.45-Caliber Firebrand (10 page)

He glanced back once more at the mules standing in the rear shadows, blowing softly or shifting their hooves, the one called Samson giving his head a weary shake. Yep, Cuno felt closer to his mules than to most people—other than Serenity, that was. He considered the old graybeard family. Aside from him, his life—after so much had come to pass—was all mules and wagons.

Not his gun.

No, not his gun.

He'd lived by his gun in the past only when he'd been forced to. But he was trying as hard as he could to live only by his wagons, his mules, and his horse. Someday, when the frontier became as friendly and as civilized as Michelle Trent and Jedediah Gallantly believed, wrongly, that it already was, he'd give up his gun for good and live the life he'd intended for himself way back before Anderson and Spoon had murdered his father and stepmother . . . back before Franklin Evans's bounty hunters had killed his pregnant wife, July.

In other words, he'd suppress his own inner savage.

“Have a good one, mules,” he said, then blew out the lamp, replaced it on the hook by the door, and went outside.

He retrieved his bedroll, rifle, and red-and-black wool mackinaw from one of the wagons and headed for the bunkhouse to scrounge up an empty bunk for a warm night's sleep. He mounted the porch steps and stopped suddenly.

Through the low, sashed window right of the door, he could see a half dozen men, including Serenity, playing cards at a long table about halfway across the lantern-lit room. Someone slapped pasteboards down, and a low roar went up. A glass slid off the table and hit the floor with a glassy thump.

“Ah, dang ye, Gristle!” someone bellowed. “You spilled my whiskey, and that was the last o' that good bottle I got from the sutler's store over to the Rogers Outpost!”

Cuno compressed his lips. Suddenly, the mules looked even better than before, and the silent stables beckoned.

He wheeled, retraced his steps to the stock barn, and jerked the door open. This time, he didn't bother with the lantern. He threw his gear down in the first empty stall he came to, doffed his hat, and kicked out of his boots. Dropping into his blankets and burrowing deep in the straw, he sighed and closed his eyes.

Michelle Trent stared at him disapprovingly from the twilight fog of early slumber.

“Really, Mr. Massey!” chortled her betrothed.

“Kiss my ass,” Cuno grumbled and went to sleep.

 

He had no idea how much time had passed before he woke with a start and reached for his .45.

All he grabbed was leather. The .45 was gone.

Someone laughed.

Another, nasal voice said, “You broke my nose, you son of a bitch!”

9

CUNO LOOKED UP. Three men stood outside the stall, staring over the partition at him.

They were blurred figures in the barn's dim light, breath puffing around their hatted heads. He recognized the
segundo
, Quirt, by the red-spotted white bandage taped over his nose.

Cuno blinked sleep from his eyes and narrowed one lid. “If I don't get my pistol back in about three seconds, you're gonna be pinin' for the time you only had a broken nose.”

Quirt jerked forward and held up Cuno's ivory-gripped Colt Frontier, showing it off. “Come out and get it, mule skinner!”

Cuno scrambled to his feet, anger burning at the back of his neck. No one trifled with his guns if they knew what was good for them. Quirt and the other two men—one on each side of the ugly
segundo
, both about three inches taller than Quirt, and broader—stepped back away from the stall partition, swaggering, one rolling his shoulders, loosening the joints.

Cuno pushed through the stall door. Quirt backed up, twirling Cuno's gun on his finger and grinning, showing his white teeth below the white bandage on his narrow, horsy face.

The freighter nodded at the two big men who shuffled up in front of him, between him and Quirt. All three men were wearing heavy coats against the penetrating morning cold. “Who're they?”

“Friends of mine,” Quirt said. “Paid 'em four dollars each to break your nose . . . and whatever else they get around to breakin'.”

Cuno slid his gaze from one brute to the other. “Four dollars ain't much for gettin' the holy shit kicked out of you, friends.”

Quirt chuckled. “You ain't gonna kick the holy shit outta these hombres, mule skinner. Why, these boys pull fence posts outta the frozen ground with their
hands
.”

“They're gonna have a hard time doing that with
broken
hands.” Cuno lifted his chin at Quirt. “Beat it, fellas. Quirt's the one with the beef . . . and my gun. Let's not turn this into a rodeo.”

Quirt laughed. With his broken nose, he sounded like a magpie.

The brutes grinned.

While Quirt hiked a hip on a water barrel and continued playing with Cuno's .45, the brute on Cuno's left shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a nearby nail from which harnesses drooped. Staring menacingly at Cuno, he slid his suspenders off his shoulders, jerked his shirttails out of his pants, and unbuttoned and removed his shirt.

He didn't stop until he was out of his grimy undershirt. Then he stood before Cuno—a big, broad, hairless mountain of a muscle-bound man, pocked and lashed here and there with knife scars. His smile, missing two front teeth, was like a giant rattler's.

The other brute stayed in his coat and hat. He had one wandering eye. That and his leering half smile made him look drunk. He was growling deep in his throat as the other man stepped forward, chin down, drawing his bunched left fist back and widening his eyes.

Shorter than the bare-chested brute, and lighter on his feet, Cuno sprang forward and, before the man could swing his left haymaker forward, Cuno punched him twice in the gut hard. It surprised the brute as well as twisted him around and threw him back into a stall partition with an enraged “Whufff!”

The other brute shuffled forward. Cuno wheeled toward him. The man grunted as he swung a roundhouse right, which glanced painfully off Cuno's upper right cheek. Shaking off the blow, Cuno ducked to avoid the next one, then stepped forward and buried his own right fist in the brute's gut.

As the man chuffed and dropped his head slightly, Cuno delivered two savage jabs to the man's face. The man's nose gave beneath Cuno's big fist like a bladder flask of blood, and the man was suddenly looking a lot more like Quirt.

“Ah, come on, Deuce!” Quirt complained. “That ain't what I paid ya for!”

Deuce loosed a shrill curse and blinked through the blood in his eyes, gritting his teeth and balling his fists with rage.

Cuno didn't step back before the bare-chested gent was on him, hammering his jaws with two quick jabs. He stumbled back, hearing bells toll in his head. Setting his feet, he blocked another punch with one arm, turning the bare-chested brute slightly, and then twice he rammed his left fist against the man's right ear.

As the man twisted to Cuno's right, Cuno hammered him with a right crosscut, jerking his face back around toward the freighter, his bloody lips glistening in the growing light from a window and his brown eyes snapping wide with fury. Cuno was beside the brute now, spreading his feet and preparing another couple of jabs to the dazed man's face.

To his left, he saw the other man stumble toward him, raising a long hickory ax handle in his right hand.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
the brute bellowed, swinging the handle forward in a broad arc.

“Just fists, Deuce!” Quirt yelled from the rain barrel.

Cuno ducked as the ax handle curved toward his head, and the mallet whistled as it cut the air unimpeded. Deuce grunted with exertion. There was a solid, bony smack and another, louder grunt. Still crouching, Cuno turned as the bare-chested brute froze suddenly, blinking slowly, eyes losing focus.

“Oh, Jesus, Bill!” Deuce cried, dropping the ax handle down by his side and regarding his partner with exasperation. “I didn't mean . . .”

Bill's head wobbled. His jaw hung askew and blood ran in twin streams down the side of his head and neck and down his shoulder. He dropped to his knees and, unblinking, fell straight forward onto his face.

“Deuce, damnit!” Quirt cried, dropping down off the rain barrel. “I told you—only your fists! Is he
dead
?”

Breathing heavily, keeping his fists balled, Cuno backed away from Bill, who was moving his feet from side to side and shuttling his glance between Deuce and Quirt.

“Don't think he's dead,” Deuce said, suddenly raising the ax handle once more and glaring glassy-eyed at Cuno, “but this son of a bitch sure—”

There was a tinkle, like a spoon tapped against a wineglass. And then, suddenly, Deuce's head jerked slightly, and the muscles in his face planed out.

He looked at Cuno with faint blame in his eyes.

Cuno blinked his own eyes as if to clear them, slow to understand that the fletched end of a Ute arrow was protruding from the right side of Deuce's head, while the sharpened strap-iron end poked out of the other side, just above Deuce's left ear.

The blade was sheathed in thick, red blood speckled with white bone and brain matter.

Deuce feebly raised his right hand, almost as though he were waving, then dropped it down his side. At the same time, Cuno jerked his gaze toward the broken window and, seeing movement in the murky dawn shadows of the ranch yard, heard the rising thunder of approaching hooves and the growing cacophony of mewling warriors.

In the periphery of his vision, as he bolted toward Quirt, Cuno saw Deuce tumble over Bill. Quirt was staring toward the window through which the arrow had sliced into the stable.

“Is that . . . ?”

“Who do you think it is?” Cuno grabbed his .45 out of Quirt's hand. “Too early for Santa Claus!”

Quirt shouted an epithet and clawed his own pistol from its holster. Cuno quickly stomped into his boots and slid his Winchester from its leather sheath.

Quirt was moving stiffly toward the barn doors, shoulders raised, gun held low by his side.

“What the hell you waiting for?” Cuno yelled as he ran past the
segundo
and heaved one of the doors open. “I don't think they're here bearing peace offerings.”

Arrows thumped into the stable's logs walls. Hooves thundered. The Indians' war cries were now so loud that they covered the stable door's rasp along its metal track. Cuno had thrown the door three feet wide when an arrow smashed into it, reverberating like a ricochet.

Three war-painted Utes galloped past him, heading for the bunkhouse. Men were spilling from the bunkhouse in various stages of dress, some wearing only their longhandles and socks. One man tripped over his own pants and tumbled down the porch steps with an angry yell.

The three braves bore down on them, loosing arrows quickly and expertly, throwing two drovers back against the bunkhouse wall while one took an arrow through his calf as he came off the porch.

Cuno racked a shell into his Winchester's breech, aimed quickly, and fired. The Indian he'd drawn the bead on turned, and the bullet careened wide. He nocked an arrow, howling like a mad coyote, and, putting his paint horse into a gallop toward Cuno, let fly.

Cuno jerked his head down and to one side. The arrow buzzed by like a bee, nearly taking out his right eye, before it slammed into the stable door behind him.

Cuno levered his Winchester and fired as the brave swung his horse to Cuno's left. The Winchester's round slammed into the brave's deerskin-clad arm, and the brave howled even louder than before, throwing his head back on his shoulders, then sagging forward in his blanket saddle as his horse galloped westward.

“Holy Christ!”
Quirt cried as he bounded through the door and dropped to a knee beside Cuno. “More comin' up from the creek!”

Cuno could see more braves rushing up from the south, several peeling off from the main group and galloping toward the main house at the top of the hill. What had captured the brunt of his attention, however, were the two braves that had climbed atop the bunkhouse's shake roof from the rear and were scampering up toward the front, one nocking an arrow while another held a Spencer repeater with a leather lanyard.

They were both looking down at the cowboys and Serenity and Snowberger still stumbling bleary-eyed out the bunkhouse's front door. A couple of the drovers were triggering pistols or rifles, but the sudden attack had caught them by surprise. Their bullets so far had grazed only one warrior who, turning his pinto in tight circles, triggered arrow after arrow at the yowling, cursing drovers.

While Quirt triggered his Schofield .44 at the Indians galloping up from the creek, Cuno shouted, “Serenity! Behind you!”

Cuno aimed and fired. One of the Indians was punched back off his feet. He hit the shake-shingled bunkhouse roof on his back, then rolled down over the eave and hit the porch in a dust puff between Henry Kuttner and a bearded drover wearing only longjohns and an open buffalo robe.

Both men, shooting the new Winchesters Cuno's train had brought to the Double-Horseshoe, paused to glance down at the bleeding Indian who tried to climb onto his hands and knees. While Kuttner drilled a round through the wounded Ute's head, Cuno fired three more rounds toward the bunkhouse roof.

Serenity, wearing only his boots, long johns, and beat-up sombrero, fired his Colt Navy, and one Ute was thrown down the backside of the roof while another dropped to his butt.

Blood leaking from the seated brave's belly, the warrior tried to bring his Spencer carbine to bear. A drover on the porch, wielding a sawed-off shotgun in one hand and a Colt in the other, fed the brave double rounds of buckshot and a .44 slug, turning his head to pulp.