William Johnstone - A Good Day to Die

“He ain’t siding him. He just left the Spur,” Oxblood told Vince.

“Now, maybe. But later?”

“Johnny’ll kill a lot of Comanches.”

“He could kill a lot of our men too. You think of that?”

“I’ll worry about it once Red Hand’s whupped.”

“You’re out of line, gunslinger.”

“You don’t like it, Vince, you know what you can do about it. You’re wearing a gun, too.”

“Easy, Red,” Clay breathed. “Knock it off.”

Ignoring him, Oxblood pressed, “How ’bout it, Vince? You and Quent against me, right here, right now. What d’you say?”

Vince sneered. “Shoot me, who’s gonna pay you, huh?”

“You’re pushing it, Red. Don’t push it,” Clay said, half threatening, half pleading.

“I ain’t so prideful I can’t back away,” Vince said. “I’m no gunman. I got nothing to prove. I don’t want to lose no more sons, neither. I want to live to avenge my boy Bliss. That’s what’s important to me.”

“That your call?” Oxblood asked.

“That’s my call. Let it go.”

“I won’t go against Cross, or that one-legged pard of his. As for the rest of them, they ain’t nothing to me, one way or t’other.”

“I still want you to brace Teece when the showdown comes with the gambler, if you’re of a mind to.”

“Want me? You need me.” Oxblood laughed softly. “I’m the only one here can take Teece straight-on.”

“Prove it,” Vince challenged.

“I will when the time comes. When the Comanches are dead or on the run. Not before.”

“All right.” Vince turned his back, going off by himself into the dim depths of the store.

“Break it up. It’s over,” Clay told the men. “Get to your posts. Don’t let the Comanche catch you napping. Move!”

The Ramrod riders began to disperse. Sidling away, Quent darted bad eyes at Oxblood, muttering, “You cain’t hide behind Red Hand all the time.”

“Damn you, Quent!” Clay let his breath out slowly and took off his hat, holding it in his hands. Without warning he slashed the brim at Quent’s face, whipping it across his eyes.

Quent cried out, raising his hands to his face. Clay kicked him between the legs. Quent doubled over, grabbing his crotch. His eyes bulged, and his face turned fish-belly white. His mouth was a black sucking O.

Clay lowered a shoulder, slamming it into Quent’s chest. Quent, knocked off balance, fell. Vince rushed forward, throwing a hand out. “Clay, don’t!”

Clay moved in, lifting a booted foot to stomp Quent. Vince clawed at his sidearm. “Clay!”

Clay put his foot on the floor. His voice low, ominous, he said, “You gonna draw on me, Pa?”

“Nobody’s drawing on nobody,” Oxblood said, resting a hand on his gun butt.

Vince and Clay glared at each other over Quent, who lay rolling on the floor, holding himself between the legs and moaning.

Vince’s hand fell to his side, empty. Clay ran his fingers through his hair, eyes wild in a stiff face. Vince moved away, off to the side.

“One big, happy family,” Clay said, then swore. Vince spat on the floor. Quent kept moaning.

“It’s a new way to fight Indians,” Clay went on. “We scrap like cats and dogs with each other and the redskins are so scared they call off the attack.”

A couple of men in the shadows laughed.

“I ain’t here to fight Injins,” Vince said, giving Clay a dirty look. “I’m here to even up on the killers of my son Bliss—the gambler and his whore.”

Nobody laughed.

TWENTY-TWO

Sam Heller, Johnny Cross, Bayle, and Lockridge rode their horses west of town to the church, all unaware of how close Quent Stafford had come to taking a shot at Johnny. Nobody shot at them, neither red men nor white. The two men on duty in the bell tower mounted up and rode back to Four Corners. Nobody shot at them, either.

The windows of the church were boarded up and shuttered closed, making the inside near dark. A couple lamps burned wanly at opposite ends of the central aisle. The newcomers brought their horses into the building, tethering them in the outside aisle between the front wall and the rearmost wooden pews. Plenty of hay had been spread on the floor where the animals were grouped. It was an act of necessity, but even so, Bayle was self-conscious about it.

Sam barred the front doors shut, then moved to a window, looking east through a gap between nailed-up boards. The others sat in a pew close by.

“It don’t seem right,” Bayle said dolefully, shaking his head.

“You still going on about the horses? What do you want to do, leave ’em outside so Comanches could steal ’em? That’d leave us in a pretty pickle!” Lockridge said.

“I reckon the Lord won’t mind. If Red Hand wins, there ain’t gonna be no church. No town either,” Johnny pointed out.

Sam turned away from the window. “Gonna be light soon.”

“Let’s get to it.” Johnny hefted a sack filled with bundles of dynamite, slinging it over his shoulder so it hung down his side, leaving his hands free.

Sam slipped his arms into the leather straps of his wooden gun case. It rested flat on his back. The mule’s-leg was holstered at his side.

He and Johnny went down the central aisle to the west end of the church and through the door in the wall behind the pulpit. It opened on to the well of the bell tower. A vertical wooden ladder was nailed flat to the tower’s west wall, rising to the belfry. Near the top of the fifty-foot shaft was a wooden platform with a square hole in the center. A length of thick hempen rope hung down through the hole, with its fat knotted end dangling a few feet above the floor of the shaft. It was connected to the church bell in the spire atop the tower, allowing it to be rung from the ground floor level.

“After you,” Johnny invited, indicating the ladder. Sam stepped forward. Looking up, his hat almost fell off. He tied the hat strings under his chin and let the hat dangle down the back of his head. He gripped a rung at shoulder height, giving it a good shake. It seemed sturdy enough. He started climbing, testing each rung before trusting his full weight to it.

Up he went. The case on his back brushed against the bellpull, setting it swaying, though not enough to set the bell ringing. The shaft smelled strongly of the wooden planks and beams of which it was made.

The higher he climbed, the less sturdy the wooden ladder seemed, though he told himself that was just an illusion. He was careful not to grip each rung with both hands at the same time. If one of the rungs gave way, he wanted to have a hand on another as backup.

At the top, Sam reached over and pushed the hatch in the platform open. It rose on its hinges and fell back against the floor, making a dull booming noise in the confined space of the tower.

He climbed through the open hatchway to the belfry, stepping onto the floor. Like the tower, the belfry was square. Its walls were waist-high. Above them, it was open to the sky. Four massive corner post beams upheld an obelisk-shaped spire. Four feet of open space stood between the top of the balustrade and the bottom of the spire.

The spire was hollow, its interior shored up by a skeletal wooden scaffolding of beams and braces. A stout horizontal crossbar supported the church bell. The bell rope was secured to a ring in the clapper.

Sam eased his arms out of the shoulder straps of the gun case and set it down in a corner of the platform. He set his hat squarely on his head.

The air seemed cool after the close confines of the shaft. The sky was a rich purple-blue dusted with paling stars. The horned moon hung way down in the west, as if seeking to hook a peak rising from the jagged skyline of the Breaks.