Ralph Compton - West of the Law

Prescott fired, fired again, and his bullets crossed Allison’s. Prescott was hit again, hit hard, and went to his knees, blood scarlet on his chest. Allison swayed, cursing, and leaned his left shoulder against a cottonwood trunk, but his Colt was coming up.

Prescott shot quickly. The bullet slammed into Allison’s gun and ranged upward, exploding into the gunman’s chin, tearing away bone and teeth. His face a horrifying mask of blood, Allison screamed his rage. He tried to trigger his Colt, but the cylinder was jammed. He lurched toward Prescott, yelling strangled words without meaning. The little gunfighter steadied his gun in both hands, took careful aim and put a bullet between Allison’s eyes. The gunman’s head snapped back and he recoiled a few steps before crashing onto his back. His legs jerked like a stricken insect’s. Then he lay still.

Turning fast from the waist, Prescott triggered his Colt. One of the miners stood in the stirrups and toppled off his horse. Prescott tried to fire at the other man, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber.

Stunned by the killing of his friend, the miner shot his hands into the air. His eyes were frightened and he babbled wildly that he didn’t want to fight.

McBride ignored the man and crossed quickly to Prescott. The little gunfighter was lying on his back, his eyes wide open, turned to the sun. He was dead.

McBride was vaguely aware that the surviving miner had turned his horse and was splashing across the creek. The man reached the far bank and kicked his mount into a run, riding for High Hopes with the bad news.

A sense of grief and loss in him, McBride looked down at Luke Prescott, trying to make sense of his death. In the end, he’d proved himself worthy of the rank of named man . . . by being better than the worst of them. It was the terrible suddenness and finality of Luke’s dying that McBride found hard to accept.

Stryker Allison was dead, his face a thing of horror. The downed miner gasped for a few minutes, tried to speak; then he too was gone.

There was no way of getting around the fact that Prescott had shot the tin pan in cold blood, while he had no weapon in his hand. But Luke shared the one quality that all men who live by the gun possess—he was a killer. That had made him the man he was.

McBride looked up at the sky, blue, cloudless, uncaring. The sun burned bright still, the deaths of three men a small matter in an infinite universe. A rising wind rippled the water in the creek and ruffled the brown prairie grass like a hand moving through the hair of a towheaded boy. In the distance a small herd of antelope walked into the shimmering heat haze, their legs strangely elongating before they slowly melted from sight.

McBride walked to the creek bank, glanced into the clear water and saw what he’d hoped to see. He slipped his suspenders off his shoulders and stripped to the waist. Then he carried Prescott’s body away from the creek and laid him out on the crest of a shallow hill where pink and blue wildflowers grew. He laid his rifle and Colt beside him, the call of his ancient Celtic ancestors strong in him, reminding him that a warrior must be buried with his weapons.

It took him most of the day to carry enough rocks from the bed of the creek to the hill to cover Prescott’s body completely. But when it was done, and the stones were mounded high, he considered the cairn to be a fine monument.

Luke would lie where he could be one with the land he loved.

Allison’s body and that of the miner, he left where they fell. The coyotes had a right to eat.

The long day was darkening into evening when McBride unsaddled the dead men’s horses, removed their bridles and sent them running into the prairie with a slap on the rump. Allison’s horse and the miner’s would find their way back to High Hopes. As for Luke’s big American stud, he would probably find a wild-horse herd and add his blood to future generations.

Tomorrow McBride knew he would have to make decisions about his next moves. But he’d already made one decision—he had to save Shannon from Gamble Trask, and that meant riding into High Hopes and accepting its dangers.

Once the miner told his tale in town, McBride knew, he would be a marked man. The Allison brothers would not let the death of their oldest go unavenged nor would Trask ignore the destruction of his property and the killing of his men.

Now that Luke was dead, he was one man against many, yet he had to do it.

Shannon Roark needed him.

Chapter 21

John McBride rode east along the creek. Making a grave for Prescott had taken him a long time and the sun was falling in the sky, gifting him with his shadow, the slowly moving shape of a tall man astride a small horse.

He had taken the pot and coffee and his eyes scanned the hilly country ahead of him for a suitable campsite. He needed water and fuel for a fire, and that dictated that he stay close to the creek. High Hopes was a day’s ride away, time enough to go over his plan.

If he had a plan.

Then it came to him, perfect in its simplicity.

He would ride into town, find Shannon and take her away from there, head east and ride through the sunrise, putting ground between them and Trask. He wanted to bring the man down, ruin him, but that could wait. Until? McBride had no answer for that.

And what about the Chinese girls? Could he coldly ride away with the woman he loved and leave them to their fate?

The questions had already undermined his new-found confidence. What had seemed simple had all of a sudden become complicated. McBride rode into the sullen twilight of the dying day, as many shadows angling dark through the corridors of his mind as there were on the trail ahead.

He had, he decided, come full circle, at as much of a loss as he’d been just a few minutes before.

Darkness pressed on McBride, soft as a spring rain but crowding him close. The water was no longer visible, the creek a black ribbon unwinding away from him into the night. Out on the prairie the coyotes had begun their lamentations and the first stars hung like lanterns in the sky, glittering with frosty light.

The mustang lifted its head and its ears pricked forward as it stared into the gloom. ‘‘Easy, boy, easy,’’ McBride whispered. He lifted the Winchester from the saddle horn, levered a round into the chamber and set the brass butt plate on his right thigh.

He drew rein on the horse and raised his nose, testing the wind. The smoke smell was a fleeting will-o’-the-wisp, but it was there.

More of Trask’s men? That was possible but unlikely. Then who? Maybe punchers riding through or freight wagons coming or going from the gold mines. The road into town was close and mule skinners could be camped for the night.

Where there was a fire there would be coffee and food and McBride’s stomach had been complaining for hours. In the end his hunger overcame his good judgment and he rode on, tense and ready in the saddle.

He saw a campfire winking orange in the violet darkness. He judged the fire to be on the other side of the creek and swung the sure-footed little mustang into the bank. The spring melt was long gone and the water was shallow. He splashed across and climbed the bank on the other side. The firelight was closer now, winking in the gloom like a fallen star.

McBride rode nearer. He made out the flickering shadows of men walking in front of the fire and beyond the circle of the firelight he made out the shapes of several parked wagons, pale red light reflecting on the sides of their canvas tops.

He drew rein and, remembering what Prescott had taught him, called out: ‘‘Hello the camp!’’

The reply was immediate, a heavily accented voice. ‘‘Come on in!’’

McBride kneed the mustang forward and rode into the camp. About a dozen men had stopped their various chores and stood watching him. They didn’t look like mule skinners or miners either. Rather, they had the jaunty, weather-beaten appearance of the seafaring men McBride had seen on the New York docks.