Nick could feel panic building in the air just like he could smell the burned gunpowder hanging in front of him. He stepped through the acrid cloud, kicked the gun from Dutch’s shaking hand and then took aim at one of the two other gunmen who were still standing. Hofferman was right beside him, aiming his freshly loaded shotgun at his former worker.
Ross shook his head wildly and tossed his gun. He might have fired a shot or two, but wasn’t even collected enough to hit the house. “I swear I didn’t want anyone to get hurt!” Ross said. “You weren’t even supposed to be here!”
“Guess it’s a good thing I decided not to go along on that drive, then,” Hofferman said. “Otherwise, I never would have seen for myself what a sorry piece of trash you are.” Hofferman looked to the other young man standing nearby. “And you, Peter? You sided with these men, too?”
Peter was a man in his thirties with a round face and dull eyes. Letting his gun drop from his hand, he said, “A man’s gotta make money however he can.”
Hofferman shook his head and tightened his grip on his shotgun.
Just then, Joseph stormed through the front door of the house with the rifle in his hands.
“Cover this one here,” Nick said, indicating one of the two gunmen, before Joseph could do anything.
Joseph complied and stood at the edge of the porch.
Nick walked over to Dutch, squatted down to his level and said, “Things aren’t so easy when you don’t have a dozen men backing you up, are they?”
“Go to hell,” Dutch wheezed.
Joseph’s rifle barked once to send a round into Dutch’s face and out the other side of his head. Dutch lay sprawled on the ground, twitching for a few seconds before his end finally came.
When Joseph spoke, it was in a soft, almost disbelieving voice. “That man killed my family,” he said as if reciting it to himself. “He killed them.”
Hofferman’s eyes were wide and he shifted nervously on his feet while keeping his rifle aimed at Ross. “What’d he say?”
“He’s speaking the truth, Mister Hofferman,” Nick told him. Looking to Joseph, he said, “Put the gun down now, Joseph. It’s all over.”
But Joseph shook his head slowly while shifting his aim to Peter. “No it’s not. It’s not over until they’re all dead. Every last one of them.”
“You’ve done plenty,” Nick said. “You and me have tracked these bastards down and put an end to them. It’s over, you hear?”
Joseph kept shaking his head as he put his rifle to his shoulder and took careful aim at Peter’s head. Seeing the cold, haunted look in Joseph’s eyes, Peter couldn’t breathe. Moving was entirely out of the question.
“Jesus!” Peter said. “I didn’t hurt no one! I swear!”
“Not yet, maybe,” Joseph said. “But you would have.”
Joseph’s finger tightened around the trigger just as someone suddenly shoved his rifle barrel toward the sky. Fire roared from the barrel, scorching the mangled hand that held it.
Gritting his teeth through the pain, Nick tried to pull the rifle out of Joseph’s hands, but the heat from the barrel made him give it up. “What in the hell are you doing? Stop this!”
“That’s a fine way for you to talk, Nick. You’ve killed more men than I have, and now you want to start preaching to me?”
“Those men we tracked down were killers who meant to kill us. I did as much dirty work as I could so you wouldn’t have to.”
“I didn’t need your help. I didn’t even ask for it!”
“The hell you didn’t!” Nick snarled. Since he’d let go of the rifle, it had been aimed directly at his chest. He didn’t seem to care about that in the least as he glared into Joseph’s eyes and shouted in the hopes of being heard. “You charged into this thing looking for revenge and if you couldn’t have it, you would’ve been more than happy to die. I recognized that look in your eyes the first night I took you in, and you had every reason for it to be there. That’s why I decided to help.”
“You want to help? Then step aside, Nick.”
“I may not know what it’s like to lose a wife and daughter the way you did, but I know what it’s like to want to kill as badly as you do right now. I felt that taste in my mouth when I was shot to pieces in Montana. I tasted it when those good folks who helped me were threatened, run off and…God only knows what else.”
“That wasn’t the same,” Joseph said bitterly. “Not by a long shot.”
“It was brought about differently, but killing is killing. The men who killed your wife and daughter deserved to die. It’s only right that you got to take the first shot at them, eye for an eye, just like the Good Book says.
“I spent years of my life digging through the same pile of shit until it was all dug up and the men that wronged me got what they deserved. More than once, I wondered what it would have been like if I would have just turned my back on it all and got on with my life when I still had the chance. Turn the other cheek, just like the Good Book says,” Nick continued with a wry grin. “It’s too late for me. I spent years healing up and gunning down anyone who even talked about that Committee. From there, I kept living by my gun because it was all I knew. I’ve been like that since I was old enough to shoot straight. But you haven’t.”
As he listened, Joseph’s eyes darted from Nick to the two men behind him. They were still too frightened to move, and if they tried or so much as flinched, Hofferman and his shotgun were there to change their minds.
“You have every right to be angry,” Nick said. “And you always will. What happened was terrible, and the men that hurt your family deserved what they got. Folks are hanged for stealing horses. Hell, I arrange the parties they throw afterward. Sometimes, killers get away just because they’re smarter than the men trying to hunt them down. I know both sides of this argument too damn well.”
“So what?” Joseph said with a little less venom in his tone. “I’ve killed, so I guess I’m no better. Is that it?”
Nick shook his head. “You could have let the law take a run at these men, but you didn’t. I don’t really blame you for that. The men you killed, as bad as they were, will haunt you. I tried to give you some time to simmer down and have second thoughts, but you kept going. I can’t blame you for that, either. You’ll carry this with you your whole life, but these two boys here,” Nick said, pointing behind him, “they didn’t have a damn thing to do with what happened to you or your family.”
“They would’ve hurt this family right here.”
“Maybe, but they didn’t. I’d wager you can live with putting bastards like this one down,” Nick said, gesturing toward Dutch’s body as if it was a dung heap.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if I didn’t,” Joseph replied solemnly.
“What about this boy here?” Nick asked while stepping aside to let Joseph look at Ross. “He wasn’t there that night. He doesn’t know you. Kill him and you’ll be stepping into some territory that you don’t want to get into. You’ll lose sight of the man you were and you’ll become a killer without any bit of righteousness behind you. You’ll be a stone’s throw from the assholes who drove you to this. You’ll be an outlaw, and there’s no angels for outlaws. Those words become truer to me every day. Maybe you should think about them before you get so far into hell that you won’t be able to find your way out.”
Although Joseph didn’t say anything, the fire in his eyes was dimming a bit. Nick stepped forward until he bumped his chest against the end of Joseph’s rifle barrel.
There was no fire in Nick’s eyes.
There was no emotion whatsoever.
There wasn’t even a flicker of humanity when Nick took his modified Schofield and pointed it directly between Ross’s eyes. It was that same icy glare that had gotten Nick further in his days as a bad man than whatever gun was in his hand at the time.