“We should stick together,” Charley reiterated. For their mutual protection, if nothing else. He heard a voice and looked out. Eli was standing over a white-haired body, talking to it as if it were alive. “Do you see what I see?”
“He’s gone loco!” Enos exclaimed.
Charley was inclined to believe it when Eli stepped back, cocked the scattergun, pointed it at Brock Alvord, and let the corpse have both barrels full in the face. There wasn’t much of it left. Giggling, Eli broke the scattergun open to reload. “That’s what you get for what you did to me!”
Suddenly another man was there next to Brandenberg. A mammoth, bearded brute who roared like a beast, threw both arms wide, and enfolded Eli in them.
Charley thumbed back the Winchester’s hammer and stroked the trigger, but the hammer fell on an empty chamber. He jacked the lever, feeding a cartridge from the magazine, but before he could fire, the big man lifted Eli off the ground and shook him as a bear might shake a badger.
“That’s Big Ben Brody!” Enos cried, whipping Clarabelle to his shoulder. He aimed, fired, and missed.
“Let go of Eli!” Charley hollered. He tried to fix a bead, but Brody was swinging Eli back and forth, and he couldn’t get a clear shot. They all heard the sharp crack of Eli’s spine and saw blood gush from Eli’s mouth. Big Ben Brody shook Eli a few more times, then cast him to the dirt.
Clarabelle boomed a second time. Brody was jolted sideways as if kicked by a mule. His legs, as big around as oak trees, buckled from under him, and he toppled, raising puffs of dust.
“I’ll be a nanny goat! I hit him!” Enos crowed and kissed Clarabelle. “I’m not as useless as I thought!”
Tony plucked at their sleeves. “We must hide. The other Hoodoos will be after us.”
“Let ’em come!” Enos bellowed. “By God, I’ve never been afeared of any mother’s son, and I’m not afeared now! I’m hell with the bark on! Part alligator and part snapper! Show me a coon out for my hide, and I’ll show you a hide fit for a rug!”
He would have ranted on and on, but Charley pulled him to the rear of the house, saying, “Hush up! One lucky shot, and you think you’re Daniel Boone!” He went to clamp a hand over Enos’s mouth to stifle another outburst, but it wasn’t necessary. The buffalo hunter was staring at another body a few buildings down.
“That’s not one of Gunther’s dandies. He’s wearin’ a slicker.”
“What are those sticks pokin’ out of his chest?” Charley wondered.
Rifles level, they crept closer.
“God Almighty!” Enos breathed. “That there is John Noonan, the Missouri Terror! Someone put four arrows into him and lifted his hair to boot.”
Not all the scalp was gone. About half. A knife had been inserted at the hairline, then the skin peeled back like the peel on an apple. Queasiness overcame Charley, and he averted his eyes. “Who would do such a thing?”
“A Shoshone.” Enos was examining the arrows. He tapped an empty sheath attached to the killer’s belt. “And he used Noonan’s knife to do the scalpin’.”
Tony’s brow knit. “What is a Shoshone doing in Painted Rock?”
“You’re askin’ me?” Enos snickered. “My brain would explode if I tried to make sense of this mess.”
A metallic click warned them they were not alone. A curly-headed man with the barbed tip of an arrow sticking from his shirt had a Colt fixed on them. He fit the description of Curly Means. Incredibly, he was grinning. “Where the hell did you three come from?”
“We’re just passin’ through,” Enos replied, holding his Sharps behind his back. “We couldn’t help but notice everybody is killin’ everybody else, so we ducked back here until all the shootin’ stops.”
Curly looked at Noonan. “So this is where he got to.” His Colt dipped, and he tottered against the wall, scarlet oozing down over his lower lip and chin. “Don’t this beat all? Done in by a damned redskin old enough to be Methuselah.”
“Who?” Charley asked, but it fell on ears that couldn’t hear. The Hoodoo’s eyes were glazing, and his Colt had fallen from fingers gone limp.
“I am so confused,” Tony said.
Enos moved ahead. “Stay behind me. There’s only one of these cutthroats left, but he’s the worst of the bunch.”
Charley knew who he was referring to: Kid Falon. They found another of Gunther’s men between the general store and the saloon. Inside the saloon were two more bodies. Townsmen, from the looks of them.
“This is a regular massacre,” Enos remarked. “Someone has a heap of buryin’ to do, and it won’t be me.”
“It won’t be me either,” declared someone behind them.
Charley turned.
Kid Falon stood in the doorway, his Colts trained on them. He took a step, his eyes as flinty as quartz. “Drop the artillery, or I’ll drop you.” When their rifles had thunked to the floor, he studied them, then said, “I heard a buffalo gun go off earlier. And now one of my pards is lyin’ out in the street with a hole in him as big as a pumpkin.” He gestured at the Sharps. “Guess which one of you I’m killin’ first?”
Enos licked his lips. “I don’t suppose you’d give me a sportin’ chance?”
The Kid’s laugh was more like a growl. “If life was fair, money would grow on trees.”
Others might have cowed in fear, but Enos jutted his chin defiantly and thrust out his chest. “I figured you for yellow. Do your worst, you polecat.”
Charley couldn’t stand there and let Enos be murdered. He was standing sideways, and he lowered his right hand to his .44, hoping Falon wouldn’t notice. But the Kid did and barked, “Don’t even think it!” The very next second, the Kid snapped his head toward the street as if he had heard something, and Charley clawed out the .44.
Kid Falon spun and fired.
Charley was in motion, diving for the nearest table. Enos and Tony were also seeking cover, Tony with his revolver out. Charley and Tony squeezed off shots at the same instant, but they both must have missed, because the Kid was gliding to the right, his pistols cracking one after the other. Charley’s hat went flying. He landed on his shoulder as holes sprouted in the table. Wood chips stung his face. He fired at the Kid, but his slug hit the wall. Tony was also shooting and having no more success.
Falon aimed both Colts right at Charley. He would not miss this time.
There was the crack of a shot. Charley flinched and waited for the dark to claim him but nothing happened. It was Kid Falon who pitched onto his Colts, briefly convulsed, and died.
In the doorway was Melissa, tendrils of gunsmoke curling from the barrel of her revolver. She rushed inside. “Is anyone hurt?”
Charley slowly stood and looked down at himself. He shook his right leg. He shook his left. He wriggled both arms and grinned. “I’ll be damned.”
Tony had taken a slug through the fleshy part of his left arm. It had gone clean through and was hardly bleeding at all.
“Good shootin’, Missy,” Enos complimented her. Chuckling, he rolled Kid Falon over. “This man-huntin’ sure was easier than I thought it would be. Maybe we should do it for a livin’. After we turn these buzzards in for the reward, how about if we go after the James gang?”
Some pieces of the jigsaw forever remained a mystery.
After freeing the settlers, Charley and his friends made a thorough search of the settlement but never came across the Shoshone. They did find a half-dead man with severe rope burns on his neck lying in a flower patch. Mrs. Shadley offered to nurse him back to health so they put him in her parlor. Months later, Charley heard the man worked for the government, and that when he was fit enough to return to Washington, D.C., Mrs. Shadley had gone along as his new wife.