CHAPTER 38

Ten minutes earlier, Slash had removed his hat and edged a look around the side of a lumber pile, ancient and moldering, toward the back of the Spanish Bit barn.

A man stood out there smoking a cigarette. He was a bit hard to see, as it wasn’t quite dawn, but a little light was filtering into the valley now—enough to temper the darkness so Slash could see with some detail a few feet around him. He could smell the smoke from the man’s cigarette.

The smell made Slash want one, though of course he wouldn’t be taking the time to hammer another nail in his coffin anytime soon. He had some big fish to fry, many a man to kill . . .

The man keeping watch was maybe ten feet from Slash, who hadn’t expected him to be out there. He’d figured on only one man being in the barn, manning the Gatling gun in the loft, but he’d been wrong. The man in the loft had been smart enough to post a man outside the rear of the barn to watch his flank.

Last night, during their long, wet night together in the saloon up at the mine compound, Lisa had filled Slash and Pecos in on what she knew about the Spanish Bit headquarters, where Hattie was being held. If they hadn’t killed her by now, that was. Slash didn’t think they had. They’d assume she wasn’t the only one on their trail, and they’d want to use her for leverage.

What Lisa had told Slash and Pecos about had included the Gatling gun. She’d spied it both times she’d ridden down as close to the ranch as she’d dared come and risk being seen. Knowing now what she knew about the ranch and the mine—that they were both merely cover for a very lucrative gold-stealing operation—she was sure the outlaws had the machine gun manned in the loft all the time.

It was damn sure being manned now, Slash thought, or this man wouldn’t be out here. The killers sensed trouble was coming. They’d know trouble was coming in a few minutes, when the horses hauling the seven dead men would gallop into the yard.

Slash and Pecos had captured the dead men’s horses last night. Very early this morning, they’d tied the dead men over their saddles, wrapped in their rain slickers. They’d tied all the dead men over the horses except one. Pecos had taken that man’s place. At this very moment, Pecos and Lisa were likely driving the horses down from the mountain toward the ranch.

Again, Slash edged a glance around the lumber pile. The man was still out there, smoking a quirley and humming to himself a little nervously. He was tall and thin, with long, brown hair under a shabby black opera hat. He wore spectacles with one dark lens, likely a bum eye. A Henry rifle rested on his right shoulder. He was smoking the quirley and sort of prancing around just outside the half-open barn door, nervous and chilly and tired after the long, cold night’s vigil trying to stay awake.

Slash knew how the man felt. He himself had it worse.

After circling around to the north of the ranch, he’d tied his horse in a shallow wash and crawled practically half a mile to the lumber pile here on the ranch yard’s north edge. The ground was frosty and damp, so he himself was frosty and damp; he resisted the urge to shiver.

Slash regarded the smoking picket once more, sizing up the situation. His hand strayed to the big bowie knife sheathed on the right side of his cartridge belt. Time to see if his aim was as good as it used to be. Back in his younger days, he’d obsessively practiced throwing the big knife, killing time in outlaw camp or just needing something to do between jobs, between carouses and parlor girls.

Now, however, having become a respectable businessman, he hadn’t practiced with the bowie in some time.

He saw no other plan here than the bowie, however. He needed to dispatch the picket as quietly as possible. He was about to find out how rusty he was . . .

Slash slid the knife from its sheath. He looked at the smoking picket again. The man had just turned to press his back against the barn wall as he stared straight out from the barn to the north. The track of his gaze was maybe fifteen feet to Slash’s right. Slash needed him to turn directly at Slash, to help ensure a sound bowie strike.

Gripping the bowie in his gloved right hand, Slash gave a low whistle.

Frowning, the man pushed away from the barn and turned toward Slash, letting the quirley drop from between his fingers and bringing the Henry down from his shoulder. Slash flung the bowie from behind his own right shoulder, watched it turn end over end in the air, forming an arc. As it began its descent, it turned end over end once more before the pointed tip embedded itself with a crunching thud in the picket’s upper right chest.

A miss! Slash had been aiming for the heart!

He’d likely only punctured the man’s lung . . .

The man stumbled backward against the barn with a heavy thud. He dropped the rifle and grunted and flung his left hand toward the bowie’s handle. At the same time, he looked around with pain-bright eyes. He saw Slash running toward him.

Sliding down the barn wall, he opened his mouth to yell but only loosed a gurgling grunt before Slash silenced him forever with a decisive blow from his Winchester’s brass-plated butt.

Slash watched the man sag to the ground and roll onto a shoulder, eyes rolling back in his head. Slash drew a breath, held it, looking around, half-expecting someone to have heard the commotion and come running.

“Hey, Bishop,” a man called from somewhere above Slash, from inside the barn, “what the hell you doin’ down there? Rasslin’ a rabid barn cat?”

Slash’s heart thudded. He could feel the throb in his temples. Had he just gotten himself killed—and likely his partner, not to mention Lisa Ingram and Hattie Friendly?

“Hey, get your butt up here, will you?” said the man in the barn loft. “I gotta pee like a Prussian plow horse!”

“Okay, okay!” Slash said, brushing a fist across his mouth to disguise his voice.

He reached down to wrap his right hand around the bowie’s handle. He placed his left foot against the man’s arm and pulled the blade free with a wet sucking, grinding sound.

“Hurry up, dammit—quit playin’ with yourself down there!”

“Comin’!” Slash gave the bowie’s blade a cursory cleaning on his victim’s coat. Sheathing the knife, he stepped into the barn and peered around, frowning into the heavy shadows.

Where is the ladder to the loft?

He looked around quickly, striding down the barn’s main alley, breathless with anxiety.

“What the hell are you doin’, Bishop?” yelled the man in the loft. “I told you, I’m about to bust my seams up here!”

Rungs, rungs. Slash was looking for wooden ladder rungs . . .

There!

Quickly, he ran to the outside wall. He climbed quickly with one hand, holding his rifle in his other hand. He poked his head above the loft floor and peered toward the front of the loft. The Gatling gunner was perched on a milking stool before the Gatling gun, the brass canister aimed down into the yard through the open loft doors.

The gunner twisted around to look back toward Slash. “Jesus—about time!” He rose from the stool, pulled his pants up higher on his lean hips.

He was in the late twenties, with a thick shock of sandy blond hair curving down over his left eyebrow. He also wore a heavy, quilted elk-hide coat against the chill. Doffing his hat and brushing a hand quickly back through his hair, he began walking toward Slash across the loft. The only hay up here was some musty, leftover old stuff strewn across the floor.

Slash was still on the ladder, his hips level with the loft floor. He set his rifle on the floor to his right and quickly slid the bowie from its sheath.

The man walking toward him stopped abruptly.

He blinked. Slash could barely see his face in the loft’s darkness. The man was silhouetted against the two, big open doors that were filled with the milky light of the fast-approaching dawn. Outside, birds were chirping.

Hooves thudded—a handful of horses coming fast.

The man had heard the horses right after he’d seen that the man in the loft with him was not who he’d thought he was. He turned his head to his left, listening as the horses entered the yard and set the Spanish Bit men to yelling exclamations.

He whipped his head back toward Slash, his right hand reaching for the revolver holstered on his right hip, on the outside of his coat. Slash threw the bowie. It flashed in the pearl light as it tumbled through the air.

Whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo . . .

The point of the blade hit its intended target with a resolute thump.

The man stopped abruptly and looked down at the bowie’s hide-wrapped handle protruding from his chest. “Oh,” he said on a heavy sigh.

Outside the horses had stopped. That meant that Pecos was going to need Slash at the Gatling gun within a minute . . .

Slash stood facing the Gatling gunner, who swiped his hand toward the revolver once more. Missing it, he reached for it again. This time he wrapped his hand around the gun’s walnut grips.

“No, no, no, no,” Slash said, heart racing. Keeping his voice low, he said, “You’re dead. Fall!”

He started to bring his rifle up but knew he couldn’t use it without alerting the men in the yard, now likely circling the horses and Pecos, that something was up.

Slash cursed and strode quickly to the man with the knife in his chest. The man was slowly sliding his revolver from its holster. Slash couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The man before him, fifteen feet away, had a foot-length blade in his chest, likely in his heart, and he was still trying with what appeared some success to draw his revolver!

Slash stopped before the man, just as the man’s shaking hand and shaking gun cleared leather. Slash grabbed the gun, over the man’s own hand. Slash couldn’t believe the strength remaining in the shaking hand. The man himself grimaced at Slash, gurgling between his lips, from which blood was dribbling down from both mouth corners. He fumbled for Slash with his other hand but was having trouble keeping it raised.

“For cryin’ in the queen’s ale, bucko,” Slash said through gritted teeth, trying to wrestle the pistol out of the man’s hand, “you’re dead!”

Finally, the gun came free. Slash tossed it away and started to raise his rifle to bean the Gatling gunner with the Winchester’s butt, but then the man leaned toward him. Gritting his teeth, he wrapped his hands around Slash’s neck, grinding his thumbs into Slash’s throat. His eyes were flat, and his face was already going pale—Slash could see that in the growing dawn light filtering into the loft—but he still had a hell of a death grip!

Slash hadn’t been prepared for the attack from a dead man. Or a man nearly dead, anyway. He stumbled backward, tripped over his spurs, and fell to the loft floor on his back.

His half-dead assailant fell on top of him, blood still oozing from his mouth and dribbling up around the blade in his chest. He ground his thumbs once more into Slash’s throat. Unable to work the man’s hands free of his neck, Slash wrapped his hands around the blade handle painfully grinding into his own chest, just beneath his breastbone.

Gritting his teeth, he twisted the handle and thus the knife embedded in his assailant’s chest.

The man’s grip loosened. His head jerked, his eyes widened in horror as he stared straight down into Slash’s own eyes. Slash twisted the blade again, working it around, hearing the soft grinding in the man’s own brisket as the razor-edged steel shredded the man’s ticker.

“Oh,” the man said through a weary groan, whispering. “Oh . . . oh . . . oh . . .”

The light faded from his eyes. His hands fell to both sides of Slash’s neck. His head sagged toward Slash’s head. Keeping his hands on the bowie’s handle, Slash pushed the man over to one side and onto his back.

“Damn,” Slash said, breathless, heavily gaining his feet. “Doesn’t anything ever go as planned?”

Outside, voices sounded. They seemed louder now.

Slash’s heart hiccupped.

Pecos!

He ran over to the Gatling gun and stared over the canister into the yard just as one of the men gathered around the dead men’s horses blew straight back off his feet, taking two other men to the ground with him. The first, cannon-like blast was followed quickly by a second blast. Another man was hurled up and back with a shrill cry, slamming another man to the ground before he himself hit the ground and rolled wildly, ass over teakettle.

As all seven of the horses gathered down there began leaping wildly, as did the men around the horses, jerking back in shock, then whipping up their guns, Slash saw one of the “bodies” drop from a bucking horse. Pecos hit the ground and rolled, his sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun gripped in his left hand, while his right hand grabbed for the big Russian thonged low on his right thigh.

Slash swiveled the Gatling’s barrel, taking aim at the men congregated in the yard below, and wrapped his right hand around the wooden handle of the crank.

He shouted, “Get your head down, Pecos, you big ugly galoot!”

Slash turned the crank, and the Gatling gun began caterwauling, spewing flames and fire.