In the deep shadow at the side of the wagon, Crow’s right hand casually flipped the retaining thong off the hammers of the scattergun. Calming himself ready for what he now saw was inevitably going to happen. The kids were all charged up and ready for a killing and there was nothing better than a total stranger.
“I don’t have a quarrel with you men,” he said, voice still quiet in the late morning peace.
“Well we got a fuckin’ quarrel with you and your clumsy kin yonder,” said the one called Clem, pointing at the trembling figure of the stooped boy.
“He’s no kin.”
“We goin’ to get him after you, you half-breed fuckin’ dog.”
“This’ll end in killin’,” said Crow.
“Maybe your’n,” laughed someone, but the shootist saw the flicker of doubt, so familiar to him, in the eyes of the three of four nearest young men.
“Maybe, son. Maybe. But if I see a man take a step nearer or let his hand drop to a pistol, then I’ll promise you a lot of blood.”
The boys—eleven of them—were grouped close together, a couple in the street, and the rest clustered in front of the window of the grocery store. The owner, a fat woman with a streak of flour on her dimpled cheek, was standing inside the window, peering out at the drama.
“He don’t have a pistol,” one of them said, his voice unnaturally high with tension as he realized that this was for real. It was going to be killing. Not just a drunk piece of funning with a drifter.
“That’s a shotgun,” said someone else.
Like a pool when a boy throws in a small stone, the group seemed to ripple, spreading out, everyone wanting a little more room for himself.
“Ten gauge,” offered Crow, as restrained and controlled as if he’d been discussing the warm weather with a group of spinsters at a quilting bee.
“Jesus Christ! Make a ...” began one of them.
“Get the fucker!” shouted the boy called Clem, his voice riding over everyone else’s, drawing his pistol from its low holster.
Crow had been ready for the move, every nerve tight and sprung, hand hovering over the walnut butt of the heavy Purdey.
The gang of lads was in disarray. Some trying to follow Clem’s example and tug out their own handguns. Others eager only to get out of the way. Drink slowed them all down, mixed with a gut-feeling of fear for the tall, lean man in the black clothes.
It was like hitting a barn wall while you were inside the building. At a range of around ten feet, there was no way at all that Crow could miss the struggling mass of humanity.
He drew the scattergun with practiced ease, half-turning as he did so. The movement automatic now, presenting the smallest possible target to his enemies. Bending a little at the knees as he turned, keeping his balance on the balls of his feet. The butt of the gun snug in his strong right hand, the left coming across to steady it at the base of the sawn-down twin barrels. His right thumb cocking both the spurred hammers, index finger going straight to the narrow triggers.
Not bothering to aim consciously. Squeezing the first trigger, feeling the familiar jar as the shot boomed out, the boys vanishing in a cloud of powder smoke. Crow heard the screaming, but he didn’t bother much about it. Shooting into a dozen people he knew that one barrel would be a great deterrent, but that both might just turn the day his way.
The gun crashed out a second time, its hail of lead starring out just enough at that range to rip through the boys like shrapnel from a heavy mortar. Crow slipped the shotgun back into its special holster and reached around back of himself, drawing the Colt Peacemaker from his belt. Thumbing back on the hammer, feeling rather than hearing the triple click as the pistol readied for action.
He stared through the clearing smoke into a scene of bloody carnage.
It would be tedious to list the various injuries that the boys of Rosa Cruz had suffered. Only three of the eleven had escaped without a single wound, and all of them were cowering on the floor. Two on the right and one on the extreme left.
It looked to Crow as though two and maybe three of them were dead. Clem had lost most of his face and was lying, feet kicking in the air, through the shattered window of the grocery store. The plump lady was still standing where she had been, but her dress was torn to ribbons and blood speckled all over her where the shards of flying glass had razored at her clothes and flesh. Her hands were squeezed over her face and crimson was seeping between them. She was screaming in a high, monotonous voice that seemed as it could go on for ever and ever.
The tangled mess of limbs and bodies and heads that had been the drunken mob was shifting like a labyrinthine serpent, moaning and crying out. Blood was dripping through the boards of the sidewalk and puddling the dust beneath it into sticky mud.
“Promised you a whole lot of blood,” said Crow, softly.
“Murderer!” came a voice from across the street, and the shootist heard the crack of a rifle, the bullet missing him by a yard. Hitting one of the local boys through the temple as he struggled to his feet.
“Jesus!” sighed Crow, spinning around, snapping off a couple of shots towards the dry goods store behind the wagon.
“Get the killer!”
“Gun him down!”
“He shot our boys!!” screamed a woman’s voice, high and shrill. Rising above the sound of moaning and crying from the wounded and the dying heaped in front of the “Inside Straight’.
It was looking bad.
Crow had just three rounds left in his Peacemaker and a full load in the Winchester bucketed on his horse fifty yards back up the street.
But now there were shots coming from opposite the wagon. At least three or four men with hand-guns, stepping out from cover when they realized that the shootist was low on ammunition.
His only chance was to get to the stallion, but that meant running the gauntlet of raking gunfire that would surely pick him off.
Suddenly he heard a voice from inside the wagon. Deep, with a west Texas drawl to it. “You goin’ for that rifle, mister, you better move. I’ll cover you and meet you a mile out of town. Go!”
So, at the last, it wasn’t such a bad day after all.