Jerry patted his belly. 'I know!'
'Going to get serious, Jer?'
'I don't know. Maybe. Luckily we're both adults, and have been up and down the road a time or two. It isn't something new to either of us. So we're cautious.' Jerry paused and looked at the wagons that had just rolled into town. 'What the devil are those wagons doing, Frank? Looks to me like they're going to block both ends of Main Street. My God, they _are_ blocking both ends.'
Frank looked first at one end of the street, then the other. The wagons were not long enough to completely block off the wide streets, even with the teams, but it looked as if they were sure going to cause some major problems for other wagons trying to get past.
'Frank, they're folding back the canvas on both wagons. Heck, maybe it's some sort of circus come to town, or some minstrel show. You reckon?'
'I don't know what's going on, Jer. But I damn sure intend to find out.'
'I'll take this end,' Jerry said, pointing. 'You take the other.'
'Marshal Morgan,' Jiggs said, walking up. 'What in the world is happening? Those wagons are blocking the street. That can't be allowed.'
'We were just about to straighten out this mess, Jiggs.'
'I swear, Marshal, some people have no consideration for others, do they?'
Before Frank could reply, Jerry said, 'Frank, what is that machinery those guys are uncovering? I never seen no minin' equipment that looked like that.'
Frank looked and felt cold sweat break out on his face. He blinked, thinking he was surely mistaken. He stared. No doubt about it: his first look was correct. 'Those are Gatling guns, Jer!'
'Gatling guns?' Jiggs blurted. 'Good God! Are you joking?' He stared at first one wagon, then another. 'By the Lord, you're right, Marshal. What are those people going to do? Put on some sort of a demonstration?'
A couple of seconds after Jiggs asked his question, a tremendous explosion rocked the town. A huge cloud of dust enveloped the road leading out of the main street and up to the mines. The immense explosion was so powerful it cracked windows and sent some people stumbling off the boardwalk and into the street.
'The road's blocked!' an excited man yelled from the other end of the street a few seconds after the explosion. Then he started coughing when the enormous cloud of dust began settling over the main part of town, covering everything.
The men in the wagons began cranking the Gatling guns, and lead started flying all up and down Main Street. Several men and women were hit and knocked spinning by the gunfire.
Pistol fire joined the rapid fire from the Gatling guns.
On his belly on the boardwalk, Frank watched as half a dozen men, all carrying guns and cloth bags, entered the bank.
'Bank robbery!' Frank yelled, and rolled off the boardwalk and into the street just as the carriage from the Browning estate turned onto the main street from a side street. Frank could do nothing except stare in horror as a dozen rounds of lead raked the carriage. Vivian was knocked out of the carriage to lie still and bloody in the dirt.
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*Twenty-one*
Frank snapped off a lucky shot that hit the gunner in one of the wagons in the shoulder, knocking him back. But in a heartbeat another man had taken his place and was cranking out the lead, spraying death in all directions. Frank tried to get up and make his way to Vivian, but the intense fire from the Gatling guns forced him back. He crawled behind a water trough as the bullets howled and whistled all around him.
Frank glanced over to where he'd last seen Jerry. The deputy was apparently all right, and had taken shelter in a store, returning the gunfire as best he could whenever the hail of bullets ceased for a few seconds. All the stores up and down the street, on both sides, were missing windows. The wounded were moaning, and many were crying out for help. There were men and women and a few children among them.
One of the bank clerks staggered out of the bank, his chest bloody, and fell facedown on the boardwalk. A young child, a girl, sat in the dirt beside her fallen mother and cried. Many of the horses that had been tied at hitch rails in front of various stores had broken loose and bolted. Others were badly wounded, screaming and thrashing on the ground, unable to get up because of their grievous wounds.
While the gunners were changing magazines on the Gatlings, Frank dropped one of the outlaws, who was exiting the bank with a bagful of money. Frank shot him twice, once in the belly, once in the chest, ending the man's outlawing days forever.
Jerry shot another one leaving the bank, shot him in the throat with a hurry-up shot. The .45 round almost took the man's head off. He fell back against the front of the bank building and lay kicking and jerking and trying to push words out of his ruined throat, the bag of money beside him forgotten in his horrible agony.
Frank rolled away from the trough and under the raised boardwalk, squirming his way a few yards closer to one of the death wagons. He shot the gunner in the head just as another charge of dynamite was lit and tossed. The barber shop exploded in a mass of splintered wood and broken glass. The peppermint-painted barber pole was blown a hundred feet into the air. It came down in the alley behind the barber shop and landed on the slant roof of a privy, crashing through and almost conking a man on the head who had taken refuge in there. He jumped out of the privy and took off, running toward the edge of town.
The main street was once more covered in dust and smoke and confusion. The Gatling guns resumed their spitting out of misery and destruction. Frank nailed another outlaw coming out of the bank, his shots turning the robber around and around in a macabre dance on the boardwalk. He dropped his bulging sack of money just before he slumped to the street and died beside the bag of money that cost him his life.
Frank heard a shotgun boom inside the bank, and an outlaw was knocked through the big front window, dead from the shotgun blast before he hit the boardwalk.
