The Wild Gun Read online

  He descended the stairs into the dank cellar. It was pitch-dark and he could not see anything that was inside. He groped along the right wall. He felt the bottles, two of them, and then a can with a pouring spout. He lifted the can. It was full and would suit his purpose. He judged it to hold at least three gallons.

  He carried the can up the steps and handed it to Lelia. It sloshed when she took it in both hands.

  “Now comes the hard part,” he said. “I wish I had a funnel.”

  “We have a funnel,” she said. “It’s in the house. I’ll get it.”

  She went back into the house and returned a few minutes later with a small funnel that was used to fill the lamps with coal oil.

  “Thanks,” he said and took the funnel from her. He poured coal oil into each of the bottles and pressed the corks tight. The smell was overpowering and both of them turned their heads to escape the fumes.

  When he finished, there was very little oil left in the can.

  “Just leave it here,” she said. “We’ll refill it the next time we go into town for supplies.”

  “I’ll pay you for the oil,” he said.

  “No you won’t. But what is it for?”

  “A surprise,” he said. “Now to the tack room and my saddlebags.”

  They walked to the barn. Lelia carried four bottles, Cord the other four. He set the bottles down and entered the dark barn. He found the tack room and entered it. He retrieved his saddlebags and carried them outside to where Lelia waited, her bottles lying at her feet.

  Cord hunkered down and began to remove the cloth sacks from his pockets. He put four bottles in one of his saddlebags and packed the sacks around them. Then he put the other four bottles in the other bag and did the same.

  “That ought to hold them,” he said as he stood up.

  “At least the bottles won’t break,” she said. She felt in each bag and found that the bottles were swathed in cloth. They would not clank or break.

  “We’ll leave the bags here while I wake up Earl. Then we’ll saddle up and be on our way.”

  “You’re going after Horace?” she asked.

  “Wish me luck.”

  She embraced him and held him tight.

  “Be careful, Cord,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I know it will be dangerous.”

  “It will be thorough,” he said cryptically as they walked back to the house through a pale haze of moonlight. The smell of coal oil was still cloying in his nostrils.

  Lelia shivered against him in the chill of night.

  There was plenty of time, he thought, as he looked up at the star-strewn sky, the band of light that was the Milky Way, and the moon inching across a clear sky.

  Not an ideal night to do what he had to do. But a good enough night for all hell to break loose.

  All hell.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Earl rubbed his eyes as he saddled Louie in the dark. He was still sleepy and not entirely sure what Cord had in mind for this late-night ride. Lelia had gone back to bed and they were alone outside the barn.

  Cord slid his rifle into its scabbard, checked the two cinches under Windmill’s belly. He could not slide his fingers between the cinch and the horse. He pressed his hand against both saddlebags as he secured them to the horse’s rump. They made no noise. He still had some sacks in his back pockets and he tapped those to make sure they were still secure.

  Then he tapped one of his shirt pockets to make sure the matchbox was there. He pulled a fresh rhubarb stalk out of the other pocket and began to chomp it before he stepped up into the saddle.

  “Ready, Earl?” he said.

  “Just about.”

  Ernesto appeared out of the darkness, a dim figure drenched in the soft light of the moon.

  “You go to the 2Bar2?” he asked.

  “You keep an eye out, Ernesto,” Cord said. “If we don’t come back, say a prayer for us.”

  “You will be back,” Ernesto said.

  “I only live in this one moment, Ernesto,” Cord said. “The past is gone forever. The future is not yet here. All we can do is just live right now.”

  “But you are strong, Cord. Horace is weak. He has many men who kill for him, but he is nothing but a cockroach.”

  Cord chuckled.

  “Well, if he’s a cockroach, he’s going to feel my foot come down on him.”

  “You will squash him, no?” Ernesto said.

  “As long as I have a foot, Ernesto, I will squash Horace.”

  Ernesto laughed. “And I will piss on his grave,” he said.

  Cord raised a hand to Ernesto and spurred Windmill. He and Earl rode through the dark toward their destination. The horses glistened a dull gloss of silver in the moonlight. The prairie was a dull pewter filled with shadows that dotted the eerie landscape.

  It was odd, Cord thought, how much the night changed things. Ordinary bushes took on menacing shapes. Landmarks moved or turned invisible. Creatures with glistening eyes moved like ghosts over a changed, almost dreamlike land. They appeared and disappeared, the coyotes and their prey, the jackrabbits. And when they paused in the hunt or the flight, they became just another dark shadow, indistinguishable from rock or plant.

  He hoped that he and Earl would just be shadows when they were closing in on Horace’s house, the bunkhouse, and the barn. That was Cord’s wish, that they would seem only shadows against shadows. The guards, if they were looking, would not see them if their stalk was on foot and they stayed below a man’s line of sight.

  He went over the lay of the ranch in his mind, seeing it in both daylight and darkness.

  At night, a man’s vision was shortened. Even with binoculars, a man could not see well in the dark. And his line of sight would be off if he lifted a rifle to his shoulder and took aim. The dark twisted men and animals and shifted them from one plane to another. Not much, but enough that a man could easily miss any target.

  Cord had the advantage, though. He knew what he was looking for. He was the hunter; Horace’s men were the prey.

  It was that simple.

  The hunter had the advantage. Especially at night. The prey would be looking for movement and the shape of a silhouette. He would not know where to look, or exactly what he was looking for, because every blade of grass, every bush branch, was a threat.

  Cord knew exactly what to look for. And he knew how to adjust his gunsights to compensate for the shift, up or down, of a man in those sights.

  But he hoped that none of the guards could detect his movements. He would not be atop his horse, but a part of the land and the vegetation, a hunter on the prowl in that shadow-filled landscape that surrounded the house and the other buildings.

  These were the things Cord thought about as he and Earl rode over a seemingly deserted prairie with the slight breeze in their faces and the chill searching through their clothing for warm flesh that it could cool.

  When they were close enough to see the black roofs dancing like rafts in a black sea, Cord reined up his horse and turned to Earl.

  “The ranch is just ahead,” he whispered to his brother. “We’ll leave our horses here.”

  “We’re going there on foot?” Earl said in an equally low whisper.

  “Yes. It’s the only way. We’ll hug the ground, crawl if we have to. We must be very quiet, and do not shoot unless absolutely necessary. I’ll show you what to do and where to be. Now, no more talk.”

  Earl nodded as Cord slipped out of his saddle and ground-tied Windmill to a sagebrush.

  Cord knew his horse would stay there until he returned. The animal was well trained. He patted its neck and whispered into its ear as it bowed its head.

  “Be a good boy, Windmill,” he said. “I’ll be back.”

  Earl tied his horse, Louie, to another bush and patted it on its rump. Then he
pulled his rifle from its scabbard.

  Cord left his rifle in its boot.

  Earl shook his head but stayed silent.

  Cord beckoned to Earl as he stood by his saddlebag on the left rump of his horse.

  “I want you to tuck two of these bottles in your back pockets and follow me,” he whispered into Earl’s ear.

  He pulled bottles from his saddlebags and handed two of them to Earl. The bottles were still wrapped in flour and coffee sacks. Earl sniffed them and nearly gagged. Then he put them into his two back pockets while Cord took two more out of his saddlebag. Cord stuffed some of the empty sacks inside his shirt as Earl watched in fascination.

  Cord put two bottles in his back pockets, then walked around and took out four more, which he carried in his arms.

  Using the cover of trees and bushes, Earl followed his brother as they circled and came into the ranch compound behind one side of the barn.

  There they waited, listening.

  They both heard the crunch of boots. Cord motioned for Earl to stay where he was while Cord set the four bottles on the ground and edged along the back of the barn, climbed through poles that enclosed a corral, and then looked toward the bunkhouse and the main house.

  He saw a man with a rifle. The man walked between the bunkhouse and Horace’s house, his rifle at the ready, looking all around him. The man stopped, listened with one hand cupped to his left ear, then walked the same path again.

  Cord looked to see if there were any other men, perhaps leaning against the bunkhouse or Horace’s house. He waited for several minutes, but saw only the one man acting as a sentry.

  He crept back around the barn to where Earl still waited.

  They did not speak.

  Cord crooked a finger at Earl to indicate that his brother should follow him. He picked up the bottles he had left there.

  He crept to the back of the barn and squatted down. He soaked one of the rags in coal oil and stuck it under the barn. He did that to a second rag, then hunched over, walked to the corner of the barn.

  There, he waited until the sentry was headed toward Horace’s house. Then he hunched over and ran behind the bunkhouse, Earl right behind him.

  They waited to see if the guard had heard them.

  Then Cord stuffed more bottles with cloth and soaked them in coal oil.

  They both hugged the side of the bunkhouse as they checked out the guard again.

  When the guard walked toward the bunkhouse, Cord and Earl dashed in behind Horace’s house. They waited and listened to the crunch of boots.

  The sentry stopped.

  Cord’s heart pounded. He heard a crinkle of paper and a rustling sound. Then the sound of a match striking sandpaper.

  The guard had rolled and lit a cigarette.

  There was the crunch of boots as the guard continued on his rounds.

  Behind Horace’s house, Cord stuffed the last of the bottles, made sure the sacks were fully drenched in coal oil. He took out his box of matches, struck one and lit the first bottle. Then he lit the others. The coal oil caught fire and streaked into the bottles. The flames licked at the wood of the house, right at the base.

  He and Earl dashed back to the bunkhouse and lit the bottles that had been placed there. Finally, he set the bottles under the barn on fire. He beckoned to Earl to follow him.

  They went to the front of the barn and watched the guard.

  There was a crackling sound from behind the bunkhouse as the lone sentry passed in front of it. He stopped, then turned when he heard the same sound from behind the barn.

  The sentry headed to where Cord and Earl waited in the shadows, hugging the wall at the front corner of the barn.

  When the man was close, Cord drew his knife and grabbed the man. He clamped a hand over the man’s mouth and nose.

  “One yelp, and you’re a dead man,” Cord whispered into the man’s ear.

  The rifle in the guard’s hands dropped to the ground. It did not make much noise.

  Cord stuck the point of his knife into the man’s side, just enough so that he could feel it. He tightened his grip on the man’s mouth and mashed his nose almost flat.

  “You’re about twenty seconds from eternity,” Cord whispered into the man’s ear as he ring-necked him with his right arm. He held the knife now at the man’s neck, the blade pressed against his quivering throat.

  “Mmmf,” the man breathed as he tried to speak. As he tried to beg for his life.

  “What’ll it be?” Cord asked. “Life or death?”

  “Mmmf,” the muffled voice crept through his crushed mouth.

  “You yell and it’ll be the last sound you make,” Cord said. Then he eased up on the grip he had on the man’s mouth.

  The man swallowed before he eked out his words.

  His voice was scratchy and gravelly as he uttered three words.

  “Go to hell,” he said.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Earl could not believe his ears. Cord had given the man a clear choice. Live or die.

  The man was defiant until almost the very end of his life. What kind of man was this? Loyal to Horace? A fool? Mad, perhaps?

  Earl saw his brother’s hand mash down on the man’s mouth before he could let out a yell. He saw the knife in Cord’s hand poised at the man’s neck. He smelled smoke and heard the sound of the flames lashing at the baseboards on the barn’s back wall.

  What the man did next was even more startling to Earl. It caught him unprepared.

  Suddenly, the guard slammed an arm into Cord’s arm. He knocked the knife away. At the same time, he drove an elbow into Cord’s waist. He knocked Cord to one side and grabbed the butt of his own pistol. The sentry drew his pistol as Cord struggled to keep his footing. He shouted out a warning, calling for help.

  Earl stood frozen nearby, his rifle in his hands.

  The gunman started to raise his arm and bring the barrel of his pistol to bear on Cord.

  Cord staggered to solid footing and slashed at the guard’s arm with his knife. He drew blood as the blade slashed into the gunman’s right sleeve and cut through the skin.

  Cord heard the click of the hammer as the guard thumbed the pistol to full cock. In that split second, Cord knew that his life hung by a slender thread.

  Earl’s jaw dropped and he fumbled to bring his rifle up to a level where he could shoot his brother’s attacker.

  Cord swept his arm sideways in an attempt to knock the pistol from the guard’s hand. His fist smacked into the guard’s wrist and he gained a fraction of a second.

  But the gunman whirled out of range as Earl leveled his rifle. He groped for the inside hoop of his trigger guard. His hand was shaking and he missed the aperture on the first try.

  Cord sidestepped and drove in, headfirst, to smash into the gunman’s stomach before he could get off a shot.

  His head smashed into the guard’s stomach. Cord swung his knife inward toward the man’s side. The blade struck soft flesh and penetrated into the gunman’s stomach.

  The guard grunted at the blow. Blood spurted from the wound and he doubled over. But he still held on to his pistol.

  Cord withdrew his knife blade and struck again as the guard straightened back up, his trousers soaked in blood, his wound gushing with every beat of his heart.

  “Unh,” the guard grunted and swung his pistol toward Cord, who was only a foot or so away.

  Earl could not fix the front sight of his rifle on the gunman. He was afraid he would shoot Cord instead. The two men grappled and swung around in a circle until he could see only Cord’s back. His brother was hunched over and pushing on the gunman’s arm. The arm with the pistol at the end of it.

  Cord knocked the arm down and away. He had gained another second or two.

  But time was running out fast, like the sands in a broken hourglass.
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  “You, you . . .” The guard grunted and tried to step backward, away from Cord’s grappling arms and the knife.

  Cord did not hesitate.

  He stepped inside the guard’s gun arm, bumped the elbow with his left shoulder, and drove the knife straight into the man’s soft belly. He plunged the knife deep. Then he twisted it and felt the man’s innards open to the cutting edge of the blade. A terrible stench emerged from the man’s wound as intestines emptied and gases escaped from the gunman’s bowels.

  The gunman staggered back. His mouth dropped open, but no sound came out past his slobbering lips.

  His gun drooped, though he still gripped it.

  Cord rose up above the weakened man, whose knees bent as his strength departed. He pushed the man’s head back with his left hand and swung the knife in a blurred arc at his throat.

  The gunman’s legs gave way as the knife opened his throat. Blood spurted from the fresh wound. Cord heard a soft gurgle in the man’s throat as he pitched forward on jellied knees that gave way.

  The guard struck the ground with a thump and Cord stepped back. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s trousers and slipped the knife back in its scabbard.

  “Watch the front of the bunkhouse,” he told Earl. “Shoot anyone who comes out.”

  Earl nodded and stepped slightly away from the barn.

  The flames at the back of the barn began to crackle loudly as fire raced up the summer-dried boards and whipped toward the stored hay in the loft.

  Flames rose above the bunkhouse, then crawled along the roof. The tongues of fire lapped at the dry shingles, devouring them in a rush of fire.

  Cord and Earl waited, their guns at the ready. They watched as the door stayed closed and the men inside seemed oblivious to the danger.

  Then they heard shouts from inside the frame building.

  “Fire, fire!”

  “Get out!” yelled another.

  “Let me out!” a man shouted.

  The front door burst open and a man still wearing his long johns dashed into the open.

  More men crowded into the doorway and fought each other to burst through the open door. Behind them, flames danced at the far end of the bunkhouse and a man screamed as his clothing caught fire.