TW12 The Six-Gun Solution NEW (4 page)

“You cut up the insides of the legs and down the belly, then around the head," said Scott. "Then you tie a rope up to the hide and hitch it on a horse. It peels right back. Only that's work for skinners, not for hunters."

Masterson nodded.

"So he hunted buffalo," said Holliday. "Still doesn't mean he's not a gunfighter. 'Specially if he's as fast as Frank says."

"Practice your fast draw on the farm, did you?" Wyatt asked, softly. Virgil simply looked on quietly, watching him carefully.

"Like I said, Marshal," Scott replied, in a steady voice. "I don't want any trouble. I didn't start what happened here tonight."

"Nobody's sayin’ that you did, Kid," Masterson said. quickly. "But like Wyatt said, you wear your hair like a plainsman. Only you dress like a gunfighter. And you damn well shoot like one."

"I hear tell you're a fair hand with a gun yourself," said Scott.

"It's been said," Masterson replied. "A man's reputation gets around. Only you see, none of us have ever heard of you before. Someone shoots the way you do, you'd think there'd be some talk. The reason for all the questions is that Wyatt here tends to be the careful type. Virgil, too. It's their job to keep the law in Tombstone and, as you've seen, it can be quite a job.”

"Like I said, I don't want any trouble," Neilson replied. And you've got my gun."

“We've got stores in town that sell 'em," Wyatt said. “There's no law keeps you from buyin' another one. Just don't let me catch you wearin' it in town."

"What about Mr. Holliday'?" asked Scott. "I don't see a badge on him."

"Doc's got special permission." Wyatt said.

"I see." said Scott. "So the idea here is the law-abiding citizen is disarmed, but the outlaw carries a gun, is that it? You'd think it should be the other way around.”

"The outlaw is not permitted to carry a gun. either," Wyatt said.

"Yeah, but if he's an outlaw, he'll do it anyway, won't he'?"

"Only if I don't catch him at it," Wyatt replied, severely.

"Tell me something, Marshal," Scott said. "do you generally catch him before or after he shoots somebody?"

"Before, if I can manage it," said Wyatt. giving Scott a hard stare.

"And if you can't manage it, I guess that's hard luck for the fellow he just shot." They were pushing him a bit to see how he would handle it. If he didn't push back slightly, they'd be suspicious, but he had to be careful not to push back too hard.

"If you don't care for the law in Tombstone. Kid, you're free to move on," said Virgil, in a neutral tone.

"Oh, now that I've been informed of the law. Mr. Earp, I'll abide by it," said Scott. "But I guess it's a lucky thing for your two friends that I wasn't informed of it before." He pushed back his chair and stood. "Meet you right here in the morning, Mr. Masterson?"

"Right here's fine with me. About eight o'clock suit you'."

"Eight o'clock suits me fine." He touched the brim of his hat. "Gentlemen . . ."

They watched him as he left.

"He asked a bunch of questions," Wyatt said, "but he didn't answer many. The Montana Kid, eh? I've never heard of him before."

"Oh, well, that was just a little joke of mine," said Masterson, with a smile. "Frank called him 'this here Montana kid' and I just sort of stuck it on him. His real name's Scott Nelson."

"Neilson. I think he said," said Virgil.

"Nelson, Neilson, I never heard of either one of 'em, "said Wyatt. "But that kid's a gunfighter, that's for certain. Jack and Slim were sure as hell no greenhorns when it came to shootin’. And he got 'em both right through the heart."

"The Kid also saved my life." said Masterson. "And Frank's. He could have simply stood there and stayed well out of it. He didn't have to chance it."

"Only he did chance it," Wyatt said. "And the result was that he killed two men in a fair fight. By tomorrow, everyone in Tombstone will be talkin' about the Montana Kid. And by next week, they'll be sayin' that he killed three men. And then four. And then half a dozen. Before long, we'll have a man in town who's got himself a reputation as a killer."

"Isn't that how you got yours, Wyatt?" Masterson said, with a smile.

"Maybe, only I'm wearing a badge.

"Perhaps you should pin one on the Kid," said Masterson.

“A shootist like that would be handy to have on your side. Especially since Ike Clanton's already got Sheriff Johnny Behan on his."

"I don't need any help against the likes of Ike Clanton," Wyatt said, drawing on his cigar. Unlike the others, he didn't drink.

"Maybe not now," Masterson replied, "but Johnny Behan's had it in for you ever since you took his girl. He's close to Clanton and so are his deputies. You've got a lot of badges in this town, only not all of them seem to be on the same side. That could develop into a sticky situation."

"You sayin' the Kid could side with Clanton and his bunch?"

"Oh. I doubt that very much," Masterson replied. "Not after he dropped two of them."

Wyatt grunted. "I can't say I think much of the men you choose to gamble with, Bat.”

Masterson shrugged slightly. "I didn't know them. You know I haven't been in Tombstone that long, Wyatt. I had no idea they were part of Clanton's bunch. And their money was as good as anybody else's."

"You take much of it?"

Masterson smiled and, with a deft motion, produced a card from up his sleeve. It was an ace of spades. "What do you think?"

"The Montana Kid, you say?"

The man who was speaking was a striking individual. He was wearing an elegant dark suit with a red brocade vest and an expensive watch and chain. He had a large diamond on his finger, as well as in his stickpin. But it was not his attire that was the most striking thing about him. It was his size and his appearance. He was a large, powerfully built man, incredibly muscular, with arms and a chest that strained the fabric of his clothes. People stared at him with awe when he walked down the street. His thick hair was jet black and curly, giving him a romantic, Byronic aspect, and his handsome features were marred by a knife scar that ran down the side of his face from below his left eye to the corner of his mouth. His voice was deep and resonant and his mouth was cruel, but his eyes were his most striking feature. They were a bright, lambent green, with a gaze so intense it was unsettling.

The pretty young saloon girl standing before him had a hard time meeting his gaze. Not just because of the force of his personality, but because he was her creator.

"It was what the others called him," she said. "I don't know what his real name is. If he gave it, I didn't hear."

"And you say his speed with a gun was almost superhuman?"

"I've never seen anything like it," she replied. "I've seen Wyatt Earp's draw and even he isn't that fast. He fired off two shots in a fraction of a second, without even aiming, and he hit both men in the heart.”

"Interesting," said Nikolai Drakov, with a smile.

"You think he's one of them? The agents from the future?"

"There was a young man whose path I once crossed in London," Drakov said. "He was part of the support team working with Delaney, Cross and Steiger. And he was unusually skillful with lead projectile firearms."

"What was his name?" the girl asked. "What did he look like?”

"We never actually met face to face," Drakov replied. "But his name was Neilson. Scott Neilson.”

The girl shook her head. "I don't know." she said. "He looks very young. Just a boy, perhaps sixteen or seventeen--"

“Appearances could be deceptive if he's from the future," Drakov said. "With the antiagathic drugs, he could be anywhere from sixteen or seventeen to twenty-five or thirty. What else can you tell me about him?"

"He has light blond hair. He wears it long, like a plainsman. But he has the look of a gunfighter. Dark suit, vest, green calico shin, black Stetson . . ."

"How does he wear his gun?"

"In a cross draw holster on his left side."

"A Colt?"

“Yes, nickel-plated, with a short barrel."

“Good for a fast draw. What about jewelry? Was he wearing any jewelry.? A bracelet of some sort, perhaps?"

"Yes. Yes, he did have a bracelet. I saw it briefly. It was one of those silver Indian bracelets, with a large turquoise stone."

"Like these?" asked Drakov, opening a drawer in the end table. There were three matching Indian bracelets inside it. He took one out and held it up so she could see it.

"Yes, exactly like that," she said.

Drakov smiled. “You didn't hear what he and the others, the Earps and Masterson, spoke about?"

She shook her head. "I’m sorry. They were all sitting together at a table and I didn't want to seem as if I was trying to eavesdrop. And it was noisy in the saloon and—"

"That's all right," said Drakov. "You've done well, Jennifer. I want you to cultivate his acquaintance. It would be perfectly logical for you to do so. You saw what happened, you’re fascinated by him, you want to get to know him. Find out his real name. Find out anything you can. But try not to arouse his suspicion. Be friendly and curious, but not too curious. Don't push it."

"I'll do what I can."

"Yes, I'm sure you will. Did you find out where he was staying?"

"In the Grand Hotel."

Drakov nodded "Keep an eye on him. I want to know everything he does." He smiled. "Things are starting to get interesting. The players are almost all assembled."

He toyed with the Indian bracelet and opened the hinged cover, revealing the chronocircuitry controls of the warp disc.

"We will move slowly, and with great care," he said. 'I will not underestimate them this time. It should prove to be an interesting little drama. Imagine, the Network, the S.O.G., the Temporal Underground and the T.I.A., all gathered in one place, at one strategic time. It will be like playing chess against a roomful of opponents, simultaneously. Only they'll be playing against each other, little realizing that I control the board."

He snapped shut the cover on the warp disc.

"And so the game begins," he said, softly.

The one-horse rig Masterson had rented pulled up in front of the cabin in the Tombstone Hills. It looked abandoned. It was a small, primitive adobe structure with a dirt floor, similar to many dwellings in the area. It couldn't really be called a house. Building lumber had to be hauled in from the Huachucuas and the only local wood was mesquite, of which a quantity had been chopped and piled up outside the cabin. It gave off a pleasant aroma when burned. The Observers had a well dug and there was a makeshift shed about twenty feet away, with a crude corral beside it.

"Well, this is it," said Masterson, as he reigned in.

Neilson looked at the place. There was something rather sad about it. It would have been cramped quarters for three men, but this was how a lot of people lived in this time, in this part of the country. They came out from the Eastern cities or from farms and ranches in the Midwest, or from cities on the coast like San Francisco, chasing the dream of making a rich strike. A few of them, like Ed Schieffelin, got lucky. Most didn't. But still, they kept on coming.

This was how it all started. Neilson thought. One man came out to this barren desert territory, populated only by Apaches, scorpions and lizards, struck silver and, as word got out, the boom began. Tombstone grew up on Goose flats, at first nothing but tents and adobe cabins and a few buildings made of lumber that had to be brought in, then saloons and fancy hotels, the railroad coming in to Benson, stage lines connecting the town to nearby points. Arizona was still a wild territory, its raucous towns peopled by miners and gamblers and cowboys coming through with their herds, "hurrahing" the town with their six-shooters after months on the trail and blowing all their money on cheap whiskey, dance hall girls and at the faro tables. The Wild West as it really was, a brief, colorful period of American history, one that shaped the nation's character for years to come.

The men that achieved fame in this period seemed bigger than life. They were men like Wild Bill Hickok, with his brace of Navy Colts tucked butt forward into his belt, and Buffalo Bill Cody, the scout and buffalo hunter who would do more than perhaps any other man to give birth to the legend of the frontier with his traveling Wild West Show. Men like Clay Allison, the rowdy gunfighter and rancher who would contribute the word “shootist" to the language and who once, for lack of anything better to do, hurrahed a town by riding through it stark naked. Men like John Wesley Hardin, one of the fastest guns who ever lived, an outlaw who eventually became a lawyer, and Billy the Kid, whom legend was to paint as a misunderstood, romantic young hero but who was, in fact, a mean spirited psychotic. And here in Tombstone were men such as John Henry “Doc” Holliday, the frail, tubercular dentist from Georgia who, as Bat Masterson would write, was “. . . a weakling who could not have whipped a 15-year-old boy in a go-as-you-please fist fight, and no one knew this better than himself, and the knowledge of this fact was perhaps why he was ready to resort to a weapon of some kind whenever he got himself into difficulty.” And his skill with those weapons made him feared throughout the West.

Then there was Masterson himself, the gambler and lawman, who shot his six-guns from a crossed wrist position and had been credited with killing thirty-seven men, and Wyatt Earp and his brothers, who within a few short months would stride into frontier legend in their famous shoot-out with the Clantons. Yet, for all those larger-than-life, colorful figures, the real men who had built the West were men who lived like this, in small shacks and adobe dwellings, scratching a livelihood out of the dirt and aging quickly in the merciless desert sun.

The blow dust got into their lungs, their faces became lined and wrinkled prematurely, their backs worn from constant toil. They were, frequently, men who walked on both sides of the law, ranchers or miners by day, rustlers and stage robbers by night. Even Wyatt Earp was once accused of horse stealing and, in later years, he would be accused of being a stagecoach robber and a murderer, as well.