“Come back here, you cowards!” Potter screamed.
“Let them go,” Richards said calmly. “Nobody fire at them.”
His partners looked at him strangely.
“It’s over,” Richards said. “We’re walking-around dead men and don’t even know it.”
“What do you mean?” Stratton’s scream was tinted with hysteria.
“Look,” Richards said, pointing toward his ranch house.
A huge cloud of black smoke was filling the air.
“The PSR house!” Reese yelled.
“Yeah,” Richards said. He smiled. “And you can bet my darling Janey has taken all the cash in the house— which was considerable; she’d need a pack animal to carry it off—and is gone. Her brother wouldn’t kill her.”
“Well, you’re taking it damned calm,” Potter said.
“No reason to get upset. What is done is done.”
One of the dying gunhawks on the ground moaned.
“Hosses comin’ at us,” a gunnie said. “Holy crap!” he yelled. “We’re being charged!”
Deadlead and Matt were in the middle of the riders before the gunhands could really believe it was all taking place. With the reins in their teeth and their fists wrapped about the butts of .44s and .45s, the old mountain men emptied their pistols and had shucked their rifles before anyone else could fire a shot. Richards had trotted his horse off a few hundred yards and was sitting quietly, watching it all, Potter and Stratton with him. Stratton’s face was ashen, his hands trembled, his once fine clothes were torn and dirty.
Eight more riders had joined the four on the ground before the mountain men were blasted from their saddles. Matt rose to his boots, roaring as his blood poured from his wounds.
“Somebody kill that damned nigger!” a gunslick yelled.
Matt shot the man between the eyes with a pistol he’d grabbed from off the ground.
Deadlead jerked a gunhawk off his horse and snapped his neck as easily as wringing the neck of a chicken.
Twenty guns roared. The riddled bodies of the mountain men fell to the already-blood-soaked dust.
Deadlead lifted his bloody head and looked at Sheriff Dan Reese. “Thank you, boys.” He fell to the ground, dead, beside his lifelong friend.
“He
“If you don’t understand,” Richards said, “there is no point in my trying to explain it to you.” He looked around him. “Long! Take a couple of boys. Get over to that woman’s cabin Sam is sweet on. Kill her and them snot-nosed brats.”
“With pleasure,” the short, stocky gunhand said with a grin. “I just might get me a taste of that gal ’fore I do.”
“Your option,” Richards said.
Long took Deputy Weathers and rode toward the nester cabin. They were, despite all that had happened, in high spirits. Becky was a one fine-lookin’ piece of woman. They rode arrogantly into the front yard, scattering chickens and trampling the flower garden.
“You in the house!” Long called. “Get your tail out here, woman.”
The door opened and Nighthawk stepped out, his big hands wrapped around .44s. He blew Long and Weathers clean out of their saddles. He tied the dead men to the saddles and slapped the horses on the rump, sending them home.
“Those two won’t bother me again,” Becky said.
“Ummm,” Nighthawk replied.
23
The ever-shrinking band of outlaws and gunhands looked toward the west. Another cloud of black smoke filled the air.
Lansing began cursing. “How in the hell are them old men doin’ it?” he yelled. “We’re fightin’ a damned bunch of ghosts.”
“Are you stayin’ or leavin’?” Stratton asked.
“Might as well see it through,” the man said bitterly. Those were the last words he would speak on this earth. A Sharps barked, the big slug taking the rancher in the center of his chest, knocking him spinning from his saddle.
“I’ve had it!” a gunhand said. He spun his horse and rode away. A dozen followed him. No one tried to stop them.
“Look all around us,” Brown said.
The men looked. A mile away, in a semicircle, ten mountain men sat their ponies. As if on signal, the old mountain men lifted their rifles high above their heads.
