Spurr pressed the back of his head against his covering boulder, his heart thudding heavily but slowly, skipping a beat now and then. He’d let the outlaws wonder for a few seconds what his next move would be, let them start wondering what theirs should be.
When enough time had passed that they were likely letting their guards down just a little, he turned sharply to his left and pressed his cheek tight against his Winchester’s stock. A target presented itself in a cabin window—the vague shape of a man’s hatted head as he stared toward Spurr. The old lawman saw the man’s eyes snap wide as Spurr’s Winchester spoke.
Before the man could jerk his head back behind the cabin wall, his right eye disappeared. Spurr caught a brief glimpse of red as the bullet hammered through the man’s head and out the back of his skull before Spurr pulled his own head and his rifle back behind the boulder. Sucking a sharp breath, the lawman pushed off the boulder and slid down the bank and into the sandy-bottomed wash.
Spurr had always worn high-topped moccasins instead of stockmen’s boots with spurs and jinglebobs—had started the practice just after he’d left his horse-trading family’s shotgun farm in western Kansas to hunt buffalo nigh on forty years ago—and he was especially glad to be wearing them now. The soft-soled, low-heeled moccasins fairly propelled him—as much as anything could propel his tired, broken-down carcass—down the gravelly wash. He was able to move quietly, and the willows and cottonwoods lining the wash hid him from view of the cabin.
When he’d run thirty yards, his wizened lungs heaving in his chest, his heart tattooing a manic rhythm against his breastbone, he followed a game path up the bank. It was only about a six-foot climb, and not a steep one, but Spurr had to pause at the top and bend forward, placing a hand on his knee, to catch his breath. His chest felt as though a hundred little black spiders were crawling around in it. A trap was sinking its steel jaws into his heart. His temples throbbed.
Letting his rifle hang down in his right hand, he stretched his lips back from his teeth. “Come on, goddamnit. Don’t give out on me now, ticker. One more job to do. Just one more.”
He pressed his left hand against his chest and straightened, sucking a deep draught of air. The trap loosened its jaws a little, and the ground stopped pitching around him.
“All right. That wasn’t so damn hard now, was it?”
He looked toward the cabin, hidden from view by willows and a couple of wagon-sized boulders that had been spit out by whatever river had carved this canyon a million years ago. Good. He ran forward, dropped down into another wash, and followed it north along the west side of the cabin.
Philpot’s gang was shouting now, though Spurr couldn’t make out what they were saying. He was breathing too hard, though his moccasins moved along nearly soundlessly. He’d traded an old Sioux woman up in Dakota a bag of Arbuckles and a Schofield .44 for the pair he currently wore. He’d have to look her up—Little Crow Feather was her name—when he was up that way again, as the old woman knew her salt.
If he ever made it out of here, that was.
As the dry wash’s right bank lowered, the cabin appeared about fifty yards away. Spurr dropped to his knees, crabbed over to the bank, and peered over it. One of the outlaw gang had left the cabin and was now crouched behind an overturned handcart about twenty feet in front of it, a rifle in his hands. The men were shouting back and forth, but Spurr still couldn’t make out what they were saying, though it was obvious they were looking for him.
He gave a grim smile. He had them confused. Maybe a little scared. Spurr wasn’t half the lawman he once was—at least not physically—but if he could still make as ring-tailed a crew as Philpot’s streak their drawers, maybe he still had a year or two left in him.
He lowered his head and ran crouching along the wash. When he was north of the cabin, he followed a right-forking branch of the wash into a broader draw that ran generally northeast to southwest and skirted the knobby escarpment. He couldn’t see the cabin because of the six-foot-high right bank and screening brush, but it was probably about fifty yards away.
The outlaws had stopped shouting. That was a good sign. It meant they had no idea what Spurr was up to, and they were growing more and more nervous about that.
Spurr strode around a bend in the wash. Something moved ahead of him, and he stopped, crouching and raising the Winchester. He removed his thumb from the hammer. Ahead was a string of horses tied to a long picket rope threaded through some cedars growing along the draw’s bottom. Spurr moved forward until he could see all five of the mounts—two paints, a brown-and-white pinto, an Appaloosa, and a Morgan-cross. They were all saddled and ready to ride, though their bits were slipped and their latigo straps hung free beneath their bellies.
Buckets of water had been set out for the small remuda. The Appaloosa and the Morgan were snorting up whatever oats remained of a recent feeding. The pinto had lifted its head high and was staring toward Spurr, the sunlight glinting in its soft brown eyes. Its ears were slightly back, and its nostrils were working like a miniature bellows.
The air around the remuda smelled richly of horses and cedars.
The Morgan jerked its own head up as Spurr approached. The Appaloosa whinnied shrilly and lurched back against the bridle reins tied to the picket line, kicking a pile of fresh apples and causing the picket rope to bow and squawk.
“Easy, easy,” Spurr rasped, sucking air through his open mouth as he moved out in front of the horses.
They were real beauties. Fiery-eyed. All five built for bottom as well as speed. Philpot knew horses. The old lawman would give him that.
That and a bullet.
Chuckling to himself, Spurr pulled his bowie knife out of the sheath sewn into his right moccasin, and quickly went down the picket line, cutting the horses free.
The horses backed away, rearing, from the picket line and the crusty old stranger whose smell they were not familiar with. Their manes buffeted in the hot, dry breeze. Sand-colored dust lifted.
“All right—move your mangy asses!” Spurr shouted, throwing his arms up high above his head.
A couple of the mounts whinnied as they galloped on down the draw and along the base of the escarpment and out of sight, the rataplan of their hooves dwindling quickly.
Spurr wheeled and ran south. The draw’s southern bank was little more than a gradual incline studded with cedars, rocks, and yucca. There were many large, pale boulders that had likely tumbled down from the main escarpment on Spurr’s left, offering cover.
He’d heard the outlaws begin shouting again just after the Appaloosa had loosed its warning whinny. Now the shouts were growing louder, and as Spurr crouched behind a boulder and stretched a look around it toward the cabin, he saw why.
The outlaws were running toward him, strung out to either side in a shaggy line, brightly colored neckerchiefs billowing, bandoliers winking, broad-brimmed hats shading their faces. All four.
Philpot was the second man from the left. They were about halfway between Spurr and the cabin, about sixty yards away and closing fast. The frantic looks on their faces betrayed their worry about the horses. Men on foot out here in the remote Jicarillas were coyote bait. If thirst or rattlesnakes didn’t get them, the wolflike Jicarilla Apaches would.
“Stop and throw down your guns!” Spurr shouted as he rose up from behind his cover.
Not giving the killers time to stop or throw down their guns—they hadn’t given Kenny Potter time to crawl for cover—he pumped a round through Philpot’s right knee. The outlaw ran another two yards, stretching a look of anguish across his face while reaching for his leg. He hit the ground and rolled, howling, losing his hat and his rifle. He came up on his ass, clutching his knee with both hands, red-faced with fury, eyes nearly popping out of his hairless head.
The others ran to skidding stops, kicking gravel up around their knees and raising their rifles. Spurr had ejected the spent cartridge from his Winchester’s breech. He aimed quickly, and the Winchester roared like near thunder. Vernon Drake stumbled backward and twisted as he fell a half second after his own shot had sliced through the slack of Spurr’s deerskin vest and carved a hot line along his left side.
Spurr cocked and fired again, again, and again, until all four of the outlaws were down and howling. Through his own wafting powder smoke, the old lawman saw Philpot crawling back toward the cabin, sort of leapfrogging while clutching his bloody knee. Spurr was about to draw a bead on the killer, but then he saw one of the other three—the man farthest to Spurr’s right—leap to his feet and dash toward a boulder at the edge of the yard.
Spurr fired hastily, his shot plunking into the ground several yards behind and beyond the big man in a black-and-white checked shirt, red bandanna, and patched denims, whom he recognized as the half-Comanche Alvin Silva. Silva dove behind a large rock. As he lifted his head, Spurr levered another shell into his Winchester’s breech, aimed more by instinct than sight, and fired.
Silva’s head jerked back sharply, as though he’d been punched hard in the face. His head wobbled forward, and the sun glinted off the ragged hole that Spurr’s .44 round had punched through his face, just to the right of his long, hooked nose. Silva had not hit the ground before Spurr swung his Winchester back toward the cabin to which Philpot was approaching like a giant, wounded frog.
As the gang leader ran to within ten yards of the open back door, Spurr fired twice, empty cartridges winking over his shoulder. His first shot plunked into the back of Philpot’s left thigh, evoking another shrill scream. His second bullet slammed against the adobe-brick wall left of the door with an angry crack.
Philpot threw himself through the open door, mewling. As the outlaw twisted around, reaching for the door, wide-eyed and red-faced, Spurr triggered his Winchester and cursed as the hammer pinged on an empty chamber.
He caught another glimpse of Philpot’s bald head and bearded face as the outlaw slammed the door closed in its frame.
“Fuck you, old man!” The indictment was muffled by the closed door.
“I may be old,” Spurr said, striding forward while plucking .44 cartridges from his shell belt and sliding them through the gate in the Winchester’s receiver, “but I ain’t fixin’ to meet my maker like you are, you cold-blooded son of a bitch.”
As Spurr continued striding toward the cabin and loading his long gun, Philpot slid his head into the open window right of the door, so that Spurr could see half of his face. “What if I give up?” the outlaw leader cried, his blue eyes flashing his fear.
Spurr shook his head. “I’d like to help you there. Too late. When you killed that boy, you killed your chances of seein’ what tomorrow looks like.”
Philpot angled a long-barreled pistol out the window. It flashed and thundered, smoke wafting from its maw. Spurr ignored the bullet spanging off the ground ten yards behind him. The old, bandy-legged deputy U.S. marshal kept walking, shoving an eighth shell into the Winchester’s breech, pumping one into the chamber, then shoving a ninth through the loading gate.
“Spurr!” Philpot cried. “I’m wounded bad! I’m givin’ myself up, ya hear?”
Spurr stopped. Philpot’s entire face was in the window’s lower right corner, as though he were kneeling on the floor. His eyes were bright, mouth stretched wide, showing his two silver-capped front teeth. Tears dribbled down his brown-bearded cheeks.
“A few years ago, I’d have honored that request,” Spurr said. “And I’d likely have shunned any lawman who’d do otherwise. Now, as old and stove up as a thirty-year-old whore, I am one of them that’s gonna do otherwise.” Spurr chuckled wryly and shook his head. “Ain’t that just a bitch, Philpot?”
“Spurr!” the outlaw screamed, poking his pistol out the window again.
Spurr raised his rifle and fired a quarter second before Philpot’s revolver belched, blowing up sand and gravel five feet in front of Spurr’s moccasins. The gun dropped to the ground in front of the window as Philpot screamed still louder and flew back into the cabin, clutching the bloody hole in his right shoulder.
Spurr could no longer see the outlaw, but he could hear him scrambling around inside and sobbing, his boots thumping, spurs trilling on the earthen floor. Spurr walked up to the closed door and rammed his rifle butt against it twice near the steel-and-leather latch before the locking bolt broke and the door swung wide on its creaky hinges.
As the door banged against the wall, Spurr raised his rifle to his shoulder. Philpot had just staggered out the front door and into the yard, stumbling over his boot toes.
Spurr lowered the Winchester slightly and walked through the cabin that reeked like an old goat in late August. Philpot continued staggering into the front yard, both his wounded legs stiffening up on him.
“Turn around or take it in the back, Philpot!”
Philpot dropped to his left knee, the other leg stretched out behind him. He rolled onto a hip and looked up at Spurr, his eyes pinched with pain and terror. He threw up his hands in supplication.
“You can’t shoot an unarmed man, Spurr.”
The old lawman ambled on through the cabin and out the front door. As he lowered the rifle to his side, Philpot’s bearded cheeks slacked in a slight show of relief.
Spurr stopped six feet away from the kneeling outlaw. He glanced over to where Kenny Potter lay dead near the well, his curly hair crusted with dried blood. Rage boiled anew in the old man’s veins, and he raised the rifle, aiming down from his right cheek.
“Wanna lay odds on that?”
Philpot’s lower jaw dropped, and his eyes widened.
Boom!