“Boss!” one of Jud’s bodyguards said, pulling up and pointing to the tiny figure sitting amid the wildflowers in the meadow.
Jud squinted his eyes and an evil smile turned his mouth. His lips were suddenly dry and he licked them as all sorts of wild, lustful and immoral thoughts, all involving Doreen and himself, raced feverishly around in his brain.
“Get her!” Jud ordered. “I’ll have that woman. She’ll come around. She’ll learn to love me. I’ll make her my queen!”
The bodyguards spurred their horses.
Doreen looked up at the sounds of pounding hooves, fear in her eyes. She jumped to her feet, her heart racing. She dropped the basket of wildflowers and began running just as Susie and Alan were beginning the long walk to the meadow.
Alan took stock of the situation quickly. He jerked Susie to the ground, knowing that he could not shoot—the distance was far too great. And there was no point in them being spotted and taken prisoner—or worse. At least for Susie.
All they could do was lie amid the flowers and watch.
Doreen ran for her life, screaming as she ran. Strong and hard hands jerked her off the ground and swung her across a saddle. She felt the horse turn and gallop back across the meadow. The horse slowed, then stopped, and she was dumped to the ground. She looked up into the hard eyes of Jud Vale.
“My queen,” the rancher said. “You’ll be my queen; you’ll reign by my side. Together we’ll rule this whole country.”
“You’re crazy!” Doreen hissed at him. “You’re plumb loco!”
Jud laughed at her as his eyes roamed over her young body. “Hoist her up here, boys. I want me a handful of that woman.”
Doreen began screaming.
Cheyenne had wheeled his horse to face the Bar V gun hands. The old gunfighter’s face was hard, his eyes narrowed to obsidian slits. He looked straight at Don Draper. “What the hell are you and this bag of crap ridin’ with you doin’ on Box T range, Draper?”
“For a skinny old man, Cheyenne, you got a big fat mouth, you know that?”
“And for a punk, Draper, you’re ’way over your head and outclassed facin’ me, you know that?”
Draper flushed. “Anytime you’re ready, Cheyenne. Then me and the boys will take that kid and have some fun with him.”
“You’ll visit the privy ever’ day if you eat regular,” Cheyenne popped back. “And you ought to, ’cause you shore full of it.”
Draper’s face darkened further at that remark. But still he hesitated, as did Davy Street. Cheyenne was known throughout the West as an old He-Coon who had never backed down from anybody or anything at anytime. If the truth be known. Cheyenne had killed as many men, or more, as Smoke Jensen or John Wesley or Rowdy Joe or Tom Horn—and maybe as many as all of them combined.
Old he might be, but Cheyenne was still a man not to be taken lightly.
It was an old man and a young lad that faced the eight Bar V gun hands that hot morning, but the smell of fear was coming from the so-called gun slicks, not from Cheyenne or Matthew.
“You’re a fool, Cheyenne!” Draper spoke, stalling for time.
“Naw,” the old gunfighter said, amused at the man’s reluctance to drag iron, bu t at the same time worried about Matthew. “I’m just an old man who’s lived a long, long time, that’s all. Now I’m ready to see the varmint and rest for a time.”
“We gonna kill you and this snot-nosed brat!” a gun hand sneered at him, cutting his shifty eyes to the bespectacled Matthew.
The boy waited, his right hand close to his six gun.
“You might,” Cheyenne admitted. “But they’s gonna be a fearful toll taken on you boys whilst doin’ it.”
“You say!” the gun slick said.
“I say,” Cheyenne replied calmly. He had faced this a hundred or more times, and he knew the time was now. This was the entire world. No one else existed. This little pocket was all there was. Time had stopped. Eternity was looking them all in the eyes.
“Now!” Davy yelled, grabbing for his gun.
Cheyenne drew, cocked, and fired, all in one smooth and practiced motion, blowing Davy out of the saddle, the slug taking the man in the center of the chest and knocking him backward.
Don jerked iron and fired, the slug striking Cheyenne in the side. Cheyenne leveled his long-barreled pistol and fired just as Matthew’s Peacemaker barked. One slug struck Don in the belly, the other one took him in the chest, the bullet nicking his heart. He stayed in the saddle, one dead hand still holding onto the reins.
A Bar V gun blasted the smoky air, the bullet passing through Cheyenne’s lungs. Cheyenne grinned a bloody smile and put a slug between the man’s eyes as he was sliding from the saddle. The old gunfighter fell to the ground, on his knees just as Matthew put hot lead into the Bar V hand’s stomach.
Cheyenne managed to lift his six gun and drill another hired gun before that pale rider came galloping up to touch him on the shoulder.
The old mountain man and gunfighter died on his knees, still wearing his hat and boots and holding onto his six gun.
