They came straight to the house and reined up in a flurry of dust. As I had guessed, they were townsmen, and they were armed.
A stocky man in a bowler dismounted and stared aghast at the burning buildings. “My God! Will you look at that! We’re too late.”
“Check in the house, Howard,” an older man with stooped shoulders urged. “See if she’s in there.”
Howard complied. I heard him clomp about, upstairs and down, and in a few minutes he reappeared, breathing heavily. “I found two men, both dead. Jim Unger and Ike Fraykes.”
“Damn. But no sign of Gertrude?”
Howard shook his head. “We might as well head back to town, Bill. We can’t be of any help here.”
I was glad I had left Brisco and the mare behind the house rather than in front. In a few minutes the townsmen would be gone and I could get on with destroying the ranch.
“Where is everyone else?” a third townsman wondered.
“Surely he can’t have killed them all,” said a fourth.
Howard had lifted a foot to a stirrup, but paused. “Maybe we should look around for more bodies. We came all this way. We might as well do something.”
The older man, Bill, was staring at the house with his brow knit. Suddenly he exclaimed, “Son of a bitch!” and drew a Merwin & Bray pocket pistol from under his jacket.
Alarmed, the others produced revolvers. Howard lowered his foot and clumsily unlimbered what looked to be a Smith & Wesson. “What’s wrong? What did you see?”
“The house isn’t burning.”
“No, it’s sure not.” Howard glanced at the house and then at Bill. “What difference does that make?”
Bill glanced toward the corner and I ducked back. I heard him say, “Don’t you get it? Any of you? He wouldn’t burn the other buildings and not burn the house, too. Do you know what this means?”
Howard was not the sharp razor of the bunch. “No, I can’t say as I do. Suppose you tell us.”
“It means he’s still here.”
I was fit to be tied. Why did they have to butt their noses in when I was almost done? The easy thing to do was get on Brisco and light out after Gertrude, but the man called Bill was right; I couldn’t burn down the rest and not burn down the house, too. The house contained everything Gertrude held dear.
There were five of them, but they were townsmen, so I should have an edge. I stepped into the open with my Remington leveled.
“There he is!” Howard squawked.
I fired and had the satisfaction of seeing my target deflate like a punctured water skin and fall from his saddle. I would have shot the man next to him, but Bill cut loose with that Merwin & Bray, three swift shots that struck the corner near my head and seared my cheek with flying slivers. For a townsman, old Bill was uncommonly slick.
I ducked back again. I was angry at them for sticking their noses in and I was angry at me because I refused to leave. I had done more than enough killing the past few days, and honestly and truly had no hankering to add these Good Samaritans. They should have stayed in town where they belonged.
A horse whinnied. Shoes scraped the porch.
I risked a glance and saw the man I had shot sprawled on his belly, dead. There was no sign of the other four. I took it that they had sought cover in the house, but then Howard showed himself at the far end of the porch and snapped a shot. I jerked back and it missed.
From inside the house came Bill’s voice. “Mr. Stark? Can you hear me out there?”
There was no sense in not answering. They knew where I was. “No, I can’t hear you,” I hollered, and chuckled at my little joke.
“Give yourself up, Mr. Stark, and I give my word that we will take you back to town unharmed.”
“That’s awful kind of you,” I said in disgust.
“It’s in your own best interests. We’ve sent for the Texas Rangers and they’re likely to shoot you down on sight. At least if you go with us, you get to live until the trial is over.”
“It will be a week or more before the Rangers can get here,” I said. By then I would be well shed of Texas, and good riddance.
“You’re mistaken, Mr. Stark. Those two you killed, Deeter Smith and Leslie Adams, were part of a company scouring the mountains north of here for renegades. The rest of the company will be here by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.”
Unwelcome news. A company of Rangers once held off hundreds of Comanches. If they caught up to me, I didn’t stand a chance in hell.
“We came to tell Gertrude,” Bill had gone on. “We never expected to find you here. But since you are, you might as well be smart and give up. We’ll treat you decent. I give you my word.”
“You have it backwards,” I said. “You’re the one who should be smart and take your friends and go. I won’t shoot. I promise.”
“Even if we trusted you, which we don’t, we can’t just up and ride off. I would never be able to live with myself.”
“Be sensible,” I said, knowing full well that sensible people were as rare as hen’s teeth.
“That’s strange, coming from you. How sensible was it for you to shoot up our town and kill all those poor souls? How sensible is it for you to do what you do for a living? You can no more claim to be sensible than you can claim to be kind.”
He had a point. One person’s sensible is another’s folly. But I was not there to bandy words. I raised my voice. “Listen! All of you! Think of your loved ones. Your families and friends. Your wives and kids. Think of the tears they will shed if you don’t come home.”
“You are a mangy cur,” Bill declared.
I tried a different tactic. “The chore of tracking me down and ending my days belongs to the Rangers, not to you.”
“I beg to differ, Mr. Stark. Those were our friends you murdered. Calista Modine was as decent a woman as ever drew breath. You have too much to answer for, for us to turn our backs.”
“I did not kill Calista,” I said quietly to myself. They would not believe me if I told them the truth.
“Mr. Stark?” Bill said. “No man is invincible. Eventually we all meet our Maker. You might think we will be easy to take, but we won’t. I was a lawman once, years ago, in Ellsworth.”
That explained his ability with a six-shooter.
“What will it be, Mr. Stark?”
I was becoming angry. While we stood there sparring, the wicked witch of west Texas was making good her escape. I had to get this over with quickly.
“I’ve met men like you before, Mr. Stark,” Bill said. “Men who felt they were above the law. Or, rather, a law unto themselves. But none of us have the right to decide who lives and who dies. We’re none of us God, Mr. Stark, although, Lord knows, a lot of us behave like we are. In the end we always have to answer for our deeds. You have the choice of how you answer for yours. You can either go out in a blaze of smoke and blood, or you can submit to a trial and take what comes.”
It occurred to me that he was talking too much. Almost as if he was doing it on purpose to distract me. I glanced over my shoulder, but no one was at the far corner of the house. I glanced up at the windows above me—and my gut churned like a pond in a tempest. One of the townsmen was leaning out a second floor window, taking deliberate aim. I threw myself to the ground at the selfsame instant that his revolver boomed. Pain exploded in my left shoulder. I landed on my side and snapped an answering shot that added a hole where his eyebrows met his nose.
Curse me for my stupidity! I had fallen for one of the simplest ruses of the law trade. I was hit and I was bleeding. I had to find out how bad, but I could not do it there. Rising, I watched the windows as I ran toward the back of the house. No one else appeared. They were playing it cagey. Bill’s doing, I bet.