained tied to the hotel’s façade. The outlaws within hadn’t seemed to get a fix on him yet, and not a single shot had been fired his way, though he’d seen the barrels of revolvers poking from between the slats of the boarded-up windows.

That the gang would stay inside and use the hotel as their fortress remained a possibility, but York considered it a distant one. Managing to keep them pinned down might give Doc Miller time to raise a posse to send to support him. But that would be hours from now.

He’d considered having Tulley drive the stage a respectable distance and then let either Doc Miller or Raymond Parker take over at the reins, delivering the women back to Trinidad. That would have given him Tulley and his scattergun, making it possible to keep both the front and back of the hotel covered.

But getting those two females back to safety had been his major concern, and he didn’t feel confident that either Miller or Parker could handle the role of stagecoach driver.

So that left him here, a man alone, which was probably his preference anyway. He grinned as he peeked around the rear of the buckboard. Ned Clutter was getting ripe, but at least the ruckus had scared the flies off.

Now several minutes had gone by and nothing — not a voice, not a gunshot — had emanated from the hotel, the slots between boards on those windows no longer sprouting gun barrels, either.

So they were coming for him.

He felt his best bet, in that case, was to hug the buildings along the boardwalk of the ghost town, though the squeaks of the weathered wood underfoot, and the spurs on his boots, would almost certainly announce him. Keeping a gun in his right hand, he sat on the crushed-rock street behind the buckboard, and his left hand encouraged his boots off. In his stocking feet now, he could edge down that boardwalk and not be easily heard, as long as he took care.

Staying low, he started around the buckboard, at his left, but this exposed him in the street briefly, which was enough to draw a shot from above.

York ducked, rolled, and aimed up at a vague figure in a second-floor window. The .44 cracked the silence and the window glass. The vague figure seemed to totter, as if the man were using his last conscious moments on earth to decide whether to fall backward or forward.

The shooter chose the latter and burst through the window in a shower of shards and crunching glass and splintered wood, pitching onto the overhang of the hotel porch. He rolled like a log down and off that roof and hit the street with a whump , raising dust.

By this time York was under that overhang, his back against the building. Wondering who he’d killed, York looked past the still hitched-up horses of the outlaws at the facedown bearded man in the street, and figured this to be Ben Bemis, who he’d never seen before. That was as much thought as he gave that subject, as staying alive was more important.

So he crept along the boardwalk, past the next building, what had been a laundry, waiting for someone to try to come around on him from the back. With spaces between buildings, he needed to glance behind him every two seconds or so. His progress was slow.

Then, between a dead restaurant and the equally defunct post office, Reese Randabaugh emerged onto the boardwalk, gun in hand raised and ready to shoot, just a few feet from York. The older Randabaugh’s face contorted with rage, his hatred and perhaps his jealousy of the man who’d called himself Bret McCory overwhelming him for half a second.

York, not encumbered with any such emotion, used that half second to blow a hole through Reese’s forehead. The close-set eyes, shared by the brothers, had just time to widen before the works within him shut off; the hole, not quite in the center of his brow, looked black, then wept a single scarlet tear that trickled between blue eyes.

Then Reese tumbled to the boardwalk, his head hanging off the slightly elevated side, leaking blood and brain and bone matter onto the crushed-rock street.

York headed back the way he came, figuring they would try a pincer move, meaning the next gun should come from the other side of the hotel, between it and the assay office. As York moved by Doc’s hitched-up buckboard, the trotter restlessly dancing after the gunfire, he wondered if he’d misjudged their strategy; but then Randy Randabaugh stepped out from between buildings, revolver ready, and looked past York at his fallen brother.

Screaming, the boy started shooting wildly, staying put but issuing one gunshot after another. The idiocy of this non-tactic caught York by surprise. He dove into the street, seeking to return fire from a prone position.

Randy had availed himself of a second handgun and was firing just as wildly with it now, pausing only to skirt Doc’s buckboard, making it momentarily impossible for York to return fire. When the boy was in view, in the street, the incessant gunfire caused York to have to again roll back out of the way.

“Randy!” a female voice called.

The blond boy froze and his eyes went to the source, a female figure in the window, the same one where Ben Bemis died; framed in the broken-glass teeth, she stood holding a double-barreled shotgun, its twin black bottomless eyes aimed down.

Mahalia either had experience with such a weapon or was just plain lucky. The first barrel turned the boy’s groin into a bloody mess. His mouth opened but nothing came out, as if screaming just didn’t cover his loss. The second barrel took his head off. Blood shot up like an oil well coming in. But the gusher was brief.

York got to his feet and smiled up at the girl. She was smiling, too. He tipped his hat to her and moved on.

This left only Hargrave and Juanita. York figured the woman was at least as dangerous as the man, unless they both had covered their tails by siccing the Randabaughs and Bemis on him while they quietly left out a backstage door.

No , he thought. He had ruined enough things for Hargrave and his honey to keep them here seeking revenge. Hamlet was the actor’s most famous role, after all...

York walked past the Buckhorn Saloon, its broken window saying only BUC and OON now. Next door was the Palace Theater, where Hargrave had likely once performed; its façade had no windows at all, just the bold lettering announcing itself and a marquee to add who was playing. No one, right now. Unless...

Surely the actor would not take refuge there , of all places!

But actors, particularly Shakespearean ones, had a love of poetry, and of the inherently dramatic gesture, and what more dramatic, poetic place could there be for the last confrontation between archenemies than the ghost town’s playhouse?

And, indeed, the front doors of the Palace Theater stood open. Someone — well, there were only two possibilities — had engaged the wedges that had once upon a time been used to keep those doors open to the public.