CHAPTER 35
The crouched figure, appearing half-man, half-beast—a giant coyote, maybe—stepped quietly into the cabin, both arms raised to the right, holding something in the thing’s hands over its right shoulder, just off that ear.
The figure was like a coyote ghost belched out of the night—wiry, filthy, sweating, seething with anger. The ghost was badly disheveled, wearing a soiled pin-striped shirt and suspenders and baggy broadcloth trousers, both knees torn, stuffed into the high tops of mule-eared boots. A bloody bandage encircled the top of the specter’s coyote-like head with a long, thin nose and pinched up eyes. Thin sandy, sweaty hair trailed down over the bloody cloth.
Jay blinked as she more closely scrutinized the newcomer, felt her lower jaw drop.
She turned to Myra. The girl’s own jaw was sagging, and both eyes were growing wider. She and Jay yelled at the same time, “Delbert!”
“Thayer!” Walsh said in horror. “What in God’s name . . . ?”
“God didn’t have nothin’ to do with it, you fork-tailed demon. You ugly, dry-gulchin’ sidewinder!”
Delbert stood six feet from Walsh. Jay now saw that what the young man held in his hands, cocked and ready to fly, was a slingshot. Young Thayer canted his head to his right, aiming the rock-loaded scrap of rawhide, attached with cow gut to the forked wooden handle, at Walsh’s head.
He showed his buck teeth as he seethed out, “You left me in that canyon to die, didn’t ya? Or maybe you figured I was dead! Well, I wasn’t dead. I was playin’ possum, ’cause while folks might like to laugh and make light of me, like you and them two deputies out there nursin’ split skulls, I’m smarter than I damn look!”
“Oh, Delbert!” Myra sobbed into the hands she was clamping over her mouth, tears of joy runnin’ down her cheeks and over her hand.
“Hah!” Delbert laughed bitterly, his eyes spitting bayonets of raw fury at Walsh. “I’m back from the dead, all right. Delbert lives! Ya see, ya stupid fool, Marshal Walsh, any kind of a head wound bleeds profusely. Even a small nick like the one you gave me. It threw me from my saddle, all right, but I lay there playin’ possum till I heard you chuckle and ride away. Yaring-tailed polecat! Copper-riveted dunderhead!”
Delbert shifted his boots on the earthen floor as he glared with challenge at Walsh. The marshal still had his hand wrapped around the grips of his holstered Colt. The two men faced each other, crouching like pugilists frozen in midmotion.
“Go ahead and de-leather that smoke wagon, Walsh! Go ahead! You don’t think my aim is true? Or maybe you think bringin’ a slingshot to a gun battle gives me the short end of the stick!”
That was what Walsh must have thought, all right.
In the next second, the marshal whipped the gun out of its holster. There was a creak of rawhide and gut as Delbert loosed the rock. It thumped against Walsh’s forehead just as the man’s hogleg cleared leather.
Walsh wailed and dropped the pistol. He clamped both hands to his forehead, stumbling backward. Dropping the slingshot, Delbert stayed on the man, pulling his own six-shooter from the soft leather holster on his belly, clicking the hammer back and thrusting it hard against Walsh’s chest. Walsh stumbled over his own feet and dropped to the floor, falling hard. Dust and grit rose around him. He landed in front of the wide-eyed women.
Delbert dropped to a knee and pressed the barrel of his cocked old Remington against the outlaw marshal’s forehead. Walsh raised his hands in supplication. Delbert’s sharp-featured face with its long nose and blue eyes was still flushed deep red with rage as he glared at Walsh’s, whose own face was now twisted in pain and terror.
“How dare you dry-gulch me, you criminal! How dare you hurt my girl an’ Miss—”
Young Thayer stopped himself and turned a shade even redder as he glanced sheepishly at Myra and said, “I mean . . . Miss Myra an’ Miss Breckenridge.”
Jay glanced at Myra, who smiled, then tucked her bottomlip under her upper one, suddenly wistful.
Delbert cleared his throat self-consciously, then switched his narrowed, enraged eyes back to Walsh. “I oughta feed you a pill you can’t digest right here an’ now for doin’ something that low-down an’ poison mean. I heard how you was gonna kill these ladies. I had my ear pressed against the back wall there. I heard the whole thing . . . before I stole around an’ beaned both of those post-stupid deputies with my old slingshot. Yessir, Walsh, I oughta turn you toe down an’ kick you out with a cold shovel. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t!”
Jay cleared her throat, hesitant to intervene in the young man’s castigation of the outlaw marshal, since he seemed to be airing his spleen over a good many injuries even above and beyond Walsh. “Uh . . . Delbert?”
“Yes, Miss Jay?”
“The others left to meet Jason Hall and hold up the bullion run. Don’t you think we should tie him up and . . .”
“Don’t you worry yourself, Miss Jay. Nor you, hon . . . I mean, Miss Myra.” Again, Delbert’s flush deepened. “I got it all taken care of.”
“What?” Walsh blinked up at the enraged young deputy, suddenly curious.
Keeping his eyes on Walsh, Thayer said, “Before I rode out here the other day to hunt me some outlaws and warn the Horsetooth Station about an imminent holdup, Uncle—er, I mean the sheriff—wired me from Santa Fe an’ said he was headed back on the next flyer. Well, after you dry-gulched me, you low-down dirty dog—with my apologies to dogs—and I spent two days tryin’ to clear my head and track down my horse and then heard shootin’ that drew me over here, I ran into the sheriff his ownself. He’s leadin’ a posse out from Camp Collins—a good twenty men. They’ll be layin’ for you and Hall at Horsetooth Station, armed for bear!”
Young Thayer cackled wickedly and shoved his coyote face down closer to Walsh’s. “Oh, I guess you won’t be there, will you, Marshal? Since you’re here and I got you dead to rights! Hah!”
Jay turned to Myra, and the two women shared a delighted, much-relieved smile.
Then Myra turned to Thayer and said, “Del . . . honey . . . ?”
Thayer jerked his head to her, his face turning as bright as Christmas morning. “Yes, Miss Myra?” he asked eagerly.
“Since you got that poison-mean, low-down dirty dog—with apologies to dogs—dead to rights, could you maybe tie him up now and cut me and Jay loose? We haven’t had any blood to our hands or feet for a good half hour.”
Young Thayer stared at his beloved. Jay thought that if his heart had been a bird, it would have flown out of his chest and burst into song. “Why, sure, sure. Sure, I will, honey!”