He grabbed for his guns.
Smoke shot Dunlap in the chest just as his hands gripped the butts of his guns. Dunlap looked puzzled for a moment, coughed up blood, and sat down in the chair he should never have gotten out of. He slowly put his head on the tabletop and sighed as that now-familiar ghost rider came galloping up, took look around, and grinned in a macabre fashion. He decided to stick around. Things were quite lively in this little town.
The ghost rider put a bony hand on another’s shoulder as half the men in the barroom grabbed for iron and Lujan shot one between the eyes.
Mulroony jumped behind the bar and landed on top of the barkeep who was already on the floor. He’d been a bartender in too many western towns not to know where the safest place was.
Parnell’s sawed-off shotgun-pistol roared again, the charge knocking two gunnies to the floor. Johnny picked that time to make his move. Just as he was reaching for his guns, Parnell stepped the short distance as he was reversing the weapon. Using it like a club, he hit Johnny in the mouth. Teeth flew in several directions and Johnny was out cold. Parnell dropped to the floor and once more loaded up.
The Reno Kid was crouched by the bar, coolly and carefully picking his shots.
Charlie had dropped two before a bullet took him in the shoulder and slammed him against the bar. He did a fast border-roll with his six-gun and kept on banging. When his gun was empty, Lujan grabbed the older man and literally slung him over the bar, out of the line of fire.
The Moab Kid took a round in the leg and the leg buckled under him, dropping him to the floor, his face twisted in pain.
But it was Parnell who was dishing out the most death and destruction. Firing and loading as fast as he could, the schoolteacher did the most to clear out the room and end the fighting.
The gunnies and tinhorns gave it up, one by one dropping their still-smoking six-guns and raising their hands in the air. Cord, Del, Ring, and Cal stepped through the batwings, pistols drawn and cocked, Ring with his double-barrel express gun.
“Get Doc Adair,” Smoke said, his voice husky from the thick gunsmoke in the saloon.
Cal was gone at a bow-legged trot to fetch the doctor.
Lujan helped Charlie to a chair. The front of the old gunslinger’s shirt was soaked with blood.
“Did I get the old bassard?” a gunhawk moaned the question from the floor. He had taken half a dozen rounds in the chest and stomach and death was standing over him, ready to take him where the fires were hot and the company not the best.
“You got lead in me,” Charlie admitted. “But I’m a long ways from accompanyin’ you.”
“If not today, then some other time. So I’ll see you in hell, Starr,” the gunny grinned the words, his mouth bloody. He started to add something but the words would not form on his tongue. His eyes rolled back in his head and he mounted up behind the ghost rider.
Smoke had reloaded. He stood by the bar, his hands full of Colts, his eyes watching the gunnies who had chosen to give up the fight.
Johnny moaned on the floor and rolled over on his stomach, one hand holding his busted mouth. The other hand went to his right hand gun. But it was gone.
“Are you looking for these?” Parnell asked, holding out the punk’s guns in his left hand. His right hand was full of twelve gauge sawed-off blaster.
Johnny mumbled something.
“You’re diction is atrocious,” Parnell told him. He looked at Smoke and smiled. “My, Cousin, but for a few moments, it was quite exhilarating.”
Smoke grinned and shook his head. “Yeah, it was, Parnell. I’ll stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you anytime, Cousin.”
Mulroony had crawled from behind the bar and waved his photographer in. The man set up his bulky equipment and sprinkled the powder in the flashpan. “Smile, everyone!” he hollered, then popped his shot, adding more smoke to the already eye-smarting air.
Beans had cut his jeans open to inspect the wound, and it was a bad one. “Leg’s busted,” he said tightly. “Looks like I’m out of it.”
The flashpan popped again, the lenses taking in the bloody sprawl of bodies and the line of gunhawks standing against a wall, their hands in the air, their weapons piled on a table.
While Doc Adair tended to Charlie and Beans, Smoke faced the surrendered gunhandlers. His eyes were as cold as chips of ice and his words flint-hard.
“You’re out of it. Get on your horses and ride. If I see any of you in this area again, I’ll kill you! No questions asked. I’ll just shoot you. And no, you don’t pack your truck, you don’t get your guns, you don’t draw your pay—you ride! Now! Move!”
They needed no further instrucitons. They all knew there would be another time, another place, another showdown time. They rushed the batwings and rattled their hocks, leaving in a cloud of dust.
“You tore up my place!” a woman squalled, stepping out of a back room.
“Howdy, Harriet,” Beans called. “Right nice to see you again.
“You!” she hollered. “I might have known it’d be you, Moab.” Her eyes flicked to the Reno Kid. “You back gunhandlin’, Reno?”
“I reckon.”
She looked at Smoke. Took in his rugged good looks and heavy musculature. “Remember me, big boy? ”
“I remember you, Harriet. You were one of the smart ones who left Fontana early.”
“Did you kill Tilden Franklin?”
“I sure did.”
“Man ever deserved killin’, that one did. You gonna run me out of Gibson?”
“I didn’t run you out of Fontana, Harriet.”
“For a fact. See you around, baby.” She turned and pushed through a door.
“He can’t sit a saddle,” Adair said, standing up from working on Beans’s leg. “And I’d rather he didn’t for a few days.” The doctor pointed to Charlie.
“I’ll put some hay in the wagon,” Cal said, and left the saloon.
The undertaker and his helper, both of them trying very hard to keep from smiling, entered the saloon and walked among the dead and dying, pausing at each body to go through the pockets.
“Does I get my guns back?” Johnny pushed the words through mashed lips and broken teeth.
Parnell looked at Smoke. Smoke nodded his head. “Give them to the punk. He’d just find some more. One of us is gonna have to kill him sooner or later.”
The flashpan belched once again.
“What a story this will make!” Horace chortled, rocking back and forth on his feet. “I shall dispatch it immediately to New York City.”
“Do try to be grammatically correct,” Parnell reminded him. Horace gave him a smile. A very thin smile.
Sandi hollered and bawled and carried on something fierce when she saw Beans in the back of the wagon but then brightened up considerably when she realized he’d be laid up for several weeks and she could nurse him.
Reno had checked out of his room and rode back to the Circle Double C with the men. He had strapped on his other Peacemaker and was in the fight to the finish.
Charlie bitched about having to be bedded down in the main house so the ladies could take proper care of his wound. Hardrock told him to shet his mouth and think about what a relief it would be to the others not to have to look at his ugly face for a spell.
“It works both ways,” Charlie popped back, smiling as the ladies fussed over him.
Parnell had taken a slight bullet burn on his left arm. But the way Rita acted a person would have thought he’d been riddled. She insisted on spoon-feeding him some hot soup she fixed-just for him.
“What did we accomplish?” Cord asked Smoke.
“Damn little,” he admitted.“Seems like every time we run off or kill a gunhawk, there’s ten to step up, taking his place.”
Cord added some more numbers in his tally book and shook his head at the growing number of dead and wounded. “Why did the Reno Kid toss in with us, Smoke? Charlie says he’s married, with several children.”