.45-Caliber Deathtrap (6 page)

CUNO LET HIMSELF
out of Miss Mundy's and headed for the livery barn. It was still dark, but the horses and mules were scuffling around the corral, knowing it was getting close to chow time. Cuno walked around behind the barn, retrieved his camping gear from the creek, then walked back to the barn. He was opening the small front door when he turned toward Serenity Parker's saloon and paused.

The windows were dark. A
CLOSED
sign hung in the right front window. The old man must've decided to take the day off and go fishing.

Cuno continued into the barn, tossed his gear into the wagon box, behind the driver's seat, then went out to fetch his mules. A half hour later, he was moving along the gently sloping wagon road west of Columbine, watching his shadow angling out ahead of him along the rocky ground, the copper sun rising from the sage of the eastern flats behind him. On his left, Columbine Creek gurgled in its steep cut, sheathed in willows and aspens, pines and cedars studding the canyon's boulder-strewn walls rising to either side of the lumbering wagon.

Around ten, the sun heated up, reflecting off the canyon walls, and Cuno slipped out of his denim jacket, tossed it into the box behind him. He was about to reach into his grub sack for some biscuits when a shadow flicked in the corner of his right eye, up high on a towering scarp. A rifle barked, the shot plunking into the seat a foot from Cuno's right thigh.

The mule spooked to the right of the trail, and the wagon's right front wheel slammed between two low boulders, giving a wooden crunch. The mule brayed as another rifle shot spanged off one of the boulders. The animal put its head down to lunge ahead, but the wagon held fast.

Cuno grabbed his rifle, jacked a round into the chamber, aimed at the scarp's crest, and fired. The man there ducked down behind a cedar as Cuno's .44 slug kicked up dirt just below the tree.

As several more rifles barked around him, kicking up dirt and gravel and chewing pieces from the wagon, Cuno leapt left off the wagon. He landed on a flat-topped boulder a few feet down the creek's ravine, turned a quick glance back toward the road. Three men were hunkered down behind rocks ahead of the wagon, crouching behind boulders and cedars a third of the way up the canyon wall.

Cuno fired three quick shots, saw a bushwhacker grab his shoulder and fall behind his cover, dropping his rifle. As the road agents returned fire, Cuno leapt from the boulder into the aspens and ran and slid down the slope toward the creek, loosing clay and gravel in his wake.

Damn fool, he chided himself. So busy thinking about Wade's killers, wondering how to make up the road time, that he hadn't realized he'd entered Long Draw, which all eastern slope freighters knew had recently become a favorite haunt of road agents.

At the edge of the water, Cuno hunkered down behind a cottonwood. He doffed his hat, threw it down to his feet. Keeping his head and cocked rifle back behind the tree trunk, he waited, listening.

Footsteps sounded. A rustling of brush, the clatter of rock. Pressing his back to the rough cottonwood bark, he glanced to his right. A shadow moved along the bank, scuttling across the adobe-colored stones.

Moving quickly, he snaked the rifle around the right side of the trunk and fired. The man, who'd come halfway down the bank, gave a surprised grunt, staggering back. Regaining his balance, he raised his revolver and fired, the shot plunking into the cottonwood. Cuno flinched, rammed a fresh shell into the Winchester's chamber, and returned fire, the .44 round blowing up sand between the bushwhacker's boots.

Cuno bolted out from behind the tree as the man scurried back up the bank, moving sideways and up toward the road and a small cottonwood copse. Gritting his teeth, Cuno took aim, fired two more quick shots, blowing up dust at the buchwhacker's feet. The third shot sliced between the man's scissoring legs as he gained the crest, smacking the inside of his left thigh.

The man groaned and hopped sideways, dropping his pistol and clutching his left leg. He dropped onto the road and out of Cuno's line of vision.

“Simms!” a man shouted.

Thrashing rose from the road, the scuff of boot heels. A pinched voice: “He's down by the river!”

Cuno saw two more heads and rifle barrels moving along the road, on the other side of the trees. Dusters flapped back like devils' wings. Cuno scrambled out from behind the cottonwood, moving left, upstream, toward a deep cleft in the bank. Over the cleft was a slight ledge, where falling rock had hung up against old tree roots.

He scrambled into the cut, which was high enough that he could stand and only bow his head slightly. He was hidden from anyone descending the bank either upstream or down. Slowly, stretching his lips in a wince, he levered another shell into the firing chamber. He leaned the rifle barrel up against the bank beside him, unholstered his Colt .45, and checked to make sure all chambers showed brass.

He holstered the .45, picked up his rifle, and waited.

Voices rolled down from the road. A few minutes later, stones rolled down the bank to Cuno's right. A few plopped into the water, the splashes drowned by the stream's tinny rush.

A shadow flashed on the gold-dappled stream. Cuno pressed his back as far into the cleft as he could, looking to both sides, making sure he cast no shadow on the bank.

Minutes passed. He was about to risk a peek along the bank, when sand dribbled off the ledge just above his head. It sifted down near the squared toes of his low-heeled boots.

He lifted his eyes to the ledge, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. A cunning light entered his eyes, and he almost sneered. He took a breath, squeezed the rifle in his hands, then took one step away from the cleft, moving toward the river before swinging around toward the bank, raising his rifle.

Another bushwhacker stood atop the cleft, one boot resting on a thickly knotted root jutting from the ledge—a tall, latigo-tough hombre with pale hair falling down from his coffee-colored Stetson, a Winchester carbine in his beringed hands.

He saw Cuno too late. His eyes snapped wide, and he began moving his carbine down. Cuno's Winchester barked. The man dropped his rifle to grab his lower chest with both hands, his cheeks bulging, eyes pinching.

Cuno reached up with his left hand, gave the man's right leg a tug. The man tumbled off the ledge and hit the ground in a cloud of puffing dust and falling stones. Cuno picked him up by his collar, feeling the man's death spasms through his wrist, and threw him into the stream.

The body skidded off a couple of water-polished rocks, then turned onto its back, the boots still kicking, the water roiling red. The body turned this way and that before the current caught it and hauled it, bobbing and rocking, hands flung out, palms up, downstream.

Rip Webber was hunkered in the cottonwoods near the wagon, his rifle resting across his thighs, when he saw something floating down creek. He squinted his eyes. A deer maybe—a small doe or fawn that had fallen and drowned when trying to cross the stream.

Then he saw the man's body—Liddy Lewis—twisting and turning, the water red-tinged around it before it swept over a small beaver dam and shot headfirst downstream. It turned a semicircle before disappearing around a bend.

“Christ,” Webber said, running his eyes upriver. Seeing no more signs of the driver, he rose and walked up the road.

Donny Simms was still writhing around in the middle of the trail, trying to knot a neckerchief around his thigh. Joe Zorn was making his way down the ridge on the other side of the trail, cupping a bloody hand to his shoulder, holding his rifle low along his fringed right chap. His hatchet face was set grimly beneath the broad brim of his hat.

Stopping near Simms, Webber looked up the road. Fletcher Updike was hunkered behind a boulder, peering into the river cut, squeezing his Spencer rifle as though trying to ring water from a soaked towel.

“You see him?” Webber called.

Updike turned his round face toward him, shook his head.

Webber glanced at the river, ran a hand across his jaw, feeling foolish at having been hornswoggled by a mere freighter—the freighter he and his four partners had themselves intended to hornswoggle—then turned again to Updike.

“Let's get the wagon and light a shuck.”

“What about that son of a bitch down there?” Updike called. “I think he killed Liddy.”

“He did kill Liddy, you tinhorn.” Webber's thick nostrils swelled. “We go after him, he'll kill us too. I know when I'm beat, and when to light a shuck, and I been beat here, so I'm lightin' a shuck.”

Joe Zorn leapt from a rock to the road, grunting painfully. “At least we got the wagon. Who was that son of a bitch anyway?”

“Some freighter that don't like givin' up his load,” Webber said as, walking toward the wagon, he ran his gloved hand over one of the mule's backs, appraising the beast. He could get a hundred and fifty for the mule over at Lyons. “Help me get the wagon unstuck, and let's get the hell out of here.”

Trying to push himself up on his good leg, Donny Simms shouted, “Give me a hand, goddamnit!”

Ignoring him, Webber walked to the rear of the wagon. He cast his glance over the covered load, and removed one of the ropes tied over the tarp. “Gonna have me a look inside, see what that short-trigger freighter done donated.” He chuckled, cast another nervous glance into the creek gorge, then removed another rope.

When Zorn had removed the ropes hooked to steel eyes on the far side of the wagon box, the men each took a side of the tarp, lifted it, and peered over the tailgate.

KAA-BOOM!

Joe Zorn's head instantly vaporized, blood spraying behind the wagon like red paint.

“No!” shouted Webber.

KAA-BOOM!

The blast took him through the chest, lifting him straight up in the air and six feet straight back. He hit the ground, arms and legs spasming, his eyes already glassy.

Cuno was halfway up the riverbank, moving toward the wagon, when he'd heard the shotgun blasts and the man's shout. Cuno stopped, listening and wondering as the twin echoes chased each other around the canyon. He heard running footfalls, then scrambled up the bank, pulling at weed clumps and fixed rocks, no longer caring how much noise he made.

He'd just lifted his head above the road's crest when a man ran past him from left to right, heading for the wagon fifty feet away.

Cuno crouched and leveled his Winchester. “Hold it!”

The man skidded, stopped, and swung around with his Spencer. Cuno drilled him twice through the chest, then flinched as a bullet sliced across his own left temple.

He whirled, saw a slumped figure in the road, and triggered the Winchester twice more. One round smacked through the man's left hand resting on the ground before ricocheting off the rock beneath it. The second plunked through his right cheekbone and smashed him straight back on the trail, flopping like a landed fish.

Cuno ejected the smoking shell casing, levered another into the chamber, and swung the Winchester's barrel around, looking for more shooters. The mules were braying and bobbing their heads, trying to plunge forward through the rocks, but to no avail. The wheels held fast. The animals and a single, high-hunting hawk made the only sounds, the only movements.

“Oh, Christ!” A man's voice rose from the wagon. There was a dull thump and a wooden clatter, as of something hitting the ground. “Mercy!”

Staying to the opposite side of the trail, Cuno ran down the side of the wagon, stopped, and aimed the Winchester toward the back. The tailgate was open. Lying twisted and groaning on the ground beneath it, clutching his left knee with both hands, was Serenity Parker. His shotgun, both barrels smoking, lay over the leg of one of the two dead men.

“Christalmighty, Parker, what in the hell are you doing here?”

“Flyin' whores!” Parker gritted his teeth. “Hurt my knee.”

“Can you stand?”

“Give me a second.” He clutched the knee for a time, slowly released it. Even more slowly, he stretched the leg out, then glanced at Cuno. “Give me a hand.”

Cuno took the Winchester in his left hand, offered his right to the old man, gingerly helped the man to his feet. Parker stood, testing his weight on his right knee, then gently flexed it.

“Think it'll be all right now.”

“What the hell were you doing in my wagon?”

The old man looked sheepish, but as he glanced around at the two men he'd nearly obliterated with his gut shredder, he gained a look of surprise and admiration. “I reckon you could call me a stowaway.”

“If you wanted a ride somewhere, you could have asked me for one. You didn't need to hide under the tarp.”

The old man walked around, limping, testing the knee. He walked over to Webber, stooped with a grunt, trying to bend only his left knee, and picked up the shotgun. He wiped the blood-flecked stock on his thigh.

“I reckon I ain't really goin' anywhere. I mean, I'm goin' where you're goin'.” He broke open the shotgun, plucked out the spent wads, and fished two more out of the breast pocket of his worn flannel shirt, nudging aside a suspender strap.