Man From Boot Hill (5 page)

Joseph woke to the crack of a gunshot followed by shattering glass. He strained to open his eyes and was immediately rewarded for his efforts by a healthy dose of pain, which flooded through every inch of him.

Men shouted and hollered as horses thundered to and fro. There was more breaking glass, which was now joined by the crackle of flames.

When Joseph heard that crackling, his senses came back to him in a rush. He pulled in a deep breath and immediately choked on it. The acrid taste of smoke filled his nose and stuck to the back of his throat. He could hear wood splintering and more windows being broken. He could also hear a familiar voice raised in a terrified scream.

“Leave us alone!” Anne shouted.

Although he couldn’t make out the words that followed, Joseph could tell they were being spoken by angry men. The night was then split apart by the blast of a rifle.

Joseph wanted to shout to his wife. He wanted
to see if she was all right or at least still alive. He wanted her to know he was nearby and would help her, but he couldn’t do a damn thing. He still couldn’t even see.

Another voice drifted nearby, growing clearer as a door slammed open. “Bitch shot me!” he said. “She’s got a damn gun.”

The reply came from much closer than Joseph had been expecting. “Then take the gun away from her,” Dutch shouted. “Or is handling one woman too hard for you?”

Joseph struggled to open his eyes. Finally, he realized that his eyes had come open the first time he’d tried. The only problem was that he was laying face down over the back of a horse and was staring at the animal’s flank.

Thankfully, the spots where he’d been shot had mostly gone numb. Gritting his teeth, Joseph got his arms moving and pushed himself back until he felt his weight sliding along the curve of the horse’s back.

When his boots touched against the ground, Joseph expected to crumple over, but he managed to keep his balance and hold onto the horse for support. Now that he didn’t have a face full of horse-hair, he could take in his surroundings.

Like a nightmare, shadows clung to the sky like thick tar. The bunkhouse was on fire and the flames roared up even higher as Joseph watched. Men were going in and out of the stables, taking
what horses were there and lining them up next to Dutch and one of the other riders.

Dutch sat on his horse less than ten paces from Joseph. He nodded in appreciation of the scene in front of him, but most of his attention was focused upon the main house, where several men were headed for the front door.

“The money’s in there,” George said, pointing to the ranch house.

“You sure about that?” Dutch asked.

“Yeah. I know it’s in there somewhere! Try under the floor.”

“You hear that?” Dutch shouted to the men near the house. “Look under the floor. Pull the damn thing up if you have to.”

The man that had stumbled out the front door took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair before stuffing his hat back on. “That bitch with the gun’s in the big bedroom.”

“Then pull her outta there. If we don’t get that money, this whole damn trip’s for nothing!”

The man nodded and then marched back into the house.

Joseph could picture Anne and the children with their backs to a wall and one old hunting rifle separating them from the unthinkable. He balled up his fists and started to lunge forward, but was stopped suddenly by what felt like a lead weight dropped onto his shoulder. Joseph wheeled around to take a swing at whoever had stopped him. His
fist made it about halfway around before it was stopped by a callused hand sporting four and a half fingers.

The weathered man who fixed his eyes upon Joseph placed a finger from his free hand up to his lips. Just the fact that this other man was crouched and hiding right along with him made Joseph trust him a bit. He felt even better when the man’s face struck a chord in his memory.

“You’re…the undertaker?” Joseph whispered. “Nicolai Graves, wasn’t it?”

Nick nodded, glancing around to make sure that Joseph’s question hadn’t been heard through all the other noise. Seeing that the closest horsemen were still looking away, Nick turned toward an outhouse and motioned for Joseph to follow.

It pained him to move away from the house rather than toward it, but anyplace was better than the spot he’d been. Both men kept low and scurried around the outhouse. Once they were behind that small bit of cover, Joseph leaned back against the shack and took a moment to collect himself.

“How bad are you hurt?” Nick asked.

Joseph shook his head quickly as if he was just waking up. “What are you doing here? How’d you get to me so easily?”

“It wasn’t easy, trust me. Do you have any weapons stashed?”

“I need to get to the house. There’s other men around. Lots more.” Just then, Joseph caught sight of a shape spread out on the ground a few paces
from where he was standing. After squinting a bit, he saw two men piled on top of each other. Neither of them was moving.

“Did you…?”

Nick interrupted Joseph’s question by repeating his own. “Do you have any weapons stashed? Anything at all we can use?”

“There’s an old pistol in the house. Oh, and a few more pistols behind the bunkhouse. That’s where my hired hands store their guns, since I don’t want them walking around my children heeled.”

“Take me to those guns.”

Joseph started for the bunkhouse, but Nick stopped him before he stepped out from behind the outhouse. Nick leaned past him and took a quick look around while motioning for Joseph to stay put. After a few seconds, he waved and rushed toward the burning building.

Rifle shots blasted from within the house, followed by more screams. Joseph’s first impulse was to start running that way.

“No,” Nick hissed. “You’ll just get yourself killed. If there’s more weapons to be had, we need to get them. We’re already outnumbered.”

“I don’t even know for certain if the guns are there. My ranch hands…they’re behind this or some might even be dead. Besides,” he added, pointing toward the raging fire, “whatever guns are there are about to be melted down.”

Another shout filled the air, but didn’t come
from a woman or any children. It came from one of the horsemen, who let out a piercing whistle and tugged on a bunch of reins gathered up in his hand. He and the horses from Joseph’s stable ran away from the circle of buildings and headed south into the night.

“You see that?” Dutch shouted while glancing over his shoulder. “You awake back there to see this? If you are, you might want to do your family a favor and…” Dutch’s voice trailed off and was soon followed by an eruption of obscenities ending with, “The rancher’s gone! Somebody find him, goddamn it!”

Nick barely managed to reach out and grab hold of Joseph’s arm before the rancher bolted toward his house.

“Let go of me,” Joseph snarled. “My family needs me!”

“You’ll be captured or killed in a second if you run out there like that. Come with me and we might be able to turn this around.”

Joseph shook his head slowly. “I can’t wait any longer. If anything happens to them…”

“Then at least take this,” Nick said.

When Joseph looked down, he saw a small revolver in Nick’s hand. He reached out to take it, only to have it snatched away at the last possible moment.

Having caught a bit of movement from the corner of his eye, Nick turned on the balls of his feet toward it and gripped the pistol tightly. After a
quarter turn, he saw an armed man rushing toward him and taking aim.

In the space of a half second, Nick weighed his options and realized the element of surprise was going to be blown no matter who pulled their trigger. Nick’s hand flashed to the holster buckled over his stomach and took hold of his pistol’s grip. His fingers seemed to melt into the specially carved handle and the gun came out as if it had a will of its own. Pointing the weapon like an extension of his own arm, Nick took his shot, which knocked the other man off his feet.

“Take this,” Nick said while tossing the other pistol to Joseph. “But don’t waste your bullets.”

Joseph grabbed the gun and rushed toward the main house. Nick was about to follow when he saw some more figures running toward him from another direction. The larger of the two didn’t even notice the body lying on the ground. He was too busy chasing the smaller one, a four-foot bundle of flailing arms and legs.

“Get back here, you little shit,” the man grunted.

Nick caught sight of the little boy’s face and was drawn to a pair of wide, terrified eyes. The boy’s mouth hung open in a silent scream. Since Joseph was already gone, Nick ran to help the child.

Still reaching out to try and grab the boy, the boy’s pursuer glanced over to Nick and he immediately shifted to guard against him. His gun arm bent at the elbow, allowing him to fire off a quick
hipshot. The bullet blazed through empty air, forcing Nick to duck rather than fire back.

As he rushed toward the boy and his attacker, Nick saw a second armed man close in on the kid from behind.

“Look behind you, boy!” Nick shouted.

The kid flinched and huddled down out of fear, rooting himself to the spot.

Nick swung his arm around to fire a shot at the second man to buy a few more seconds for the boy to escape. Just as he tightened a finger around his trigger, Nick heard the first gunman fire again. The bullet came closer than the first, but snagged Nick’s coat rather than anything vital. Nick returned fire, which sent the first gunman diving for cover. Pulling his trigger again, Nick put a round into the gunman’s chest before he hit the ground.

By this time, the first gunman was running straight for Nick. Before Nick could react, the gunman reached out and shoved the barrel of his pistol in Nick’s face.

Nick swiped his left arm up and out to knock the man’s gun away. The pistol discharged a round straight up, but remained in its owner’s hand. Nick then swung his other hand in a vicious chopping motion, which ended with his gun’s handle slamming down upon the other man’s collarbone.

Letting out a surprised grunt, the gunman dropped to one knee. The next thing he felt was Nick’s knee slamming into his face. There was a dull thump before the gunman’s head snapped
back. His eyes were still open, but completely vacant as he hit the ground on his back.

Nick could hear people shouting and a woman screaming. Men were swearing and shooting at each other. All of that chaos swirled amid the building roar of flames as the fire spread from the bunkhouse and made its way to the other buildings, filling Nick’s senses until everything became damn near incomprehensible.

The one thing he could focus on was that boy.

The kid was scared and still running for his life.

It was only due to the raging fire that Nick had enough light to catch sight of the boy as he raced toward the open land surrounding the circle of buildings. There was a rumble of hooves in the distance, which may very well have been a stampede of spooked cattle.

Without another thought, Nick took off after the boy. He prayed Joseph could hold on until he got back.

Anne was screaming.

Through all the gunshots and men shouting back and forth, Joseph could hear his wife’s panicked screams as plain as day. Those screams drove him forward, in spite of the pain that lanced through his body.

Joseph raised the gun Nick had given him and thumbed back the trigger. His eyes anxiously searched for a target.

A skinny man with a grimy face and sparse beard walked out the front door of Joseph’s house dragging Laurie by the arm. His bony hand clutched her wrist, bringing a pained wince to her face with each step. The man didn’t even look to his left as he came out. He was too intent on making sure he had Dutch’s attention.

“Lookee here what I found!” the man said. “This sweet little thang looks real tasty, don’t she? Can I keep her?”

Laurie struggled against the man’s grip, but wasn’t strong enough to break it. She kicked and
screamed and punched, but that only served to widen the smile on her captor’s face. Behind the girl, Anne’s shouts were eclipsed by the sounds of breaking furniture and heavy fists landing again and again.

Just then, Laurie heard a voice cut through the chaos.

“Close your eyes, sweetie.”

Laurie stopped fighting and looked in the direction of the voice. When she saw her father standing to one side with a gun in his hand, she hunkered down and did exactly as she was told.

Joseph fired at the man holding his daughter. The man’s head snapped back as his face exploded amid a spray of blood. His grip loosened and he fell back into the doorway of the house.

Laurie peeked out from behind her eyelids and started to run toward her father. She was stopped by a bullet that tore through her right calf muscle and sent her, stumbling, to the ground.

“See what happens when you don’t follow the plan?” Dutch asked as he rode forward with smoke still curling from the gun in his hand.

Rushing toward his daughter, Joseph didn’t bother looking at anything else around him. He dropped to his knees and scooped her up with his free arm. “It’s all right, Laurie. Daddy’s here.”

The twelve-year-old was only slightly shorter than her mother, but felt light as a feather in his arms. She winced and blinked a few times, but was more than able to wrap her arms around him and
hold him tight. “Ma’s still inside, they’re—”

From inside the house, Anne let out another scream. The sound of it ripped a hole through Joseph’s heart. When he looked into the house, all he could see was a mess of overturned shelves, splintered wood and shattered glass. He picked his daughter up and started inside.

“What the hell do you think you’re gonna do?” Dutch asked, watching the scene with an amused grin as more and more of his men gathered around him. “You got lucky and killed a few of my men, but you don’t think you’re actually walking out of here, do you?”

Joseph was still moving. As much as he wanted to run to his wife’s aid, he wasn’t about to put his daughter down. The only compromise he could stomach was carrying her with him as he headed toward the dwindling sound of his wife’s screams. “Where’s your brother?” he asked Laurie.

Laurie was breathing in frantic gulps. Between them, she said, “He ran off when they kicked the door in. I don’t know where he is.”

“Watch yourself in there, boys!” Dutch shouted from outside as if he was watching a show. “You’re about to get some company!”

Joseph was glad to hear the sounds of fighting from his bedroom come to a quick stop. He was even glad to see the men start drifting out to meet him. “Stay right here.” He set Laurie down. “I’m coming right back.”

The girl’s face was pale and her leg was bloody.
The moment she was lowered onto one of the few chairs that was still standing, she pressed her hands to the fresh wound and forced herself to breathe deeply.

Without hesitation, Joseph raised his gun and took a shot. His bullet clipped one of the intruders, but wasn’t enough to hold them off. The shot was immediately answered by several more from the men, who pulled their triggers as quickly as they could manage.

Joseph felt a few jolts of pain, which were like a small animal’s teeth biting viciously into his flesh. He ignored them and fired again and again until one of his shots managed to drop the closest gunman. Shifting his aim to the next closest man, he shouted, “I’m coming for you, Anne! Just hold on!”

That promise could be heard even over the crackle of return gunfire and the slap of a hammer against empty bullet casings.

Once they saw that Joseph had emptied his gun, the intruders stopped firing and came out from behind the cover they’d managed to find. The men began to chuckle. One of them walked over and stood in front of Joseph, dropped his spent pistol into a double-rig holster, and drew another to replace it.

“What should we do with him?” the man shouted.

From outside, Dutch asked, “He still alive, Bertram?”

Bertram looked down at Joseph’s face and studied it. The whiskers of his mustache hung just below his chin and skewed at odd angles when he smirked. “Yep.”

“Bring him out!”

Joseph gathered his strength and swung his empty pistol, which smacked against Bertram’s leg. Bertram answered by using his own pistol to deliver a devastating blow to the side of Joseph’s neck. Laurie screamed as she watched her father drop.

“Bring them all out!” Dutch commanded.

When Joseph finally reopened his eyes, he was looking down at the ground and his own two legs bent beneath him. He tried to move his arms, but quickly realized they were each being held by a different gunman. Joseph tried to struggle, but barely had the strength to lift his head. Just then, the gunman to his left grabbed Joseph by the hair and lifted his head for him.

Dutch and two other horsemen stood a few paces away. One of the horsemen was in the middle of saying something, but Joseph’s ears were roaring and he didn’t catch all of it.

“…herd into New Mexico by next week.”

“Good,” Dutch replied. “Do you how many head the others rounded up?”

“About twice as many as we got from the last place.”

“Perfect.” Finally looking over to Joseph, Dutch
said, “I was just about to lose patience with you. Did you want to see your wife?”

“An…Anne?” Joseph groaned through all the pain flooding through him.

“Show the man his wife, Bertram.”

The hand that had been grabbing Joseph’s hair wrenched to one side and twisted Joseph’s face around. Joseph couldn’t see much, but he could make out shreds of Anne’s dress on the bloody mess of the body lying beside him.

Joseph’s stomach clenched. “Jesus.”

“You’re the one fighting to get to her,” Dutch sneered. “I could have told you not to waste your time. You might like to know that your boy got away from the house, although I’m sure he’s being tended to as we speak. My guess is that you won’t want to get a look at him, either.”

“Wh—why? Why do this?”

“I think he’s talking to you, Georgie. You want to answer the man?”

The ranch hand was on a horse, sitting quietly nearby in much the same way he’d been when Joseph had seen him earlier that night. Now, as before, the young man could only look at Joseph for a second before averting his eyes.

“I got to hand it to you, Mister Van Meter,” Dutch said. “You gave us much more of a fight than we ever got on any of these jobs. Maybe after folks hear about what happened here, they won’t get as worked up as you did when they see us coming.”

“Laurie?”

Dutch squinted and cocked his head for a moment before finally nodding. “Oh, you mean your little girl? You want to see her too? I can arrange that if you tell me where you keep that stash of money of yours. The missus down there wasn’t too helpful.”

Joseph held his eyes shut as the fresh images of his wife coursed through him in an unwelcome torrent. He gnashed his teeth and clenched his fists, sapping nearly all the strength his body had left.

“She didn’t know anything,” Joseph snarled.

Dutch nodded and said, “I guessed as much. My boys may have had their fun, but there ain’t a woman alive who would keep quiet through all of that. If you’re more helpful, I might let you see that pretty little girl of yours.”

“It’s under the boards in my den,” Joseph said quickly. “Take it and go!”

Dutch threw a quick nod to his right. “Go get it, Georgie.”

As much as he wanted to pull his arms free, Joseph simply couldn’t. He felt like a damp sheet hanging from a line. “You…didn’t have to do all this.”

“Maybe not,” Dutch said. “But variety is the spice of life.”

George came out of the house with a strongbox under his arm. “I found the money, Dutch.”

“Now show me my daughter, you bastard!” Joseph shouted.

“You want to see her, Mister Van Meter?”

In the few times he’d wondered what hell was like, Joseph had never even considered anything this bad. The possibilities that raced through his mind only got worse the longer he thought about what his family had endured.

“I think he does want to see her,” Dutch finally said. “Go on and show him.”

This time, Joseph’s head was twisted in the other direction. The sharpness of the movement sent a warm pain through his neck, which he felt as much as a raindrop was felt against the surface of an ocean.

The girl’s eyes were blackened, but they were open and alive. Her entire body shook as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“You see?” Dutch said. “I’m not such a bad fellow. I waited around all this time to see if you’d wake up just to make certain you’d have something to watch.” With that, Dutch looked to one of the gunmen and nodded.

The sound of a hammer being cocked back echoed through Joseph’s ears. From the corner of his eye, he saw the gun. Since he didn’t have the strength to fight, he savored the sight of his daughter’s face one more time. Forcing the last bit of fortitude into his voice, Joseph told her, “Close your eyes, sweetie.”