Yancey Bannerman was sure he had the Guthries and their bunch trapped when they rode into Half Moon Canyon. He figured that if they rode on down into the narrow section of one of the canyon’s ‘horns’ there would be no place for them to go and, even though he was only one man against five, he could keep them pinned down until help arrived.
That was the way he figured it. But they outsmarted him.
It seemed as if they were riding towards the entrapping, narrow ‘horn’ section of the canyon and Yancey, eager to close off this assignment after so many weeks of hard trails and gunsmoke, grew just a mite careless. He was weary, hadn’t slept in forty hours, and his reflexes weren’t as sharp as they usually were. The sorrel was near-jaded too, and, though he urged it across the canyon to the one place he could hole-up and pin down the Guthries, it didn’t respond quite fast enough. The extra seconds he had to spend getting it moving almost cost him his life.
There was an open stretch of about ten yards to be covered; no problem for a galloping horse that was tolerably fresh. But, the sorrel was staggering and slow-moving and halfway across it stumbled. If it hadn’t, Yancey would have had his head blown off. As it was, the bullet laid a red streak across his left cheek and clipped the lobe of his ear. Blood sprayed onto his dusty shirt shoulder as he instinctively threw himself to one side, snatching at the butt of the heavy Winchester ’76 rifle that rested in the saddle scabbard. A second shot smashed into the rifle butt and slivers of the burr-grained walnut stung his hand as he snatched it back and rolled out of the saddle. The horse whinnied, and plunged, but he didn’t know if it was just frightened or if it had been hit. Then the ground slammed into him and the breath gusted out of him. He landed on his shoulders and somersaulted onto his belly. Squirming around, he dragged out his six-gun and looked swiftly about for cover. Sand kicked into his face and another bullet sent a fist-sized rock flying before ricocheting away with a savage buzz.
Yancey was right out in the open here and he cursed the Guthries for turning at this point to make their stand. Likely it was Frank who had thought of it. The others, his twin brother, Tag, included, would have ridden on until the canyon narrowed too much for them to move and by the time they figured there was no way out, it would have been too late. But Frank Guthrie was the smart one of the twin outlaw killers. He must have realized the trap they were riding into. Now he had neatly turned the tables on Yancey and if the Enforcer didn’t move fast—and soon—he would be shot full of holes.
Yancey didn’t waste his lead right now. Bullets spattered around him and as soon as there was a lull, he gathered himself and made a zigzagging, pounding run for the rocks part-way up the slope, where he had been heading in the first place. His horse had already run out of sight. He heard someone yell and then the killers’ guns opened up and the bullets flew around him. Some ricocheted off the rocks ahead and the flattened lead discs slashed and planed through the air around him. He made the first of the rocks and went over it in a headlong dive. He hit harder than he meant to and grazed his head on a rock. It knocked his hat off and lights burst and whirled behind his eyes as he skidded into another, larger rock that slammed against his ribs.
Panting, doubled up in pain, Yancey squirmed around and dragged himself a little higher and around behind an even bigger rock. Four bullets peppered it but he was safely behind it by then. He knelt and laid his sights on one of the outlaws who was making a run for higher cover. The big Peacemaker boomed and the man pitched headlong in mid-stride. He crashed and rolled back down the small slope. He landed on his back and didn’t move.
Yancey ducked as his shelter was raked with a withering fire. Hunkered down while the bullets flew, he looked around him, at the same time, dropping the used shell from his Colt’s cylinder and replacing it with a live cartridge shucked from his belt. Four to one now and he had to even-out the odds a little. He was on his own. He had sent a telegraph from the last town, Cannon Hill, to his sidekick, Johnny Cato, but didn’t know if he had received it. Or, even if Cato had gotten the message, if he would be in a position to respond to the call for help. And, even if he was already on his way, there was no way that Cato could know Yancey was pinned down in Half Moon Canyon halfway across the San Blas Desert.
What it meant was that he was on his own. If Cato turned up to help—and in time—then it would be a bonus, a very fortunate one.
The shooting stopped and Yancey didn’t hesitate. He had his new shelter picked out, a clump of four boulders, five yards up-slope, with an overhanging ledge above to protect him from overhead fire. Trouble was, he knew damn well Frank Guthrie would have already seen this as good protection and would likely have it covered. He was right; the four guns across the canyon hammered in volley after volley as he pounded for the boulders. Yancey kept his eyes on the clump, ignoring the spattering shots. He felt lead tug at his flying vest; something slammed hard into the earth almost directly beneath his left foot and sent him stumbling to one side. There were several savage buzzing sounds that made him flinch involuntarily. The breath burned the back of his throat as his legs and arms pumped, driving him up the soft-earth slope. The blood roared and pounded in his ears. He fell, face down, slamming into the earth. It was so sudden, without any warning at all, that, at first, he thought he must have been hit.
The outlaws likely figured the same thing for the firing stopped abruptly and in the pause, he got his legs under him again, thrust upright and hurled himself the last few feet, right through the opening between the rocks. He was inside and squirming around again before the shooting recommenced. Yancey lay there, getting his breath, letting his nerves settle, unworried by the lead spanging off the boulders. Then, when his breathing was more or less normal, he wormed his way to a triangle of light that showed where two boulders leaned together and he was able to get a fair view of the canyon.
Guthrie and his men were changing positions as he figured they would. They were climbing higher and two men were mounted. He picked them right away as Frank and Tag Guthrie, and he aimed and fired at Tag. His lead went close enough to take the man’s hat off and reveal his shaggy brown hair, but it didn’t touch Tag. All it did was make him rake his horse’s flanks with his spur rowels until the blood dripped, almost literally hurling the animal behind shelter. Frank threw his rifle to his shoulder and sent three fast shots at Yancey’s rock and then he, too, disappeared behind the ridge.
The other two men were afoot and were running fast for a lower section of the ridge, concentrating on getting behind cover. Yancey took careful aim at the first man and fired. The man spun around, clawing at his side, fell, but started to rise again. Yancey dropped him with one more carefully-placed shot. The other man was almost to the top when Yancey turned his gun on him, but, by then, the Guthries were in position and he ducked hurriedly as rifle bullets peppered his opening. Yancey rolled aside and flinched as two bullets came into his shelter and buzzed back and forth from the rocks before whining away. Damn! he cursed silently. He was in a death-box. If they kept putting their lead inside here, he could be cut to ribbons by the flying, flattened bullets as they ricocheted in series. And he knew that Frank Guthrie was a good man with a rifle, and well able to place his shots carefully.
He hadn’t made such a good move after all; in fact, he could have signed his death warrant by coming in here.
~*~
Johnny Cato was in a lousy mood as he rode into the town of Cannon Hill. Yancey’s telegraph had caught up with him in the nearby town of Saber Cut and he had cursed the luck that had delayed him there just long enough to be on hand when the wire had come, relayed down from Austin in code by Kate Dukes, the governor’s daughter. Yancey was in trouble and needed help. Well, he sure didn’t mind lending old Yance a hand. He just wished his old pard had chosen a more opportune time to ask for it.
Cato was in something of a hurry. He’d had a bad time not so long ago, posing as a rogue gun for Lester Dukes, the governor of Texas, so as to infiltrate a bunch of slavers and wetback-runners. It had cost him plenty, not just in physical suffering, but it had also lost him Marnie Hendry, the girl he had aimed to marry after the assignment was over. i The trouble was, it had been so hair-trigger a situation, that he had been unable to take the girl into his confidence and she had been deeply hurt by his behavior towards her ... all part of his cover. It had all been too much for her and she had left before he came back from the job, convinced that there was no future for them together. He had accepted this at first for, in truth, he couldn’t blame the girl. She had been through mental hell and he hadn’t been able to do anything about it. He had been disappointed when she had taken off like that and he had been drunk for three days.
Then Governor Dukes, believing he was doing the right thing and helping Cato, had found him an assignment to keep him busy. At first, Cato had been grateful: the need to concentrate had kept him from having too much time to think about Marnie. Then the assignment had come to an abrupt end. The man he had been after had confessed everything in writing and blown his brains out. Cato was left once more with time to think about the girl.
It didn’t take him long to figure out that there was really only one thing to do. He had to find her and at least try to explain, tell her that, if she would have him, he was still keen to marry her and make a life together. If she wanted, he would quit the Enforcers, and go back to gunsmithing in some peaceful town. He was pushing thirty-six, had had a wild and exciting life, so maybe it was time he thought about settling down. And the only woman he’d ever met who could put such thoughts into his head was Marnie Hendry. He’d be plumb loco to let her walk out of his life without making some attempt to get her back, even though she was ten years his junior.
He hadn’t even gone back to Austin. He had merely sent a wire to Dukes, saying he aimed to take some of the accrued leave due him. He had heard nothing against that idea and had been on Marnie’s trail when Yancey’s relayed wire had caught up with him in Saber Cut. He knew Yancey wasn’t the type to send out calls for help unless they were necessary and once again he found that it came down to him having to choose between Marnie and his job. But he didn’t hesitate for long. Marnie didn’t even know he was coming after her, so a few more days’ delay wouldn’t matter too much. But it made him mad, just the same: the first time in a week he had gotten onto sign of Marnie that was even warm and he had to leave it. But Yancey needed him and that was that.
Cato checked over his weapons: His twenty-six inch barreled Winchester ’76; his big-bladed Bowie knife, honed so sharp he could shave with it, and did; and finally, the Manstopper, the massive special handgun he had built on the frame of the old Colt Dragoon .44, the most powerful black powder handgun ever built ... until Cato designed the Manstopper. It fired eight specially-loaded .45 caliber cartridges from the fat cylinder, and there was a large, smoothbore barrel slung beneath the normal, eight-inch hexagonal .45 barrel. This fired the twelve-gauge shot-shell, held in a special chamber in the center of the cartridge cylinder and was operated by means of a toggle on the gun hammer. Cato was not a big man, only standing about five-eight, and he didn’t weigh any more than one hundred and forty pounds, but, apart from agility and an inbuilt fighting ability, the Manstopper more than evened the odds when he ran up against bigger, deadlier men. In fact, his small stature often worked to his advantage, for bigger men would dismiss him as not being very dangerous. There were a lot of them resting under headboards on various Boothills throughout the West who had realized their mistake too late.
Now, satisfied that his weapons were in top class condition as usual, making sure he had sufficient ammunition, Cato quit Saber Cut and rode hell-bent for Cannon Hill.
The town was quiet when he first rode in, but when he left, a bare half-hour later, it was in an uproar. Cato wanted to get to Yancey pronto; not only because he wanted to be free to carry on with his search for Marnie, but because Yancey’s wire had been delayed by going to Austin first and then having to be relayed on to him. By now, Yancey could have real trouble on his hands. When he had sent the wire, he was close to the Guthrie bunch and was afraid he would lose them once they started put into the San Blas Desert. Cato was a day behind schedule and he had to make up that time. He ordered a fast, fresh horse at the livery stables in Cannon Hill. While the stable hands hurried to cut out the blotchy brown gelding he had chosen from the corral out back, Cato cornered the livery owner as the man made out the bill-of-sale.
“Yancey Bannerman ... heard of him?”
The liveryman looked up, frowning, then shook his head. “Not from round these parts.”
“Big feller, six-two, hundred-ninety, two-hundred pounds. Brown hair, gray eyes, face’s got a few scars on it like he’s been in some scrapes, which he has. Would’ve been through here yesterday, I guess, maybe late the day before.”
“What was he forkin’?” the liveryman asked, looking thoughtful.
“Dunno.”
“Can’t help you then,” the liveryman said handing Cato his bill-of-sale.
Cato took the paper without looking at it, bored his cold eyes into the stableman’s face. “How about Tag and Frank Guthrie and their bunch?” he asked quietly. “Help me there?”
Cato saw right away that the man didn’t like that query. He began to fidget and wouldn’t look at Cato as he busied himself with some papers on his untidy desk.
“They’re outlaws, ain’t they?”
“You know it,” Cato said harshly. “And I hear tell that Cannon Hill folk look on them as somethin’ of heroes. Just because they drop by here from time to time and spread a little money around. Stolen money.”
“They’ve helped a heap of folk round these parts,” the man said defensively.
“Sure, by killin’ and, like I said, forkin’ out stolen dinero.”
“Lawman?”
“Sort of. Bannerman is, too. So, you withhold information on him and you’re in trouble, mister.”
“I’m in more from the Guthries if I say anythin’ to you!” the man replied, breathing heavily.
“I just wouldn’t take any bets on that,” Cato told him and he lifted the massive Manstopper and rammed the barrels under the man’s chin. He let him watch with bugging, near crossed eyes, as he flicked the hammer toggle and then notched it back to full cock. “Know what I just done? That there toggle opens the firing chamber for that underslung barrel, the smoothbore. There’s a twelve-gauge shot-shell in there, chock-full of buckshot, and it’ll spread your head halfway out into the street if I let the hammer drop. Now, no need to start shakin’ like that. Here, I’ll steady you ... that better? All you got to do is think about the Guthrie bunch and Yancey Bannerman some more. Then you tell me which way they headed when they quit this dump. But you do them things pronto, before I reach the count of ten, or your wife and kids’ll be weepin’ at your graveside tomorrow. If they can find enough of you to bury. One ... two ...”
Cato didn’t get past ‘five’. It took the man that long to swallow and get some spittle into his mouth to moisten his tongue. Then he bleated like a sheep as he said, “Hold up!”
Cato paused, waited, put a shade more pressure on the gun barrels.
“Yesterday. Just before sundown. They rode out into the San Blas.”
Cato thrust hard and brutally with the gun barrels. “Damn it, I know that much! Which direction?”
“N-north, north-west.”
“What lies out there? Some place the Guthries use to hole-up?”
The man swallowed. “Th-they’ll kill me!”
Cato pressed hard and leaned his face close. “They’re out in the San Blas but I’m right beside you, mister,” he reminded the liveryman.
“Half Moon Canyon. It’s their hole-in-the-wall,” the man rasped. “Twenty miles northwest. Lifts outa the plain like a giant, hunched mountain lion, ready to spring. Bouldershot, and you wouldn’t know a canyon was there ’less someone told you.”
“This’d better be gospel.”
The man nodded vigorously. Cato held him under the gun a moment longer, then released him, just as the other stablehand brought down the brown horse, all saddled. He looked queerly at his white-faced and shaking boss but said nothing as Cato took the reins from him and swung up into leather. He glared down at the liveryman.
“Might be I’ll be back this way.”
“I—I told you gospel!” the man grated hoarsely.
Cato nodded and heeled the horse down towards the big double doors. The stable hand looked at his boss.
“What happened?”
The livery boss was already tearing open a desk drawer and snatching at a six-gun. “He’s after Tag and Frank! He’s a lawman, just like that big feller, Bannerman!”
“Goddamn you!” the stable hand snapped, dragging at his own gun. “This town’ll kill you for that!”
“Not if we stop him!” the boss said, leaping out into the aisle and starting to blaze wildly after Cato as the Enforcer, out in the street now, lifted the brown to a canter. Cato ducked and drew the Manstopper as the two stablemen ran to the big double doors and began shooting. They yelled to other men on the street that Cato was a lawman after the Guthries. Before he had gone a block, he had a dozen guns shooting at him.
He lay low over the neck of the racing horse and then dropped hammer on the Manstopper’s shot-barrel. The unexpected roar of the shot-shell slapped through the main street and men dived for cover as the screaming pattern of buckshot took out a store window and ripped white slivers of wood from a false front. The townsmen kept their heads down and Cato flicked the toggle and blasted at whoever he saw with a gun in hand. One man tumbled over the horse-trough, another slammed face-first into a building wall, a third took a wild tumble over a cracker barrel. He didn’t know if he had hit them or whether the bullets merely went close. But it was enough to send the others rushing for cover and by that time he was fast approaching the end of Main. He peppered windows as he tore past, emptying the big gun, just as the brown left the town behind and thundered on out into the San Blas Desert.
~*~
Yancey had exactly ten cartridges left in his belt loops and four in the chamber of his hot Peacemaker.
The heat pulsing from the rock shelter was like a furnace. He had stripped off his shirt long since and tied his kerchief around his forehead to keep the sweat from rolling down into his eyes and blinding him. He figured there was another dead man over there with the Guthrie bunch, but he couldn’t be sure. They hadn’t moved about much for the past couple of hours, knowing they had him pinned, and with the sun heading for high noon, he figured they would let it work for them, too. Yancey was dizzy with the blasting heat and his mouth felt as though it was full of cotton. He badly wanted water but his canteen was on the saddle of his horse and he didn’t even know where the animal was. There were a few stones scattered around his shelter and he had tried sucking on one, but he was too dehydrated for that old trick to work. He couldn’t muster any saliva to stimulate further flow and the stone had burned his tongue and the roof of his mouth, before he had spat it out.
They had sure turned the tables neatly on him. He had figured, once they had ridden into this canyon, he could keep them pinned down until Cato arrived. Then the two of them could have finished off the Guthrie gang once and for all. But he realized now that Half Moon Canyon must be one of the many hideouts used by the Guthries and they had been the ones leading him into the jaws of a trap. They could afford to take their time. now. They had water, food and ammunition, and the wall of the canyon threw a massive slab of shade across their shelter. His boulder clump was exposed to the full blast of the noon heat and the ledge above was hotter than the rocks around him. Already his vision was starting to go, flaring into brilliant yellow flashes, interspersed with whirling colored dots. He would be glare blind in another hour or so and then they could just walk up and put their guns in through the openings and blow him full of holes. Maybe he had been in worse spots, but right now he couldn’t think of any.
Where the hell was Cato, anyway? He had really expected the man to show before this. A train out of Austin to Saber Cut would have put him within a frog’s leap of Cannon Hill.
Then he would have made it his business to find out just where Yancey had headed on the trail of the Guthries. Of course, Cato might have been out on another assignment. But then Dukes would have simply diverted the nearest agent or even called in a Ranger troop to make sure some kind of help reached Yancey.
Yancey ducked, spitting and cussing as his face plowed into the loose sand and the grains stuck to his lips and crunched between his teeth. Lead raked his shelter, mainly on the outside, though one bullet came through a gap between the rocks and buzzed and slashed and screeched off the boulders. He winced and bared his teeth with every new sound it made until, finally, it found another opening and whined away into the hot pulsing furnace of the canyon. Sooner or later one of those ricochets would get him, he knew. It wouldn’t be like getting hit with an ordinary slug; it would be like getting hit with a coffee-cup sized hunk of lead travelling at the speed of a locomotive. For, once the lead hit a rock and flattened, it would be dollar-sized, the edges split and flared and sharp, like razors. If it hit him flat on, it would blow a hole in him you could drive a buckboard through. If it hit edge on, it would cut him up like a saber thrust, only it would destroy his internal organs, pulping them, because of the energy behind the jagged lead disc. It sure wouldn’t be a pleasant way to die.
He checked, lifting his head, listening to something through the roaring in his ears. Gunfire, slapping and echoing through the canyon, but not coming from the last place the Guthries had holed-up. Hell, if they were on the move, going to take him from all sides, he didn’t have a chance! But he still had ten shells and he loaded the gun’s cylinder swiftly to full capacity and then shucked out the spare remaining cartridges and placed them on a rock close to his hand. He blinked and rubbed at his eyes in an effort to clear his vision. Then he stiffened.
There was the reverberating, thunderous roar of a shotgun ... and yet not quite like a shotgun. It lacked some of the deep-throated boom of a Greener. By hell, there was only one gun he knew that made a sound like that—Cato’s Manstopper!
Taking a chance now, he looked through one of the gaps between the boulders and he saw Tag and Frank Guthrie running for their mounts while the other gang member leapt from a rock and hit the slope at full speed, skidding and sliding down, rifle in hand. Dust was settling from some sort of eruption on the slope above him and Yancey knew that was where Cato’s blast of buckshot had landed. He heard the gun hammering again, even the cartridges having a flatter, different sound to the normal factory loads of the ordinary six-guns. The outlaw on the slope bounded to his feet and brought his rifle around. Then he staggered as lead hit him and the rifle sagged and exploded into the ground. The man jerked again and crashed over backwards. His body rolled on down the slope but there was no life left in it now.
Yancey’s throat was too dry to yell but he crawled out and began firing as the Guthries sprang into their saddles, wheeled their mounts and made their run down the canyon. Yancey’s gun bucked in his hand, and he gripped his right wrist with his left fingers, steadying it, getting off two fast shots. He missed Frank but the bullets hit the man’s horse and the animal went down thrashing, throwing Frank solidly into the canyon wall. The man must’ve been badly shaken, but he was game. Pure instinct drove him to his feet and he began firing upslope at Yancey. The big Enforcer ducked and, even as he did so, he spotted Cato, riding in on a lathered brown horse, cutting down a steep slope, trying to head off Tag Guthrie. The outlaw wasn’t bothering to shoot; he was concentrating on getting away, aiming to get his mount through the narrow entrance before Cato could bring him down or cut him off.
Frank Guthrie paused in shooting at Yancey to stare, slack-jawed as he watched the race. He bawled at his brother to slam home the spurs, but Tag was already raking his mount’s flanks to bloody meat. He glanced briefly at Cato and the small Enforcer, seeing that Tag would make the entrance before he could get there, stood in the stirrups, holstered the Manstopper and slid his Winchester from the scabbard in one smooth motion.
He threw it to his shoulder and it blasted twice.
Tag Guthrie seemed to rise in his stirrups and the way he kicked one boot free, it looked almost as if he was aiming to step off the racing horse. But the forward-driving impact of the bullets snapped his neck back at a violent, unnatural angle and his body lost its smooth motion, jerked convulsively and somersaulted over the racing mount’s neck in an awkward fall. Tag went down, bounced off the front legs of the horse and was jammed between the horse’s body and the narrow entrance wall. Even if the bullets hadn’t killed him, the crushing impact of the racing animal would have finished him.
“Ta-a-a-ggggg!” roared Frank Guthrie, his own danger momentarily forgotten as he witnessed his twin brother’s death. Eyes wide, face twisted up, Frank staggered down the slope towards his dead brother.
Yancey, barely able to keep to his own feet, stumbled down from his hiding place and put a bullet into the ground only inches from Frank’s boots. The man stopped and turned and blinked up at Yancey, then started to lift his gun. Yancey fired again and his bullet tore the Colt from Frank Guthrie’s grasp. The man howled as he clutched at his jarred gun-hand, clasping it against his body. Yancey cocked his gun again and took a few tentative, unsteady steps down. He couldn’t speak, his mouth was too dry.
But Frank Guthrie wasn’t fighting any more, in fact, didn’t even seem very interested in Yancey. He turned his head as Cato rode up and dismounted, still holding his rifle. Frank’s eyes slitted dangerously.
“Goddamn you, mister!” he grated, a catch in his voice. “You murdered my brother!”
Cato merely looked at him coldly and then flicked his eyes to Yancey. “You okay?”
Yancey nodded and made guttural sounds in the back of his throat, indicating his scaled, dry lips. Cato got the message and turned and took down his saddle canteen, tossing it to Yancey one-handed while he covered Frank Guthrie. Yancey snatched at the canteen and drank greedily. Cato met Frank’s hate-filled gaze.
“By hell, mister, I won’t rest till you’re dead meat!” Frank Guthrie grated. “You hear me? ... Dead meat!”
Cato merely stared back levelly and jerked the rifle barrel, indicating that the outlaw should raise his hands. Guthrie did so. slowly, not taking his eyes off Cato for a second.
It was as if he didn’t ever want to forget one single feature of the man.