Chapter 21
Conn and Sheffield reunited with McKay and rode out of town, heading for Pepper’s Gulch.
Sheffield knew Pepper’s Gulch.
McKay did, too, and reckoned he knew where the Blake brothers’ farm was, too. He was a cattleman and had grazed that region.
“I remember some brothers running a farm down there at the mouth of the gulch. I think their name was Blake.”
It was a start, anyway.
So that’s where they rode. The trail passed Cole and Mary’s place.
Glancing in that direction, Conn felt a wave of deep sorrow that conjured the lump in his throat again.
As before, he pushed it down and rode on.
It took another three hours to reach Pepper’s Gulch. By that time, the sun was dipping to the west, and the mountains were casting long shadows across the basin.
Pepper’s Gulch was well within this shadowed stretch, and by the time McKay led them up to the remembered farm, premature dusk had overtaken the place.
Conn saw a lone figure walking from the house to the barn. A man. Average height with a short beard.
Might be Ben Blake himself.
But those similarities weren’t enough to shoot the man on sight. Most folks were, by definition, of average stature, and plenty of men had short beards and brown hair.
“You men spread out and hang back a little,” Conn said, unfastening the hammer loop on his Remington.
“All right,” Sheffield said. “What are you gonna do?”
Conn pulled the H&R from its short scabbard and rested it against his saddle horn. “I’m gonna ride over and talk to that man.”
“Anything happens, we’ll come running,” McKay said.
Conn approached from an angle, wanting to keep the barn between him and the man until he got right up on him.
Reaching the barn, he swung down from the gelding, landed lightly, and flattened himself against the barn wall.
A hundred feet away, the house was dark. He watched it for a moment, saw no movement, and started forward, meaning to surprise whoever was in the barn.
But then someone shouted from inside the house, “Look out, Ben! He’s right on the other side of the wall!”
Conn rushed forward. A second later, gunshots rang out inside the barn and bullets burst through the siding.
Conn came around the corner and saw the brown-haired, short-bearded man of average height standing beside a bucket of spilled grain, trying to reload a revolver.
Seeing Conn, he shouted, “You!”
Conn blasted him.
At this range, the ten-gauge snuffed Blake out like a candle.
A second later, someone was shooting at him from the house.
Conn fired the shotgun’s other barrel blindly in that direction and plunged deeper into the barn, running past the remains of Ben Blake and turning down a lane of stalls, where he paused to reload.
But as he started to pluck a fresh load from his bandolier, a man came screaming out of one of the stalls with a pitchfork and rushed forward, thrusting the weapon at Conn’s chest.
There was no time to reload or draw his Remington.
Conn reacted instinctively, stepping to the left and batting the pitchfork aside with the barrel of his shotgun.
Still hollering, the man started to bring the pitchfork back around, but Conn was faster. He whipped his left hand forward and struck the man’s forehead with his palm.
It was an awkward but powerful blow that sent the man reeling backward and gave Conn time to drop the scattergun and draw his Remington, which he pointed at the man.
“Drop the fork,” Conn bellowed, aware of a gun battle raging out by the house.
“You killed my brother!” the man with the pitchfork shouted.
“And he killed my brother,” Conn said, stepping backward in case the man rushed him. “Now, don’t make me kill you, too.”
The man licked his lips and lowered the pitchfork a little, and for a second, it seemed like he had come to his senses. Then he lunged forward, aiming the tines at Conn’s heart.
Conn shot him in the chest and barely managed to evade the pitchfork, pivoting away and firing again, putting a bullet into the man’s side.
Ben Blake’s brother dropped the fork and spilled forward onto the floor of the barn. He thrashed briefly and died.
Conn reloaded his Remington, holstered it, and picked up the H&R. He broke open the barrels, cleared them, jammed two fresh shells in place, snapped it shut, and drew back the hammers.
Then he made his way cautiously to the front of the barn. Outside, the battle had fallen silent.
Sheffield stood holding his rifle beside a fallen man. McKay rode past the house, scanning for threats.
Seeing Conn, Sheffield said, “You get him?”
“Yeah, I got him,” Conn said. “Got his brother, too. Man gave me no choice. Came at me with a pitchfork.”
“This one here was running for the barn, fixing to shoot you,” Sheffield said, “but I gave him a taste of his own medicine. He was a scrapper, I’ll give him that. He put up a fight. Didn’t amount to nothing, but he put up a fight.”
The man on the ground groaned with pain.
With one glance, Conn could tell he’d never survive.
Fixing his eyes on Conn, the man growled, “You kill that Henry Toole. He’s the one. Led Ben astray and got us all killed.”
“You got yourself killed. Your brother was no good. You shouldn’t have joined the fight.”
The man grimaced, clutching his wounds. “That’s what brothers do. Don’t matter if they’re good or not. You stick up for them.”
“I wouldn’t know, because my brother was good. And your brother killed him.”
“He was there, but he didn’t do the killing.
That was Toole and Duncan. Ben told us all about it.
He didn’t seem none too pleased with the affair.
Then Toole double-crossed them by some old cabin.
Ben and some others—Rafe and Danny and Toby was their names—didn’t want to ride with Toole no more, and Toole shot one and tried to shoot Ben, but Ben and the other fellas was too quick. ”
“Did Ben say where Toole was heading?” Conn asked.
The man nodded, then groaned, and for a second, Conn was afraid that was it.
But the man’s eyes reopened, burning with rage. “Toole’s heading for Poncha Springs. Gonna hideout in an old mine down there, the Sierra Perdida. Kill him, you gotta kill him!”
“I will,” Conn said. “That’s a promise.”
Satisfied, the man nodded and let go, settling back into death.
“Well, that’s that,” Sheffield said.
“Yeah, that’s that,” Conn agreed.
McKay circled back around and reported that everything was empty. There were no more Blake brothers. They’d wiped them out.
“Shame,” McKay said. “This is a nice little place. Neat and tidy. These boys put a lot of work into it.”
Sheffield spat on the ground beside the dead man. “Then squandered everything by fighting alongside their worthless brother.”
“Yeah,” Conn said, and left it at that.
He wondered about the last Blake brother’s dying words, what he’d said about brothers and it not mattering whether they were good or bad.
He reckoned maybe that was true. Whatever the case, it had been true here, and it had cost the lives of two innocent men.
This wasn’t going to be easy. And he wasn’t gonna get out of this clean.
He had hoped to ride down his brother’s killers and wipe them out, one by one, simple as counting to eleven.
That’s not how it had worked out, though. Things had gotten messy. He’d killed men who hadn’t ridden with Toole, and now, he understood he might have to kill a bunch of other people to root out Cole’s killers.
The road ahead was murky, but at least now he knew where it led.
Poncha Springs and the Sierra Perdida mine.
Meanwhile, that was five down. Six to go.
“Guess we’d better ride back to town and tell Marshal Andrews what happened,” McKay said.
“Prudent,” Sheffield said. “Besides, we gotta take Ben Blake back there.”
“What for?” Conn said. “He can’t stand trial now.”
“I told that boarding house woman she’d see him strapped to a horse, and by God, she’s gonna see it,” Sheffield said.