CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Tian’s granddaughter pointed out the mayor’s house, a low, timber building that didn’t look even vaguely Chinese. A hastily built pole corral at one end of the cabin held two horses, a long-legged buckskin and a paint mustang.
The place seemed deserted, but thin smoke trailed from the chimney and the smell of coffee hung in the air.
“So what do we do, O’Brien?” Sedley said after they’d stopped at a distance from the cabin. “Knock on the door and wait until they ask us in for tea?”
“I’m calling him out,” Shawn said.
“Suppose he doesn’t want to come out?” Sedley said.
“Then I’ll kill him at a distance,” Shawn said.
“No, Shawn, I’ll call him out,” Ford Platt said.
“I’m here in my official capacity as a representative of Wells Fargo. It’s my sworn duty.”
“Hell, it don’t matter a damn who calls him out,” Sedley said. “It’s what happens when he comes out that’s the problem.”
“Sedley, is that the first or second sensible thing I’ve ever heard you say?” Platt said.
“Second, I think.”
“Good, then you’re improving.”
Platt stepped toward the cabin, Shawn and Sedley behind him.
The afternoon was hot and near the cabin the branches of a dead, overturned piñon gleamed like scattered white bones in the sun glare. Crickets rasped in the bunch grass and, a ways off, a solitary buzzard flapped to an untidy landing and regarded the three men with a cold, merciless eye.
Platt stood in front of the cabin, spread his legs and filled his chest with air.
“Hank Cobb!” he yelled. “Do you hear me, Hank Cobb? I’m calling you out!”
There was no answer.
A dust devil spun around Platt’s legs and tugged the bottom of his pants.
“Oh, well, there’s nobody to home, O’Brien,” Sedley said. “Better luck next time, huh?”
“They’re to home,” Shawn said. “Their horses are in the corral and they sure didn’t go anywhere on foot.”
“Hank Cobb!” Platt yelled again, leaning heavily on his cane. “Get out here and take your medicine like a man.”
Shawn saw a curtain twitch in a window to the front of the cabin and then from somewhere inside a man’s voice droned followed by a laugh.
Then, “Who the hell is out there?”
Hank Cobb’s voice . . .
“My name is Ford J. Platt, and I’ve been deputized to arrest you for complicity in the murder of a Wells Fargo passenger on the Silver Reef to Cedar City stage. What is your reply?”
Cobb made no answer, and Platt raised his voice even louder. “Do you hear me, Hank Cobb?”
“I hear you,” Cobb yelled.
“Then state your intentions.”
“I’m a wounded man who’s feeling right poorly, but I’m coming out.”
 
 
Shawn stepped closer to Platt and Sedley did the same.
But the gambler swallowed hard and he looked pale and Shawn wondered if he’d stand.
He didn’t blame Sedley. The man wasn’t a gunfighter and this would be close and sudden work, calling for quick hands and steady nerves.
Concerned for the man, Shawn said, “You all right, Hamp?”
Sedley’s face settled into a scowl.
“Don’t worry about me, O’Brien,” he said. “I’ll stand.”
“I never thought other wise,” Shawn said.
“Yes, you did.”
“Well, maybe I did.”
Sedley face cleared and he managed a smile.
“And so did I,” he said.
 
 
The cabin door opened and Hank Cobb stepped outside. With him was a lean, hawk-faced man with careful eyes, wearing a two-gun rig, a rarity on the frontier at that time.
“I see you cut yourself shaving, Hank,” Platt said.
Cobb’s fingers strayed to the bloodstained triangle of newspaper on his left cheek.
“I enjoy a shave before I kill a man,” he said.
Cobb’s eyes crawled over Shawn and Sedley like snails and his thin mouth widened in a smile.
“Well, well, well, all my dear friends are here, just like old times,” he said. He adjusted the hang of the sling on his left arm.
“Cobb, you’re a piece of human garbage,” Shawn said. “And I’m not your friend.”
“No, I guess you’re not at that,” Cobb said.
His gaze dropped to the Colt in Shawn’s waistband.
“The hell if that’s not Mink Morrow’s gun. Did you kill him, O’Brien?”
“No. He gave it to me as a gift.”
“Generous of him.”
“I thought so.”
Platt spoke slowly as though he was deliberately choosing his words.
“Well, Cobb, will you come quietly?” He read the scorn on the other man’s face and said, “I can promise you a fair trial.”
“And a first-class hanging, huh?”
“If that is the jury’s decision, then yes.”
Cobb turned his head to Simon Badeaux.
“What do you think?”
“I think you tell him to go to hell.”
Badeaux had a heavy French accent that would have been at home in a café shaded by the horse-chestnut trees along the Champs-Elysees, and he had a tightness around his mouth that Shawn didn’t like.
Cobb stared at Platt. “You heard the man. He said go to hell. So cut loose your wolf!”
And he went for his gun.
Cobb’s draw was fast and smooth and he targeted Shawn, having long before pegged him as gun slick.
In that, he was right.
Shawn drew from the waist and had a bullet into Cobb’s chest an instant before the man fired. Shawn took the hit on the top of his left shoulder. Cobb’s bullet burned across his skin like a red-hot iron.
Cobb’s eyes were wild, shocked. He knew he was hit hard, but couldn’t believe it had happened to him.
He staggered back a step, his face grim and worked his Colt.
He fired.
A miss.
Shawn, past and present angers driving him, was relentless.
He fired, fired again.
Hit in the belly and again in the chest, Cobb screamed his rage and dropped to his knees. Scarlet blood and saliva ran from his mouth and his eyes were murderous.
He tried to bring up his Colt. . . .
Then something happened that Shawn, Cobb . . . no one could have anticipated.
The old Chinese man named Tian darted from the corner of the cabin, running at a speed that belied his age.
A moment later, with tremendous strength, he swung a flat, wide-bladed sword, a red tassel hanging from the hilt, and the honed steel bit into the right side of Cobb’s neck . . . and kept on going.
Cobb’s head seemed to jump a foot from his shoulders. It rolled in the dirt and came to a stop close to Shawn, who kicked it aside.
He turned and caught the last moments of the gunfight between Badeaux and Ford Platt.
Platt, pulling a gun from the pocket of his coat, had been slower than Badeaux. But he’d taken his hits, remained on his feet, and gamely got his work in.
But now he was down on one knee, his chest splashed with blood.
Hit, Badeaux had staggered to the cabin and shoved his back against the wall.
Now he shouldered himself off, steadied his stance, and took deliberate aim at Platt.
Shawn and Sedley fired at the same time.
Hit twice, Badeaux fell against the cabin and slowly slid down the wall to a sitting position.
His eyes were wide open . . . but he saw nothing.
Cobb’s eyes were also open . . . but God alone knew what they were seeing. . . .