Читать книгу A Knife in the Heart - William W. Johnstone - Страница 13

CHAPTER SEVEN

Fallon brought the match down and stuck the tip against Whit’s throat.

The punk yelped, and Fallon slammed the palm of his left hand against the kid’s jaw, then slid the forearm past his neck to the crook of his arm. Twisting, Fallon pulled Whit against his body. The shotgun clopped onto the wooden planks, and Fallon used his right hand to reach down, found a belted revolver, and he pulled it, thumbed back the hammer, and saw Mabry turning around, cursing.

The .45 bucked in Fallon’s hand, and crimson exploded from the gray vest the outlaw wore, just above his waistband. Two of the men were already mounted, and as Mabry twisted from the impact of a lead slug in his belly, he triggered the Winchester, the bullet splintering the post of the hitching rail. That sent the horses screaming and the two already carrying riders bucking.

Mabry was down on a knee, head bent, blood pouring from his mouth. The one who had been pretending to cinch the horses ran toward Fallon, pulling a double-action Smith & Wesson from his holster and dropping his Winchester.

“Nooooo!” Whit tried to scream, and Fallon shoved him toward the duster-wearing horse holder as the .44 bucked three times, turning Whit around, and another slug shattered his spine. Fallon was diving now, triggering the Colt, hitting the horse holder in the shoulder and sending him stumbling into the street. Two of the horses had broken their tethers and stormed down the street. Fallon landed, came up to his knees, grabbed the shotgun, and eared back the hammers.

A bullet tore through the crown of his hat, knocking it off. Fallon caught a glimpse of one of the men shooting recklessly from the saddle of his bucking horse. He saw the other had managed to get his horse under control. That’s the one Fallon drew a bead on and touched one of the triggers to the scattergun. The man was blown out of the saddle, his arm slamming the other rider somehow in the face, and sending him crashing to the pavement. Then both men disappeared underneath horseflesh and the acrid, biting white smoke from the shotgun. The horses ran, the one belonging to the man Fallon had killed heading up the street, toward the courthouse, leaving a bloody corpse on the pavement. The other horse, a black Thoroughbred, galloped the other way, out of town, dragging its rider—his left foot hung up in the stirrup—behind him for two blocks, leaving a trail of blood and gore until the socked foot slipped out of the boot, and deposited another dead man in front of Blessingame’s Funeral Parlor.

Fallon sat up, bracing his back against the wall of the Stockgrowers’ bank. A bullet splintered the wood inches from Fallon, and fragments of wood stung his face. That would be from the man in the slicker, across the street. Fallon had one round left in the shotgun, but buckshot wouldn’t travel that far. Fallon looked at the rifle that Mabry had carried, contemplated his chances of getting it. Two bullets hit the wood then, one shattering the window and another tearing a whole in the left sleeve of Fallon’s expensive coat. Fallon saw the horse holder, standing, aiming, touching the trigger of his Smith & Wesson, realizing it was empty, and pulling another gun from a second holster. The man across the street fired again, but his bullet dug a furrow into the boardwalk. Fallon triggered the shotgun again and saw the horse holder catapulted four feet into the street.

He rolled over then, tossing the shotgun away, grabbing the Winchester, and diving as far as he could. Another bullet whined off the street. Fallon saw the man, halfway in the street, levering the rifle. Fallon came up and dived again, this time landing behind the water trough in front of the grocery next door to the bank. A bullet tore through the heavy wood, showering Fallon with water. He rolled onto his back, levered a round into Mabry’s .44-40, and caught his breath.

The lookout in the slicker fired again. The plate glass window to the grocery shattered.

Fallon swallowed, tried to figure out his best action. Which side to go to or come up over the top.

Then, a woman’s voice cried out, “You gol-dern hoodlum. Take this.”

What sounded like a cannon roared, and then all Fallon heard were the shrieks of men and women, and someone ringing a fire bell, and horses and feet clattering down the boardwalks and on Cheyenne’s paved streets of its main business district.

Fallon used Mabry’s rifle to push himself up, and he saw the man in the rain slicker lying spread-eagled on the street. Fifteen feet away, in front of the saloon, stood the owner of the saloon, red-headed and rouge-faced Ma Recknor, holding a smoking Greener shotgun in her hands, her yellow teeth clamped on her favorite brand of cheroot.

“Want a drink, Marshal?” Ma Recknor called out. “It’s on the house.”

Fallon tried to say, “no thanks,” but nothing came out. He shook his head instead. “If you change your mind, I’ll be having mine,” Ma said, and pushed her way through the batwing doors.

He reached for his hat that wasn’t there, leaned Mabry’s rifle against the water trough, picked up his hat, stuck a finger through one of the holes the bullet had made, and examined the carnage.

Mabry was dead on the boardwalk. Three feet away lay Whit in a pool of blood. Two men were crumpled on the street in front of the bank. A trail of blood and brain matter on the stones led to the corpse in front of the funeral parlor, and the sixth was blown to pieces in front of the saloon.

What was that question one of the kids had asked at the Abraham Lincoln Academy? What had Fallon thought about answering, “I’ve never killed any man as a United States marshal”? . . . Well, that couldn’t be his answer from here on out.

* * *

The city’s street department was busy at work cleaning up the carnage. Chief of Police Derrick McGruder snuffed out his cigarette on the splintered hitching rail in front of the bank and asked, “Harry, how the hell could you kill all six of these outlaws and wind up with just a scratch on your cheek?”

Fallon sipped the coffee the banker had brought him.

“Ma killed the one across the street,” Fallon told him. “Not me. I didn’t kill the one the horse dragged to death, either. The fellow I blasted with the shotgun accidentally knocked him out of the saddle. The kid there, ripped to pieces with that Smith & Wesson, he got killed by his pard, but I guess I killed his pard.”

“So three men instead of six?”

Fallon swallowed. “Hell, Derrick, I don’t know. It happened so fast.”

A deputy held a Pinkerton National Detective Agency description to Mabry’s face, and looked at McGruder. “It fits Big Burl Mabry to a T, Sheriff. Man, this’ll be something to tell my wife about tonight.”

“Speaking of which,” Fallon said, “can you send someone over to my house, let Christina know I’m all right?”

“Your wife shouldn’t be worried, Harry,” McGruder said. “This wasn’t a job for the U.S. marshal.”

“Any gunfight, Christina will likely figure I’m in the thick of it.” He smiled without humor.

“Richard, go over to the marshal’s house. Tell Mrs. Fallon that her husband is fine, that there’s no danger, that everything’s all right.”

“Should I tell her everything?” the deputy asked as he rose and handed the Pinkerton paper to his boss.

McGruder looked at Fallon, who hooked a thumb toward the Cheyenne reporters running all over the street, talking to witnesses. “She’ll find out soon enough.”

“You heard him,” McGruder told the deputy, and added, “But tell her she has permission to shoot any newspaper reporter in the buttocks if they bother her.”

The deputy was gone. McGruder shoved his hands into his pockets and shook his head. “There will be a coroner’s inquest, you know. But I can assure you it’ll end there. You’ll be due some reward money, too.”

“No,” Fallon said. “Give it to Ma Recknor. Hadn’t been for her, I’d be among the dead, too, most likely.”

“Hell of a thing,” McGruder said.

“Hell of a thing,” Fallon agreed. “You done with me? I need to get back to work.”

“Work?” McGruder laughed. “Harry, you’re a wonder. I was thinking if it’s too early to drink.”

Fallon tilted his head across the street. “Ma’s buying. Have one for me.” He shook McGruder’s hand and headed toward the courthouse.