Ralph Compton - Bluff City

Stark pivoted and took deliberate aim. “That’s close enough, meat-cutter! We’re leaving and we don’t want any trouble.”

The butcher did not stop. “What have you done to Jack Randolph and Horace Stubbs?”

“They’re lying on the bank floor with their hands and feet tied,” Jesse lied. “But keep coming and that can change.”

Reluctantly, the butcher halted. “Jack! Horace! If you’re alive and can hear me, give a holler!”

“I gagged them, too,” Stark said.

The butcher resumed his advance. “I reckon I will just see for myself. You better not have harmed them.”

“I did the same to them as I am about to do to you,” Jesse Stark said, and shot him in the chest.

The butcher was a big man. Years of handling heavy slabs of beef and wielding a big butcher knife had sculpted his arms and shoulders with muscle. The slug staggered him but he did not fall. Raising the cleaver, he charged the nearest outlaw, who happened to be the one bringing the horses.

“What the hell!” Mills was astride one horse and leading the rest. He let go of the reins to grab for his revolver, but he had only begun to draw when the razor edge of the cleaver sliced into his leg. Blood spurted in a scarlet geyser, and Mills screamed. By then he had his six-shooter out and, thrusting the muzzle against the butcher’s forehead, he squeezed the trigger. In his excitement and pain, he forgot to thumb back the hammer. Nothing happened.

The butcher had gone berserk. Rather than finish off the mounted man, he charged the outlaw in front of the bank window. The outlaw quickly drew and fired, but in his haste he missed.

Jesse Stark swore and extended his Remington. “If you want something done right,” he declared.

Abruptly, a shout from between two adjacent buildings caused the butcher to lurch toward the source. He was weakening and stumbled just as Stark fired. Lead bit into the wall and slivers went flying.

“Damn it, I missed.”

The butcher sank from sight.

“Mount up!” Stark roared. “We’re getting the hell out of here!”

Their horses, though, were milling nervously about in the middle of Fremont Street. The outlaw who had complained about the slim pickings dashed to get his animal, but the horse shied and pranced away.

“This is not going well,” Jesse Stark said.

That was when Crooked Nose Baine stepped into the street. He appeared out of the gap between the two buildings. The wide brim of his black hat was pulled low so the sun was not in his eyes. His right hand hung low at his side, nearly brushing the black leather holster and the pearl-handled Colt.

Jesse Stark could not hide his surprise. “What’s this? Did you come to join us?” He had to raise his voice to be heard above Mills, who was shrieking like a gut-shot cat while trying to stanch the flow of blood from his leg, and above the racket raised by the milling horses.

“No,” Baine said. One instant his hand was empty, the next it held his Colt. The Colt belched lead and smoke, and Mills’s scream became a gurgle that ended with the thud of a body striking the ground.

Stupefied, Jesse Stark and the other outlaws gaped at the twitching form. Then the man who had been trying to catch his horse bawled, “You shot Mills!” and clawed for his hardware.

Crooked Nose Baine shot him through the heart.

Belatedly, Jesse Stark and the other two outlaws galvanized to life. All three squeezed off shots as fast as they could, but Baine was no longer there. He had ducked between the buildings.

“After him!” Stark roared. But he had only taken a couple of steps when a rifle boomed somewhere down the street, kicking up dust in front of him. The rifleman was on the roof of the feed and grain, taking aim. “Into the bank!” Stark commanded, back-pedaling.

Another rifle cracked before they reached the door.

“It’s the damn townsmen!” one of the outlaws cried. “They’re fighting back!”

The three of them made it into the bank and Stark slammed the front door after them. “Out the back!” he directed.

“We don’t stand a prayer,” the third outlaw lamented. “Not against a whole town and Crooked Nose, both!”

“We’re not dead yet.” Stark plunged into a narrow hall that brought them to the rear door. It was made of oak. He threw the bolt and put his shoulder to the door, but it would not budge. Stepping back, he fired two shots at the wood, close to the lock, then kicked with all his might. The door swung open.

“Now what?” the third outlaw asked as they hurtled outside. “Without our horses we’re as good as caught.”

“Don’t you ever get tired of looking at the bright side of things?” Jesse Stark snapped. Wheeling, he raced along the rear of the buildings. “Ours aren’t the only nags in town.”

“What are you saying?” the second outlaw asked. “That we’re going to help ourselves to others?”

“The stable is this way,” Stark said.

“But stealing horses will get us hung!” the third outlaw objected.

“And robbing the bank won’t?” Stark countered. To the thin air he said, “I have morons for partners.”

They came to the end of the street. Ahead was the broad structure that offered salvation.

Stark ran for all he was worth, but he was not fleet of foot and the other two reached the rear of the stable ahead of him. From up the street came the heavy crash of rifles mixed with the lighter crack of pistols.

“Who the blazes are they shooting at?” the third outlaw wondered.

“Just so it ain’t us.”

The back door was ajar.

“I’ll have a look-see,” Stark whispered, and warily pushed it open so he could poke his head in. Half the stalls were filled. There was no sign of anyone.

“It’s safe.”

They found saddles and saddle blankets and bridles, and were ready to ride out in half the time it would ordinarily have taken them. One after the other they stepped into the stirrups.

Jesse Stark raised his reins and glanced at his companions. “Don’t be shy about using your spurs. If you’re hit, cling on for dear life.”

“Going somewhere?”

The three outlaws twisted in their saddles and Stark blurted, “You again! What did you do, follow us from the bank? What in God’s name are you up to?”

“You haven’t guessed?” Crooked Nose Baine asked, and again his Colt blossomed in his hands. Two swift shots, and the men on either side of Jesse Stark pitched from their mounts.

Stark heeded his own advice and applied his spurs harder than he ever had in his entire life. As his sorrel streaked out the front, he swung onto the off side so he would be harder to hit.

Baine ran from the stable and raised his Colt. His trigger finger was tightening when a rifle thundered from a rooftop and hot lead ripped through his body from back to front. Baine staggered and nearly fell. Rallying, he shifted and had a clear shot at the townsman who had shot him. But Baine did not shoot. Instead he ran for his claybank. Other rifles opened up, and revolvers, too, until the street swarmed with leaden hornets.

Somehow Crooked Nose Baine made it to the claybank. Somehow he gained the saddle and brought the claybank to a gallop. He could not sit up, though, and his buckskins were soaked with blood. Gritting his teeth, he slumped over the saddle horn, riding for his life as more lead fanned the air around him.

Chapter 3

Jesse Stark was madder than he had ever been, and that took some doing. The horse he had stolen was racing pell-mell across the prairie. To the west the sun hovered on the horizon, and night could not fall soon enough to suit him.

Jesse voiced every swear word he knew, two or three times. He cursed Whistler’s Flat. He cursed the bank. He cursed the banker. He cursed the teller. He cursed his partners. He cursed the butcher and the baker, but not the candlestick maker. But the one he cursed the most, the one he could not stop cursing, was Crooked Nose Neville Baine. He cursed Baine’s mother. He cursed Baine’s father. He cursed Baine’s brothers and sisters, if Baine had any. He cursed Crooked Nose Baine as he had never cursed anyone, and after he ran out of breath and recovered, he cursed Baine some more.