A Grave for Lassiter (29 page)

Ahead he could see the north wall of the warehouse. And at street level were some figures, not much larger than ants at the distance. His heartbeat quickened. Human beings in the path of the runaway.

Cold sweat dampened Lassiter's body. Every nerve end screamed. He tried again with the rope as the tongue flew into the air. He missed. But this time it was closer. Very close. But dear God was there time enough to halt this plunging mountain of steel and wood?

At this speed, why didn't an axle snap or a wheel spin off? He reeled in his dragging rope and got ready for another attempt.

Never had the north wall of the warehouse looked so formidable, like the flat side of a towering cliff. So it seemed in the dizzy moments as the hurtling behemoth narrowed the gap. At top speed, with the saddlehorn jolting against his breastbone, Lassiter, bent over on the back of his galloping horse, shook out another loop in his rope. He set it whirling above his head. Using all his strength to keep the tearing wind that rushed against him like a giant's breath from blowing it down. The loop formed, whirled, whirled and he made his cast.

Just as he let it go, following through so he was within kissing distance of the billowing mane, he saw Roma. Just a flash of her standing against the warehouse wall, motionless as an insect under glass. Her black eyes wide, the lips taut as bowstrings. And she was frantically tugging at the arm of a boy. A wisp of a little fellow probably no more than six or seven. The narrow little face seemed ashen, the eyes enormous. His mouth was wide open as if screaming. But due to the monumental din, the boy's voice was unheard.

For Lassiter to digest all this had taken no longer than the twitch of an eyelid. Roma's veil had slipped off, revealing her swollen features. By brute force, she dislodged the frightened boy from the wall and sent him spinning toward Casitas Street. People in the street were scattering. Voices also beyond hearing because of the thundering runaway, the pound of hoofbeats from the lone horseman.

As the wagon tongue bounced high into the air after striking a half-buried stretch of flat rock, Lassiter felt as if his right arm was nearly wrenched from its socket. Even so, exultation swept through him as he realized his rope had snagged the roaring beast at last. Which way to turn this granite cliff on wheels hurtling down a mountainside? Lassiter started to wheel his horse to the left, but that would endanger Roma, who was still running wildly. As was the young boy who had found his legs and was scurrying to escape the great wagon with its load of deadly metal.

Desperately Lassiter reined his horse to the right. Wheels screeched as it left the road and hurtled toward the warehouse wall. And then with a shudder the wagon began to break apart. It started to cartwheel. Added to the din was the clang of steel rails and the mammoth copper boiler being ejected into the air. What was left of the speeding wagon slammed into the warehouse wall, going through as if it were made of paper. Lumber splintered as well as glass and there were screams from inside the building.

“Roma!” Lassiter cried out as he saw the girl nearly out of danger. But a steel rail, flying through the air like a flung spear, found her. She went down beneath it. Lassiter groaned. His horse, running for so long, seemed unable to stop. It carried him through the great gap in the warehouse wall. Fifteen feet inside the shattered building, Lassiter managed to bring it to a halt. It stood with barrel heaving, slick with sweat. Foam dripped from its muzzle.

A dazed Lassiter stared at the chaos. The desk where he had first seen Melody, months before, was flattened under the copper boiler. Two men lay at the edge of what had been the arena the day of the fight. Another man was crumpled over a shattered chair. From his right arm was a length of white bone.

In the street there were cries and harsh voices. The sound of men running.

Lassiter got out of the saddle and stood on a stable section of flooring; much of it had been shattered by hurtling steel rails and ore cars. What was left of the wagon lay scattered, wheels and shattered body.

His catch rope, like a long dead snake, dangled from the end of the wagon tongue, which had been torn loose and now lay propped against one of the ore cars.

With his breathing returning to normal, he was about to rush outside and see if Roma was badly injured when he heard a man's voice behind him.

“. . . and you shot Vanderson down like a dog. He was my friend. Better than friend, he was shirttail kin. Turn around, Lassiter, and pull your gun while you're doin' it!”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Lineus Swallow. Turn around, damn you!”

Farrell's man, inventing a tale of relationship to that cowardly Vanderson, the cause of this chaos and responsible for Roma being smashed to earth by a steel rail.

He was in no mood to play games, with Roma lying out in the street, injured or dead.

He looked over his shoulder and saw Swallow with a confident grin, wearing a red vest decorated by a gold watch chain with large and impressive links. Swallow's right hand dangled like a rag in a breeze just above the grips of a holstered gun.

In the gaping hole that had been the north wall of the building were many faces, some frightened. As Swallow's challenge echoed throughout the wrecked end of the building, men began to push out of the way, some shouting their fear.

Lassiter made his turn quickly, dropping to one knee as he did so. Swallow wasn't going to give him a chance to turn clear around. That was evident. For when Lassiter sank to one knee in his turn, Swallow's gun crashed. Lassiter sensed rather than felt the puff of air against his left cheek as a bullet missed by inches where his heart should have been.

It was from a crouched posisiton that Lassiter thumbed a shot. Swallow staggered, looked surprised as the front of his red vest began to darken. Light was leaving his shocked eyes even as he collapsed.

“He tried to trick you, Lassiter,” Lodor of the Mercantile shouted excitedly.

Lassiter pushed his way through the crowd, having no wish to see Swallow. He had seen more than his share of death in his lifetime.

He got outside and elbowed his way to where Roma lay in the street. He thanked God because he could see that her eyes were open. Her breasts rose and fell evenly to show that she breathed normally.

Two men had bent down to lift a steel rail from her right leg.

“Let me,” Lassiter said and took the rail into his own two hands. He threw off the heavy length of steel and heard it thud against the earth. A smear of blood stained the right side of her dark green skirt.

“My leg,” she groaned.

Lassiter's rigid features melted into a smile of encouragement. “Doc will take care of your leg. I want a litter for this lady,” he said to the crowd and there was a scurrying of men to carry out his request.

There was a man's sudden scream. “Farrell, you tromped my toes!”

Lassiter froze. He straightened up from Roma and saw Farrell walking purposely through the crowd, unmindful of the feet of other men. The one who had cried out was favouring his left foot and grimacing.

“You've been howling for a chance to meet me face to face,” Farrell said in even tones. He halted. “Now's as good a time as any. You've wrecked my building, caused injuries to several of my employees, the deaths of two that I know of. Besides that, you shot my friend Lineus Swallow. No doubt by some sneak trick. You could never have beaten him in a stand-up gunfight.”

“Liar!” Lodor of the Mercantile cried, shaking his fist. “It was Swallow tried a trick. It didn't work. This town is fed up with you, Farrell . . .”

“This town has got me for keeps,” Farrell said arrogantly.

He didn't even bother to look at the owner of the Bluegate Mercantile, but kept his eyes on Lassiter. A few women in the crowd began to whimper and push away because of the threat of danger.

“Hasn't there been enough killin' this day?” one of them cried out.

In the silence, nobody answered her question.

Lassiter gestured at Roma, who was clenching her teeth at the pain of her injury. “I want to get this girl to the doctor's. Then I'll face up to you, Farrell.”

“Always got an excuse, ain't you, Lassiter?” It was Rip Tolliver standing a few feet from the elegantly tailored Farrell in a gray suit with small dark checks. His boots were black, with only a light coating of dust to mar the high polish.

Overhead a flock of brown birds swooped low over the street and then as if mystified by the insanity in the street below, whirled, chattering, and flew toward thick trees at the edge of the mountain.

People were crowding in close to peer down at Roma's bruised and swollen face, evidence that she had been beaten.

Lassiter pointed at Roma. “You marked her, Farrell. Your two hands did that.”

“Of course,” he admitted with surprising candor. “She's nothing but a fallen woman. She came to my ranch time and again and prostituted herself with my men . . .”

“No!” Roma screamed.

“. . . so I decided to teach her a lesson.”

“Liar!” Roma cried. “Filthy liar!”

“Listen, everybody,” Lassiter said, fighting down his anger, for he knew it was Farrell's plan to get him in a rage so he'd make some stupid move. “Farrell's great friend, Vance Vanderson . . . he's the one brought tragedy to this town. He'll talk.”

Farrell laughed. “Now who's the liar?”

“He'll tell the truth about who paid him to pull out wheel blocks and set that wagon on the loose.”

“How can a dead man talk?” Farrell sneered.

“He's very much alive . . .”

“You'd never let him live, Lassiter. I know you . . .”

But there was indecision on Farrell's face. He stared hard at Lassiter, then his right hand whipped under his coat and withdrew with a gleaming .45. Above the screams of onlookers, the sudden shifting of feet, came the spiteful crack of the weapon.

But Lassiter had moved suddenly, hurling himself aside, to draw fire away from Roma. He landed on his right shoulder as the screaming from dozens of throats increased. Pain knifed through arm and shoulder as he drew his gun while rolling, rolling. A bullet slammed into the hard-packed street, showering him with dirt. Lassiter sprang to his feet, lunged to the left in order to give Roma more room. He felt as if punched in the stomach as a slug nicked a corner of his silver belt buckle and went screeching into the air.

In the turmoil, with everyone trying to reach safety, Lassiter spotted Farrell duck into the ruined building. Lassiter was after him at a crouching run.

A man yelled, “Lassiter . . . watch out . . .
Tolliver!
”

And Lassiter saw him just as he charged through the gaping hole in the warehouse wall. Tolliver loomed up amidst the wreckage and fired almost point blank. But somehow the bullet missed Lassiter, who was dodging at full speed through the ruins. He saw Tolliver's face, the ever-present curl of dark brown hair low on the forehead. Lassiter fired from the hip. Suddenly most of the curl disintegrated. Strands of it flew into the air. Tolliver's lips parted and all life was washed from the eyes. Blood mixed with a grimy gray matter appeared in what was left of the lock of hair. Tolliver crashed into a ruined chair and flopped over a scattering of steel rails.

“It's you and me now, Lassiter!”

Farrell was calling to him from behind a thick beam that dangled from part of the ceiling that had erupted when the runaway freighter crashed through the north wall.

Farrell stepped into view, hands lifted chest high.

“Let's go at it, man to man,” Farrell taunted. “If you have the guts.”

Lassiter carefully straightened up. “Who else have you got hidden out?”

“Nobody. Now it's just us, Lassiter. You and me.”

Harsh laughter was Lassiter's answer.

“Holster your gun, Lassiter. We'll go at it even up.” Lassiter hesitated, trying to read Farrell's expression through streamers of dust and gunsmoke. There was just a trace of mockery on the full lips. A bank of strained faces crowded at the break in the wall and at the middle doors that had been slid open. Not a sound. The stillness was strange in Lassiter's ears, after the agonizing minutes of the thundering runaway wagon and the pounding rhythm of his own horse straining to the limit of its endurance.

“All right,” Lassiter said in a tense voice. “We go at it even up.”

He holstered his gun. And the very moment his gun touched leather, he knew he had been tricked. One thing he had forgotten, Farrell was ambidextrous. A faint gleam of steel was visible as a knife passed through a bar of sunlight shining down through a wide crack in the ruptured roof. A knife hurled expertly by the left hand. The point aimed straight for Lassiter's wide chest.

And in that shattered part of a second, Farrell drew his gun. As Lassiter drew his. Farrell's .45 boomed like a cannon. Sound waves whipped through the wreckage, making onlookers jump. But Lassiter had turned sideways to the oncoming knife in that splinter of time, so the bullet cut neatly through a bulge in his shirtfront. The long barrel of the .44 was clanging against the thrown knife, knocking it to the floor. As Farrell fired a second time, Lassiter was on the move. He leaped over Rip Tolliver's body and came up suddenly on Farrell's left side. Farrell was forced to swing around. His green eyes mirrored not only anxiety, but surprise. His teeth clenched as he let fall the hammer of his gun. But Lassiter in a zig zag run was nearly behind him then.

“Even up is it?” Lassiter shouted. “You and your goddamn knife!”

Almost in desperation, Farrell cried, “Stand still!”

He whirled, just as Lassiter aimed for the widest part of his body, and fired again. But the bullet tore up a shower of splinters where it struck that portion of the office floor that had not been caved in.

The impact of the .44 caliber bullet into the chest, knocked Farrell back on his heels. There he took a few staggering steps while staring at Lassiter in disbelief. Desperately he tried to bring up the .45 that dangled from the right hand, while Lassiter stood ready to shoot him again. But Farrell lacked the strength and his gun clattered to the floor. As Farrell sank to his knees, the shocked green eyes never left Lassiter's face.