Читать книгу Massacre at Whiskey Flats - William W. Johnstone - Страница 11

The rock slide completely blocked the trail and extended for a hundred yards or so beyond it on the other side. That presented no problem for horsemen, who could easily ride around the rubble, but the trail would have to be cleared before wagon traffic could get through again.

That wasn’t the responsibility of Bo, Scratch, and Jake Reilly, so after they finished refilling the final resting place of John Henry Braddock, they mounted up and rode on, still heading south. Bo had slipped the letter from the mayor of Whiskey Flats into the inside pocket of his coat, along with Braddock’s badge.

The badge itself didn’t have any markings, so Bo assumed it could function as the symbol of authority no matter whether its wearer was serving as marshal, sheriff, constable, or in some other law enforcement position.

“How far do you think it is to this Whiskey Flats place?” Reilly asked. He was a decent rider, Bo noted, and handled Braddock’s buckskin without much trouble.

“I don’t know,” Bo replied. “Scratch and I have been through this part of the territory before, but it was a long time ago.”

“Thirty years or more, I reckon,” Scratch commented. “Back then it was still part of Mexico.” He chuckled. “Remember the big ruckus we got into in that cantina in Santa Fe?”

“You could ask a similar question about nearly every place we’ve been,” Bo said dryly.

“Hell does have a habit o’ poppin’ wherever we happen to be, don’t it?”

Reilly said, “Well, I guess if we keep riding, we’ll come to it sooner or later.”

“Hell,” Scratch asked, “or Whiskey Flats?”

“With a name like that, and the way Mayor McHale talks about it in his letter, there may not be much difference,” Bo said.

It was almost midday by the time they left the scene of the avalanche behind, but they rode on for a while before stopping to eat a little and rest the horses. The meal consisted of cold biscuits and a little jerky from Scratch’s saddlebags.

Reilly said, “You know, you could break out that bottle again. A couple of swigs might make this food go down easier.”

“That’s all right,” Bo said. “You need a clear head, Jake, for what’s coming next.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

Bo gestured toward the Colt .45 on Reilly’s hip. “Let’s see how good you are at handling that smokepole.”

Reilly frowned and said, “I told you, I never used a gun like this very much.”

“Well, give it a try anyway.” Bo pointed. “See that rock over there, about twenty feet away?”

“The one sitting on top of the bigger rock?”

“That’s right.”

Reilly squinted at the target Bo had chosen, a fist-sized rock resting on top of a stone about the size of a carpetbag.

“Seems like it’s sort of far away.”

“Just see if you can hit somewhere in the general vicinity,” Bo told him.

“All right,” Reilly said with a sigh. “If you’re sure.”

He positioned himself with his right side toward the rocks and reached down to draw the gun. He pointed the Colt toward the sky and then extended his arm to its full length so that he could squint down the barrel toward the target.

“Hold on,” Scratch said. “You ain’t fightin’ a duel with them rocks. Stand facin’ ’em.”

Reilly lowered the gun and turned so that he was squared up toward the rocks. “Like this?”

“Yeah. Holster that gun and draw it again.”

Reilly slid the weapon back into its sheath. “Shouldn’t I have the holster tied down or something? Or be wearing it lower?”

“Why? You want to impress some pretty girl with what a gunfighter you are? I don’t see no pretty girls out here.”

Bo said, “Just wear the holster normally, Jake. You don’t want it too low or too high. It needs to be where you can catch hold of the gun naturally as your hand comes up in your draw.”

“All right.” Reilly faced the rocks, took a deep breath, and drew. The gun came out of leather smoothly enough. He didn’t fumble it. But he still stuck his arm straight out and aimed along the barrel for a second before he pressed the trigger. The bullet struck the bigger rock a few inches below the target stone and ricocheted off with a whine.

“Not bad,” Bo said, impressed with Reilly’s accuracy. “You won’t always have time to aim like that, though. See how you can shoot from the hip.”

“The key is keepin’ your eye on what you’re shootin’ at,” Scratch added. “Learn how to do that, and you’ll hit what you’re lookin’ at more often than not.”

“Sort of like knowing what card is gonna come out of the deck next, even when you haven’t marked them,” Reilly said with a grin.

“Yeah, something like that,” Scratch said with a shake of his head.

Reilly holstered the Colt, took his stance again, drew, and fired, snapping off the shot from his hip.

“A clean miss!” Scratch called.

Reilly flushed. “Let me try again.”

“Go ahead,” Bo told him.

The next time, Reilly’s bullet kicked up dirt a good twenty feet beyond the rocks. “Blast it!” he said, and stubbornly holstered the revolver and set himself to try again.

By the time he had emptied the Colt, only his first shot had hit anywhere near where it was supposed to. The others had all missed by considerable margins.

“Son of a bitch!” Reilly exclaimed. “Nobody can hit anything shooting like that!”

“Is that so?” Scratch drawled.

Bo had a pretty good idea what was coming next, so he wasn’t surprised when Scratch’s ivory-handled Remingtons seemed to leap into his hands. Scratch held the guns waist-high and squeezed off round after round, the shots coming so closely together that the explosions formed one long, rolling roar. The fist-sized rock leaped into the air, then split in two as another bullet struck it, and then those pieces shattered as well as Scratch’s slugs continued to find their targets unerringly. By the time Scratch’s guns fell silent, the rock had turned into gravel pattering down to the ground.

Reilly stared, wide-eyed. “Son of a bitch!” he said again. “I never saw shooting like that!”

“There are men who can do better,” Scratch said as he holstered the left-hand Remington and broke open the other one to begin reloading it. “And that ain’t false modesty, just fact. But I’ll admit that I’m pretty fair at gun-handlin’.”

“And at wasting ammunition by showing off,” Bo said, but his grin made it clear that he wasn’t really annoyed with Scratch. “Load that Colt and try again, Jake. That’s the only way you’ll get any better.”

“What’ll I shoot at?” Reilly wanted to know. “He busted that little rock all to pieces!”

“Just try for the big one,” Bo told him.

Reilly reloaded and continued to practice, and his last two shots from that cylinder both hit the target. He turned to Bo and Scratch with a grin. “How about that?”

“Yeah, but the rock ain’t shootin’ back,” Scratch pointed out.

“You show some promise, Jake,” Bo said. “Keep it up, and you might be a pretty good hand with a gun like that.”

Reilly shook his head. “Don’t know why I’d ever need to be. I’m just carrying it because Braddock doesn’t have any use for it anymore. When we get to Whiskey Flats, I’ll probably sell it. Might get enough to buy a smaller gun and have some left over to stake me in a game of cards.”

He appeared to have forgotten what Bo had said about him getting a job in a store or a livery stable. That was all right, Bo mused.

Because he had something else in mind for Jake Reilly now.

They hadn’t reached Whiskey Flats by nightfall, if indeed the settlement lay in this direction. That seemed likely, considering that John Henry Braddock had been heading south, too. It might take several days to get there, or they might ride right into the place tomorrow. Only time would tell.

Bo and Scratch found another good place to camp, this one on top of a small hill with a view of the surrounding countryside. Considering the location, the Texans deemed it best not to have a campfire, which would have been more visible here than the place they had camped in the night before. It was still possible that Tom Harding and his gunhands might be coming after them, although Bo deemed that more unlikely with each day that passed.

Reilly groused about not having a fire, of course. “Cold food will fill your belly just as well as warm,” Scratch told him. “And the weather ain’t nippy enough at night to freeze off anything important.”

“I just don’t understand why you have to be so careful all the time.”

“That’s because we want to stay alive,” Bo said. “And the best way to get dead in a hurry out here is to be careless.”

“What about Braddock?” Reilly asked. “He wasn’t being careless. He was just riding along the trail. And now he’s as dead as he can be.”

Bo shrugged. “Sometimes bad luck can’t be avoided no matter what you do. But it doesn’t hurt to try to tip the odds in your favor.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Reilly admitted. “Sort of like playing poker.”

“Cheatin’ at poker, you mean,” Scratch said disdainfully.

“Anyway,” Bo added, “you were the one who was worried about Indians, Jake. You wouldn’t want to advertise our presence up here, just in case there is a war party anywhere around these parts, would you?”

Reilly shut up after that.

They made another meal on biscuits and jerky, washed down with cold, clear water from a nearby creek instead of the whiskey that Reilly would have preferred. Afterward, Reilly leaned back on a rock and took a cigar out of his pocket. He was reaching for a match when Bo said, “Might as well put it away, unless you want to chew on it unlit, Jake.”

“Damn it!” Reilly said. “Now you mean to tell me that I can’t even smoke either?”

“I’d like a pipe myself,” Bo said, “but the smell of tobacco smoke can drift a long way. If anybody’s looking for us, it’d be easy to follow the smoke right back here to us.”

Muttering disgustedly, Reilly shoved the cheroot back in his pocket. “It’s like traveling with a pair of damned old mother hens.”

“These mother hens are tryin’ to keep you alive, boy,” Scratch said. “Seems to me like we’ve pulled your bacon outta the fire a couple o’ times already. You ought to be a mite grateful.”

“I am,” Reilly said, although he didn’t sound particularly thankful.

“If that’s true, then maybe you’ll consider an idea I have in mind,” Bo said.

Suspicion was suddenly audible in Reilly’s voice as he said, “An idea? What sort of idea?”

Bo thumbed his hat back on his head as he sat on the ground with his legs stretched out in front of him. “I’ve been thinking about what’s going to happen when we get to Whiskey Flats,” he said.

“I sort of figured we’d go our separate ways,” Reilly said. “No offense, and like I told you, I’m grateful to you fellas for what you’ve done for me, but let’s face it…we’re just not cut from the same cloth. You’re cramping my style.”

“Crampin’ your style?” Scratch repeated as he started to get up. “Why, you little pup—”

“Take it easy,” Bo said. “Jake, how do you think the people of Whiskey Flats are going to feel when they find out that John Henry Braddock, the man they were counting on to bring law and order to their community, is dead?”

Reilly shrugged. “Disappointed, I suppose. But that’s not my problem, and it’s not yours either. Hell, you’re doing them a favor just by bringing them the news that Braddock is never going to get there.”

“But what if he does?” Bo asked. “What if John Henry Braddock rides into Whiskey Flats after all?”

A laugh came from Reilly. “That’s gonna be pretty hard, seeing as how he’s dead and buried.”

Now it was Scratch’s turn to be suspicious as he asked, “What sort o’ crazy notion is floatin’ around inside that noggin o’ yours, Bo Creel?”

“It’s really simple,” Bo said. “John Henry Braddock can still take the job of marshal in Whiskey Flats and bring law and order to the settlement.” He held out his hand, and the light of the rising moon glinted on the badge that rested on his palm once again. “All you have to do, Jake, is pretend to be Braddock. You can be the marshal of Whiskey Flats.”