TEN
Somebody else fired on them from the end of the stable. A length of corral fence was joined to the building there, and drying hides were hanging over the rails. They provided cover for somebody who was taking snapshots, and moving before there could be a reply.
One outlaw down then, three located in or near the livery stable, and three others to find.
Bobcat stayed at the near corner of the log cabin to keep the stable covered, while Johnnie moved on again. By racing around two sides of the cabin, he expected to come to where he would be able to see along the back of the stable. Around the first corner, however, he came face to face with one of the outlaws coming the other way. It was the man they had spoken to in the saloon doorway.
He fired at Johnnie point-blank. The bullet brushed hot over Johnnie’s left shoulder, and in passing seemed to snap some hidden cord that was holding Johnnie back. Johnnie’s first shot blasted the fellow backwards, and before the man could fire again, Johnnie did so, a coolly aimed shot which smashed the man’s chest in.
A second outlaw was behind him, revealed as the first went down. This next man had been unable to fire because of his friend in the way, and then left it too long when he did get a clear sight.
Johnnie, on the other hand, his doubts gone, just kept squeezing the shots away, and as the front man sank to the ground, Johnnie’s third and fourth shots thumped into the man behind.
The unexpected shot which came next was from further away. All Johnnie saw was gunsmoke drifting from behind a tent some distance to his left. He put lead that way just to discourage the marksman, and beat a hasty retreat back around the corner of the cabin.
Metal cartridge cases meant that he was quickly able to reload the five chambers out of six he had emptied from the Lefancheaux. His new Remington was still in reserve fully loaded.
Hoping that the opposition wouldn’t be expecting him to appear again so quickly, Johnnie burst from the shelter of the building, and legged it rapidly for the tent the last shot had come from. Nobody was there.
The grassy meadow beyond sloped away toward the river. A terrace edge hid some of the middle ground, but further down was more grass on the river flats, and there most of the runaway horses were milling nervously in two groups. Dusky led one band. The flea-bitten grey, now without its length of railing, was prominent in the other.
One of the enemy was somewhere down there below the terrace. It was the only direction the man behind the tent could have taken. Three more were still around the stable. Those three seemed to be the immediate danger to Mary-Lou, so Johnnie went back to his original intention of trying to outflank them.
Mary-Lou, meanwhile, was doing quite well at looking after herself. She had worked out that only one of the outlaws was in a position to fire in her direction, the one inside the stable, and he could only fire through the open stable door.
‘Can you fire in there too high to hit any of the horses, but low enough to make that fellow keep his head down?’ she asked Danny.
‘No,’ Danny replied promptly, ‘not if you’re planning to make a dash over there to get alongside the stable. You do the covering fire, and I’ll go over there.’
The man hiding in the stable wasn’t as green as they hoped. Mary-Lou emptied her revolver, all five shots, through the stable doors, only to cause the man to lie prone for his return fire. It caught Danny in the legs, as he raced for the blind side of the stable; the right thigh, and again in the calf of his left leg. To add to his troubles, Danny knocked himself senseless by cannoning full tilt into the stable wall, and finished up in a bleeding heap at the bottom of it, fortunately hidden from within.
Mary-Lou felt dreadfully guilty. The idea had been hers, but Danny had paid the price of it. That he had agreed with the idea was, to her, beside the point.
From the other end of her building Little Hawk was keeping busy the two rustlers behind the stable. Bobcat was helping him from the next building along.
Peeping around her corner, Mary-Lou could see that the outlaw inside the stable was angling for a view of where Danny had got to. It seemed that the man wasn’t aware of the effects of his shooting, and wasn’t happy about having Danny so close, and yet out of his sight. Quickly she closed up her revolver, with only one chamber reloaded, and snapped a quick shot at him.
She heard him yelp. He couldn’t have been hurt too badly all the same, for he whipped one back at her just as fast.
Six, she thought, he has fired six. We are both empty.
Rapidly she pushed home fresh percussion caps, and rammed the measures of powder down on top of them, hoping that she was working faster than the outlaw. Would he stop to fill all six chambers? Six to her five?
She risked a peep around the corner.
He was right by the stable door, seeking the light to work by, only half-hidden by the near jamb. The gun he held was a Remington, like Johnnie’s new one. His cylinder was in his left hand, while he squeezed tightly fitting lead into the chambers. Even as she closed her own weapon, he began to mount the cylinder back into his. She was ahead of him!
Her initial shot ripped through his sleeve, and, shocked, he dropped the cylinder. It hit the ground, and rolled out into the open.
Desperately, he lurched after it, his now useless gun in his right hand.
Mary-Lou bolted into the open to meet him. They were both still out of sight of the men behind the stable.
‘Drop it!’ she yelled at him.
He glanced at her, sneering, but kept reaching for the dropped cylinder.
Mary-Lou fired at the groping hand. Blood sprayed away from the back of it.
He reared back, gasping.
Mary-Lou stopped two yards from him, beyond his reach, her gun pointed right in his face.
‘You want to live?’ she demanded.
He looked at her, surprised more than anything.
There was no sneer on his face any more though.
‘You people killed my husband,’ she said. ‘I’d as lief kill you. Drop it!’
He let the useless gun fall from his hand. She meant what she said, and now he knew it.
‘Now follow me over here,’ she ordered, backing away from him. ‘Just keep that distance.’ She had no intention of allowing him to lay his hands on her.
It was a relief for her to get back into the cover of the adobe building again. The other two gunmen were still firing the other way from their end of the stable, and one of them could come around to see what was happening at any time. Sooner or later they’d realize that their companion had stopped firing.
‘Keep coming.’
The outlaw trailed unhappily after her, as she drew him around behind the building, the first corner, and then the next, while she sought one of her own people to support her. She had left her post undefended, and she also wanted to get back to it to keep some sort of watch over Danny’s unconcious body.
Little Hawk was lying on the ground at the next corner. Beyond him, behind the corner of the next building, the log cabin, was Bobcat.
‘Little Hawk,’ she asked, ‘can you keep a watch on this fellow, while I go back for Danny? He’s been shot.’
There was no reply from Little Hawk. He continued to lie there, his head at the corner, not responding to her.
‘Send your prisoner here,’ Bobcat called to her.
‘You heard,’ she reiterated. ‘Get yourself over there to my friend.’
She backed away with her gun still on the outlaw, but giving Bobcat a clear sight of him also. The fellow gave her a dirty look, and then surveyed the gap between the two buildings. When he crossed it, his friends by the stable would be able to see him.
‘Get moving!’ she snapped.
He scuttled rapidly across the open, hands high, hoping that would stop his friends from firing blindly at the movement before they recognized him.
He needn’t have worried.
Johnnie, by then, had reached a position which allowed him to see along the back of the livery stable. The man lying be
hind the corral fence was partly obscured by a bundle of hides, but his companion was in plain sight at the rear of the stable. Johnnie aimed carefully at the easier target, and fired twice, then a third time, but it was the second bullet that did the damage, whacking into the man’s neck to splatter the rough planks with blood and splintered bone.
The one on the ground rolled promptly under the corral fence, and came up firing at Johnnie, who emptied the Lefancheaux at him, both of them missing every time.
Not so Mary-Lou. She had a view through the railings of the corral, and knew that the gunman had to be firing at Johnnie. One of her bullets hit him as he stood. Another took him under the chin even while he was falling away from her. Then her gun was empty again.
Hooves were pounding. Somebody was galloping their way, coming fast. Johnnie whirled about, reaching for the Remington with his left hand, while he shucked the Lefancheaux with his right. A bullet whirred past his head, another, and still another.
It was the man in grey. The horse he rode was the flea-bitten grey, and a second followed on a halter. Flipping the loaded revolver into his right hand, Johnnie tried to hit the man, without hitting either of the horses. That, of course, just made him fire high. It was enough, though, to make the rider swerve away, and spoil his aim for his next shot.
He thundered by on the other side of the tent, and disappeared around the back of the log cabin.
When he came around to the other side, Mary-Lou suddenly found him looming over her. She looked him full in the face. His gun started to come down towards her, while hers was still open in her hands, nothing but the percussion caps as yet in the chambers.
Bobcat too had an empty gun. All he could do was yell, and he did, high-pitched, blood curdling, trying to attract the gunman’s fire away from Mary-Lou. The bullet meant for Mary-Lou went his way instead, missing him by scant inches.
Johnnie once more had a view, but had to fire over Mary-Lou’s head. Again his fire went high. Even so, it threw the grey man off his aim for nis next shot, and caused him to look about for the source of the fire directed at him.
Mary-Lou’s captive saw a chance. He lowered his hands, and dived for the spare horse his leader had in tow. It was a good try, but he missed. The horses were going too fast for him. His hands did no more than brush the rump of the led horse.
The man in grey looked back as he galloped away, gun in his right hand; in his left the reins of the spare horse. His man stood bereft, appalled, calling desperately for help. The rider had one shot left. It blew a shower of spilled brains from the head of the abandoned outlaw.
Mary-Lou sank to her knees, and vomited in the dust.
When Johnnie reached her, coming to crouch beside her, he too was shaking like a leaf.
The man in grey kept on going. Their last glimpse of him was when he rounded the end of the spur where the trail came in from the east.