him at times like this, when all reason and concern for his personal safety were discarded. All that mattered now was killing, silencing the gun on the hilltop… and he was sure there would be more guns out there, waiting for their opportunity to arrive.
Boyd Johnson knew he’d missed. “It was that damn fence,” he whispered to his brother Lee. “I’ll git the sumbitch next time, soon as he shows hisself.”
A rifle cracked from a hilltop north of the ranch, and then a chorus of gunfire erupted from every direction. Answering guns thundered from barns and hay sheds and deep shadows all across the ranch headquarters.
“They was expectin’ us!” Lee shouted above the roar of so many guns.
“Shut up, little brother!” Boyd snapped. “You’s gonna tell that bastard right where we is!”
Boyd waited, aiming down at the fence where he’d last seen the big fellow, bare-chested, wearing buckskin leggings. “That was him,” he muttered angrily. “I had the sumbitch dead in my sights till he come to that goddamn fence. I know one thing fer sure ’bout this Jensen feller—he’s damn sure lucky, or he’d be dead as a pig right now.”
The crackle of exploding rifles filled the night with sound, making Boyd uneasy. It helped to have keen hearing when a man was stalking about in the dark with a gun, but gunfire was drowning out every other noise, making it impossible to hear footsteps, the snap of a twig, or the brush of grasses against a man’s boots.
“How come you ain’t shootin’, Boyd?” Lee asked, as minutes dragged by without Boyd firing a shot, which caused Lee to keep his gun silent too.
“Nothin’ to shoot at yet,” Boyd answered. “No sense in lettin’ ’em know where we are till we got us a target we know we can hit. Let them others waste ammunition. Remember what Pa told us when we was kids huntin’ squirrels—Make every shot count, ’cause gunpowder an’ shot is expensive.” Scanning the spot where he’d last seen the gent he believed to be Jensen, it was hard to figure where such a big feller could be hiding.
Something tapped him on the sole of his right boot, and Boyd whirled around, focusing his lone functioning eye on the outline of a bare-chested man holding a pair of pistols. “How the hell did you… ?” he exclaimed, as both six- guns belched stabbing fingers of yellow flame.
Something cracked against Boyd’s forehead, slamming his head to the ground with the force of a mule’s kick. He heard Lee let out a scream as lightning bolts of pain shot through his skull in great waves. His vision blurred as he caught a glimpse of the man who had shot him and his brother, and damned if he could explain why the bastard seemed to be grinning just seconds before everything went black. He felt his body floating off the ground and he could not explain the sensation… Bodies didn’t float. But he was thankful that now, his terrible pain was fading away.
Dewey Hyde pumped seven slugs through his Winchester in a fit of rage, knowing he’d hit nothing with any of his bullets. Spittle dribbled down into his beard when he forgot to spit with a wad of chewing tobacco in his left cheek, thus he spat and took seven more shells from his pocket, pushing them into the loading gate to fill its cartridge chamber. As the roar of gunfire came from all directions, he wondered idly if Marvin was having any better luck in the ravine below, to the west. This kind of a fight didn’t suit Dewey, not when he couldn’t see who he was shooting at so far away in the dark.
“Turn around, creep,” someone said behind him. “I want to see your ugly face before I blow it off your skull.”
Dewey made a quick half turn, swallowing tobacco juice in his haste and fear, bringing his rifle around for a shot at the owner of the strangely calm voice in the middle of a deadly gun battle like this. He saw a squatting figure, muscles bunched in his bare chest, aiming two pistols at him from only a few yards away.
Before Dewey could aim, he heard a noise, an explosion, and in the same instant something akin to a red-hot poker entered the soft flesh beneath his chin—he was sure he could feel fire as it traveled upward, through his mouth and tongue, jarring him the way an iron-rimmed wagon wheel did when it struck a rock. He was scooted backward by the flaming poker entering his brain, and he could feel it tearing through the top of his head. Without truly understanding what was happening, he puzzled over the hot sensation, like fire. How could fire get inside his skull like this?
He lay back as the figure stepped over him, heading down to the ravine where Marvin was shooting. Dewey tried to yell, to warn Marvin, only his mouth was full of blood and tobacco juice and he could feel only the stump of his tongue moving when he tried to speak. He coughed and closed his eyes. Marvin would be able to take care of himself until Dewey could figure out what was wrong. For some reason, in spite of what had just happened to his head, he felt sleepy, and it was sure as hell the wrong time to be needing to take a nap.
Marvin Hyde decided it was time to pull back. Some of the bullets fired from the ranch were coming too close, whizzing over his head by no more than a foot or two. He didn’t want somebody to get off a lucky shot that would turn out to be unlucky for him and in all this noise and confusion, Jessie Evans would never know he’d moved to a safer place.
Marvin came slowly to his hands and knees, pulling his rifle along in the grass, its barrel still hot from so much shooting. A few feet more and he was behind the lip of the shallow ravine, where he could stand up.
As he turned around, he came face-to-face with a half-naked man holding two pistols. “Who the hell are you?” Marvin asked, unable to recall this fellow’s face as being a member of Jessie’s gang.
“Your executioner, plowboy. I’m gonna put a hole through your overalls while you’re wearin’ ’em.”
“The hell you say!” Marvin cried, bringing his Winchester up for a shot.
The roar of a Colt .44 caught Marvin in mid swing, before he could get his rifle muzzle lifted. He was torn off his planted feet by what felt like a whistling gust of wind striking his chest. His rifle flew from his hands as he fell backward from the force of it, and when he fell on his back it was as if an anvil had been dropped on his rib cage. He couldn’t breathe at all, not a single breath, and when he touched his chest he felt something wet on the front of his bib overalls, then the hole this sneaky stranger had promised.
He saw the stranger hurry off into the darkness, and thought how he needed to warn Dewey. But try as he might, he could not raise his head or suck in enough wind to shout to his brother.
He noticed his legs were trembling uncontrollably, feet twitching as though they had minds of their own. It occurred to Marvin that joining up with Jessie Evans and his gang hadn’t turned out to be such a good idea after all. Maybe he and Dewey should have stayed in Indian Territory, or headed north for the Kansas line.
Off in the distance, he could hear the pop of rifles, and it sounded like they were moving away, growing fainter. With all his strength, he tried to draw in a breath of badly needed air, and found again he couldn’t, Marvin had
