The Man From Nowhere

Chapter 40

“You, the drunk,” Darlene said, “did you bring the money?”

Oates nodded. He glanced at Nantan. His wife’s eyes were wide in the shifting scarlet light and she looked scared.

“I’ve got twenty thousand in gold in my saddlebags,” he said, “and it’s all yours, Darlene. All you have to do is let my wife go free.” He hesitated a moment. “Put her on her horse and send her home. Now!”

Charles looked at his sister and the grin on his handsome face grew insolent. “You going to let a tramp like that call you by your name?”

“Shut up, Charles. Go see if he’s telling the truth.”

The man retrieved the saddlebags and returned to Darlene.

“Well?” she asked.

“Double eagles, hundreds of them.”

“It seems that you weren’t lying to me, Oates,” Darlene said.

“Then let my wife go.”

The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s impossible. I have enough problems at the moment, and I don’t want to add to them by leaving any of you alive to dog my back trail.”

“We’ll let you be, Darlene,” Oates said. “I swear on a stack of Bibles.”

Darlene made no answer. She turned to Clem. “Load up the money. We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

“What about her?” Halleck said, nodding to Nantan.

“After the rest of us leave, you can have her.”

Halleck smiled. “I’ll be busy for an hour or two. Then I’ll catch up.” He looked at Charles. “The tall one’s name is Warren Rivette, Charlie. He’s the gun.”

“I can take him.” Charles McWilliams grinned.

Grim old Mash Halleck threw Nantan away from him and she landed heavily on the frozen ground. “Leave the little one for me, Charlie,” he said. “He killed my boy.” His eyes measured the ground between him and Oates. “Remember him?”

Nantan was rising slowly from the ground and anger fired Oates. “He was just like you, Halleck, low-life scum.”

Then he moved. It was unexpected and it caught Darlene and her men flat-footed.

Ignoring Mash Halleck, Oates drew and fired at Charles, the fastest of them. He hoped that Rivette would follow his lead and take on Mash. For the moment Clem was out of it, somewhere in the shadows loading the saddlebags on his horse.

Oates had opened the ball, but he’d drawn too quickly and nerves and anxiety over Nantan spoiled his aim. A clean miss.

Charles had drawn both Remingtons and was shooting them both, a grandstand play.

He missed with his left hand, scored with the right. Oates staggered as the bullet hit him low in the left side of his waist. Despite the tunnel vision a man gets in a gunfight, he was aware of Rivette shooting and Mash Halleck down on one knee, spitting blood.

Oates fired again.

He’d aimed for Charles’ belly, but the gunman’s fisted right revolver was directly in front of him. Oates’ bullet hit the Remington on the trigger guard, ranged downward and neatly severed all three of the fingers Charles had wrapped around the ivory handle.

The man screamed, dropped both his guns and turned to his sister. “Darlene, he’s maimed me!”

Her face furious, the woman shrieked, “Weakling! Pick up your gun and get to fighting!”

Suddenly Oates was aware of Mash Halleck lurching toward him, his bloody face twisted and made terrible by rage. “Die, and be damned to you!” the man roared.

He and Oates fired at the same time.

Halleck missed; Oates didn’t. His bullet crashed into the man’s chest and Halleck staggered a couple of steps and fell on his back.

Rivette was still shooting.

Clem Halleck staggered out of the gloom, firing his gun into the air. He opened his mouth to speak, but his words died with him and he collapsed onto his knees, then stretched out facedown on the ground.

Out of the corner of his eyes Oates saw Darlene dive for Charles’ gun. He fired a shot in front of her. The woman jerked to a halt as if she’d been burned, raised her hands and smiled.

“You wouldn’t shoot a woman?” she said.

“He might not, but we would.”

Oates turned, his head spinning from blood loss and the pain of his wound.

A few yards away a dozen riders sat their horses, their shadowed faces grim as death. One of them carried ropes, the hangman’s knots dangling at his stirrup.

Nantan threw herself into Oates’ arms and he hugged her close. “Eddie, you’re hurt,” she whispered.

Oates made no answer, his eyes on the one of the riders who had moved out from the others, a big, bearded man riding a shaggy cow pony.

“You made it easy for us, Darlene,” he said, drawing rein. “At night a man can see a fire for as far as his eyes are good. Maybe you figured we’d let up and gone back. You were wrong.”

“What do you want, Blackie?”

“What do I want? Not a damned thing, Darlene, except to see you hang, you and Charlie there and them other two, if’n they’re still alive.”

Holding his arm, his wounded hand dripping blood, Charles McWilliams reeled toward the man. “Don’t hang me, Blackie. I was always good to you, huh? Always gave you respect in front of the men.”

“Charlie, you murdered my boss and I ride for the brand. Me and the boys talked it over, and we decided on what was justice and what wasn’t. A hanging is justice—we agreed on that.”

Blackie had said he was loyal to the brand and there was no arguing that. Its roots went too deep, back a thousand years to medieval Europe when mounted and belted men pledged undying allegiance to their lord and proudly wore his badge. It was a bond that was seldom broken, not then and not now.

Desperately, Charles tried another tack. “Look at my hand!” he shrieked. “Damn you, haven’t I been punished enough?”

“Shut your mouth, Charles!” Darlene snapped. Her eyes lifted to Blackie. In the crimson firelight the granite-faced man looked like the specter of death.

“Blackie, I remember the way you used to look at me, stripping me naked with your eyes, riding me hard in your mind,” Darlene said, standing with her legs spread, her hips thrust forward. “I have twenty thousand dollars, Blackie. We can go away, Mexico, anyplace, just you and me, like you always dreamed.”

The big man nodded. “You’re a fine-looking woman, Darlene, and no mistake. But it’s way too late for all that.” He smiled in his beard. “You know what’s funny, Darlene, a real snapper? Tom Carson was dying. He found out about a week after you moved into the ranch house. The doc in Alma said Tom had a cancer, deep in his belly, and it was killing him. He didn’t want to tell you, but I was his foreman and he confided in me.”

Blackie shook his head. “All you had to do was wait. A couple of months, no more than that, and the Circle-T would have been yours.”

Darlene swung on her brother. “You fool! You talked me into killing him. I should never have listened to you.”

Rivette moved beside Oates and Nantan. He looked at the man called Blackie.

“Mister,” he said, “I’ve heard some mighty loose talk about hanging. I’ve seen men hanged—didn’t like it much. I figure I’d like it even less if it were a woman.”

The Circle-T foreman took no offense. He nodded as if he’d carefully considered what Rivette had told him, then said, “Warren Rivette, I’ve played poker with you many times back in Alma, lost my shirt each time, but I got no kick coming about that—you deal honest cards. A friendly warning, don’t take sides in this. Those two are as guilty as sin. You heard it out of Darlene’s own mouth. There will be a hanging whether you approve or not.”

Oates left Nantan’s side and walked in front of the riders. Even in the dark he recognized the hangdog face of the taciturn puncher he’d met on the trail when he went to visit the Circle-T.

Their eyes met and Oates said, “Can you do something?”

The man shook his head. “What’s done is done and there’s no changing that. Now we’ll do what still remains to be done.”

Blackie said, “Rivette, my advice is to saddle up and get out of here. And in her delicate condition, there’s no need for the little lady there to see what’s coming.”

Oates stepped back to Rivette. “Warren, we can’t fight all of them.” He managed a wan smile. “And I’m not sure I can stay on my feet for too much longer.”

“You’re wounded,” Rivette said, seeing the blood on Oates’ coat for the first time.

“Yeah, I’m shot through and through.”

The gambler’s eyes again lifted to Blackie. “Is there anything I can say? A way to change things?”

The big foremen shook his head. “No, Rivette, not a damned thing.”

A few minutes later, Oates and the others passed the Circle-T riders on their way out of the arroyo.

“Hey, Warren,” Blackie said, “was Darlene on the level about the twenty thousand?”

“It was a lie, Blackie,” Rivette said evenly.

“Figured that.”

As they left the clearing, Oates heard Blackie say, “All right, boys, do your duty.”

He looked back. Charles was on his knees, begging loudly and vainly for his life. Beside him Darlene stood silent, her head lifted, proud and defiant as she watched angry, merciless men come for her.

Oates was impressed despite himself.

She was the worst of them, and the best of them.