Six hundred dollars would help get him to San Francisco and give him a good few days there. Balanced against that was the possibility of getting himself killed. But to a man like Crow, death was always at your shoulder, or in the next arroyo, or waiting cold-voiced in the shadows of a frontier town.
All three men turned incredulously towards him as he sat motionless in the darkness. It was the Mexican who spoke first, voicing all their disbelief.
‘You said something, Señor?’
‘I spoke to the gentleman there, friend,’ replied the shootist.
‘He ain’t your friend and I ain’t your friend and Jay here ain’t your damned friend neither.’
Both men held guns on him, but neither had them pointed right at him. It was just that they were trying to keep the Easterner covered at the same time, and they really couldn’t believe that this one man was going to call them all out.
‘Please,’ said the Easterner, desperation naked in his voice. ‘I’m carrying a lot better than a thousand dollars in coin, and …’
‘Mister,’ said Crow, wearily, ‘I guess I’ve never met a man so damned eager to set a bullet between his own teeth.’
‘You can sit there still and easy and nobody’ll say a word,’ said Jay. ‘Looks like you’re our kind, and it don’t do for us to jump at each other’s throat.’
‘I’m not your kind,’ replied Crow.
‘I’ll cut you for a straight fifth of what this son of a bitch has.’
‘And you can get a chance at the señora,’ added Garcia.
‘Less’n them boys is more to your line of fuckin’,’ sneered the younger man. ‘Though they seem uglier than sin to me, not havin’ that sort of taste.’
‘Six hundred dollars to save you from these men? Is that it?’
‘Yes. Anything.’
Crow smiled in the shadows. ‘Been offered a lot, but never anything like this. Man shouldn’t be that rash. Suppose I take you up on it one fine day.’
‘You really figure to try and take us all?’ asked the leader, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘That just don’t signify.’
‘Six hundred. Seven hundred and fifty.’
‘Maybe I should just sit here and see how high you’re goin’ to go,’ said Crow.
‘You sure have a nerve, Mister,’ said the young man. ‘Sit there with that soft voice and tell us you’re goin’ to save that flabby bastard and his whore of a fuckin’ wife.’
‘Help us get out of this infernal place of heat and rock and death,’ said the woman, her voice making everyone look at her.
Crow took the chance to allow his right hand to slip from the tabletop and rest comfortably just above the cut-down butt of the Purdey in its deep holster.
‘Infernal’s a good word for here, Ma’am,’ he said, nodding to her.
‘Why?’
‘I spent some time with the Paiutes hereabouts. They call it “Tomesha”, this valley.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Means the place where the land’s on fire. Good enough name.’
‘I do not believe this,’ sighed Jay. ‘I’m here with two good men, both with drawn guns, ready to kill these four. And you sit there like a teacher learnin’ snot-nose brats about history and that. Sayin’ you’re goin’ to take us all. All three!’
‘I’ve just agreed a deal here,’ said Crow.
‘You figure you got a pistol that’ll wipe us all three away before we can gun you down?’ asked the youngest of the trio.
‘No.’
‘Then you blow your cheeks and puff us all away out of the door?’ laughed the Mexican.
Crow didn’t know about them. They weren’t just ordinary killers or bounty hunters. Not three of them together. That sort of man stayed alone, or rarely in pairs. Never three of them. So they must be a loose gang, looking for ways of making some money with as little work as possible. Some rustling maybe. Or a small robbery. And they certainly wouldn’t shrink from killing.
The tall Jay looked as though he might be useful, but taken together they weren’t that good. They were cocky and careless. Over-confident that this single man seated at the corner table ten paces from them was just bluffing.
The three of them stood close together, bunched in a way that no top shootists would ever stand, giving such an easy target. In the dim light at the corner of the saloon Crow thumbed back the twin hammers of the sawn-down gun.
‘If you’re aiming to stop us doing what we plan, then I figure you ought to be making yourself some kind of move, Mister? I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Didn’t throw it. I’m called Crow.’
‘A black bird, Pa,’ exclaimed the younger son of the family, for no reason that Crow could see at that moment.
But he didn’t bother to wonder why he’d said it, or why his father looked so shocked at the words. What he did bother about was that everyone turned to look at the teenager.
For someone with reflexes as keen as Crow, it was more than enough chance.
Beneath the scarred top of the table, he gripped the scattergun, still in its holster, tilting it forwards. Bracing his wrist against the back of his chair to give it the support he knew it would need the moment his finger squeezed the twin triggers.
The double boom was strangely muffled, though it took all of Crow’s great strength to avoid the gun kicking clean out of his grasp. Smoke billowed from under the table, momentarily obscuring the trio of men. He heard a scream, from the woman, he thought, and then immediately on top of that came yells and cries of shock and agony. As the smoke cleared he saw just how devastating the shots had been.
All three men were down, kicking at each other in a tangled welter of blood. At such a close range it would have been impossible to have missed such a fine target and Crow thought again how right he was to wear the Purdey, unsporting though it might be.
Even as he stood up he dropped the smoking gun and drew the Colt from the back of his belt, cocking it and aiming at the floored men. Though it seemed that all three were out of the fight, Crow hadn’t lived to be thirty by taking chances.
Jay, the leader, was nearest, his right leg virtually severed above the knee, the whiteness of the shattered femur visible through the pulsing blood. He was lying half on his side, face contorted with pain, but even through that dreadful wound he was trying to draw his own handgun, fumbling for it.
Crow shot him once between the eyes, the impact of the forty-five making the back of the man’s head buck hard against the sodden planking. The bullet burst out taking a fist-sized chunk of skull with it, leaking his brains into the spreading pool of crimson.
‘Madre de Dios!’ screamed the Mexican, one hand still absurdly holding the tinkling sombrero. Rolling backwards and forwards, knees drawn up to his chest.
He seemed the least wounded, though the shot from the Purdey had broken both legs just above the calf, some of the lead starring upwards to strike him in the groin and lower belly.
Just as Crow aimed and fired the pistol Garcia heaved himself backwards, the bullet plowing a bloody furrow across his temple, knocking him out and giving him an easier end than most of his life deserved. The second shot killed him immediately, hitting him just above the left ear as he lay on one side.
‘Fuckin’ bastard!’ screamed the boy, scrabbling in the slick blood for his own gun, failing to reach it by a clear eighteen inches.
‘It’s over, son,’ said Crow quietly.
‘Let me kill him,’ yelped the fat Easterner, appearing from nowhere with his matching pistols cocked ready in his chubby fists.
‘No.’ said Crow.
‘Why the Hell not?’
‘You’re paying me for this.’
‘Don’t let that fuckin’ cockless bastard shoot me, you son of a bitch killer,’ moaned the young man, eyes staring up at Crow.
The shot had hit him higher than the rest, because he had been slightly the furthest away. The front of his shirt from chest to belt was torn apart and soaked through with bright blood. His pistol had been sent flying from his fist and he was weaponless.
And that was the way that Crow liked to see an enemy. There were few braver men than Crow, yet nobody hated heroics more. His idea for a good fight would be one where he held all the aces and the opposition none. Living wasn’t a game with rules. You killed quickest or you gotten killed yourself. It was truly as simple as that.
A mortally wounded boy with no guns was about what Crow liked.
‘It’s over,’ he repeated, leveling the pistol at the defiant face.
‘Don’t let him, Pa,’ whined the younger boy. ‘You do it.’
‘Touch the trigger and I’ll break your arms off.’ warned Crow, the softness of his voice making the threat somehow more credible.
And the Easterner recognized it for a promise rather than an empty threat and he reluctantly holstered his fancy irons.
‘Thanks friend,’ said the kid, trying to force a grin.
‘I surely ain’t your friend, son,’ replied Crow pulling on the narrow trigger of the Colt for the fourth and last time, killing him instantly.
‘They’re all dead, dearest,’ said the fat man, patting his sobbing wife on the shoulder.
‘I’ll take another beer,’ called Crow to the Indian bartender who had just reappeared from the floor. ‘And I’ll take six hundred dollars from you, Mister.’
‘Of course. Of course. By God, but that was the most unbelievable thing! have ever been privileged to witness. Unbelievable.’
‘Six hundred dollars,’ repeated Crow, reloading the pistol and then walking to pick up the dropped scattergun, breaking it to empty the cartridges, thumbing in two new charges. Clicking it shut and sliding it back into his holster.
‘You’ll get it. Every red cent, Mr. … Crow wasn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘That your first name?’ asked the fatter of the sons.
‘Yeah. And the second. Just Crow.’
‘The black bird, Pa,’ he squeaked, ‘Like that’s some kind of sign from the Almighty that Mr. Crow’s goin’ to help us find the …’
A sudden angry slap across the face stopped him, standing speechless, staring at his father with the red marks of fingers livid on his cheeks.
‘I didn’t … Mr. Crow,’ stammered the Easterner. ‘There’s things that … would you be a guide for us?’
‘Well.’
‘Sit down, Mr. Crow. Sit down and let you and I have ourselves some talk. Yes, indeed, some talking.’