Death in the Desert Read online

  “Yeah, okay . . .”

  • • •

  Clint fell back, satisfied with what he had heard. Steve Harwick sounded like a smart man, and a smart man who was also good with a gun was dangerous. Maybe he ought to take these two out while he could, leaving Harwick alone—unless he had already called for help.

  Clint worked to catch up to the two men again, to see if they’d reveal anything else.

  • • •

  “I can hit what I shoot at, but I ain’t no fast gun,” Billy was telling Chris. “What about you?”

  “I ain’t never shot at another man,” Chris said. He appeared to be about ten years younger than the other men.

  “Well, you will someday,” Billy said. “Might as well be now.”

  “Yeah, but there’s only three of us—”

  “Right now,” Billy said, cutting him off. “But you heard Steve. He’s already sent a message to get us six more men to help load and transport. So they might as well help us hunt, too.”

  “Well,” Chris said, “with that many men and guns, maybe I won’t have to kill anybody.”

  “Maybe not, if there’s only one man in town pickin’ us off,” Billy said, “but if there’s more, you better do your part, boy.”

  “Don’t worry, Billy,” Chris said. “I’ll do my part.”

  “You better, if you want to get a full share,” Billy explained.

  “I will,” Chris said, “I swear.”

  “Okay,” Billy said. “Okay, look, you cross the street and we’ll cover both sides at once.”

  “B-But . . . Steve told us to stay together.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll just be across the street from each other. We’ll be able to see each other.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Come on, kid,” Billy said. “We’ll finish up faster that way.”

  “Yeah, okay,” Chris said. “But you keep your eye on me.”

  “And you keep your eye on me.”

  “Agreed.”

  Chris nodded, and started across the street . . .

  • • •

  Very quickly, Clint made up his mind. He fell back, crossed the street, and took up a position in one of the empty businesses. All he had to do was wait for young Chris to come along and stick his head inside. Once he took him out, the other fellow—Billy—might just come running to see what happened to his partner.

  This was Clint’s opportunity to cut the odds down from three-to-one to even money.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Billy Cabot walked from doorway to doorway, sticking his head in, looking the place over, then stepping out and looking across the street to check on Chris, who was doing the same on his side of the street.

  Chris Hunter was more tentative each time he stuck his head in a door, as if he was expecting to get it chopped off. Then he’d withdraw and look across the street for Billy, to make sure he was still there.

  • • •

  Clint watched silently as Billy moved along, figuring Chris was right with him on his side of the street. Then he heard the sound of Chris’s boots on the boardwalk as he approached the store he was hidden in. He moved away from the window to the door.

  Chris’s footsteps came right up to the door. When the young man stuck his head in, Clint reached out and grabbed him, yanked him into the store. As the boy went by him, he snatched his gun from his holster so fast that Chris didn’t realize it was gone. He turned and reached for it. Only then did he realize it was missing.

  “What the—”

  “Quiet, boy,” Clint said, pointing Chris’s own gun at him.

  Chris looked at the barrel of the gun and swallowed hard.

  “Keep your voice down,” Clint said.

  “W-Who are you?”

  “My name’s Clint Adams.”

  The boy’s eyes went wide.

  “The Gunsmith?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Right now I’m trying to keep from killing you,” Clint said. “You want to help me with that?”

  “What?”

  Clint spoke more slowly.

  “Do you want to help me not kill you?”

  “Well . . . sure,” Chris said. “I don’t wanna get killed.”

  “Good,” Clint said. “You and me are going to wait until your friend across the street notices you’re gone.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then he’ll come looking for you, and I’ll take his gun, too.”

  “You won’t get Billy’s gun as easy as you got mine.”

  “We’ll see. Let’s watch.”

  Clint moved Chris over to the window and they both looked out.

  • • •

  Billy checked the last building on his side, then turned to look across the street. He didn’t see Chris, so he assumed the boy had gone into one of the buildings. He waited for him to come out, and waited, and waited . . .

  When Chris didn’t reappear, Billy froze. Something was wrong. Whoever was picking them off one by one had done it again. Chris was gone.

  Billy went into the street, the first step toward crossing over to look for the boy, but he abruptly changed his mind. He backed up onto the boardwalk, turned, and hurried away.

  • • •

  “What’s he doin’?” Chris demanded.

  “What’s it look like he’s doing, boy?” Clint asked.

  “He’s . . . he’s leavin’,” Chris said. “He ain’t comin’ lookin’ for me.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  Clint turned away from the window, kept his eyes on the boy so he wouldn’t try anything. But Chris was beyond that. He was devastated by the fact that his colleague, his partner Billy, was walking away without trying to find him.

  “Where’s he goin’?” Chris asked, aloud.

  “He’s going to find your boss,” Clint said. “Steve.”

  “What—what are you gonna do with me?”

  “The same thing I did to your friend Ned,” Clint said.

  “Did you kill him?”

  “No,” Clint said. “You see where we are?”

  Chris looked around.

  “A hardware store.”

  “Right,” Clint said. “Come on, we’re going to find some rope.”

  • • •

  A little while later, Chris was gagged and securely tied, hands and feet, and placed in the back room of the hardware store. Clint even piled some crates around him, to hide him from sight. Then Clint left the store.

  He had successfully cut the odds down to two-to-one.

  Or so he thought.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Steve Harwick decided to look for Ned someplace the others might not have gone. He went back to the house where they’d found Kenny’s body. If he was going to hide another body, that’s where he would put it.

  He entered the house, checked to see if Kenny was still there. He was, and he was only just starting to smell bad. Steve went through the rest of the house, and when he got to one of the bedrooms, he heard a noise coming from the closet. He went to the door and found it locked. There was no key. He looked around the room, found a key on a dresser top, and tried it. It unlocked the door. He swung it open and looked down at Ned, hands and feet tied, gagged, thumping his heels on the floor. Because the closet was so small, that was all he could do.

  Steve reached down, dragged Ned out of the closet, and then untied him.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “I got jumped in that boardinghouse,” Ned said, trying to straighten his legs but finding it painful.

  “By who?” Steve asked. “How many men?”

  “Just one man,” Ned said, “the one who killed Kenny.”

  “You let one man take you?” Steve said. “Who the h
ell was it?”

  “Steve,” Ned said, “it was Clint Adams.”

  “Adams?” Steve asked. “What the hell is the Gunsmith doing in Medicine Bow?”

  “Taking us one at a time,” Ned said. “First Kenny, then me. I don’t know who’s next.”

  “Why didn’t he kill you, Ned?” Steve asked. “Why kill Kenny and not you?”

  “He said Kenny didn’t give him no choice,” Ned said. “I did. I chose to stay alive. See, I figured you’d find me.”

  “You did, huh?”

  “Well, you found me, didn’t ya?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “What, you think I’m in on it with him? What was I doing trussed up in a closet?”

  “Okay,” Steve said, reaching his hand out, “come on, get up.”

  He grabbed Ned’s hand and hauled him to his feet. Ned hobbled about, trying to get the feeling back into his legs and arms.

  “Where are the others?” he asked.

  “Out lookin’ for you,” Steve said. “Come on, we’ll go find them, and then we’re gonna find that girl.”

  Outside Ned asked, “You got more men comin’?”

  “I do,” Steve said. “Six. They should be here tonight.”

  “We gotta stay alive ’til then,” Ned said.

  “Don’t worry about that,” Steve said. “We’ll just stay together.”

  “You’re pretty fast, Steve,” Ned said. “You think you can take the Gunsmith?”

  “I don’t know,” Steve said, “and I ain’t anxious to try.”

  “Why?” Ned asked. “Killin’ the Gunsmith would give you a big reputation.”

  “I don’t want a reputation, Ned,” Steve said. “I just wanna be rich. No, if we have to face the Gunsmith, we’re gonna face him together. All of us.”

  • • •

  Clint had questioned Chris before gagging him, and the boy had been so distraught he had talked. He said that all along Steve had been saying that they were to leave the little girl alone. That they could always find her later and use her, if they had to.

  Clint figured once Steve realized he was losing his men one by one, he’d look for Emily. And now that Kenny was dead, and Ned and Chris were missing, he had to know something was up.

  Clint headed for the Magnolia Hotel in a rush, still careful to keep out of sight.

  Along the way he almost ran headlong into two men. He took cover, and recognized them as they went by. Steve and . . . Ned! Obviously Steve had thought to look in the house where Clint had left Kenny’s body, and had freed Ned. Now Clint’s two-to-one odds were back up to three-to-one. He almost decided to step out and brace them while there were only two, but then he thought about Emily and Kathy. What would they do if he became careless and got himself killed?

  So he let them go by, waited for them to get out of sight, and then ran for the Magnolia.

  • • •

  Steve and Ned saw Billy running toward them.

  “What the hell—” Ned said. “He looks like he seed a ghost.”

  “Ned!” Billy said. “You’re alive.”

  “Sure, I’m alive,” Ned said. “Steve found me.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Steve asked. “What happened? Where’s Chris?”

  “He’s gone!”

  “Whataya mean, gone?” Steve asked.

  “I mean one minute he was there, and then he wasn’t,” Billy said. “I guess they got him, too.”

  “There’s no they,” Steve said. “It’s one man, according to Ned.”

  “One man?” Billy looked to Ned for confirmation.

  “Clint Adams.”

  Billy’s eyes went even wider.

  “The goddamned Gunsmith?”

  Ned nodded.

  “What the hell is he doin’ here?”

  “He said he was just passin’ through.”

  “Goddamn!” Billy said. “That’s a bad coincidence, Steve.”

  “Yeah, it is. Come on.”

  “Where we goin’?” Billy asked.

  “You’re gonna show us where you saw Chris last,” Steve said. “If he left Ned alive, maybe he did the same thing to Chris. Probably tied him up and left him someplace, too.”

  “We find him, we’ll be back to four,” Ned said.

  “Four of us?” Billy asked. “Against the Gunsmith?”

  “There are more comin’,” Steve said. “Six. They’ll be here by tonight.”

  “So why don’t we just wait for them to get here?” Billy asked. “I mean, find a hole and wait?”

  “Because,” Steve said, “it’s better to be the hunter than the hunted. If we just hide, Adams will be out there hunting us. But if we hunt him, maybe he’ll go into hiding. He doesn’t know we’ve got six more men coming. Once they get here, we’ll have him hopelessly outnumbered.”

  “What about just leavin’?” Ned asked. “We got plenty of stuff. Let’s just go when the other men get here.”

  “Not my call,” Steve said. While he was their boss, he wasn’t the man in charge of the whole show, even though he’d had a lot to do with the planning. “And I can’t send any more telegrams, so we’ll just have to stick to our plan to pick this town clean.”

  “So right now we’re lookin’ for the Gunsmith?” Ned asked. “That don’t seem like the smartest thing for anybody to do, ya know?”

  “Right now we’re lookin’ for Chris,” Steve corrected. “When we have four men again, then we’ll start lookin’ for the Gunsmith . . . and we’ll all stick together.”

  “That suits me,” Billy said.

  “Me, too,” Ned said. “I ain’t lookin’ to face the Gunsmith alone again. I thought he was gonna kill me.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  When Clint got back to the Magnolia, Kathy and Emily were sitting together on one of the beds. Between them was a deck of cards. Clint didn’t know what game they were playing, but it didn’t matter.

  “Pack up,” he said. “We’re moving again.”

  “But why?”

  Clint looked at Emily, who was still frowning at the cards in front of her, and said to Kathy, “I’ll tell you later.”

  Kathy got off the bed and started packing.

  “But where are we going?”

  “I’ve thought about it,” Clint said. “I think we need to go someplace they won’t think to look.”

  “And where’s that?”

  “Someplace they’ve already been.”

  “Where is that?” Kathy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Clint said. “Maybe back to your house.”

  “That would suit me,” she said.

  Clint drew her aside while Emily remained on the bed. He quickly told her everything that had happened, and what he had heard.

  “There’s a good chance they’ll find the boy I left tied up, too,” he finished.

  “So there’ll be four of them again,” she said. “I suppose that means you should have killed the two men stead of tying them up.”

  “I only kill when someone is trying to kill me,” he said. “Both of those men were helpless.”

  “But . . . they’ll be looking for you now? To kill you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And Emily.”

  He nodded.

  “The only person they’re not looking for,” he said, “is you.”

  “Only because they don’t know about me.”

  “Can you ride?” he asked her.

  “Well, yes, of course I can ride, but I’m sure my horse is gone, taken along when they all left town.”

  “That’s probably true,” Clint said, “but if I can find you a horse . . .”

  “You expect me to leave you and Emily here?”

  “Not Emily,” he said. “If I can get you one horse, you can r
ide out of here with her.”

  “And what about you?” she asked. “You have a horse. You could leave with Emily.”

  “No, I can’t leave,” he said.

  “Well, if you can get a horse—and I presume you intend to steal one of theirs—we could all leave.”

  “Wrong again,” he said. “We still don’t know if I’m carrying any part of the disease. I can’t leave and take a chance of spreading it. But you and Emily have been through it and have come out the other side.”

  “But where do we go?”

  “To the nearest town,” he said. “We’ll figure that part out. First let’s get out of here to someplace less obvious—and hopefully, safer. Get Emily ready.”

  He went to the front window and looked down at the street. It was empty, but they’d still go out the back.

  “We’re ready,” Kathy said.

  “We weren’t finished playing,” Emily complained.

  “Where are we going?” Kathy asked.

  “I’m hungry,” Emily said.

  Clint turned to face the two of them. He was at a great disadvantage as long as he had to worry about them. In the end, they might all end up getting killed.

  “We’ve got to get you out of town,” he said. “So we’re going to go and find a horse.”

  “Why can’t we just ride Eclipse?” Emily asked.

  Why not, indeed? Clint thought.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Stuart Brock turned the girl over onto her back and stared down at her. Her big breasts leaned to the sides, the areolas slightly elongated. He leaned down and took one nipple into his mouth, and then the other, sucked them both until they were hard.

  “Mmmm,” she said, “nice.”

  “Shhh,” he told her. “I’m paying you to fuck, not talk.”