Smoke quickly explained and the men tore out for Gibson.
“There she is, boys,” Lanny pointed toward the fast-growing town. “We hit them hard, fast, grab the money, and get gone.
“I gotta have me a woman,” one of Cat Jennings’s men said. “I can’t stand it no more.”
“Mills,” Cat said disgustedly. “You best start thinkin’ with your brain instead of that other part. You can always find you a woman.”
“A woman,” Mills said, his eyes bright with his inner cruelty.
“Let’s go.” Jason spurred his horse.
Some seventy strong, the outlaws hit the town at a full gallop, firing at anything that came into sight. They rampaged through on the first pass, leaving several dead in the muddy main street and that many more wounded, crawling for cover.
At the end of the street, the men broke up into gangs and began looting the stores and terrorizing the citizens. Mills blundered into Hans’s cafe and eyeballed Hilda.
“You a fat pig, but you’ll do,” he told the woman, walking toward her.
Hilda threw a full pot of boiling coffee into the man’s face.
Screaming his pain and almost blind, Mills stumbled around the cafe, crashing into tables and chairs, both hands covering his scalded face.
Olga ran from the upstairs, carrying two shotguns. She tossed one to Hilda and eared back the hammers of her own, leveling the double-barrel twelve gauge at Mills. She gave him both barrels of buckshot. The outlaw was slung out the window and died on the boardwalk.
Mills’s buddy and cohort in evil, Barton, ran into the cafe, both pistols drawn. He ran right into an almost solid wall of buckshot. The charges blew him out of one boot and sent him sailing out of the cafe, off the boardwalk, and into a hitchrail. Barton did a backflip and landed dead in the mud.
Hilda and Olga picked up his dropped pistols and reloaded their shotguns, waiting for another turkey to come gobbling in.
Harriet and her hurdy-gurdy girls had armed themselves and already had accounted for half a dozen outlaws, the bodies littering the floor of the saloon and the boardwalk out front a clear warning to others not to mess with these short-skirted and painted ladies.
The smithy, a veteran of The War Between The States and several Indian campaigns, stood in his shop with a Spencer .52 and emptied several saddles before the outlaws decided there was nothing of value in a blacksmith shop anyway.
Some of Dad Estes’s men had charged the general store and laid a pistol up side Walt Hillery’s head, knocking the man unconscious. They then grabbed his sour-faced wife, Leah, dragging her to the storeroom and having their way with her.
Leah s screaming brought Liz and Alice and Fae on the run, the women armed with pistols and rifles. Sandi and Rita were at the doctor’s office with the wounded men.
Fae leveled her .45 at a man with his britches down around his boots and shot him in the head just as Alice and Liz began pulling the trigger and levering the action, clearing the storeroom of nasties.
Liz tossed a blanket over the still-squalling and kicking and pig-snorting Leah and gave her a look of disgust. “They must have been hard up,” she told the shopkeeper.
Leah stopped hollering long enough to spit at the woman. She stopped spitting when Liz balled her right hand into a fist and started toward her.
“You wouldn’t dare!” Leah hissed.
“Maybe you’d like to bet a broken jaw on it?” Liz challenged.
Leah pulled the blanket over her head, leaving her bony feet sticking out the other end.
The agent at the stagecoach line had worked his way up the ladder: starting first as a hostler, then a driver, then as a guard on big money shipments from the gold fields. He didn’t think this stop would be in operation long, but damned if a bunch of outlaws were going to strip his safe.
When some of No-Count George Victor’s bunch shot the lock off the door, the agent was waiting behind the counter, with several loaded rifles and shotguns and pistols. With him was his hostler and two passengers waiting for the stage, all heavily armed.
The first two outlaws to step through the door were shot dead, dying on their feet, riddled with bullet holes. Another tried to ride his horse through the big window. The animal, already frightened by all the wild shooting, resisted and bolted, running up the boardwalk. The outlaw, just able to hang on, caught his head on the side of an awning and left the saddle, missing most of his jaw.
Beans was sitting next to an open window of the doctor’s office, a rifle in his very capable hands. He emptied half a dozen saddles.
And Charlie Starr was calmly walking up the boardwalk, a long-barreled Colt in his hand. He was looking for Cat Jennings. One of Cat’s men, a disgustingly evil fellow who went by the name of Wheeler, saw Charlie and leveled his pistol at him.
Charlie drilled him between the eyes with one well-placed shot and kept on walking.
A bullet slammed into Charlie’s side and turned him around. He grinned through the pain. Doc Adair had seen the lump pushing out of Charlie’s side and their eyes had met in the office.
“Cancer,” Charlie had told him.
Charlie lifted his Peacemaker and another outlaw went on that one-way journey toward the day he would make his peace with his Maker.
“Cat!” Charlie called, and the outlaw wheeled his horse around.
Charlie shot him out of the saddle.
Cat came up with his hands full of Colts, the hate shining in his eyes.
Charlie took two more rounds, both of them in the belly, but the old gunfighter stayed on his feet and took his time, carefully placing his shots. Cat soaked up the lead and kept on shooting.
Charlie border-rolled his second gun just as he was going to his knees in the muddy street. He could hear the thunder of hooves and something else, too: singing. It sounded like a mighty choir was singing him Home.
Charlie lifted his Peacemaker and shot Cat Jennings twice in the head. Propped up on one elbow, the old gunfighter had enough strength to make sure Cat was dead, then slumped to the floor.
Hardrock and Silver Jim and Pistol LeRoux had seen Charlie go down, and they screamed their rage as they jumped off their horse, their hands full of guns.
Silver Jim stalked up the boardwalk, holding his matched set of Remington .44’s, looking for No-Count George Victor. Hardrock was by his side, his hands gripping the butts of his guns, his eyes searching for Three-Fingers Kerman and his buddy, Fulton. Pistol had gone looking for Peck and Nappy.
The Sabler Brothers, Ben, Carl, and Delmar were waiting at the edge of town, waiting for Lujan.
Diego, Pablo, and a gunfighter called Hazzard were waiting to try Smoke.
Twenty or more gunslicks had already hauled their ashes out of town. They had realized what the townspeople already knew: nobody hogties and trees a western town.
The Larado Kid had teamed up with several more punks, including Johnny and his buddy, Bret, and the backshooter, Danny Rouge. They had turned tail and galloped out of town. There would be another day. There always was. Besides, Johnny had him a plan. He wanted to kill Smoke Jensen. And he knew this fight was just about over. Smoke would be heading home. And a lot could happen between Montana and Colorado.
“No-Count!” Silver Jim yelled, his voice carrying over the din of battle, the screaming of the wounded, and the sounds of panicked horses.
No-Count whirled around, his hands full of pistols. Silver Jim drew and fired as smoothly as he had forty years back, when he had cut the flap off a soldier’s holster and tied it down.
Both the old gunfighter’s slugs struck true and No-Count squatted down in the muddy alley, dropped his pistols, and fell over facefirst in the mud.
Hardrock felt a numbing blow striking him in the shoulder, staggering him. He turned, falling back up against a building front, his right hand gun coming up, his thumb and trigger finger working as partners, rolling thunder from the muzzle.