about.”
“How much is she paying you? The last one was offered a thousand dollars. Not that he lived to collect.”
“You make no kind of sense,” the cowboy said.
I rested the Remington on the table, but I did not point it at him yet. “I don’t suppose she’s still in Three Legs, is she?”
“She who?” the cowboy said, glaring now.
“You better give a holler to your friend in the back,” I suggested. “Who knows? Maybe he’ll put windows in my skull before I put them in yours.”
Panic made him reckless. He flung the cards at me and heaved up out of his chair, bawling, “Now, Clancy, now!”
I shot him in the head before he could clear leather. Shifting, I beheld another cowboy burst from the back. He had his Colt out, and fired. His shot went wide. Mine didn’t.
The bartender and the farmers imitated statues until I rose, breaking the spell. Then one of the farmers exclaimed, “Thank God that’s over! Mister, I want you to know we have no part in this. They made us stay so you wouldn’t get suspicious that things weren’t as they should be.”
The other farmer nodded. “They told us they would pistol-whip us if we didn’t do as they wanted.”
“Frank and Cliff are telling you the truth,” the bartender confirmed. “Those two cowboys were with that woman you were asking about. She and a gun shark she called Bart lit out of here not twenty minutes before you showed up.”
I smiled at the news.
The hour of reckoning was at hand.
Chapter 28
So much for resting.
I rode Brisco and led the mare. The stars overhead, the yips of coyotes, the strong night wind, I barely noticed any of it. All I could think of was Gertrude Tanner and what I wanted to do to her.
The bartender had overheard the fancy woman, as I had described her, talking to the gun shark. Something about her knowing powerful people in high places, and how they should head for Austin, the state capital. Not Clementsville, as I had thought. So I took the road to the southeast, flying like the wind.
I was close to tasting my cup of revenge. I could feel it. They would stop soon, if they had not stopped already. Their mounts had to be more tired than mine. They only had one each while I had the two. Keeping the mare had paid off.
Neither the bartender nor the farmers had any idea who I was. All they gathered from what little Gertrude told them was that I was after her and must be stopped, and they would cooperate, or else.
An interesting tidbit: One of the farmers, Frank, heard the gun shark refer to the fancy woman as his “sugar.” Frank said the woman did not like it and snapped at the gun shark to keep quiet.
Fury coursed through every fiber of my being. Fury so strong, so potent, I felt hot all over, inside and out, as if I were being cooked alive. Many a time in my life I had been angry or mad, but I had never experienced anything like this.
I gloried in it. I reveled in the raw vitality that pulsed in my veins. I felt as powerful as a steam engine. My fatigue evaporated. I no longer craved sleep or food for my empty belly.
An hour became two and the two hours became three, yet I saw no sign of my quarry. They might ride all night. But that was fine. I would do the same, and with two horses, I could cover the same ground much more swiftly. I was sure that by daylight the long chase would be over.
Along about midnight I reined up to switch mounts yet again. I tugged on the lead rope and Brisco came obediently up next to the mare. Without dismounting, I switched from the mare to Brisco, careful not to use my left arm more than I had to. I then switched the lead rope to the mare and was ready to go. But as I raised Brisco’s reins, I spied a tiny point of flickering light perhaps a mile off across the prairie.
My breath caught in my throat. It was a campfire. It could belong to anyone, but I knew whose it was.
“They’re mine!” I cried, and pricked Brisco with my spurs.
The next half a mile was a blur. I looked neither right nor left but only at the point of light, which grew slowly but steadily bigger. I came to my senses when I realized they would hear me if I went any closer on horseback. I used picket pins to ensure Brisco and the mare would not wander off.
The Winchester in the crook of my left arm so I was free to draw the Remington with my right if I had to, I crept through the tall grass. My senses were more alert than I ever remembered them being. I could not account for it and did not try.
I slowed to a turtle’s pace. A stand of cotton-woods hove out of the night. The pair were camped close to the trees but not in them, which was strange given the trees offered better cover.
A black hat and vest and an ivory-handled Smith & Wesson left no doubt as to the identity of the figure seated by the fire. Nearby, a second form was curled under a blanket.
Bart Seton was having trouble staying awake. Twice he closed his eyes and his chin dipped, but each time he snapped his head up and shook it to break free. He was facing the northwest, the direction I had come from.
I circled around behind them. Their horses were too exhausted to do more than flick their ears. I fixed a bead on the center of Seton’s back, but I did not shoot. He must not die quickly or easily. He must suffer, and suffer gloriously.
I glanced at the form under the blanket. It was up over Gertrude’s head, probably so the firelight did not keep her awake.
If it is possible to drool with anticipation at killing someone, I did. In this instance, two someones.
Bart Seton placed his rifle on the ground and reached for the coffeepot. I waited until his fingers closed on the handle. He never heard me. So much for his reputation. I touched the Winchester’s muzzle to the nape of his neck and said quietly, “So much as twitch and you’re dead.”
Some men would have jumped up anyway, or gone for their revolver. All Seton did was tense slightly. “Well, well, if it isn’t the famous Lucius Stark. Looks like you’ve caught me with my britches down.”
“It wasn’t hard,” I bragged. In fact, it had been too damn easy. Nor did I like how calm he was.
“So what’s it to be?” Seton taunted. “A slug in the head?”
“You wish.” I glanced at Gertrude, but she had not stirred. “Shed your revolver and hold your arms out from your sides.”
“I don’t believe I will.”
I came within a whisker of blowing out his wick then and there. “You’ll do it or I’ll shoot you in the knee.” That should cause enough agony to last a good long while.
Bart Seton swiveled his head to look at me with what I could describe only as contempt. “How you have lasted so long is beyond me. Did you think we would just roll over and die?”
With abrupt clarity I saw it all: that he was calm for a reason, that the bulges under the blanket were not those of a person, and that I was the world’s worst jackass. I whirled, but I was not quite around when thunder boomed and leaden lightning struck me high in my left arm. The Winchester fell and so did I, to my knees. I did not draw my Remington. Not when I was staring up into the shadowy barrel of another Winchester in the hands of Gertrude Tanner.
“Finish the buzzard off!” Bart Seton urged her.
Gertrude stepped fully into the light, her harpy features aglow with wicked delight. People say I am vicious, but she was every bit as unregenerate, which made it doubly unsettling, her being female and all. Baring her teeth like a she-wolf that had caught a bobcat sniffing about her den, she paid me the supreme insult. “I didn’t think it would be this easy.”
Between the old wound under my collarbone and the new wound in my arm, my left side was worthless. The arm was half numb. I suspected the bone had been shattered. I flexed my fingers, or tried to, and nearly passed out.
“Why you let him spook you is beyond me.” Bart Seton was beside her. Stooping, he relieved me of the Remington. “All the damn running we did, and for what? I could have taken him anytime.”
