Robert Butler - The Hot Country

I slowed myself. I turned my head. Slim was twenty yards off, bending to another rifle, probably for me, and I knew what was next, we would storm through the front door and catch the colorados in there from behind, and I shifted my eyes away from the bending Slim who was focusing on the rifle he was reaching for, and coming up the rise from farther off to my left, from behind Slim but heading straight for him, was a horseman, was a colorado riding hard, late to the party and ready to kill and he was unslinging his rifle from his shoulder and it was starting to come down from aiming at the sky and he was going to shoot Slim in the back and ride him down and I cried out “Slim! Behind!” and my own pistol was already coming up and Slim heard me and he was straightening and was turning and I needed to get off a round just to draw the colorado ’s attention to me, make myself the bigger threat and I tried to squeeze the trigger, squeeze it not pull it, and I did and I missed the horseman but I could see him flinch his head back, I’d gotten his attention and his face was turning to me as Slim was turning to me also and I knew I was not going to hit this guy from the forty yards that separated us now and I knew I needed to be a threat to him and I squared around and I took one long quick stride in the colorado ’s direction and he was still spooked from the zip of my bullet past him and I saw his muzzle turn to me and I strode toward it and it flared even as he was jerking his bridle in my direction and I was taking another stride as I realized a razor cut of pain had slipped across my left arm at the lower edge of my deltoid, which was okay, the round came and went and was gone, and it was not my shooting arm and I took another stride and I was lifting my left arm and it seemed to be working fine and I braced my left hand under my right and the horse was scrambling to finish its turn and it brought the colorado a little off my direct line but full square in my sights and I stopped and the colorado’ s muzzle flailed a moment as the horse finished veering into its new direction and I squared myself up and the horse took a gallop at me and I clasped my hands together to steady the Browning and the rifle muzzle was adjusting onto me again and another gallop and I squeezed the trigger quick and gentle I squeezed and felt the recoil roll through me firm and sweet and the horse galloped and its nostrils flared and hissed before me and I tried to move my feet and I tried and I moved and the horse flashed past spraying sweat and dust and I stumbled back and the saddle was empty and I planted my rear stumbling foot and I strained to stay upright and I caught myself and squared my feet underneath me and I was standing and the horse was gone and I was facing Slim from twenty yards away and he was looking at me. He’d been watching me. And now, as one, we both turned our heads. And we saw the colorado on his back, absolutely still and his chest agape in crimson.

Slim gave me one sharp little nod and he lifted the extra rifle in his hand, also a Winchester, and he pushed it slightly in my direction. I lifted my pistol in response: The Browning and I had an understanding now. Slim kept the extra rifle and I knew we were about to head for the house, but Slim’s eyes moved to my wounded arm and it was like the cue for the pain to enter stage left. A thin strip of flame. I looked. The bullet had ripped about four inches of the sleeve of my mohair suit coat and, of course, out of sight, ripped the layers of shirt and flesh beneath, and all around the rip the light gray of the coat had gone dark, was even tingeing red, and now, come to think of it, I could feel the warm wet imprint on my arm and even a single far-falling rivulet of my blood down my forearm to my wrist.

I holstered my pistol and removed my passport from my inner coat pocket. I put it in my pants pocket, took off my coat and tossed it away, and the sleeve of my white shirt was crimson and Slim was moving toward me and I turned to the colorado I’d killed and I stepped to him and bent to him and I unknotted the red bandana on his throat and pulled it free and I straightened and Slim was beside me now and he knew what I was intending. He took the bandana from me and he wrapped it tight around my wound. “Nice and neat,” he said. “A graze.” And he was cinching it and knotting it and it was done, and without another word we beat it across the yard and I looked for and counted the colorados’ empty dismounts as we went — ten — and I glanced at Slim and he’d been counting too and we plunged through the front door.

The great, empty, looted receiving room had seven men, all dead, one of them right before us and we vaulted it, one more near the door — these two with red bandanas — and then four of Slim’s boys scattered about, a cluster by the fireplace, another in the middle of the room where he’d stood to shoot. And across the broad tile floor was the doorway to the inner galleria with the courtyard beyond, and that was the area where the now-deafening ruckus was happening. Eight more colorados somewhere in there, though maybe not all still alive, and I didn’t know how many of Slim’s boys were left.

He and I headed for the windows flanking the doors, him left and me right. I was on my own now and I hit the wall at the far side of the window and pressed back against it and I went low, just my arms and shoulders and head ready to show themselves, and then I looked out the window, ready quickly to withdraw, and I had two colorados right before me in the galleria, shooting into the courtyard from behind posts.

They were close enough that I didn’t have to hang out the window. I pulled back to the wall, stood up and squared around to the room, took two paces in, turned and sidestepped to frame these two colorados in the window. I extended my arms — the left hurting like a son of a bitch now, but workable still — and I steadied my hands and I started to draw a bead on the middle of the back of the guy on the right and Slim opened up with his Mauser from the other window on somebody else and my two guys were jerking around.

I squeezed off a round and the colorado I was shooting for spun and I wasn’t sure I got him but his chest was before me now and I put one in the center to make sure and he flew back and the other one had located me and his rifle was swinging my way and he’d have me in his sights before I could have him in mine so I squeezed off another round as I threw myself to the right and his shot traveled through the space I was in.

I scrambled up and back to the wall beside the window. I didn’t know if there was another round left in my pistol. I popped the magazine just in case and grabbed one from the pouch on my hip and punched it in, hoping while I was working at it that the other colorado wouldn’t lean in at the window, gunning for me. But Slim continued to fire. He’d take care of my unfinished business.

Shooting the bad guys from behind suddenly registered in me: Besides the three that Slim and I took care of, three other colorado horsemen went around to the back of the house. If there were no targets out there and no one was trying to escape through the rear, the colorados would go inside to pick off our courtyard Villistas from behind.

I turned to Slim. He’d pulled out of the window and pushed up against the wall and was stripper-clip filling his Mauser’s magazine. I lifted my pistol and set myself to cover him, just in case someone burst in.

“Slim!” I called while he finished loading. “The horsemen heading for the back.”

He chambered a round and was ready and he’d heard me, he knew my concern: He waved his arm to me, a swooping angle out the front door and around the house.