The Wild Gun Read online

  Earl raised his rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the nearest man.

  Cord raised his arm and pointed his pistol at another, half-naked and barefoot.

  Smoke billowed out through the open door as the flames along the roof made the shingles crackle and turn to ash.

  Other men poured through the door. They coughed and spluttered as they emerged from the smoke.

  And none of them were armed.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Earl lined up his sights and pulled the trigger.

  His rifle barked and a shower of sparks spewed from the muzzle. Hot spinning lead whirred through the dark air at his target. There was a short cry of pain and the man’s legs crumpled. He went down and moaned for a second or two before he was still.

  Cord picked out another man, cocked his pistol, led him as he ran, and squeezed the trigger of his Colt .45.

  The man, Nestor Jones, jerked from the impact of the bullet and plowed into the ground as he hit it, a bullet hole through both lungs.

  The flames on the roof of the bunkhouse surged like ocean waves across the shingles. Orange and red, they spewed smoke in their wake, thick as foam. The moonlight made the smoke glow with an eerie light, and it spread out like a fan over the running men.

  Some dashed toward Horace’s house, while others headed for the corrals.

  Earl saw one man dart toward him, inexplicably, and he fired point-blank. The bullet struck Pete Gander on his breastbone, tunneled to a corner of his heart, and emerged under his shoulder blade. Blood squirted from both his chest and his back. He was dead before he hit the ground, and his heart stopped pumping blood within moments.

  Both Earl and Cord were panting.

  Cord took aim at another man, Harley Davis, who climbed up over the corral, where two horses offered some protection. Cord fired and saw Davis twitch as he clung to the top rail. Then he slowly slid down, turning toward Cord as his life slipped away.

  Horace’s house smoked on the back wall. Flames pierced the night with angry lashes as the fire found new wood along the sidewall.

  One last man burst through the open doorway of the bunkhouse. For a moment, he was framed against smoke and flame.

  Earl saw who it was and uttered a throaty cry of triumph.

  It was Jessup. And he was armed. He carried a pistol in one hand, and he saw Earl at the same time Earl saw him.

  Blind hatred flooded Earl as he looked at the man who had taken part in the murder of his father and the rape of his mother. The man he had chased over miles of prairie and into the hills of Oklahoma.

  The flames illuminated one side of Jessup’s face as he turned to see where he could run and be safe.

  Earl raised his rifle again.

  “Jessup, you’ve lived long enough,” Earl yelled at him.

  “You little bastard,” Jessup said and stepped away from the bunkhouse. He stretched his arm out and took aim at Earl.

  Earl drew a quick breath and squeezed the trigger of the Winchester. The rifle spat smoke and a vivid streak of flame as Jessup fired his pistol.

  Men yelled in fear and scrambled for safety as Cord tracked them, one by one.

  A shower of sparks erupted from the roof of the bunkhouse and scattered against the dark sky like fireworks. The roof crackled as flames devoured the arid shingles. Flames burst through holes in the roof like golden balls of writhing fire. White smoke from the mattresses poured through those same holes and built small clouds that were pushed skyward by the rush of air issuing from within the structure.

  Earl’s bullet caught Jessup in his right leg as he dashed toward Horace’s house. Jessup staggered as blood spurted from the wound. He stopped, whirled around, and fired another shot at Earl.

  Earl jacked another cartridge into the chamber of his rifle. His teeth clamped together as he sought his target again. His eyes burned with hatred for the man in his sights.

  The bullet from Jessup’s pistol whirred just over Earl’s head and smacked into the side of the barn.

  “Damn you, Earl,” Jessup shouted and thumbed back the hammer of his pistol.

  Earl fired his rifle.

  Jessup ducked, but the bullet smacked into his right side and he twisted in pain.

  Earl moved, and Jessup’s bullet plowed a furrow between his feet, dusting his boots with a thin patina of grit.

  Cord dropped another man who was trying to mount one of the horses bareback. The man tumbled to the ground, his head blasted open like a ripe melon.

  The rear wall of Horace’s house was now crawling with fire. Tendrils of smoke streamed up over the roof and wafted into frosty cobwebs as the wind blew the fire like a squeezed bellows.

  Cord wheeled to see Jessup limp toward Horace’s house. Then he looked at Earl, who stood there and took careful aim.

  Cord held his breath. He saw Earl’s rifle belch smoke and sparks, heard the loud crack of the rifle. Jessup, he knew, didn’t stand a chance. He had reached the end of his string.

  Cord felt a strong sense of pride in his brother just then. It seemed as if Earl had stepped into manhood before his very eyes.

  Jessup grunted as the bullet from Earl’s rifle struck him just below the neck. Blood spurted from the hole like a burst fountain. He croaked a curse and his legs began to give way. The pistol slipped from his hand and fell to the flame-painted ground. He sagged to his knees, a hand going to his throat in a last feeble attempt to plug it up and stop the bleeding.

  Jessup spoke no more. He crumpled forward onto his knees, then collapsed in a bloody heap.

  Earl worked the lever on his rifle. He swung around, looking for another target. But there were no more men to shoot.

  To Cord, Earl looked like he was disappointed. His brother had tasted blood and wanted more.

  Cord was satisfied that all of Horace’s men were now dead. But there was still Horace and his brother, Abner.

  He looked over at the house. It was not burning as fast as the bunkhouse. But it was burning.

  “Keep your eyes peeled for anyone who comes out that front door,” he told Earl.

  He took careful slow steps toward the house. The back wall was on fire and he saw the smoke rise up and turn to tatters in the sudden wind.

  There were no lights in the house. All of the windows were dark. Strangely dark.

  The front door looked oddly still, as if it the building had been abandoned like some house in a ghost town. The only sounds now were the crackle of flames as the barn began to sag and the bunkhouse raged like some fiery monster that spit out flames and spurted tongues of fire in all directions.

  Cord stopped and waited. Earl came up alongside him. Both stared at the house.

  “Suppose it’s empty?” Earl said.

  Cord shrugged. “They’re in there,” he said.

  “Why don’t they come out?”

  “They sleep upstairs. Fire will get to them. The smoke. They might suffocate.”

  Earl stared at the house.

  It was as silent as a tomb.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Abner, deep in the clasp of Morpheus, was the first to smell smoke.

  He rubbed his nose while his eyes were still closed and he was deeply immersed in a dream. The smoke irritated his nose. He sneezed and the sneeze woke him up.

  At first, he did not know that he was smelling and breathing in smoke. It was too dark to see when his eyes opened.

  He reached for the matches on the little side table next to his bed. He lifted the chimney of his lamp and struck a match. He held the flame to the wick and turned it up with his free hand. The wick caught and the lamp bloomed with light. He eased the chimney back down.

  He sniffed the air and knew now that he smelled smoke. He looked around the room. Behind his bed and the lamp, he saw a thin tendril of smoke that streamed through a tiny crack near the floorboard.


  Abner sat up, alarmed.

  In the lamp glow, he saw a fogbank of smoke rising in the room. He scrambled from under his blanket, grabbed his trousers, then his shirt, and dressed quickly. He pulled on his boots as smoke continued to seep into his room. Then he strapped on his gun belt, snatching it from the post at the head of his bed, and started for the door.

  He paused at a window and cursed.

  He could not see out through the boards, but he heard the ominous sound of crackling and felt the heat from the back wall. He opened his door and dashed across the hall. He tried the door to Horace’s bedroom and found it locked tight.

  Abner began to pound on his brother’s door. He shouted as he knocked.

  “Horace, Horace, let me in. Horace, fire, fire.” He heard footsteps and a few seconds later the door opened.

  “What in hell’s the matter with you, Abner?” Horace asked. He rubbed one eye and cocked the other one at Abner.

  “My room is fillin’ up with smoke,” Abner said. “I think the house is on fire.”

  Horace sniffed the air. Across the hall he could see wisps of smoke fluttering through the open door. He looked down at the end of the hall and saw more smoke oozing from the baseboards. The boarded-up window seemed to leak an orange light between the thin cracks of the boards.

  Horace turned quickly and dashed back into his bedroom. Abner was right on his heels. The room was dark. Horace lit a lamp and began to pull on his trousers as he sat on the edge of his bed.

  “That bastard,” Horace growled.

  “You think Wild set our house on fire?” Abner asked as he watched Horace pull on his boots.

  “Take one of them boards off and look out,” Horace said. He donned his shirt, then strapped on his pistol belt.

  Abner went to a back window and pulled on the lowest board. The board was warm as he wrestled it from its nailed mooring. When he pried off the lowest board, Abner saw a bright light, then a lashing tongue of flame. He stepped back as if he had touched a hot stove.

  “Good God Almighty,” Abner said. “The house is on fire.”

  Horace turned his head and saw the glow from the burning back wall of his home. His eyes widened as he finished buckling his gun belt.

  “That dirty sonofabitch,” Horace said. He walked to the wall and grabbed a loaded rifle out of the gun cabinet.

  “Let’s go get that sonofabitch,” Horace said.

  They could both hear the crackle of flames and see the smoke that poured through the opening left by the slat Abner had removed.

  Horace strode to the door. Abner followed him in a daze as fingers of fire groped through the place where the slat had been. The room began to fill with smoke and when they entered the hallway, there was smoke streaming from both rooms.

  They raced down the stairs into more darkness. Then both entered the front room, which was also pitch-dark.

  “Help me get that chair and sofa off the front door,” Horace said.

  “I can’t see a blamed thing,” Abner said.

  “Light a lamp,” Horace commanded as he approached the front door that was blocked with a sofa and an overstuffed chair.

  Abner groped in the dark around a table where he knew there was a lamp.

  He touched a box of matches, then found the base of the lamp with nervous fingers. He struck a match, lifted the chimney, and turned up the wick. Yellow light glowed through the glass and spread out in a circle over the floor and furniture.

  He heard Horace grunt as he tried to lift the chair off the sofa. He saw him bathed in a soft orangish glow from the lamplight and strode over to help him.

  Abner and Horace lifted the chair, then tugged on the sofa to move it away from the door.

  “He’s out there, Abner. Ready to shoot us. You shoot first, you see him.”

  “Damned right I will,” Abner said.

  Horace opened the door and saw a dead man off to his right. His anger rose to a boiling point when he saw the burning barn and the inflamed bunkhouse.

  Flames licked the darkness off to their right, great sashes of fire, whipped by its own wind, waving like burning flags from both structures.

  Horace batted his eyes to adjust to the darkness and the flash of flames. Then he noticed all the dead men on the ground.

  Abner saw them, too, and pulled his pistol from its holster.

  The dead men seemed to ripple in the flaming light. They lay still, but their backs swarmed with grotesque shades of orange and blue, as if hell itself was reaching out for them.

  Horace shaded his eyes to look beyond the dead men and the firelight.

  He saw a pair of boots, then another.

  He saw Cord and Earl just beyond the outer edge of the flaming light. Just their boots until his eyes adjusted and he saw their pant legs and then their blurred faces under hats that glowed on one side with spatters of orange that moved off and on like a railway’s blinking lantern.

  Abner saw them, too.

  He brought his pistol up to aim and fire. It seemed to him that he was looking at two ghosts. Those two men in the shadows did not seem real. But he knew they were and he knew they meant to kill him.

  As he meant to kill them.

  Earl fired first. Straight at Abner. He was consumed by his hatred for the man who had led the bunch who murdered his father and raped his mother.

  Blind hatred.

  Except Earl’s eyes could see, and as he squeezed the trigger, he felt a deep satisfaction. He also felt a power beyond himself. A power that promised justice at last for a coldhearted, greedy murderer.

  Abner squeezed the trigger of his pistol just as he heard the crack of Earl’s rifle. Then he felt a fist smash into his chest, a mighty fist that knocked out the breath held in his lungs.

  He clutched his chest and his fingers spouted fresh warm blood, blood that pumped from the hole in his chest with every beat of his heart.

  Earl saw the bullet from Abner’s gun dig a chunk out of the ground between his legs. He jacked another cartridge into the chamber of his rifle.

  Horace steadied his rifle on Cord, who seemed to waver in front of his eyes like some store mannequin in a window.

  He also saw Cord go into a crouch and aim his pistol straight at him. Time seemed to freeze into an eternity of unreality and silence. Even the sounds of the fire diminished into a dull hum.

  Sweat poured over Horace’s face, dripped into his eyes. Stung like needles or biting ants.

  Next to him, Abner grunted and twisted into a corkscrew under the impact of Earl’s bullet.

  Horace squeezed the trigger at the same time he saw flame spew from the muzzle of Cord’s pistol and he heard the explosion of gunpowder. Cord stepped to one side, in a crouch, his body dappled by firelight.

  Horace’s bullet zipped through the cloth of Cord’s sleeve, burning a path in the flesh of his left arm. Blood seeped through the superficial wound, through the ragged tear in Cord’s shirt.

  Horace felt a slap at his shoulder. It was a hard, smacking slap that tilted his body to one side just after his rifle bucked hard against the hollow of his shoulder. He levered another cartridge into his rifle’s firing chamber and swung the barrel until he found Cord beyond its front sight.

  He never had a chance to fire off a second round.

  Cord stepped forward and stood up. He aimed at Horace’s chest and squeezed the trigger.

  Abner writhed on the ground for several seconds, a rattle in his throat, blood gushing from a hole in his back and pumping through the hole in his chest.

  Cord’s bullet smashed into Horace’s belly, just below his rib cage. The lead ripped through his body and erupted from his back, right next to his spine.

  Horace uttered a loud grunt and his rifle slipped from his hand. He doubled up in pain and clawed for his pistol, his gaze suddenly blurred. He saw only the dan
cing flames from the bunkhouse and the barn as his knees turned to gelatin, mushy and liquid.

  Cord walked up to Horace, and Horace heard the metallic sound of the man’s pistol as he cocked it once again.

  Cord looked down on Horace as the wounded man sank to his knees on the kaleidoscopic ground.

  “Bastard,” Horace spat through half-clenched teeth. Teeth that were hardened in place by shoots of pain racing through his body.

  “You’re plumb finished, Horace,” Cord said. “A cussword ain’t exactly the prayer you ought to be mounting.”

  “Go to hell, Wild. Go straight to hell.”

  Cord stepped onto Horace’s gun hand, crushing his fingers until the rifle slid from his grip.

  Horace did not cry out. The pain in his belly was going away, receding into the growing blackness that spread from some corner of his brain. His vision blurred as he looked up at Cord.

  Cord, with a pistol in his hand, aimed straight at a point between Horace’s eyes.

  “Go ahead, Wild. Shoot me,” Horace muttered.

  “That would be too kind, Horace.”

  “You got me anyways.”

  “You made a lot of people suffer,” Cord said. “Time you suffered some yourself.”

  “I ain’t . . .”

  Horace slumped down until he sat on his buttocks. One hand touched the hole in his diaphragm. Blood spewed onto his fingers. The pain returned like a searing shot of white-hot electricity, coursing through his body with crippling ferocity.

  Horace uttered a groan and a sound that was more animal-like than human.

  Cord pressed the snout of his pistol into Horace’s forehead. Right between the eyes.

  “Pull it,” Horace said. “Pull the damned trigger.”

  “Good suggestion,” Cord said.

  He squeezed the trigger. His pistol roared from the explosion of power. His bullet punctured a hole in Horace’s forehead and blew out a saucer-sized chunk of bone from the back of his head. Blood and brains flew into the ghastly shimmer of firelight.

  Horace collapsed in a heap.