and stood in the yard, facing their father on the porch. The boys spread out, about five feet apart.
“You a damn lie, you crazy old coot!” Sonny called. “She’s over to Cord’s place. Trapped with the rest of them.”
“Sorry, boys.” Dooley s voice was calm. “But some of ’em busted out and walked into town, carrying the Moab Kid on a stretcher. Now they’s got some townspeople behind’ em and is headin’ back to Cord’s place. Your little game is all shot to hell.”
Sonny, Bud, and Conrad exchanged glances. Seems like everything that had happened the last several days had turned sour.
“Aw, hell, Daddy!” Bud said, forcing a grin. “We knowed you wasn’t in that there bed. We was just a-funnin’ with you, that’s all. It was just a joke that we made up between us.”
“Yeah, Daddy,” Sonny said. “What’s the matter, cain’t you take a joke no more?”
“Lyin’ scum!” Dooley’s words were hard, verbally tossed at his sons. “And you knowed who raped your sister, too, didn’t you?”
The boys stood in the yard, sullen looks on their dirty and unshaved faces.
“So what if we did?” Sonny asked. “It don’t make no difference now, do it?”
A deadly calm had taken Dooley. “No, it doesn’t, Sonny. It’s all over.”
“Whut you mean, Daddy?” Conrad asked. “Whut you fixin’ to do?”
“Something that I’m not very proud of,” the father said. “But it’s something that I have to do.”
Bud was the first to put it together. “You can’t take us, Daddy. You pretty good with a gun, but you slow. So don’t do nothing stupid.”
“The most stupid thing I ever done was not takin’ a horsewhip to you boys’ butts about five times a day, commencin’ when you was just pups. It’s all my fault, but it s done got out of hand. It’s too late. Better this than a hangman’s noose.”
“I think you done slipped your cinches agin, Pa,” his oldest told him. “You best go lay down; git you a bottle of hooch and ponder on this some. ’Cause if you drag iron with us, you shore gonna die this day.”
Dooley shot him. He gave no warning. He had faced men before, and knew what had to be done, so he did it. His slug struck Sonny in the stomach, doubling him over and dropping him to the muddy yard.
Bud grabbed iron and shot his father, the bullet twisting Dooley, almost knocking him off his boots. Dooley dragged his left hand gun and got off a shot, hitting his middle son in the leg and slamming the young man back against the picket fence, tearing down a section of it. The horses at the hitchrail panicked, breaking loose and running from the ugly scene of battle.
Conrad got lead in his father before the man turned his guns loose on his youngest boy. Conrad felt a double hammer-blow slam into his belly, the lead twisting and ripping. He began screaming and cursing the man who had fathered him. Raising his gun, the boy shot his father in the belly.
But still Dooley would not go down.
Blood streaming from his chest and face, the crazed man took another round from his second son. Dooley raised his pistol and shot the young man between the eyes.
As the light began to dim in Dooley’s eyes, he stumbled from the porch and fell to the muddy earth. He picked up one of Sonny’s guns just as the gut-shot boy eared back the hammer on his Colt and shot his father in the belly. Dooley jammed the pistol into the young man’s chest and emptied it. coming
Dooley fell back, the sounds of the pale rider’s horse coming closer.
“Daddy!” Conrad called, his words very dim. “Help me, Daddy. It hurts so bad!”
The ghost rider galloped up just in time to see Dooley stretch his arm out and close his fingers around Conrad’s hand. “We’ll ride out together, boy.”
The pale rider tossed his shroud.
Twenty-Nine
“They’re pullin’ out!” Lujan yelled from the loft.
Smoke was up and running for his horse as the men streamed out of the bunkhouse, all heading for the barn.
“Why?” Reno asked.
“That damn crazy Del led ’em into town!” Cord said, grinning. “We got help on the way. Bet on it.”
In the saddle, Smoke said, “That means the town is gonna get hit. That’s the only thing I can figure out of this move.”
“Let’s go, boys!” Cord yelled the orders. “They’ll hit that town like an army.”
The men waited for a few minutes, to be sure the outlaws had really pulled out, then mounted up and headed for town. They met the rescue party halfway between the ranch and Gibson.
Smoke quickly explained and the men tore out for Gibson.
“There she is, boys,” Lanny pointed toward the fast-growing town. “We hit them hard, fast, grab the money, and get gone.
“I gotta have me a woman,” one of Cat Jennings’s men said. “I can’t stand it no more.”
“Mills,” Cat said disgustedly. “You best start thinkin’ with your brain instead of that other part. You can always find you a woman.”
“A woman,” Mills said, his eyes bright with his inner cruelty.
