No such luck. He heard her scream a curse, and a second later Reynolds yelled in anger and alarm. It sounded like they were struggling. Scratch burst out from behind the horses and headed for the forge.
He spotted Cara wrestling with Reynolds over the rifle. She had both hands on the barrel and was trying to wrench it out of his hands as she forced the muzzle toward the roof, but he hung on stubbornly.
With the two of them so close together, Scratch couldn’t risk a shot. There was too great a chance he would hit Cara, and he still needed her to lead him to that hidden loot. Besides, she was a woman, and his upbringing still wouldn’t allow him to forget about that.
So he charged in, figuring that he could thump Reynolds over the head with the Remington. However, before he could get there Reynolds let go of the rifle with one hand and used that fist to drive a punch into the middle of Cara’s face. Her head snapped back from the impact of the blow, and her grip on the rifle slipped. Reynolds tore the weapon out of her hands.
He swung around to meet Scratch’s charge and brought the rifle butt up. It crashed into Scratch’s jaw and brought him up short. Reynolds lowered a shoulder and bulled into him, driving him backward. Scratch lost his balance and fell.
Reynolds aimed a kick at him. Scratch rolled aside just in time to avoid it. He had dropped his revolver when Reynolds knocked him down, so he reached up with both hands, grabbed the man’s leg, and heaved. With a startled yell, the vengeful cowboy went over backward.
Scratch rolled away from him, snatching up the Remington along the way. As he came up on one knee, from the corner of his eye he saw several of O’Bar’s citizens gathered in the open doorway of the blacksmith shop. They had come to see what all the shooting was about.
Reynolds had dropped the rifle when he came crashing down on the hard-packed dirt. As Scratch leveled the Remington, Reynolds scrambled after the fallen rifle.
“Hold it!” Scratch yelled.
Reynolds gave up on retrieving the rifle, but that didn’t mean the trouble was over. He twisted around and clawed at the Colt on his hip instead.
“Damn it, stop!” Scratch ordered as Reynolds’s gun cleared leather. “I don’t want to—”
What he wanted didn’t matter anymore. Reynolds’s gun was coming up, and Scratch didn’t have any choice.
He fired.
Flame licked from the Remington’s muzzle. Reynolds was on his knees. The bullet punched into his chest and drove him halfway around. He dropped his gun and crumpled.
“The stranger shot Joe!” one of the onlookers yelled in outrage. “Get him!”
That was what Scratch had been afraid of. Reynolds had friends here. The silver-haired Texan and Cara didn’t.
As he turned toward the doorway, Scratch saw most of the townspeople scattering. Three remained, and Scratch recognized them as the men who had been playing poker with Reynolds in the Red Top. They looked like cowboys, too, and probably rode for the same spread as him.
Two of them had their guns out, and the third man was trying to draw his. Still on one knee, Scratch palmed out his left-hand Remington. With his hands full, he triggered a pair of swift shots from both guns.
The bullets smashed into the men who already had their guns drawn and sent them reeling backward. The third man had finally cleared leather, but as Scratch turned toward him, a rifle shot cracked and the man was knocked backward, his Colt flying from his hand as his arms flung out. He landed hard on his back in the street, dust flying up around him.
Scratch glanced over and saw that Cara had grabbed the rifle Reynolds had dropped. The blonde’s lips were drawn back from her teeth in a grimace of hate. Smoke curled from the repeater’s muzzle.
Reynolds was down, lying on his side, apparently not breathing. The other two men Scratch had shot had dropped their guns and fallen in the street. One of them clutched his side and moaned as he writhed around in the dirt. The other lay still, but his chest was rising and falling, and as the echoes of the shots faded away, Scratch could hear the rasp of the wounded man’s breathing.
The man Cara had blasted lay on his back, arms and legs spraddled out. Scratch had a hunch he was dead.
So, two men dead, more than likely, and two more wounded.
That wasn’t a very good way for him and Cara to avoid drawing attention to themselves.
They got to their feet at the same time. Cara worked the lever on the rifle to throw another shell into the chamber. She looked like she was ready to put some more slugs into the fallen cowboys, just on general principles.
Scratch said sharply, “Wait a minute. Don’t shoot anymore, Cara.”
“Some of them are still alive!” she protested, as if that state of affairs couldn’t be allowed to continue.
“I know it, but we don’t want to kill any more of ’em than we have to.”
Her mouth twisted in a snarl.
“Anybody gets in my way, they deserve killin’!”
Well, if he’d had any lingering doubts about her, if he’d wanted to talk himself into believing that she was really sweet and innocent and she’d only done the things she did because she was terrified of Hank Gentry, that kind of attitude pretty well took care of it, Scratch thought.
Cara LaChance was a loco, cold-blooded killer ... just like she had seemed to be all along. It was the other part that was an act.
Keeping one eye on Cara because there was no telling what she might do, Scratch took a closer look at Reynolds and confirmed that the cowboy was dead.
“Stay here,” he ordered firmly. “I’m gonna check on those other fellas.”
“Be careful that somebody else in this hick town doesn’t try to shoot you from ambush.”
Scratch was well aware of that danger. Before he emerged from the blacksmith shop, he looked up and down the street as best he could. He didn’t see anybody moving around. The citizens of O’Bar seemed to have retreated into the buildings in case any more bullets started to fly.
Scratch stepped out into the street. With both Remingtons still in his hands, he approached the man Cara had shot. The man’s glassy eyes staring sightlessly at the sky left no doubt that he was dead.
The man who’d been moaning had fallen silent. He was still breathing, though, and as far as Scratch could tell without really examining the wound, he thought that a bullet had just plowed a furrow in the man’s side. He had lost some blood and likely passed out because of it, but he ought to survive, Scratch decided.
He wasn’t so sure about the fourth man, who’d been shot through the body. He seemed to be breathing without too much strain, though, so maybe with luck he would pull through, too.
Scratch was glad to see that. He wasn’t just about to feel guilty for shooting any hombre who was trying to shoot him, but even so, he’d just as soon not be part of a massacre if he could avoid it.
The potential for a massacre might not be over, though. Scratch heard a door open and glanced up to see two men emerge from the Red Top. He recognized one of them as the counterman from the cafe and saloon, and the other man was the stocky, redheaded blacksmith.
Both of them wore grim expressions and brandished shotguns as if they intended to splatter Scratch all over the street.
CHAPTER 27
Scratch stiffened and brought up his Remingtons.
“You fellas hold it right there!” he shouted. “I don’t want to kill you!”
The two men stopped short and lowered their scatterguns. The man from the Red Top said hurriedly, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, mister! We don’t mean you any harm. We were comin’ to help you.”
Scratch frowned in confusion.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “Help me how?”
“In case some of those varmints are still alive and might try to shoot you again,” the counterman said.
