CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
“Shannon! Only a damned fool starts a gunfight in a thunderstorm!” Clay Kyle yelled.
The rain was torrential, falling from cataclysmic clouds as black as foam-swept rocks.
“I do, Kyle,” Dave Shannon called back. “And I’ll keep it up until I drive you out of here. You’re a disgrace to the neighborhood.”
Kyle and the rest were still sheltered under the rock overhang that kept off the worst of the rain but offered little by way of cover. Everyone had hit the ground when Shannon and his men started shooting, and suddenly even a fist-sized pebble became a prized barricade.
Bullets hammered into the underside of the shelf and whanged away, kicking up startled Vs of sand and gravel on the floor. Loco Garrett, a man born under a dark star, had been hit again, this time in the groin. The gunman bled a bucketful of scarlet gore and his kicking heels chawed up the ground as he shrieked in mortal agony. Loco was as stupid as a stump, but even he knew he’d received a death wound and was on a straight path to hell.
As rifles slammed on either side, Kyle cursed the storm and his exposed position. He took a quick pot with his Winchester and nailed a visible leg of one of Shannon’s men. When the gunman carelessly leaned forward to grab his shattered knee, his hat brim and then the right side of his head appeared beyond the protecting boulder. It was all the target Kyle needed. Another quick shot, and the .44-40 bullet crashed into the gunman’s temple, traversed the man’s skull and exited just above his left ear, taking brain and bone with it. It was a devastating wound, and the gunman, a man named Farrell, who’d briefly ridden with young Bill Bonney and his Regulators, died instantly.
There was a lull in the fire, and Kyle looked around him. Loco Garrett was silent now, gasping his last, his face turned to the rain. One-eyed Morris Bennett was wounded, but still in the fight. Broken Nose Charlie Bates, a former bareknuckle pugilist, a man with weak lungs, was never the steadiest of hands in a gunfight and he looked scared, breathing hard. Susan Stanton and the Calthrop girl were still unharmed and Zack and Arlo Palmer and Boon Shanks held to their positions, rifles at the ready. The vilest of the vile frontier trash, the three nonetheless had a brand of coyote courage and would fight well when cornered.
And right now, Clay Kyle was cornered.
Thunder rolled and banged, and lightning scratched across the sky like a skeletal hand. Kyle and his remaining fighting men, with the exception of Bates who seemed to be out of the fight, poured fire into Shannon’s boulder-strewn position in the middle of a stand of stunted wild oak and heavy brush. In the exchange of shots, Bennett was hit a second time and Arlo Palmer lost a left earlobe.
In later years, two of Shannon’s surviving gunmen credited Susan Stanton with an incredible kill at more than fifty yards . . . a revolver shot that hit the Missouri gunman Zebulon Hopperton right in the middle of his forehead. In 1905, Bat Masterson credited Zack Palmer with the shot, but since the Suffragette movement was at its height, like many others, Bat may have been unwilling to give a woman the credit. But Shannon’s men swore that they saw a beautiful woman shoot Hopperton with a Colt Peacemaker at fifty or sixty yards. One of them claimed to have later paced off the distance and said, “It was kinda like how Wild Bill shot Dave Tutt that time.”
Whatever the case, the killing of Zeb Hopperton ended the engagement . . . at least for that day. Under the cover of the storm, carrying their dead with them, Dave Shannon withdrew his soaked and sulky gunmen and stopped only to yell at Kyle. “Damn you, Kyle, we’ll be back!”
“I know you will,” Kyle said, but only to himself.
* * *
Loco Garrett was dead and so was Charlie Bates, shot through the top of his head and also the biggest loss of all, the skilled drawfighter Morris Bennett had taken two bullets to his upper chest and died.
Zack and Arlo Palmer . . . Boon Shanks . . . only the trash was left.
* * *
“Why did Dave Shannon quit?” Susan Stanton said.
“Two reasons . . . his men didn’t like fighting in a thunderstorm any more than we did, and he’d lost two of them,” Kyle said. “He’ll be back. He wants us out of these mountains.”
“A man shouldn’t be able to own a mountain,” Boon Shanks said.
“Shannon doesn’t want to own a mountain,” Kyle said. “He wants a place where he and others like him can hide out after a job without worrying about lawmen. Seems like just by being here I spoiled his plan.”
“What about the gold?” Zack Palmer said. Bearded and shaggy, he looked like a satyr in the firelight. “Is there gold?”
Susan Stanton said, “If there’s a rich Arabian sheik in the Sierra del Carmen with tons of gold, a harem of beautiful women, and a much-loved son who now and then comes out to play, Dave Shannon and other outlaws would own it all already. Don’t you think?”
Kyle was silent for long moments, then said, “Hell, maybe I figured it wrong. The Chinaman . . .”
“Took a legend he’d overheard in a whorehouse or on a railroad gang, embroidered the truth, and sold it to you as a natural fact,” Susan said.
“But why would he do that?” Kyle said.
“What did you give him in return?” Susan said.
“He was only a little runt, the Chinaman. I gave him protection from the other cons, and I made sure he got his fair share of whatever grub was going around,” Kyle said.
“And he spun you a yarn to keep you doing those things,” Susan Stanton said.
“He lied to me,” Kyle said. “The Chinaman was dying, but he lied to me. Don’t that beat all.”
“You helped him survive, Clay, but he hated your guts for it,” Susan said. “I knew a Chinese whore once on the Barbary Coast in California. She called her white clients, Gwai, meaning ghost men, and she hated them. Dying or not, the Chinaman had no love for you.”
Kyle shook his head. “I should have wrung that Chinaman’s scrawny neck.”
“Yes, you should have,” Susan said. “But it’s too late now.”
“Listen up, Clay,” Boon Shanks said. His hot eyes went to Jenny Caltrop. “I’ll take the girl off your hands right now. Can we make a deal?” He reached in a pocket and said, “Look. It’s Morris Bennett’s gold watch and fifty dollars and a silver gambler’s ring I took from Charlie Bates’s finger. Hell, that’s a lot more than the girl is worth.”
“Boon, you’re a filthy, slimy, slithering lizard of a man,” Susan Stanton said. “I can’t stand the sight of you.”
Boon’s smile was sly. “Does that mean you want the girl for yourself, man-woman?”
Susan Stanton’s backhanded slap across Shanks’s hairy face sounded like the crack of a pistol shot. The man had been squatting by the fire and he fell backward and his shoulders thumped on rock. His eyes slitted, Shanks screamed an obscenity, and his hand flashed for his gun. Susan was now in a kneeling position, her Colt unhandy. She skinned it but was slower than Shanks, a man fast and sure on the draw and shoot.
But Clay Kyle was also a man born with quick reactions.
As Shanks drew and started to pull himself up, Kyle had already grabbed the handle of the coffeepot. He threw the contents into Shank’s chest just as the man’s Colt came level. Boiling hot coffee splashed all over the sitting gunman, and he howled in sudden pain and dropped his gun to pull his blackened shirt away from his scalded skin.
If it had been anyone else but Susan Stanton it might have ended right there.
But the woman was not one to let a despised enemy off the hook.
She laughed and put two bullets into Shanks, and he fell back and lay still, steaming like a manure pile.
Kyle was on his feet, furious. He glared at the woman and said, “Damn you, you didn’t need to kill him.”
“Yes, I did,” Susan said. “He was a pig.”
Zack Palmer said, “Hell, Clay, keep this up and there’ll be none of us left.”
“I didn’t want Boon dead,” Kyle said.
“Oh dear, I’m as silly as a goose,” Susan Stanton said. “I thought you did.”
Zack rose to his feet, his brother Arlo flanking him. He pointed. “That woman will be the death of us all. First Arch Pitman and now Boon Shanks. Two good men gone.”
“They were not good men, they were inbred scum, as welcome at a campfire as a pair of wet dogs at a square dance,” Susan said.
“I say we get out of here,” Arlo said. “Head south until we find a place to sell the girl.”
“Arlo, how much is she worth?” Zack Palmer said.
“Depends on the brothel,” Arlo said. “Maybe five hundred. Maybe more.”
“We might do better back in Texas,” Zack said. He looked at Boon Shanks’s body. “Are we going to bury that?”
Kyle made no answer, and his shoulders slumped as he said, “Five hundred dollars. It ain’t even decent whiskey money.” He exhaled a long-suffering sigh and said, “Suzie, take the girl behind a boulder someplace and strip her down. See what you think she’ll bring in a Fort Worth brothel.”
Susan Stanton smiled. “Not much.” She stepped to Jenny. “Come on you. Let’s take a look at what you have to offer a man.”
The girl looked horrified. She bent over and picked up a rock and backed away, ready to throw. “I’m not taking my clothes off for you or anybody else. Take another step and I’ll chunk this rock right at your head. My brothers taught me how.”
Susan Stanton was a little taken aback. She smiled. “So little miss goody two-shoes shows some spunk.”
“Just try me,” Jenny said. Her dress was getting ragged, and she had a smear of dirt on her cheek.
“All right, sister, let’s see what’s faster,” Susan said. “Your rock or my gun.”
“Suzie, no! Leave the girl be,” Kyle said. “I just thought up a better plan for her.”
Susan Stanton relaxed, uncoiling slowly like a sleek serpent. “Whatever you say, Mr. Kyle.” Then to Jenny, in a thin hiss, “Sass or backtalk me again and I’ll cut your tits off, you little slut.” She turned and stepped to Kyle. “So what’s your plan, Clay?”
“She’s to be a gift . . . call her a peace offering,” Kyle said. “I got a hunch that little gal will get us out of these mountains alive.”