Читать книгу Massacre at Whiskey Flats - William W. Johnstone - Страница 8

Bo and Scratch reacted instinctively as bullets sang past their heads. They split up, Bo hugging the front wall of the saloon to the right, Scratch going to the left toward the street. The silver-haired Texan put one hand on the railing along the edge of the boardwalk and vaulted over it, rolling lithely as he landed in the street. He came up on one knee with both hands filled with the butts of his Remingtons.

Meanwhile, Bo crouched behind a bench that sat on the boardwalk. As the bushwhackers’ guns continued to blare from the alley, slugs chewed splinters from the arms of the bench. One of the wooden slivers stung Bo’s cheek as he lined up his Colt and squeezed the trigger. He had aimed just above one of the muzzle flashes, and as the revolver bucked against his palm, he saw another gout of flame from a gun barrel, only this one was aimed skyward as the man who pulled the trigger was driven over backward by the smashing impact of the bullet from Bo’s gun.

Scratch opened fire, too. Instead of the single precise shot that had come from Bo’s gun, Scratch set both smokepoles to roaring in a thunderous volley of death. Left, right, left, right, he squeezed off the shots, each Remington blasting in turn as the barrel of the other gun kicked upward from the recoil. Lead poured into the alley mouth. The second bushwhacker, even though he managed to get off another couple of rounds, never had a chance.

After triggering half a dozen shots in less than five seconds, Scratch held his fire. On the boardwalk, Bo straightened from his crouch and walked toward the alley, advancing slowly and cautiously with the Colt thrust out in front of him, ready to fire again if need be.

No more shots came from the alley mouth. When Bo reached the end of the boardwalk, he fished a lucifer out of his coat pocket with his left hand and snapped it into life with his thumbnail. The harsh flare of light from the match revealed two men lying motionless on the dirt, their rough range clothes splotched with spreading bloodstains. Bo recognized both men.

So did Scratch, who had holstered one gun and was using that hand to slap dust off his clothes as he came closer. He grunted and said, “The same two varmints who tried to hand us a beatin’ earlier.”

“Yeah,” Bo agreed. “Jenkins and Thomas, I think Harding called them.”

“You reckon he sent them back to kill us?”

Bo shrugged. “Could be. Or they might’ve come after us on their own, since we showed them up. You can bet Harding would say he didn’t know anything about them being here, if the law ever called him on it.” Bo’s mouth twisted. “But of course that won’t ever happen, since the only law around here is Harding’s tame star packer.”

Scratch leaned forward to take a closer look. “Both dead, ain’t they?”

“Oh, yeah. Shot through and through.” In fact, spreading blood was forming dark pools around both men.

Bo shook the match out and dropped it as boot heels rang on the boardwalk, hurrying closer. He and Scratch swung around in case they were about to be attacked again, but instead of more bushwhackers, all they saw were curious townsmen, drawn by the flurry of shots. The marshal, Ralston, was in the lead, carrying a lantern.

“What in blazes happened here?” he demanded. He held the lantern higher so that its yellow glow washed over the corpses. “My God! You’ve murdered two of Mr. Harding’s men!”

Gus Hobart, who was in the curious crowd that had emerged from the Buffalo Bar, said sharply, “Don’t even think about trying that, Ralston! Those Texans had barely stepped outside when the shooting started, and the first shots came from the alley over here. They were just defending themselves, and there are a dozen men here who will swear to it!”

Ralston regarded the storekeeper narrowly. “You better watch what you’re sayin’, Hobart. You’re liable to wind up neck-deep in trouble.”

Hobart thrust out his jaw and said, “You know I’ll go along with most anything Tom Harding wants. I’m no fool. But I’ll be damned if I’ll go along with these two men being railroaded for murder when all they were doing was defending themselves from Harding’s hired killers!”

Ralston jerked his head around, nervous as a rabbit as he looked at the townspeople surrounding him. “You’re sure that’s the way it was?” he asked.

“Damn sure,” Hobart responded. He didn’t look like a meek little storekeeper at this moment. Growing a mite of backbone seemed to have straightened him and even made him taller.

Ralston pulled at his chin. “Well, then, I, uh, I reckon I can’t hold you two,” he said to Bo and Scratch. He squared his shoulders in an attempt to regain a little dignity. “But you’re troublemakers, both of you, and I’m damn sure within my rights to tell you to get out of my town! Vamoose and don’t come back!”

Bo saw Scratch stiffening, and knew that the marshal’s words had put a burr under his partner’s saddle. Scratch was stubborn enough to argue with Ralston just on general principles. Instead, Bo put a restraining hand on Scratch’s arm and said, “As a matter of fact, Marshal, we were just about to ride out.”

“We’re still leavin’?” Scratch growled from the corner of his mouth.

“That’s right, we are,” Bo said, his voice as firm as the hand on Scratch’s arm.

After a second, Scratch gave an explosive, disgusted grunt and said, “Fine. I’m sick o’ this place anyway. It’s as unfriendly a burg as I’ve seen in all my borned days.”

As the Texans started toward their horses, Gus Hobart called after them, “You fellas take care. Keep an eye on your back trail, if you know what I mean.”

Bo knew exactly what the storekeeper meant. Harding might not let this lie, even after the deaths of two of his men. That might make him even more determined to exact vengeance on the two drifters who had dared to defy him.

But there was no point in borrowing trouble. Plenty of it came to a man naturally.

Bo rode a rangy dun with a dark stripe down its back, an ugly, nasty-tempered brute that didn’t look like much…but it was a horse that could and would run all day if you asked it to. Scratch’s mount, in keeping with his dandified nature, was a big, handsome bay, the sort of animal that impressed the ladies. But Scratch’s horse, unlike some that were pretty, had just as much sand and grit as Bo’s more unprepossessing mount.

The Texans untied the reins of both animals now from the hitch rail where they had left them upon arriving in the settlement. They had intended to just have a quick drink and then tend to the horses’ needs, stabling them and seeing to it that they were unsaddled, rubbed down, and properly grained and watered, before finding lodging for the night themselves.

Things hadn’t worked out that way, though, and as Bo and Scratch swung up into their saddles, Scratch said, “I sure hate to take these big fellas back out on the trail tonight. They deserve better.”

“Folks don’t always get what they deserve, for good or bad,” Bo said, “and I reckon that applies to horses, too.”

They rode out, heading south. The main street of the town became a narrow road, little more than a path. A wagon could negotiate it, but the driver would have to be careful. The horses had no trouble following it, though.

Around them rose the thickly timbered hills of northern New Mexico Territory. The tang of pine and juniper and sage perfumed the air. Mountains loomed in the distance to both east and west, dark and mysterious in the night. What seemed like at least a million stars glittered in the heavens overhead, casting a silvery illumination over the landscape. A sliver of moon floated in the sky as well. It was a beautiful scene, although the sharp contrast between light and dark gave it a weird, otherworldly aspect as well.

“You think Harding’s gonna come after us?” Scratch asked when they had put a couple of miles between them and the settlement.

“No telling,” Bo said. “He struck me as just arrogant enough, and just mean enough, to do pretty much anything.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I never did like that sort. Thinks he’s better’n ever’body else and likes to be the big boss o’ everything.”

Bo smiled. “You never did care for anybody who thought he was the boss. Reckon that’s why you never spent much time working for wages.”

“Huh,” Scratch said. “I could say the same thing o’ you, Bo Creel. Neither one of us was cut out for toilin’ like regular folks.”

“That’s probably one good reason why we’ve wrapped up in our bedrolls hungry and without a roof over our heads so many nights.”

“And you wouldn’t’a had it any other way. You ain’t foolin’ me.”

“I wouldn’t even try, not after all these years,” Bo declared.

They rode on, and as usual, their keen frontiersmen’s senses were fully at work. Their eyes never stopped roving over the starlit landscape around them, and their ears were wide-open for the sound of hoofbeats pursuing them.

The night was quiet and peaceful, though, and the only sounds were the normal scurrying through the brush of nocturnal creatures, the swish of air as an owl swooped by in search of prey, and the faintly distant, long-drawn-out barking cry of a coyote.

Tom Harding probably knew by now that the Texans had killed two of his men; the cattle baron no doubt had cronies in town who would have ridden out to his ranch immediately to deliver the news to him. If Harding intended to come after Bo and Scratch, though, it appeared he wasn’t going to do it tonight.

As for what the future would bring, there was no way of knowing, but the Texans would mosey across that bridge when they came to it.

Right now they were coming to a patch of shadow that was thrown across the trail by a stand of pines that crowded up alongside it. Bo kept an eye on that swath of darkness, knowing that it would be a good place for danger to lurk. Because of that alertness, he wasn’t surprised when a man suddenly stepped out of the shadows into the trail, blocking their path as he lifted a long, sinister-looking object in his hands.

“Hold it, you two!” the man shouted. “Don’t try anything funny, or I’ll blow you right out of the saddle with this shotgun!”