“Excuse me,” Clint said as he approached the hatbox-sized window that looked into the shed.
The man in there was stick-thin, but could very well have gotten that way after being cooped up in the wooden container through too many summers. He looked up from his book, lifted his spectacles off the bridge of his nose, and squinted at Clint. “What'd you call me?”
“Uhhh . . . nothing. I wanted to ask if the stage from Prescott was on time.”
“It should be arriving in an hour or two. Haven't heard any different.”
“Good.”
Clint meant to leave, but was pinned to his spot by the scrawny man's gaze. The bespectacled fellow studied Clint intently, moving his beady eyes up and down several times before asking, “Are you Clint Adams?”
When he heard that, Clint reflexively stepped back. “Yes.”
“I got a message for you.”
“What is it?”
“You'll just have to come here and get it,” the scarecrow in the box replied.
As Clint approached the shed again, he felt the hairs on the back of his arm stand up. “How do you know who I am?”
“Someone was expecting you.”
Hearing those words come from the fidgety little fellow didn't make Clint feel any better. Seeing the man reach down beneath the window to where a holster or shotgun might be kept didn't do him any favors, either. But when the scarecrow brought his hand up again, it was holding something a lot less threatening than a firearm.
“The woman who left this said you might be coming,” the scrawny man explained. “She described you pretty good and said you might show up around this time, asking about the stage from Prescott. This,” he said while handing an envelope through the window, “is what she left for ya.”
Clint took the envelope, feeling more than a little foolish for getting so worked up in the first place. His other hand was still in the vicinity of his Colt, but Clint dug into his pocket for some money instead. “Here you go. That's for delivering the message.”
The clerk snatched the money and muttered, “The lady already paid me to see it got to the right hands, but if you insist . . .”
Clint's name was written upon the front of the envelope in a hasty scrawl that had a feminine quality about it. When he'd moved to a spot where there weren't so many others looking over his shoulder, Clint opened the envelope, removed the letter, and skimmed straight down to the signature. It was from Madeline.
Now Clint felt like an idiot for not having guessed as much right at the start. His only excuse was that it had been a long ride to the platform, but even that didn't seem like enough to cover him. Deciding he didn't need to make excuses anyway, Clint leaned against the post supporting the closest tent and started reading the letter.
Clint,
If you're reading this, that means you're at the platform waiting for me to arrive. You must leave this instant before
“Pardon me,” someone asked from the doorway of the tent where Clint was standing. “Are you Clint Adams?”
“Yeah,” Clint replied as he continued to read.
Before Clint could take his eyes from Maddy's letter, he felt a gun barrel press against his ribs.
“Start walkin' before your guts see the light of day,” the voice snarled.
ELEVEN
Clint didn't take a step.
The only muscles he moved were the ones required to turn his head and get a look at who was threatening him.
The man who held the gun looked to be somewhere in his early twenties. His face was slightly weathered and covered with just enough stubble to obscure his face like a bandanna that had been pulled up over his mouth. He was solidly built and had plenty of muscle upon his frame. Raising an eyebrow, he jabbed the gun into Clint's ribs and asked, “Did you hear me, Adams? I told you to move.”
Seeing the fire in the younger man's eyes, Clint started walking. His steps were slow and heavy, however, shuffling over the dirt as if his boots were weighted down. “You know my name, but I don't know yours.”
“Tough shit.”
Another man chuckled as he fell into step with them. Since he didn't seem surprised by the gun in the younger man's hand and didn't make a move to help Clint, it seemed clear which side he was on.
“Where are we going?” Clint asked.
The younger man shifted so his body kept his pistol mostly out of view from any of the others going about their business at or near the platform. “You'll find out when we get there.”
“No,” Clint said as he planted his feet. “I'll find out right now.”
“Get movin'.”
“You can push that gun into my ribs all you like,” Clint said. “That won't make it seem like a better idea to go someplace where I can be shot in private. What do you want from me?”
The man with the gun let out a sigh and motioned to his partner. The other one was bigger, but had considerably less muscle than the gunman. A round belly hung over his gun belt with almost enough overlap to hide the buckle. At the first man's signal, he moved around to stand in front of Clint.
Now that Clint was surrounded, the first gunman said, “You're to tell us where to find the Chinese bitch.”
Clint only knew one Chinese girl who was connected to both him and the woman he'd come to meet. The very notion that armed men would be asking for Chen sparked a fire deep in Clint's innards. “Why the hell would I do something like that?”
“Because we need to have a word with her,” the first gunman said.
The fat man chuckled and added, “A word and then maybe a little somethin' else.”
That was all Clint needed to hear. Just the lecherous tone in the fat man's voice was enough to send him over the edge. Clint's first move was to reach down for the first gunman's wrist. He did so with the same speed he might use to draw his Colt from its holster, which was more than fast enough to get to his target before the gunman could pull his trigger.
Once he had hold of the gunman's wrist, Clint twisted the pistol in a half-circle and then angled it sharply to one side. The gunman's finger gave way with a wet crunch, but remained within the trigger guard. Clint reached down with his other hand to grab the pistol from above and trap its hammer before it could drop. From there, all he needed to do was wrangle the gun away from its owner. Considering the pain from his snapped finger, the gunman was more than happy to let the weapon go.
All of this happened in the blink of an eye. By the time the fat man saw what was going on, he barely had time to fumble for his own .44.
Clint got a proper grip upon the gun he'd taken from the first man and then drove its barrel into the second one's ample gut. “What do you want with the girl?”
The fat man sputtered something, but didn't get out more than a few choked syllables before someone else hollered at him from the nearby saloon.
“What's the matter, Jesse?” the man called out from the saloon. “You choke on a chicken bone?”
The first gunman clutched his right hand and shouted, “That's Adams! Put him down!”
Clint turned to find no less than three armed men emerge from the saloon and fan out to form a firing line as they drew their pistols and took aim. In that time, Clint moved around to get behind Jesse and wrap his left arm around the larger man's flabby throat. Tightening his grip around Jesse's neck, Clint looked over the fat man's shoulder at the others. Unfortunately, Jesse was so fat that Clint couldn't do much more than that while using him as a shield. In order to fire a few shots of his own, Clint would have had to lift his gun hand up high and fire downward.
While Clint was trying to figure out what to do with his rotund shield, the three gunmen from the saloon opened fire. Lead whipped through the air over Clint's head and one shot even tore a nasty gouge across the top of Jesse's shoulder.
Hunkering down behind Jesse, Clint drove his knee into the fat man's back and shoved him forward. Jesse waddled toward the gunmen, waving his arms and staggering like a drunken sailor.
“Don't shoot!” the fat man cried.
“Get the hell out of the way!” one of the others shouted.
Clint rushed toward the only cover he could find, which was the little shack near the stagecoach platform. Pressing his back against the wooden structure, he leaned toward the wall and said, “I know you're in there! Who are those men?”
The scarecrow's response was a shaky squawk. “What? How would I know?”
More shots were fired as the gunmen spoke amongst themselves.
“They know my name,” Clint said. “The lady who left that letter knew my name and told it to you. I don't know anyone else in this place, so that leaves you.”
Just when it seemed the scarecrow was going to keep his silence, a barrage of shots knocked a few holes through his shack. “They didn't ask about you!” he squealed from somewhere close to the floor of the shack. Clint slid down so he was squatting with his back against the wall and his head was closer to where the scarecrow must have been cowering.
“The tall fella asked about the Prescott stage and I asked him the same thing I asked you,” the scarecrow continued. “He asked a whole bunch of other questions, which brought him back to the lady who left that letter for you. She's the one he was interested in.”
“And they know she wanted to contact me,” Clint snarled.
A few more shots blazed past the shack, but the gunmen were easing up on their triggers. In the lull, the scarecrow said, “Yeah, they know. They paid me to keep quiet about it until they got you.”
“Who are they?”
“I swear I don'tâ”
Several more shots were fired from multiple angles. The gunmen must have spread out to surround the shack, because their bullets tore through the flimsy structure and splintered the three walls facing the saloon. Clint hunkered down a bit lower, but knew it would only be a matter of seconds before he was either forced from hiding or killed where he was.
“Damn, Maddy,” Clint whispered to himself. “For such a sweet lady, you sure make a lot of enemies.”
TWELVE
Since he didn't have a lot of time for a thorough check, Clint hefted the gun he'd taken so he could estimate its weight. He'd spent more than enough years around firearms to know the difference between the feel of a loaded pistol and an empty one. He was confident the young gunman's weapon was probably fully loaded, but he wasn't about to bet his life on it. When he scrambled away from the shack, he took a quick look at the area in front of the saloon.
As he'd figured, just about everyone had run for cover when the shooting started. That left the three gunmen, the one with the snapped finger, and Jesse, to stand out like birds sitting on a telegraph wire. Clint aimed the stolen pistol at them and fired as quickly as he could while continuing to move.
His shots weren't accurate, but they came in a loud fire-storm and tested the nerve of all the men in front of him. Even experienced gunfighters would have been thrown off their game by that kind of return fire, but these men were rattled a whole lot more than that. A few of them kept firing but sent their bullets into the street or hissing up toward the clouds. The rest simply scattered.
Knowing he was either out of ammunition or close to it, Clint tucked the stolen gun under his belt and drew his own modified Colt. “What's this about?” he asked. “Speak up and maybe we can resolve this without anyone getting killed.”
“Tell us where to find the Chinese whore and you won't have to get killed,” one of the others replied from wherever he was hiding.
Choking back the impulse to shoot that man on principle, Clint said, “What do you want her for?”
The man who stood up was the same one who'd had his gun taken away. Clint had to give the man credit for collecting himself so soon. Of course, it seemed to help that he looked able to pull a trigger with his left hand just as easily as he could his right. He even had another pistol taken from the double rig around his waist to back up his words. “You're outnumbered, mister,” he said. “Tell us where that house is before we hurt you bad enough to wish you would've told us the first time I asked.”
“I don't know what house you're talking about.”
“Sure you do. Didn't you read that letter yet?”
“Nope.”
“Then come along with us,” the gunman said as his partners slowly stepped out from where they'd hidden. “You'll have time enough to read it along the way.”
“The way to where?”
Jesse had been crouching behind a barrel, which hadn't been big enough to fully protect him anyway. Anxious to regain some of the pride he'd lost by getting captured so easily before, the fat man stepped forward and said, “For Christ's sake, Ayden, just shoot the prick's legs out from under him and we'll drag him to the camp!”
That idea was good enough for the rest of the men and the remaining three raised their guns to see it through.
Clint fired three quick shots from the hip, two of which clipped the men who had come from the saloon and sent them to the ground. Before those men hit the dirt, Clint was already running to where Eclipse was tethered. Jesse waddled to follow him, so Clint fired in his direction. The fat man reflexively grabbed the bloody section of his shoulder and dropped. He'd either been hit in the same spot as before or was petrified of that very thing. Either way, he was down for the moment.
After untying Eclipse, Clint climbed onto the Darley Arabian's back and snapped the reins. He then turned and spotted Ayden and one of the men from the saloon taking aim at him. Clint sent a round into the closest one, knocking him off his feet with a solid hit to the chest to land heavily beside Ayden.