Chapter 2
Chapter Two
The gunhawk swung quickly and smoothly around the corner, the Remington in his left hand cocked and ready.
Beneath the tall hat, battered and worn, hard dark eyes fixed on his target.
The killer wore a dusty black bandana around his neck, half hidden by the long bush of a beard.
A brown wool coat over a black and gray checked vest. Light brown pants tucked into worn boots.
As he moved into the open, another Remington appeared in his right hand, coming up quickly.
The judge was still talking, unaware that Destiny was taking deadly aim.
It was one of those times when the blood fired up and everything outside of a man slowed down. The light and shadows and colors and sounds became sharp and crisp as an autumn morning.
Lightning didn’t strike as fast as Caleb’s draw. The twin Colts leapt into his hands, and he slammed his shoulder into the older man, sending Patterson tumbling into a line of barrels in front of the general store.
The Remington in the outlaw’s left hand spit fire, and the air moved with a thup sound an inch from Caleb’s ear. It was a bullet that would have caught the judge right between the eyes.
But the shooter’s target had moved on him, and his gaze flicked toward the cause of the miss.
Caleb’s face would be the last thing he saw in this life.
The Colts barked in rapid succession, like a drummer’s roll on a battle march.
The first struck the man square in the chest, the second knocked his head back.
The Remington fired a bullet into the wooden sidewalk a foot in front of him.
The attacker sagged forward and collapsed onto his side, motionless.
The judge had landed on a keg, where he sat with his back against the wall of the store. Frissy’s Colt looked like a toy in his massive hand, and he was scowling in the direction of the dead assailant.
Caleb’s eyes raked across the walkway and the street and back to where they’d come from, looking for more gunmen. In his experience, ambushers rarely worked alone.
In the street and all around him, everyone was standing still, staring, unable to make their brains comprehend what was happening.
Only the agitated horses up and down the block were moving.
When two more bullets cracked and thudded into the storefront behind Caleb, the street exploded with shouts and cries and people running for cover.
It took only an instant for his eyes to locate the gunman. He was the sole person not moving.
The judge saw him too. “Don’t kill him!” he barked. “I want that blackguard alive!”
Caleb felt like a duck in a barrel. Too many innocent lives stood in the way, but he had to stop the man. Fredericks dove toward his employer, and his huge frame banged against Caleb, jarring him as he passed.
A few inches over six feet, Caleb was nearly two hundred pounds.
He was not a man to be moved easily, but Frissy had a good sixty pounds on him.
The bodyguard’s momentum drove him three feet along the sidewalk, but he fired as he moved, sending the pistoleer crashing into the dirt. He squirmed and then lay still.
A window next to the judge shattered.
A third killer had been trailing them, but his gunning days were nearly over. Frissy fired and the man dropped from sight.
Three attackers. Three dead.
Caleb pouched one of his Colts and leapt down into the street. His gaze swept the crowd for more of them. He raced toward the downed man. The attacker hadn’t moved and his revolver lay far from his reach, but he wanted to make sure.
Before he could get to the man, though, two more shots rang out from somewhere across the way. They weren’t done.
Without breaking stride, Caleb scanned the dozens of windows for the shooter. A pistol barked as a puff of dirt rose just to his right. He spotted where it came from. A smoking muzzle was sticking out of a second floor window above the oldest saloon in Elkhorn. Almost directly across.
He fired twice at the window, shattering the pane, and the gun disappeared. Caleb ran hard, scanning the street constantly. There was no telling if there were more of these dogs waiting for their chance.
Behind him, the judge’s shouts reached him. He wanted the man alive.
When Caleb reached the far side, he vaulted up onto the walkway. The old saloon had two large windows facing the street, and they were crowded with the grizzled, wide-eyed visages of men peering out.
Damn. No way to know who was friend and who was foe.
Drawing his other Colt, Caleb burst through the saloon’s open door, spinning and pointing his six-shooters at the onlookers as he backed into the center of the brandy-hole.
The bar was a shabby, smoky, dismal place, thrown up when the rest of Elkhorn consisted mainly of tents and lean-tos.
A counter about eight feet long ran along the right side of the dark room.
Two rows of empty tables lined up haphazardly on the left.
They were filled with cards and half-empty glasses. Chairs were pushed back or tipped over.
Miners and saddle slickers at the front windows stood gaping at him.
More shots were exchanged between the street and the upstairs window.
“Drop the irons.” He wasn’t taking any chances. “Now!”
The men complied, hurriedly unbuckling gun belts and laying weapons on the floor.
Caleb glanced at the barman, a balding, bearded Irishman wearing an ancient green vest over a dingy collarless shirt. The man wiped his hands on the filthy apron tied around his waist and raised them quickly as he nodded at a set of stairs by the back wall.
“Got a gun?” Caleb barked.
The saloon keeper nodded.
“Show it.”
Without taking his eyes off of Caleb, he cautiously pulled a short-barreled Parker coach gun from under the counter, holding it away from his body.
“Keep them fellas covered. I don’t want nobody shooting me in the back. Any one of them makes a move for their rod, blast them.”
Relief showing on his face, the barman nodded and pointed the shotgun at his customers.
Caleb glanced at the stairs that led to a second floor. “Is there another way out?”
“The back door and the window at the top of the stair. It ain’t a big drop off the porch there.” The saloon keeper shrugged. “But we woulda heard boots above.”
The sound of shooting subsided, but that only meant the fella upstairs would be reloaded and ready for him.
Caleb moved to the bottom of the stairs and cast a quick look up.
The unpainted wood wall of the hallway gave no clue as to what was waiting at the top.
From where he stood, he could see the back window was open, but only a little.
That meant the gunman was still there, and he had to know Caleb was coming for him.
He put himself in the man’s position. The odds of escaping were getting shorter by the minute. The only thing to do was to shoot his way out. His best chance was to wait, take Caleb out as soon as he had a clear shot, then hightail it out the back way.
And the judge wanted this bushwhacker alive? That’d be a damned tall order.
At the bottom of the stairs, he reloaded his Colts. After pouching one, he started up as quietly as he could manage.
The stairway was low and narrow, and Caleb’s broad shoulders filled the space.
If this snake appeared at the top and started blasting, he’d have a hard time missing.
When he was halfway up, the sound of crunching glass reached him.
He judged the gunman was still in the front room.
He paused on the top step with his back to the wall.
He glanced at the window, half expecting to see a shooter standing on the porch roof outside, drawing a bead on him. Nothing.
Caleb pulled off his hat and held it out beyond the corner for a second, but it drew no fire. He threw a quick look along the upstairs hallway.
Three doors opened onto the empty, dimly lit corridor. Two on the left were open. The door to the front room facing him at the end was shut.
He eased himself up the last step and moved stealthily down the hall, glancing into each room as he passed. Every nerve in his body was alert, every muscle taut. There wasn’t a sound coming from the barroom below or from the street. Every soul in creation was listening.
He kept his eye on the door to the front room. The killer was in there, poised and quiet as a cougar on the hunt.
Caleb knew how quick his own reflexes were, and his aim was as deadly as anyone’s. But in the split second after he opened the door, he’d need to find that knothead and somehow wing him. No matter what the judge wanted, he didn’t plan to take a bullet himself.
When he reached the door to the front room, he kicked it open, splintering the wood around the latch. The smoky air reeked with the smell of sulfur.
A slug hit the jamb, burying itself in the wood with a bang.
Caleb dropped down on one knee, leaned forward, and fired twice into the room before quickly pulling back.
He caught only a partial glimpse of the assassin. Over by the window, he was barricaded behind a chest of drawers with the mattress thrown over the top.
That brief look was enough for the gunman, though.
“Damn me,” the man chirped. “It is you, ain’t it.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Caleb,” came the voice again. “Caleb Starr!”
Damn it to hell.