your chain, Reno?”
“Nope,” Reno answered easily.
“You gonna fight Sissy-pants battles for him?”
“Nope.”
“You ready to die, Sissy-pants?”
“Oh, I think not.” Parnell had turned, facing the man, his right hand hovering near the butt of the holstered sawed-off. “But I do have a question?”
“Ax it!”
“What is your name?”
“Readon. What’s it to you?”
“I just wondered what to have carved on the marker over your grave.”
“Draw, damn your eyes!” the man shouted, and grabbed for his six-gun.
Parnell was calm and quick. Up came the awesome weapon, the right side hammer eared back. Across went his left hand in a practiced move, gripping the short barrels. The range was no more than twelve feet and the booming was enormous in the beery, smoky room. The ball-bearings and rusty nails and ragged rocks hit the gunhand in the belly and lifted him off his boots while the charge was tearing him apart. He landed on a table several feet away from where he had been standing, smearing the tabletop with crimson and collapsing the table. He had never even cleared leather.
The hurdy-gurdy girls began squalling like hogs caught in barbed wire and ran from the room, their short dresstails flapping as they ran.
Parnell, seeing that no one was going to immediately take up the fight, but sensing that was only seconds away, broke open the shotgun pistol and tossed aside the empty, loading it up full. He snapped it shut and eared back both hammers.
The gunhand Smoke had first seen at that little store down on the Boulder stood up. “Me and Readon had become pals, Jensen,” Dunlap said. “You a friend of that shotgun-toter, so that makes you my enemy. I think I’ll just kill you.”
He grabbed for his guns.
Smoke shot Dunlap in the chest just as his hands gripped the butts of his guns. Dunlap looked puzzled for a moment, coughed up blood, and sat down in the chair he should never have gotten out of. He slowly put his head on the tabletop and sighed as that now-familiar ghost rider came galloping up, took look around, and grinned in a macabre fashion. He decided to stick around. Things were quite lively in this little town.
The ghost rider put a bony hand on another’s shoulder as half the men in the barroom grabbed for iron and Lujan shot one between the eyes.
Mulroony jumped behind the bar and landed on top of the barkeep who was already on the floor. He’d been a bartender in too many western towns not to know where the safest place was.
Parnell’s sawed-off shotgun-pistol roared again, the charge knocking two gunnies to the floor. Johnny picked that time to make his move. Just as he was reaching for his guns, Parnell stepped the short distance as he was reversing the weapon. Using it like a club, he hit Johnny in the mouth. Teeth flew in several directions and Johnny was out cold. Parnell dropped to the floor and once more loaded up.
The Reno Kid was crouched by the bar, coolly and carefully picking his shots.
Charlie had dropped two before a bullet took him in the shoulder and slammed him against the bar. He did a fast border-roll with his six-gun and kept on banging. When his gun was empty, Lujan grabbed the older man and literally slung him over the bar, out of the line of fire.
The Moab Kid took a round in the leg and the leg buckled under him, dropping him to the floor, his face twisted in pain.
But it was Parnell who was dishing out the most death and destruction. Firing and loading as fast as he could, the schoolteacher did the most to clear out the room and end the fighting.
The gunnies and tinhorns gave it up, one by one dropping their still-smoking six-guns and raising their hands in the air. Cord, Del, Ring, and Cal stepped through the batwings, pistols drawn and cocked, Ring with his double- barrel express gun.
“Get Doc Adair,” Smoke said, his voice husky from the thick gunsmoke in the saloon.
Cal was gone at a bow-legged trot to fetch the doctor.
Lujan helped Charlie to a chair. The front of the old gunslinger’s shirt was soaked with blood.
“Did I get the old bassard?” a gunhawk moaned the question from the floor. He had taken half a dozen rounds in the chest and stomach and death was standing over him, ready to take him where the fires were hot and the company not the best.
“You got lead in me,” Charlie admitted. “But I’m a long ways from accompanyin’ you.”
“If not today, then some other time. So I’ll see you in hell, Starr,” the gunny grinned the words, his mouth bloody. He started to add something but the words would not form on his tongue. His eyes rolled back in his head and he mounted up behind the ghost rider.
Smoke had reloaded. He stood by the bar, his hands full of Colts, his eyes watching the gunnies who had chosen to give up the fight.
Johnny moaned on the floor and rolled over on his stomach, one hand holding his busted mouth. The other hand went to his right hand gun. But it was gone.
“Are you looking for these?” Parnell asked, holding out the punk’s guns in his left hand. His right hand was full of twelve gauge sawed-off blaster.
