William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

That was the edge Sam Heller had been counting on. With his repeating rifle he could pick off most, if not all, of the attackers before they closed with him.

The last of the Comanche band was very close indeed. Outriders on the flanks turned their horses’s heads, peeling off from the charge. Or trying to. Sam wasn’t going to let them circle around the rocks and get behind him. He picked off a brave at his extreme left. A beat later, he felled an outrider wheeling to the right.

Black Robe’s rage at being undone by his lamed horse was supplanted by stunned amazement as the ranks of his band thinned visibly with each passing second. What had first seemed great sport was becoming a blistering fight for survival, one his side was losing.

He took heart in the surety that all was not lost. His gods had not deserted him. What he had taken for a cruel jest of fate laming his mount had become the instrument of his salvation. Had he been at the head of the charge, he would have been the first to fall to the White Eyes with the Devil Gun. But luck was still with Black Robe, affording him an opportunity to turn disaster into victory.

Holding on to the horse’s neck with one bent arm, hooking the back of an ankle around his saddle’s high wooden cantle, he hung down on his horse’s right-hand side. This put the animal’s body between him and the foeman’s Devil Gun, covering him as he swung right to get behind the rocks on Sam’s left. Half lurching, half loping, the horse was still game, still coming on.

Black Robe clutched his rifle in one hand, the barrel protruding beneath the horse’s snout as he lined it up for a shot at Sam.

Sam was busy burning down a last lone brave who’d almost reached the rocks on a head-long charge. He drilled him through the heart.

Lydia saw Black Robe coming, but he was too well screened behind the far side of the horse to present much of a target to her. He glimpsed the girl with the yellow braids as she rose and turned, pointing a rifle in his direction. A flare rimmed the muzzle of her weapon as she fired.

Thinking fast, Lydia shot not at the brave but at his horse. The horse stumbled, forelegs folding, tumbling headfirst. Black Robe was thrown, cartwheeling to the hard ground.

He rolled to a stop, battered and dazed, semiconscious. He was empty handed, having lost the rifle in the fall. Somehow he rose, standing shakily on two feet.

Sam shot him. Black Robe’s awareness was blotted out by the darkness of complete and illimitable death.

Sam Heller looked around. Dead bodies lay all about; riderless horses scattered in every direction. Like himself, the girl was unhit, unhurt. She put a hand against a rock to steady herself. “Hey, mister!”

Sam looked at her.

“My name is Lydia—Lydia Fisher.”

Sam realized that up till now he hadn’t known her name. “Glad to know you, Miss Fisher.”

“Lydia,” she said, sticking out a hand.

He shook it. “Call me Sam.”

ELEVEN

It was quiet in the Golden Spur, as if the earlier outburst of violence had never been. The dead bodies had long since been carted away. Sawdust thrown down by Swamper had soaked up the blood. He swept it up, mopping the stains with a bucket of hot water, lye soap, and a scrub brush. Their washed-out shadows darkened the floorboards.

“That’s enough,” Mrs. Frye said. “There’ll be more later—or sooner.”

Swamper tossed the scrub brush into the bucket and put everything away, then crashed on his mattress in a corner of the kitchen to sleep off some of the booze he’d guzzled in the aftermath of the shootings.

A long case clock stood between two windows on the west wall of the main hall. In height and shape it was not unlike a coffin standing on end. Black and gold it was, made of ebony wood with gilt trimmings. An ivory-colored clock dial was decorated with images of the sun, moon, and stars; sun and moon were depicted with the human faces of Old Sol and the Man in the Moon.

The hands on the clock pointed to a little after seven in the evening. The interior of the case was filled with clockwork gears and a pendulum, each ticktock sounding as sharp and clear as a gun hammer being thumbed back into place.

Damon Bolt sat in place at the table facing the front door, playing his game of solitaire. Whether it was the same game as before or a new one made no difference to him. He continued to play with an undiminished air of concentration and a steady hand, despite the fact that the level of whiskey in his bottle had declined noticeably in the last hour or so.

Mrs. Frye had retreated to the office behind the staircase. The door had been left open to hear if anything was going on outside the room. She sat behind a desk, going over the accounts. Her steel-tipped ink pen made rustling, scratchy sounds on the ledger pages as she brought the entries up to date.

Out front, Morrissey stood behind the bar, absently polishing up glasses with a thin towel. A double-barreled shotgun lay on its side on the countertop, near at hand. The front pockets of his white bib apron bulged with shotgun shells.

Behind him, the wall showed the ghostly outline where the mirror had hung before a stray slug had shot it to pieces. The horizontal oblong was discolored compared to the rest of the cream-colored wall.

Across from the barkeep, Creed Teece sat on a long-legged stool at the bar, eating a late lunch. “Damned if I’m goin’ off my feed on account of a dustup that ain’t even happened yet,” he said with his mouth full. The thick, juicy steak that Morrissey had cooked covered his plate, the slabbed beef looking about as big as a doormat.

Teece went at it hard with knife and fork, his face almost parallel to the plate as he wolfed down his food. Strong white teeth tore at red-dripping meat, the juices running down his chin. The knotted clumps of muscle at the corners of his square jaw worked hard to chew the steak. From time to time he washed it down with great gulps from a tumbler full of whiskey, which the barkeep was quick to refill when it showed signs of running out.

Monk the bouncer was still up on the roof of the building, keeping watch.

Johnny Cross and Luke Pettigrew sat at a table off to the side of the bar, with a clear view of the main floor and front entrance. They drank beer out of solid, long-handled glass mugs. They’d switched from whiskey to beer earlier to keep from getting too big a skinful too early in the day.

“We got enough hands here to work up a decent poker game,” Luke said, looking around.

“The cards’d only get in the way of your drinking,” Johnny said.

“You ain’t exactly been on the water wagon yourself.” Luke drained his glass, setting the empty mug down on the table and smacking his lips. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Pushing his chair back, he reached down under the table, straightening the wooden leg that had been bent at a right angle and extending it in a straight line out to the side. His fingers worked on the hinge screws of the artificial limb, locking it into place.

He gripped the back of his chair with one hand and the edge of the table with another. Johnny took hold of the table to steady it. Luke hefted himself up out of the chair, on to his feet. Bending forward, he picked up the crutch which lay across a third chair at the table.

Luke snugged the crutch’s padded crossbar under his left arm and planted its tip firmly on the floorboards. “Got to see a man about a horse.”

Johnny nodded absently, watching tiny bubbles rise in his beer. Luke made his way limping to the bar. “Where’s the donnicker?”

“Through that door and down the hall, first door on your right,” Morrissey said, gesturing at a swinging door set in a near corner of the rear wall.