The Vengeance Seeker 2 Page 16

  That stopped them. It was true what the kid said. With Blackmann and his son dead that was the end of Snake Bar. And that would leave them with nothing but their bedrolls and their saddles. The gold—if the kid was right—would sweeten the pot considerably. The riders looked at each other.

  Sensing their mood, the kid swung up into his saddle and rowelled his horse directly at them. The circle of horses broke as the riders pulled their mounts back, and a moment later the kid was leading them at a gallop through the night back to Snake Bar—with not a single rider glancing back at the ruined buildings or the three bloody forms sprawled on the grass in front of the blazing cabin.

  Fourteen

  Pike struggled up onto his elbows and peered into the darkness past the cottonwoods. It wasn’t the kid returning, he knew. It had to be help from town. The effort it had taken to get him up off his back had left him weak as a kitten and caused the sky to spin above his head like a whirligig. He closed his eyes to steady himself and opened them again as Caulder broke into the clearing beyond the cottonwoods, a line of riders strung out behind him.

  He collapsed back onto the ground and waited. Presently the ground under him shook as Caulder galloped up and leaped to the ground beside Pike. In a moment his bent face was leaning over Pike.

  Pike managed a grin. “That was some warning we got.”

  “That fellow we sent to Snake Bar to keep a look-out hasn’t returned yet. This is the first we knew Blackmann was loose.”

  “Poor son of a bitch,” Pike said. “They probably caught him spying and skinned him alive. You better go see to Josh. He’s wounded pretty bad. Blackmann should be finished. The kid emptied both chambers into him.”

  By this time the other riders had come up. Swinging quickly from their horses, they crowded around. “How bad are you, Pike?” one of them asked.

  “Bad enough. I got two slugs in me. The one in my back is the one that hates me the most. Go see to the boy.”

  Wolf left Pike and walked over to Josh. Examining his wounds closely, he finally placed his head, ear down, on the boy’s chest. He listened a while, the moved back to Pike.

  “The boy’s alive, but just barely. You’re right about his father, though. He’s really been cut to pieces.”

  “The kid did it. He’s all that’s left now.”

  Wolf stood up and beckoned to one of the men. “Go back into town,” he told him. “Get a flatbed and bring Doc Cardine back with you.”

  As the man hauled himself up onto his horse, Wolf knelt back down beside Pike. “Now, you fight it, Pike,” he said. “You’ve lasted this long.” Then he glanced around him at the smoldering buildings. When his eye caught the still burning remains of the cabin, he looked back at Pike.

  “What can you tell me? How did Blackmann get it?”

  “The kid. The kid shot Josh when Josh dragged me out and turned on his father. Then Blackmann lost his head and began shooting at the kid. The kid let him have it then.” Pike smiled at the thought. “I shouldn’t be so glad. It makes that back wound hurt worse.”

  Wolf patted him gently on the shoulder. Pike closed his eyes and heard Wolf leaving him, moving back to Josh. Now that the buildings had about burned themselves out, the cool night air returned, refreshing him. Was it over? he wondered. Blackmann finished. It was hard to believe.

  The pain returned then, as if thinking of the bullet gave it a sudden enormous dimension. It felt like a red-hot poker expanding in his right lung. The ground began to shake, this time from many horses. But Pike did not try to open his eyes. He did not want to make any movements at all.

  He heard Wolf talking to Steele and Olsen. Then his voice lifted as he mounted his horse. He was going after the kid. Good. After what was left of Snake Bar. Good. Just hurry up, Cardine. Hurry up and get here.

  As the host of riders galloped off toward Snake Bar, Pike opened his eyes. Two men had been left behind to watch over him and Josh.

  “Hey,” Pike whispered.

  One of the men bent close.

  “Either of you gents got a bottle? I ain’t particular. This here pain is getting downright annoying.”

  The fellow stood back up to confer with his companion. A moment later he bent down to tell Pike they had nothing with them.

  But it was all right. Pike no longer needed anything to kill the pain. He was dead.

  Riding hard, Wolf and the others overtook the main body of Snake Bar riders just as they reached the outskirts of the Snake Bar compound. At once the fighting became a series of individual gun battles.

  Keeping his head down, Wolf rode into the compound through the main gate, ignoring the gunfire erupting on all sides of him. He was looking for a small rider wearing a bowler hat and a buffalo coat. But as he rode past the blacksmith shop, a Snake Bar rider burst out of the shadows in an effort to break out of the compound and escape. He was firing as he came and his first shot whistled by Wolf’s chin. By that time Wolf was in close enough to turn his horse and knock the rider from his saddle with a sledging blow from his six-gun that caught the man just over his right ear. As the man groaned and toppled to the ground, Wolf dismounted quickly and dropped beside him.

  “Where’s the kid?” Wolf asked the groggy cowpoke.

  “The house,” the man answered. “Went to the house ... gold.”

  Wolf shook the man. “Gold? What do you mean?”

  “Gold,” the man repeated doggedly. “The kid says there’s gold in there. He’s gone after it.”

  Wolf hauled the man to his feet. “Get back on your horse and get out of here,” he told the puncher. “Then keep right on riding, mister. These parts won’t be very healthy for ex-Snake Bar riders after tonight.”

  The man scrambled for the pommel on his saddle and hauled himself groggily onto his horse. As soon as his feet found the stirrups, Wolf gave the horse a smart slap on the rump and the rider bolted off into the night.

  Wolf ran for the house then, keeping low. Once through the main door, he paused to orient himself. The downstairs was dark. In a large room to his right a woman was praying loudly in the dark, her voice quivering with terror.

  And then Wolf heard the voices of two men quarreling. The voices came from a room at the head of the stairs. The argument was terminated abruptly, however, by the sound of a single shot. Wolf, pausing halfway up the stairs, heard the sound of a heavy body falling to the floor.

  He kept on up the stairs and kicked open the door at the head of it. The kid, still in his bowler hat and buffalo coat, was standing beside an enormous desk. At his feet was sprawled the still body of a Snake Bar rider. Behind him stood an open safe.

  At sight of him, The kid ducked behind the desk as Wolf’s first shot plowed into the desk, but got no further. Wolf ducked his head and jumped to one side as the kid threw a shot at him from behind the desk. It went wild and Wolf held his fire and charged the desk. The kid flung up his gun and pulled the trigger, but the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. By the time he pulled up his second gun, Wolf had hit the desk with his shoulder, ramming it back into the wall, pinning the kid between it and the desk.

  Reaching over the desk, Wolf hauled the kid out from behind it with one hand, knocking the kid’s two guns from his hands with downward swipes of his six-gun with the other. The kid howled in pain and tried to twist away. Wolf then holstered his gun, drew the kid closer and swung his right fist up from the floor, catching the kid flush on the jaw and sending him reeling back against the wall.

  But the kid shook the punch off with surprising speed, reached up and swept the desk lamp off the desk, right at Wolf. Wolf ducked and the kerosene lamp hit the wall behind him. With a muffled explosion the entire wall became a mass of flame. Wolf advanced on the kid a second time, hauled him to his feet, and caught him in the gut this time. The fellow sagged to the floor, gagging helplessly.

  Wolf stepped back as the kid retched over the body of the man he had shot earlier and the bags of gold and silver that were strewn about him.

  �
�Okay, Kid,” said Wolf. “You’re coming back to Willow Bend to stand trial for the murder of Slade Hamner.”

  “Like hell I am,” said the kid, wiping his mouth with the back of his forearm and glaring up at Wolf. Suddenly his other hand came up with a Colt in it—the puncher’s he had just shot.

  Before Wolf could react, the kid got off two quick shots. The last one caught Wolf squarely in the right shoulder, spinning him back across the room. He slammed into the flaming wall, then collapsed at its base, aware numbly of the smell of burning clothes.

  Doggedly, he pushed himself away from the flaming wall and crawled onto the carpet. He ignored the pain in his shoulder as he began to roll over and over in an effort to extinguish his burning vest and pants. At last, smoking but no longer aflame, he lay on his back looking up at the kid.

  The kid was grinning down at him, the flames now climbing the full length of the wall throwing a satanic glow over the kid’s pale features. The kid aimed coldly down at Wolf, but Wolf rolled away, drawing his own weapon as he did so. The kid fired and the bullet plowed a hole in the floor just behind Wolf’s head.

  Before the kid could fire a second time, Wolf was on one knee firing point blank into the kid’s buffalo coat. Wolf saw all three bullets hit, each one causing a tiny puff of dust to rise from the thick coat as they drove cloth into flesh and flung the kid back against the wall of flame.

  As the kid slid down the wall and came to rest in the midst of the spreading flames, Wolf dropped his gun—aware suddenly that his right arm was now practically useless. A warm freshet of blood pulsed out of his shoulder and down the length of his body. He was momentarily dizzy. The kid appeared to be a wide-eyed wax doll melting in the flaming bowels of a pot-belly stove. He steeled himself against the heat and pulled the kid away from the wall just as McCracken, Steele and a small army of punchers carrying buckets of water poured into the room.

  Wolf let his smoking burden fall to the floor gratefully and, ignoring Steele’s call to him, pushed his way out of the room through the punchers, anxious to feel the cool night air again—to leave behind him the stench of death.

  The first chill breeze of fall was brushing Wolf’s face as he swung into his saddle and looked down at Joshua and Betsy standing by the buckboard. They had driven all the way out to Snake Bar from Willow Bend with Josh doing most of the driving. Josh was justifiably proud of this, though Doc Cardine, it seemed, had vehemently protested the idea. But Wolf was no longer worried about Joshua. Despite the young man’s pale, gaunt look, there was no doubt in Wolf’s mind now that he and Betsy would be able to rebuild Snake Bar-Double B.

  “Thanks, Wolf,” said Joshua. “For keeping that promise, I mean. And for making it, too.”

  “I’m glad I kept it, Josh,” Wolf replied, smiling. They were both thinking, Wolf knew, of Josh’s mother at that moment.

  “You sure you won’t stay, Wolf?” Joshua asked. “Willow Bend could use a good sheriff.”

  Wolf shook his head.

  Betsy smiled up at him then. “Helen asked me to wish you good luck—and Godspeed. She says she hopes you find whatever it is you are looking for. She would have come out herself, but you know how busy she is with that store now.”

  “Sure.”

  Ben appeared in the stable entrance and started across the yard toward them. He had been staying out at the big house with Wolf, and Wolf had enjoyed the boy’s company. Though Ben had known Wolf was leaving for weeks, the boy had said nothing to Wolf about it. All that morning he had kept out of sight.

  The three of them watched as the boy approached. When he reached Wolf, he looked up at him, his freckled face serious.

  “Take this, Wolf,” he said, handing his jackknife up to Wolf. “It’s good and sharp now. I’ve been honing the blade on a whetstone this morning. You can use it for lots of things—besides cutting through rawhide.” He smiled then.

  Wolf took the jackknife and examined it with satisfaction before pocketing it. “It’ll sure come in handy, Ben. Thanks very much.”

  Ben stepped back. “So long, Wolf.”

  Wolf took a deep breath. Yes, it was time for him to go now. To keep a promise, he had ridden far to make sure that a young man did not allow others to make him hard or cruel. What he had found was that nothing from outside a man could destroy the good if it was planted firmly enough within. That was a good thing to know.

  He flicked his black’s reins, wheeled his horse and trotted out through the gate. He looked back only once for a single wave and did not look back again.

  About the Author

  William Cecil Knott was born in Boston, Massachusetts on August 7 1927. Following a stint in the US Air Force, he became a junior high school teacher and went on to continue his academic career in Connecticut, West Virginia, New Jersey and New York. Between 1967 and 1983, Knott was Assistant Professor (later Associate Professor) of English at the State University of New York. In his free time, he also carved out an impressive body of fiction, most of it in the western field. In addition to creating his own series, The Vengeance Seeker and Golden Hawk, he also contributed to the Stagecoach Station series (as Hank Mitchum), Slocum (as Jake Logan), Longarm (as Tabor Evans) and The Trailsman (as Jon Sharpe). Under the names Bill Knott and Bill Carol he wrote several children’s books, and also contributed to the WWII adventure series Mac Wingate, which is also being republished by Piccadilly Publishing.

  Will C. Knott passed away in 2008.

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