The big gundown (17 page)

Glory threw her arms around The Kid’s neck in terror. “Oh, my God! What was that?”

“Sounded like one of those cannon,” he replied as he disengaged himself from her frantic grip. “From the sound of the gunshots, I’d say the colonel’s found himself with a battle on his hands sooner than he expected.”

“But-but how?”

The Kid was convinced that Sheffield, Bateman, and the others had found Colonel Black’s stronghold and launched a surprise attack on it in the middle of the night. That was the only explanation that made any sense.

“We’ll worry about that later,” he told Glory. “For now, I want to get you and Elena to someplace safe. Elena, can you take Señora Sheffield up those stairs?”

Elena looked like she didn’t care much for the idea, but she nodded. “Sí, señor. You will come to us?”

“As soon as I can,” The Kid promised.

He picked up the lantern and the pistol Señora Lopez had dropped and hustled the two women along the hallway to the dining room, leaving the Indian woman where she was. When they got there, the sound of shots from outside was even louder. The Kid went to the section of wall where the door was hidden and pressed on the beam as he had seen Elena do earlier. The latch clicked, and the door popped open. He swung it back the rest of the way and handed the lantern to Glory, along with the little pistol.

“I’ll be along as soon as I can,” he told them. “Good luck.”

Glory looked like she wanted to fling her arms around his neck again, but her hands were full. She settled for saying, “Good luck to you, Kid.”

Elena hugged The Kid instead. “
Vaya con Dios,
Señor Morgan,” she said.

Glory frowned at the embrace, then followed Elena up the stairs. The Kid watched until they had made the first turn around the spiral and gone out of sight before he hurried toward the front of the stronghold.

He had heard only the one round from the cannon and was surprised that the other big guns hadn’t been brought into action. Maybe the attackers had picked off the gunners and their steady fire was keeping any of the other outlaws from reaching the cannon. He was headed for the door leading into the compound when it burst open and the two owlhoot lieutenants named Harkins and Brill burst in, each with a gun in his hand.

“Morgan!” Brill exclaimed. “You seen that woman you brought in?”

“Mrs. Sheffield?” The Kid said.

Brill jerked his head in a nod. “Yeah. The colonel ordered me and Harkins to stay with her and watch over her, to make sure that nothin’ happens to her.”

“What’s going on out there?”

Harkins said, “All hell’s breakin’ loose, that’s what’s goin’ on! Somebody snuck up on us and opened fire. Must be Sheffield and his men, somehow.”

“The cannon by the south guard tower got one shot off,” Brill put in, “but then the fellas mannin’ it went down, and any time somebody else tries to get to it, rifle fire forces ’em back.”

“What about the other two cannon?” The Kid asked. “Are they loaded?”

“Yeah, ready to fire. The men in those gun crews are dead, too, though. The sons o’ bitches got sharpshooters on top of the Red Skull! They swept the parapets clean. We have a few men left in the guard towers, but everybody else has had to hole up in the cabins.”

Harkins said, “What about the woman, damn it? Tell us where she is, Morgan.”

“Gone,” The Kid said. By now Glory and Elena were probably halfway up the stairs. They would have a surprise waiting for them when they got to the top. Edward Sheffield himself might be up there, although The Kid sort of doubted it. He figured the tycoon would hang back, out of the line of fire. Bateman might well be on top of the Red Skull, though, directing the attack on the outlaw stronghold.

Harkins and Brill stared at The Kid. “What do you mean, gone?” Brill demanded.

“Escaped.”

“The hell you say!” Brill’s face suddenly twisted with anger. “You let her go! I never did trust you, you son of a bitch! Cranston and Terhune were tryin’ to get the colonel to kill you, and I reckon he should have!”

“We’ll take care of that right now!” Harkins yelled.

Their guns jerked up.

But in the second it took for them to lift their weapons, The Kid’s Colt spewed flaming death, roaring and bucking twice in his hand. The bullets smashed into the outlaws and drove them backward with looks of shock and pain on their faces. They collapsed, their blood welling out onto the woven rug. The Kid stepped forward and kicked their guns out of reach before they could try again to shoot him.

Swiftly, with practiced ease, he thumbed three cartridges from the loops on his gunbelt and replaced the two rounds he had just fired, plus slipping a bullet into the chamber he normally kept empty for the hammer to rest on. In the midst of this hornets’ nest of enemies, he wanted a full deck from which to deal.

Snapping the cylinder closed, he stepped past the two dead owlhoots and hurried to the door. He looked out, saw lanterns burning in the guard towers and casting their light across the compound. Muzzle flashes lit up the darkness like crimson flowers blooming in the shadows. Some of the men in the towers fired out into the valley where a frontal attack was going on, while others directed their fire toward the riflemen on top of the cliff. Other shots came from the cabins. The air was full of whining, buzzing lead.

The Kid’s gaze was drawn back to the cannon mounted in the center of the parapet, with bodies sprawled around it. Brill had said that the big gun by the south tower had been fired, which meant that the other two were still loaded, charged, and ready to wreak havoc.

“Fall back! Fall back!”

The shouted command came from Colonel Black, who led a retreat from the cabins. The outlaws charged out, firing as they ran toward the sanctuary under the cliff. Some of them fell, but most of them made it.

“Colonel!” The Kid called as the men rushed into the stronghold.

“Lieutenant Morgan!” Gideon Black had a bloody gash on his cheek where a bullet had grazed him, but other than that he seemed unharmed. “What happened to Harkins and Brill?”

“A couple of stray bullets got them, right after they ran in here looking for Mrs. Sheffield.”

Cranston came up behind the colonel. “He’s lying! I’ll bet he shot them!”

“He’s a damn traitor!” Terhune added.

For a second, The Kid thought Black believed them. Quickly, he said, “If I was a traitor, Colonel, I wouldn’t volunteer to go out there and touch off those cannon, now would I?”

Black frowned. “It’s sure death to try for those cannon, Lieutenant.”

“I can do it,” The Kid declared. “Just give me a chance.”

Black hesitated, then made up his mind and nodded abruptly. “If you move fast enough, you might be able to reach the parapet. Take a torch with you, so you can fire the cannon as soon as you get there. But Lieutenant…I don’t think you’ll survive this gallant effort.”

“Let me worry about that, Colonel.”

All The Kid really intended to do was get the hell out of there and reach Sheffield’s forces. Then Bateman and the rest of the hired guns could finish off Black and his men. The Kid had hoped to pull the trigger on the renegade colonel himself, so that he could see Black die for what he had done to the Williams family, but as long as Black was blown straight to hell, that was all that really mattered.

“The cannon are lined up on the enemy forces,” Black said. “If you could manage to fire them both, that would blow holes in their line and we could launch a counterattack. You’d give us a chance, at least, Lieutenant.”

The Kid nodded, eager to be gone from that den of snakes. He hoped that Glory and Elena had reached the top of the stairs and would tell whoever was up there that he was on their side. Maybe they would hold their fire when they saw it was him making a break for it.

“Godspeed, Lieutenant,” Black said.

“I still don’t trust him,” Cranston murmured.

The Kid went to the door. Someone thrust a blazing torch in his hand. He waited for a slight lull in the firing, then burst out into the compound, running for the wall as fast as he could. He planned to go up to the parapet and over the wall, figuring that would be faster and easier than opening the gates.

Even over the crackle of rifle fire, he heard Glory cry, “Don’t shoot! It’s The Kid!”

Bless her heart, he thought as the shots suddenly died away. She had seen him from up there and recognized him.

In the sudden eerie silence he reached the base of the stairs that led up to the parapet. Inside the stronghold, Colonel Black figured out what the cease-fire meant. As The Kid started up the stairs, he heard Black shout, “Kill him! Kill Morgan!”

Shots roared out again, but now they were coming from the house-under-the-cliff. Bullets whipped past The Kid, so close he felt their hot breath. He reached the top of the stairs and lunged toward the wall, but shards of adobe flew into the air as a hail of slugs chewed up the top of it. If he tried to climb over, it would be sure death. Instead, The Kid flung himself down into the closest cover—the narrow space between the cannon and the wall.

He was pinned down, but at least the cannon and the carriage on which it rested provided some decent cover. Bullets ricocheted off the cannon’s barrel and thudded into the carriage.

The Kid’s eyes widened as the parapet suddenly shifted underneath him. He heard a loud crack. The supports underneath it had been hit by a lot of the bullets flying around, and the cannon was really heavy. Another beam cracked. The damage was causing the parapet to give way under the tremendous weight of the big gun.

“Son of a—” The Kid began, but that was all he got out before the parapet fell out from under him and the cannon with a splintering crash. The cannon leaned backward and toppled over, so that the barrel pointed straight up into the air for a second before it crashed on its side, pointing toward the cliff at a slight angle, the broken carriage and parapet wreckage underneath it. The Kid landed on top of it in a shower of debris. The fall wasn’t that far, but it was enough to stun him for a second even though he managed to hold on to the still-burning torch.

As his senses came back to him, he saw Colonel Black step out of the stronghold, saber in hand. He twisted his neck to look up at the top of the cliff and screamed, “Gloriana! I did it all for you, Gloriana!” Then as the rest of the gang began to boil out behind him, Black swept the saber toward The Kid and cried, “Kill Morgan!”

“Not before I kill you first, you son of a bitch,” The Kid said as he jammed the torch against the touch-hole of the cannon and threw himself desperately away from the big gun.

In the split-second before he touched off the cannon, he had seen that the barrel was lined up with the front of the stronghold where Colonel Black stood. As he hit the ground, the roar of the shot slammed into his ears and the massive weapon’s recoil made it lurch backward in the debris. Lying on his stomach, The Kid watched as the heavy lead ball flew toward the stronghold, rising slightly as it traveled.

It rose just enough to catch Colonel Gideon Black in the belly. The Kid had killed quite a few men in a number of ways, but he had never blown a hole in anybody quite like the hole that cannonball blew through Black. For a second, The Kid would have sworn he could look right through it and see the men standing behind the colonel.

Then the ball tore through them, too, and crashed into the stronghold with a tremendous impact that sent a cloud of dust and chunks of adobe and wood flying into the air. The Kid couldn’t even see the cliff anymore.

But he could hear Phil Bateman shouting from the top of it. “The gates, Morgan!” the gunman yelled. “Open the gates!”

The Kid scrambled to his feet and ran to the gates. The bar that held them closed was too heavy for one man to lift out of its brackets, but he was able to shove it enough so that it fell free at one end. The gates swung open then, and some of Sheffield’s men rushed through, firing toward the stronghold as they charged.

Exhausted, The Kid reeled over to the wall and collapsed onto the ground. He leaned against the adobe and watched as Bateman’s men mopped up the last of the outlaws. The shooting didn’t last long, only another minute or so. Then silence descended on the place once more.

The Kid stayed where he was until a buggy rolled through the now wide open gates of the compound and came to a stop not far away. Elena climbed down from the vehicle awkwardly. Someone had draped a jacket around her, over the nightgown she wore. She held out a hand and called, “Señor Morgan! Señor Morgan!”

The Kid put a hand against the wall to steady himself and pushed to his feet. “Here, Elena,” he called.

She ran toward the sound of his voice, the long white gown flowing around her legs as she hurried. She came into his outstretched arms and buried her face against his chest.

“Señor Morgan…Kid,” she said. “You are all right?”

“Just a little tired,” he told her.

He looked toward the buggy and saw Glory sitting there next to Sheffield. Someone had given her a coat, too, to cover up the skimpy gown she wore. She gave him a long, intense look, and he sensed that she was saying good-bye to him. She was reunited with her husband…and after a few months, she would be assured of someday being rich.

The Kid could have told her that having all the money in the world wasn’t what it was made out to be. It couldn’t bring back everything that was lost.

“Kid, you saved us,” Elena whispered. “You destroyed that monster, Colonel Black, and his men.”

“I had a lot of help, and a lot of luck, too,” The Kid said. “But we’re alive, and that’s what matters.”

Sheffield said something to Glory, then climbed down from the buggy and walked toward The Kid and Elena. “Mr. Morgan,” he said. “It seems I owe you a great deal. Mrs. Sheffield told me how you saved her life more than once.”

The Kid left an arm around Elena’s shoulders as he turned to face the tycoon. “No offense, Sheffield, but you don’t owe me a damn thing. I set out to kill Gideon Black, and I did.”

Sheffield frowned. “A personal grudge?”

“You could call it that,” The Kid said, thinking of Sean and Frannie Williams and their little boy Cyrus.

“You never said anything—”

“It was my business.”

Sheffield shrugged. “Of course. But at the very least, you can accept my thanks. They’re heartfelt, I assure you.”

“You’re welcome,” The Kid said with a nod. “Just take care of that wife of yours. And you might tell me how it is that you and Bateman showed up tonight, instead of tomorrow when the colonel was expecting you.”

Sheffield smiled thinly. “We were out searching for you and Gloriana, and we were only a few miles from here when we ran into a man heading for Titusville. He had a box with a rather grotesque item in it.”

Devlin, The Kid thought. He said, “You figured out that Dunbar was one of Black’s spies?”

Sheffield nodded. “That’s right. We had to kill the man who was carrying his head. He put up a fight instead of surrendering. Then we found Black’s note and the map in the, ah—”

The Kid said, “I know where they were.”

“At any rate, once we knew where the hideout was located, Mr. Bateman and I worked out a plan of attack, believing that we could take the outlaws by surprise by striking tonight. Clearly, it was successful.”

The Kid looked around at the death and devastation filling the stronghold. “Clearly.”

“It would have been much more difficult, without your help, and there’s no telling what might have happened to Gloriana in the fighting. As I said, I owe you—but never mind. We’ve been through that.”

“Yeah,” The Kid said. “We have.”

“I should get back to my wife,” Sheffield said. “Thank you again, Mr. Morgan.”

The Kid didn’t say anything as Sheffield returned to the buggy and climbed up next to Glory. Beside him, Elena tilted her head as if she were actually looking up at him and asked, “Will you take me away from here, Kid?”

“Where would you like to go?”

A shudder ran through her slender body. “Anywhere but here.”

The Kid knew the feeling.

No one left until morning, though. By then, the bodies of the dead outlaws had been piled up like cordwood. There were too many of them to haul back to Titusville, and nobody wanted to bury them. Sheffield gave orders for the corpses to be taken into the wrecked stronghold under the cliff. Rocks were piled up in front of the openings, sealing off the place and its grisly contents.

A few members of the gang had survived, along with Lopez and his wife. They would all be taken to Bisbee and turned over to territorial authorities.

The Kid commandeered a horse for Elena and some supplies for them. As they were getting ready to leave that morning, Phil Bateman sauntered over to where The Kid was tightening the cinches on the buckskin’s saddle.

“I had a hunch that before this was over, you and I would find out which of us is faster on the draw,” the gunman drawled.

The Kid smiled. “It’d be a shame if it had to come to that. This place has seen enough killing.”

“Yeah. I was kinda thinking the same thing. But maybe another place, another time—”

“If our trails happen to cross again,” The Kid said.

Bateman nodded, touched a finger to the brim of his hat, and turned to walk away.

“That man hates you, Kid,” Elena said quietly. “I heard it in his voice. Why?”

“I don’t know. Some men just have too much hate in them. It has to come out somewhere.” For a while, he had been that way himself, he thought.

Glory had pointedly ignored him since the night before, and that was fine with The Kid. As the group prepared to leave the outlaw stronghold, she sat in her husband’s buggy, her face expressionless and her gaze directed straight ahead. But as The Kid and Elena rode past, he saw her eyes flick toward them, just for a second, and he recognized the regret there. She might wind up rich, but she would pay a high price in doing so, and she knew it.

They rode out through the open gates and turned east, while Sheffield, Glory, Bateman, and the others headed south toward Titusville. Their destinations were different. Their trails had parted.

For Kid Morgan, it was a lonely trail and always would be. He glanced over at Elena. She couldn’t fill the void in his heart. No one ever would.

But she could travel beside him for a while, until it was time for their trails to part, as well.

They rode toward the rising sun.