William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

“Don’t let things get out of hand, Vince.”

“Suppose they do? Who’s gonna stop me, you?”

“That’s right.” Barton nodded.

After a pause Oxblood laughed without mirth, breaking the deathly silence. “Whew! You do speak right up, don’t you, Mack?”

The Ramrod riders flashed dark looks and muttered harsh words.

“Easy, men,” Clay cautioned.

Vince gawked in disbelief. “I must’ve heard wrong.”

“You heard right,” Barton advised. “Listen up, Stafford, and that goes for the rest of you, in case any of y’all are hard of hearing.”

Quent swelled up, stung. “That’s Mister Stafford to you—”

“Shut the hell up. Now get this. No man buffaloes Hangtree, no matter how big he thinks he is or how many guns he’s got riding for him. It’s been tried before and it never took and it ain’t gonna take now.”

“Big talk for one man,” Vince said, sneering.

“I ain’t alone.” Barton turned, angling his body so he faced Vince and West Trail Street, careful not to turn his back on the Staffords. The rest of the bunch wouldn’t make a play unless and until one of the family got the ball rolling first, he figured.

Raising his left arm slowly and deliberately, so as to not spook anybody into shooting, Barton waved a hand in the air. Armed men poured into the street from the front and side doors of the Cattleman Hotel and the Alamo Bar across from it.

“Don’t nobody get trigger-happy, gents. You don’t want to spoil your fun,” Barton said.

Figures armed with rifles, shotguns, and handguns massed in the center of the street, filling it. A crowd of thirty or forty men stood facing the Ramrod riders. The hard-core center of them were Dog Star toughs, paired with hard-bitten ranchers and cold-faced townmen. Together, they made up the Hangtown militia.

“What’s this? What do you think you’re pulling?” Vince Stafford blustered.

“Hangtree got through the war without being sacked and burned by Yankees, deserters, or outlaws, and we aim to keep it that way. Them folks over there ain’t minded to stand by and let the town go to Hades just because you or anyone else wants to run roughshod over it,” Barton said.

“Seems to me you made a slight mistake in your calculations, Sheriff,” Clay said, keeping his voice level. “Them fighting shopkeepers and store clerks and whatnot of yours—real bad hombres, I’m sure—they’re down there. But you’re here, all alone with us.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Barton said, unimpressed.

“You’re taking them, by God!” Vince cried.

Barton had been unsure whether the likes of Wade Hutto and Squint McCray could marshal their respective factions and get them in the street when the time came. That was the chancy part. Now that the confrontation had come to a head he felt cool, ready. “Them bad hombres you’re making small of have homes and businesses to protect against looting and burning. Most of them were in the war and they can take care of themselves if they have to. See that they don’t have to.

“Go fight your fight with Damon. That’s your business. It’s the Ramrod against the Spur and that’s where it better stay. If it gets out of bounds, slops over where it can foul our nests—we’ll make it our business. Savvy?”

Quent’s open hand hovered over the butt of his holstered gun. “Almighty sure of yourself, ain’t you?”

Barton eyed him, fixing him with a cold stare. “Just as sure as I am that you ain’t gonna pull that gun, you overgrowed sack of horse droppings.”

“Why, you dirty—”

“Don’t try him, Quent,” Clay said quickly.

“Back off, boy!” Vince yelled.

Quent held the pose for a beat, then slowly lowered his hand to his side, well clear of the gun.

“What I thought,” Barton said, sneering.

“Don’t crowd your luck,” Vince cautioned. “Don’t crowd us.”

“You’ll have your hands full with Damon and his pals. You’re too smart to go against him and the town both,” Barton said. “And don’t forget about the Yanks at Fort Pardee. Give them an excuse to hunt you down and they’ll clean up on the whole bunch of you and confiscate your herd and ranch for their troubles.”

A voice from one of the militia men in the street called, “You okay, Sheriff?”

“Yeah!” Barton replied, not taking his eyes off the Ramrod riders. “I’m gonna walk out of here now and tell the folks you know the facts of life and will abide by them.”

“I ain’t forgetting this,” Vince said feelingly.

“I can stand it,” Barton retorted.

“Git and be damned. Keep out of my fight and you won’t have any of ours.”

“Done.” The sheriff gave them all one last hard look. “Wonder how many of you will be alive by this time tomorrow?”

Barton turned and started walking, moving at a steady pace. It was so quiet he could hear the grit of street dirt scuffling against his leather boot soles. He fought to keep his shoulders and back muscles loose and untensed, but it was hard. He was half expecting bullets to come tearing into him any second.

He kept on walking, eyes front, not looking back. Drawing abreast of the Golden Spur, he cut a side-glance at it.

Johnny Cross stood framed in the doorway, arms folded on top of one of the hinged batwing doors. He rested his chin on his arms, yellow cat eyes unblinking, smiling lazily at the sheriff as he walked past.

Nearing the militiamen, a wall of vague oval faces began resolving into recognizable faces: town boss Wade Hutto, his top gun Boone Lassitter, Hutto’s brother-in-law Russ Lockhart, Deputy Smalls, Squint McCray and a couple of his cousins, Karl from the gunstore, others.

Hutto moved forward to meet him. “How’d it go, Sheriff?”

“Vince listened to reason,” Barton said, glad to note his voice held steady, without a quaver.

“That’s great! Good work, Mack,” Hutto enthused.

“The Ramrod bunch’ll toe the line, but we still need to keep our guns loaded and ready to smash them down at the first sign of trouble—which could be soon—anytime.”

“Whew! I don’t mind telling you, that was a real nail-biter.”

“You should’ve seen it from my end.”

Trouble came sooner than Barton expected. It came without warning out of the west, in a mass of rushing horses, gunfire and war whoops—all accompanied by the ringing of church bells.

THIRTEEN

It was mid-afternoon when Sam Heller and Lydia Fisher reached Rancho Grande. One of the biggest spreads in the county, in all north central Texas for that matter, the ranch was bordered on the north by Old Mission Road and the south by the upper fork of the Liberty River.

Before getting too deep into Grande land, Sam and Lydia were intercepted by a band of vaqueros who patrolled the lush grasslands to deter trespassers, rustlers, and marauders. Ranch master Don Eduardo Castillo had no love for intruders on his private domain, especially Anglos, all of whom he lumped under the label “Texans” and whom he resented for what he felt was their steady encroachment on his land.

The outriders closed in. Mexican-Americans, they were hard men with grim, unfriendly faces under broad-brimmed sombreros and weapons—guns and rifles—held at the ready.

“I heard the Grande riders shoot white folks on sight,” Lydia said.

“Not true,” Sam answered. “Just pesky yellow-haired gals with braids,” he added dryly.

Lydia looked unsure as to whether or not he was joking.

Sam was no stranger to the ranch, thanks to previous involvements with the Castillo clan. He was recognized by the jefe, boss of the vaquero band. Sam spoke a few sentences to him in rough, broken Spanish, a language he was learning but still a long way from mastering. He got his message across, though, especially the dreaded word Comanche .