A Wolf in the Fold

Chapter 26

Three lanterns in the bunkhouse were more than I needed. I splashed the kerosene from all three over the bunks and the walls, then scooped hot coals from the stove and dropped them onto a bunk I had liberally sprinkled. Smoke immediately curled toward the rafters.

The cookhouse was my next stop. I soaked an apron with kerosene and placed it on one of the long tables. I added the curtains and a wooden spoon and pieces of a chair I smashed against a wall. As the flames grew I backed out, then headed for the stable. There I found only one lantern hanging on a peg. I upended it over the hay in the hayloft and soon had flames licking at the rafters.

I walked to the main house and stood on the porch and admired my handiwork. The bunkhouse was fully ablaze, the cookhouse was cooking nicely, and thick gray coils rose from the stable.

One more, and I would be done. I turned to go inside and happened to glance in the direction of Whiskey Flats. “What the hell?” I blurted.

A quarter of a mile away were five riders approaching at a gallop. Unless I was badly mistaken, they couldn’t be cowboys. The punchers were either dead or with Gertrude. Then who? I wondered as I moved to the side of the house and drew the Remington. Hopefully, they had not spotted me.

They came straight to the house and reined up in a flurry of dust. As I had guessed, they were townsmen, and they were armed.

A stocky man in a bowler dismounted and stared aghast at the burning buildings. “My God! Will you look at that! We’re too late.”

“Check in the house, Howard,” an older man with stooped shoulders urged. “See if she’s in there.”

Howard complied. I heard him clomp about, upstairs and down, and in a few minutes he reappeared, breathing heavily. “I found two men, both dead. Jim Unger and Ike Fraykes.”

“Damn. But no sign of Gertrude?”

Howard shook his head. “We might as well head back to town, Bill. We can’t be of any help here.”

I was glad I had left Brisco and the mare behind the house rather than in front. In a few minutes the townsmen would be gone and I could get on with destroying the ranch.

“Where is everyone else?” a third townsman wondered.

“Surely he can’t have killed them all,” said a fourth.

Howard had lifted a foot to a stirrup, but paused. “Maybe we should look around for more bodies. We came all this way. We might as well do something.”

The older man, Bill, was staring at the house with his brow knit. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Son of a bitch!” and drew a Merwin & Bray pocket pistol from under his jacket.

Alarmed, the others produced revolvers. Howard lowered his foot and clumsily unlimbered what looked to be a Smith & Wesson. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”

“The house isn’t burning.”

“No, it’s sure not.” Howard glanced at the house and then at Bill. “What difference does that make?”

Bill glanced toward the corner and I ducked back. I heard him say, “Don’t you get it? Any of you? He wouldn’t burn the other buildings and not burn the house, too. Do you know what this means?”

Howard was not the sharp razor of the bunch. “No, I can’t say as I do. Suppose you tell us.”

“It means he’s still here.”

I was fit to be tied. Why did they have to butt their noses in when I was almost done? The easy thing to do was get on Brisco and light out after Gertrude, but the man called Bill was right; I couldn’t burn down the rest and not burn down the house, too. The house contained everything Gertrude held dear.

There were five of them, but they were townsmen, so I should have an edge. I stepped into the open with my Remington leveled.

“There he is!” Howard squawked.

I fired and had the satisfaction of seeing my target deflate like a punctured water skin and fall from his saddle. I would have shot the man next to him, but Bill cut loose with that Merwin & Bray, three swift shots that struck the corner near my head and seared my cheek with flying slivers. For a townsman, old Bill was uncommonly slick.

I ducked back again. I was angry at them for sticking their noses in and I was angry at me because I refused to leave. I had done more than enough killing the past few days, and honestly and truly had no hankering to add these Good Samaritans. They should have stayed in town where they belonged.

A horse whinnied. Shoes scraped the porch.

I risked a glance and saw the man I had shot sprawled on his belly, dead. There was no sign of the other four. I took it that they had sought cover in the house, but then Howard showed himself at the far end of the porch and snapped a shot. I jerked back and it missed.

From inside the house came Bill’s voice. “Mr. Stark? Can you hear me out there?”

There was no sense in not answering. They knew where I was. “No, I can’t hear you,” I hollered, and chuckled at my little joke.

“Give yourself up, Mr. Stark, and I give my word that we will take you back to town unharmed.”

“That’s awful kind of you,” I said in disgust.

“It’s in your own best interests. We’ve sent for the Texas Rangers and they’re likely to shoot you down on sight. At least if you go with us, you get to live until the trial is over.”

“It will be a week or more before the Rangers can get here,” I said. By then I would be well shed of Texas, and good riddance.

“You’re mistaken, Mr. Stark. Those two you killed, Deeter Smith and Leslie Adams, were part of a company scouring the mountains north of here for renegades. The rest of the company will be here by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”

Unwelcome news. A company of Rangers once held off hundreds of Comanches. If they caught up to me, I didn’t stand a chance in hell.

“We came to tell Gertrude,” Bill had gone on. “We never expected to find you here. But since you are, you might as well be smart and give up. We’ll treat you decent. I give you my word.”

“You have it backwards,” I said. “You’re the one who should be smart and take your friends and go. I won’t shoot. I promise.”

“Even if we trusted you, which we don’t, we can’t just up and ride off. I would never be able to live with myself.”

“Be sensible,” I said, knowing full well that sensible people were as rare as hen’s teeth.

“That’s strange, coming from you. How sensible was it for you to shoot up our town and kill all those poor souls? How sensible is it for you to do what you do for a living? You can no more claim to be sensible than you can claim to be kind.”

He had a point. One person’s sensible is another’s folly. But I was not there to bandy words. I raised my voice. “Listen! All of you! Think of your loved ones. Your families and friends. Your wives and kids. Think of the tears they will shed if you don’t come home.”

“You are a mangy cur,” Bill declared.

I tried a different tactic. “The chore of tracking me down and ending my days belongs to the Rangers, not to you.”

“I beg to differ, Mr. Stark. Those were our friends you murdered. Calista Modine was as decent a woman as ever drew breath. You have too much to answer for, for us to turn our backs.”

“I did not kill Calista,” I said quietly to myself. They would not believe me if I told them the truth.

“Mr. Stark?” Bill said. “No man is invincible. Eventually we all meet our Maker. You might think we will be easy to take, but we won’t. I was a lawman once, years ago, in Ellsworth.”

That explained his ability with a six-shooter.

“What will it be, Mr. Stark?”

I was becoming angry. While we stood there sparring, the wicked witch of west Texas was making good her escape. I had to get this over with quickly.

“I’ve met men like you before, Mr. Stark,” Bill said. “Men who felt they were above the law. Or, rather, a law unto themselves. But none of us have the right to decide who lives and who dies. We’re none of us God, Mr. Stark, although, Lord knows, a lot of us behave like we are. In the end we always have to answer for our deeds. You have the choice of how you answer for yours. You can either go out in a blaze of smoke and blood, or you can submit to a trial and take what comes.”

It occurred to me that he was talking too much. Almost as if he was doing it on purpose to distract me. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was at the far corner of the house. I glanced up at the windows above me—and my gut churned like a pond in a tempest. One of the townsmen was leaning out a second floor window, taking deliberate aim. I threw myself to the ground at the selfsame instant that his revolver boomed. Pain exploded in my left shoulder. I landed on my side and snapped an answering shot that added a hole where his eyebrows met his nose.

Curse me for my stupidity! I had fallen for one of the simplest ruses of the law trade. I was hit and I was bleeding. I had to find out how bad, but I could not do it there. Rising, I watched the windows as I ran toward the back of the house. No one else appeared. They were playing it cagey. Bill’s doing, I bet.

I had made enough blunders for one day. I stopped and peered past the corner before venturing around it. Cold rage seized me. Brisco and the mare were gone. While Bill had blathered, Howard or the other townsman had snuck around and led my animals off.

This could not be happening. I was being out-thought and outfought by a pack of amateurs. Until that moment I had not taken them seriously. I did now. What would they expect me to do? I asked myself. Either charge after my horses or barge into the house through the back door.

I did neither.

Never taking my eyes off the windows, I ran twenty-five yards to the outhouse. It had been destroyed in the stampede and lay in scattered sections. The door was largely intact, lying flat in the grass. I hopped over it, turned, lifted it with my good arm, and stretched out underneath on my left side. My shoulder throbbed, but I grit my teeth and bore it. The pain reminded me not to make another mistake.

Near the top of the door was a small opening in the shape of a crescent moon. I peeked through. No sign of any of them yet. Grunting, I shifted and pried at my shirt. The slug had drilled me under my collarbone, sparing the bone and going clean through. I had been lucky. But it was bleeding and would weaken me if the bleeding did not stop.

The pain I could take. I had always prided myself on being able to handle pain that would have other men weep and whine.

Suddenly I felt dizzy and sick. I closed my eyes and waited for the spell to pass. I hoped to God I wouldn’t pass out. It would be just my luck for them to find me when I was as helpless as a baby. It would embarrass me to be taken like that. I always imagined that when my time came I would go down in a hail of lead. To be taken unconscious and under an outhouse door—no, that would not do at all.

I opened my eyes and looked through the crescent moon.

Howard and another townsman were slinking along the rear wall. They came to the back door and Howard warily opened it. The other townsman watched the corner and the windows. They thought I had gone inside. Neither had bothered to glance toward the outhouse.

Ordinarily, this would be like snatching a pie from a four-year-old, but my clipped wing was stiffening. In a little while it might be next to useless. Torment washed over me as I pressed my left hand to the door to brace it, and slid partway out from under.

Howard entered the house. I centered the Remington on the other man’s back, between his shoulder blades. At my shot he stumbled, his arms flung out to keep from falling. He started to turn and I shot him again, in the back of the head.

Howard reappeared. He stared at his friend, then gazed wildly about, swinging his revolver from side to side.

I watched him through the crescent moon. He did not stay there long, but spun and ran inside. I slid out from under the door, made it to my feet, and jogged to the far corner. I was hurting bad when I got there. It was all I could do to focus.

Howard must have heard me. He poked his head out the back door. I shot him through the ear. He tottered a step and collapsed, one leg against the door, keeping it from closing.

Now it was Bill and me. I was in no condition to have our battle of wits drag out. But how to end it quickly without getting myself killed?

Another bout of dizziness brought bitter bile to my throat. I swallowed it and started toward the front of the house, only to have the world spin like a child’s top. I sank down with my back to the wall and sat catching my breath. The nausea was awful. I considered crawling away and hiding, but I was too weak. I managed to draw my boot knife and switch it to my left hand, holding it so it was concealed under my wrist. Thinking of the wicked witch, I bowed my head.

The ratchet of a hammer being thumbed back jarred me. I looked up into the muzzle of the Merwin & Bray. A boot pinned my Remington to the ground.

“You should have surrendered to me,” Bill said. Bending, he snatched the Remington. I did not resist. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” I croaked.

“Can you stand?”

“Not on my own.”

Bill hunkered. He trained the Merwin & Bray on my face while parting my shirt to examine the wound for himself.

I had one chance and one chance only. I thrust my knife into the base of his throat and sheared the blade upward. The last sound I heard was the Merwin & Bray going off.