Ralph Compton - Bluff City

“What are you saying?” Melanie asked.

“That Mr. Stark will make a fine scapegoat.”

“I get it,” Stark said. “You have her shot and blame me. Claim I broke in, and the two of you caught me robbing your safe or some such, and I shot her.”

“An excellent idea,” Barker said.

Melanie had a hand to her throat. “You can do that? Have me killed without a second thought?”

“Oh, I am sure I will have a regret or two. But you have become a threat. Threats must be removed. I do what I must to survive, my dear.”

“Call me that one more time and I will rip your eyes out,” Melanie said. She cocked her head. “I’m not the first, am I? How many more have you eliminated? Just how heartless are you?”

“Oh, the list is longer than your arm,” Barker said glibly. “As for my heart, my fondness for you stemmed from lower down, if you will pardon the crudity.”

“Clay was right about you,” Melanie said. “He was right about everything. But I refused to believe him. I thought the fault was in him, but the whole time it was in me.” She bowed her head. “I wish I could see Clay now. I wish I could let him know how sorry I am.”

“Why do you persist in calling him that?” Barker asked. “His real name is Neville Baine.”

“No, Baine is dead. He is Clay Adams now. Or he will be, once he hears Stark is dead.”

“He hates me that much?” Jesse Stark asked her.

Clay did not hear Melanie’s answer. He had been so intent on them that the first inkling he had that he was no longer alone came in the form of a clipped command.

“Reach for the ceiling, mister!”

Yet another purple would-be gunny. He was young and he was careless, because while he had drawn his revolver, he had not thumbed back the hammer.

Clay had no time to waste. He drew and shot him through the head, then whirled and charged into the dining room, firing as he ran. The men with Charles were caught flat-footed. Two were down and the rest had dived for the floor when Clay reached Melanie. Flinging an arm around her waist, he swept her toward the door at the rear end of the room. He would not have made it had it not been for Jesse Stark, who cut loose with his Remington, keeping the men on the floor pinned down long enough for Clay and Melanie and Stark himself to make it out, and for Stark to slam the door after them.

Clay spun. For tense seconds he glared at Stark and Stark glared at him over their leveled six-shooters.

Then Jesse Stark said, “We stand a better chance of making it out alive if we work together. And there is your filly to think of.”

“You don’t give a damn about her,” Clay said.

“I give a damn about me,” Jesse Stark returned. “So what do you say to a truce until we’re shed of this place?”

Go to hell! was on the tip of Clay’s tongue, but he bit it off as slugs ripped through the door. Grabbing Melanie’s hand, he turned. They were in the kitchen. Over by the stove a portly man in a white apron was gawking at them. Numerous pots and pans hung from metal hooks, and a large sink dominated one wall.

“This way,” Stark said, and dashed toward a door near the sink.

“What I want to know,” Clay said to Melanie, “is where Barker got to?”

“He bounded out of there like a rabbit at the first shot,” Melanie replied. “He came this way.”

They vacated the kitchen just as the door to the dining room was split asunder by the shoulders of several men in purple.

Jesse Stark sent several shots in the direction of their pursuers. “To slow them down.” He grinned.

They raced outdoors. The night enfolded them in its welcome blanket as they sped along a hedge. A lilac bush offered temporary sanctuary, and they darted behind it and crouched.

“Is that a badge I saw pinned to your shirt?” Jesse Stark asked.

“Hush,” Clay snapped. “Do you want them to hear you?”

Stark leaned closer. “It is a badge! I’ll be switched. I should gun you right here and now.”

Clay swung toward him, his finger curling around the Colt’s trigger. “I thought we had a truce?”

“We do, we do. But now I have more call than ever to decorate your skull with holes. If there is anything I can’t abide more than a tin star, I have yet to come across it.”

“They’re coming,” Melanie whispered.

That they were, from the kitchen and from another door farther down. Clay stopped counting at fifteen. “Maybe we can slip away without throwing more lead.” The combination of starlight and lantern light spilling from the mansion windows made that unlikely.

“Since when is Neville Baine skittish about curling a few toes?” Stark mocked him.

“I hate to admit it,” Melanie whispered to Clay, “but I agree with him. Do what you have to.”

The guards were spreading out. They poked into every shadow, every cranny. It was only a matter of a minute or two before they checked behind the lilac bush.

Clay took Melanie’s hand and started to back away. The next hedge was ten yards off. “If we can reach that,” he whispered, “we can follow it to the wall.” He had forgotten about the two guards he had seen when he scaled the wall earlier. But he was reminded of them when they stepped past the hedge and threw the stocks of their rifles to their shoulders.

“Hold it! Raise your hands where we can see them!”

Clay shot them. Two swift shots, and the way was open, but shouts and the staccato beat of boots and shoes warned him it would not be open for long. He ran, pulling Melanie after him. Pistols banged and rifles boomed.

Laughing like a kid in a sweetmeat shop, Jesse Stark emptied his Remington. It gave the purple legion enough of a pause for Clay and Melanie to reach the hedge.

Stark was close behind, reloading on the fly and chortling to himself. “These boys are pitiful. They couldn’t hit a Conestoga with a cannon.”

Clay disagreed. Poor shots they might be, but there were enough of them that the odds were in their favor. He did not shoot. He ran faster.

“Damn, what do you think you are? An antelope?” Stark complained. “How do you expect me to keep up?”

“Move your gums less and your legs more,” was Clay’s response.

The wall seemed impossibly far away. Lead sizzled the air around them. Barker’s private army was converging from both sides, firing as they came. One of them bellowed commands, “Take your time! Aim carefully! Hold your revolver with two hands if you have to! Shoot at their bodies, not at their heads or their legs! Their bodies are better targets!”

Sound advice, all of it. Clay couldn’t have that. Suddenly stopping and turning, he took deliberate aim and shot the bellower through the head.

“Kill a few more, why don’t you?” Stark urged.

Clay did. To discourage them, he shot a man on the right and another on the left, and then was off again, running swiftly with Melanie bounding at his side, her elbow brushing his. Under other circumstances he would have admired how her hair whipped in the wind and the taut bow of her body. Under other circumstances.

The wall was still too far away. Clay glanced back and realized they would not make it. “Give me your pistol, Stark.”

“Like hell,” the outlaw puffed.

“I will hold them off while you help Melanie over the wall.”

“No,” Stark said.

“No,” Melanie echoed. “I won’t leave you, and that’s that.”

Stark laughed. “You heard the little lady. But you’ve got the right idea. We’ll make our stand together, Baine. I may be a lot of things, but yellow isn’t one of them.”

Arguing was pointless. “Have it your way,” Clay said, and came to a stop. Pushing Melanie behind him, he whirled and blistered the pack baying at their heels with a hailstorm. Stark added to the hail, and while he was not the shootist Clay was, neither was he unacquainted with firearms. Three of Stark’s five shots brought men down.