“Can you three slow them down while we cut out of here?” said Macon Ray.
“Slow them down?” said Hobbs. “Hell, we can stop them cold, far as that goes.”
“Kill the lot of them, is what we’ll do,” Blind Simon said drunkenly. He leaned his chair forward from the wall and stood up, letting his blanket fall. He held his cocked shotgun in one hand, his Walker Colt hanging down his chest by its lanyard cord.
“That’s the spirit,” said Macon Ray. He hurried off the front porch and grabbed his horse’s reins as Fackler ran around the side of the shack leading the animals.
When the three outlaws had mounted and booted their horses off along a higher path behind the shack, Simon stood in front of the shack, a morning breeze blowing into his face.
“Come on, Simon,” said Karr, his gun belt strapped around the waist of his long johns. “Let’s get you inside the house. Me and Hobbs will flank the front yard.” He turned the blind outlaw and led him onto the porch. Blind Simon followed stiffly.
“I don’t want to hide and fight,” he protested with a whiskey slur. “I want to fight straight up.”
“You’re drunk, Simon,” said Karr, leading him through the front door into the shack. “Now settle down.” He positioned the blind outlaw at an open front window and helped him level his cocked shotgun out across the window’s ledge.
“They’re coming through the pines!” Simon warned with a sniff of the air.
“You stay right here, Simon. Start shooting when we do,” said Karr. “Don’t shoot any ways except straight ahead.”
“You got it, mi amigo,” said the aged, drunken blind man.
Hobbs’ eyes widened as he spotted the Giant’s huge lurking figure among a stand of saplings. His cigar dropped from his mouth.
“There they are!” he shouted, opening fire into the pines with his repeating rifle.
A hundred feet from him, Karr also spotted the Giant and started firing. Then he saw Casings as the outlaw brought his rifle around the side of a larger tree to return fire and draw their rifles away from the Giant, who stood helplessly ducking bullets like a man being attacked by hornets.
From a cliff edge higher up the trail behind the shack, Macon Ray Silverette brought his horse to a halt, swung the animal around and looked down at the shack and the clearing below, seeing the gun battle rage.
“That’s the way, old-timers,” he said with a merciless grin. “Go down fighting.” He looked at the other two and said, “Not a bad investment, eh? A little whiskey and a few dollars for all that protection?”
“They’re going to get them-damn-selves killed down there,” said Albert Kinney, sticking his cigar back into his mouth.
“Better them three than us three, right, Cockfighting Joe?” said Macon Ray.
Joe Fackler glared at Macon Ray.
“I’ve told you more than once now, I don’t want to get that name started, Ray,” he said.
Macon Ray only chuckled and said, “Relax, take it easy! I’m only funning you.” He swept a hand toward the gunfight below them. “Think how good you’ve got it. We could be down there getting shot.” He turned his horse back to the trail and said, “Now come on, let’s go spread our wealth around some.”
The other two fell in behind him, but before they got their horses onto the trail, they stopped short and sat staring at Rochenbach, who sat staring back at them from atop his dun, the horse standing crosswise, blocking their path. His big Remington stood out at arm’s length toward them, cocked and aimed.
“Hello, now!” Macon Ray said in surprise. “Who the hell are you?”
Even as Ray asked, his right hand went for the Colt holstered on his hip. The other two outlaws went for their rifles lying across their laps.
But Rochenbach’s Remington wasted no time. The big pistol began bucking in his hand, firing with precision into the three gunmen he’d caught off guard.
His first shot hit Macon Ray squarely in the chest and sent him flying backward from his saddle, slamming him into Joe Fackler’s horse behind him, causing it to spook and rear high. Fackler fired, but his shot went wild from atop the frightened animal. Rock’s second shot hit Fackler in the head, the impact causing both man and reared horse to fall backward and slide over the edge of the cliff.
Albert Kinney’s rifle bucked in his hands. His shot sliced through Rochenbach’s coat sleeve, grazing his upper arm. But before Kinney could lever another round into the rifle chamber, Rock’s third and fourth shots nailed him dead center and sent him flying sidelong to the ground.
Rochenbach cocked his forearm, raising the smoking Remington shoulder high as he looked back and forth, making sure the fight was over.
At the edge of the cliff, he heard the thrashing and scrambling of hooves and started to swing his Remington toward it. But then he stopped and watched as Fackler’s horse climbed over the edge, shook itself off and stood on shaky legs staring at him, its saddle hanging halfway down its side.
In the clearing below, the gun battle continued. Rochenbach stepped down from his saddle, walked over and picked up the saddlebags of money that Macon Ray had been carrying across his lap. He opened the bags, looked the stacks of money over and was relieved to see the bulk of it was still there.
It won’t be for long, he told himself.
Then he closed the bags and slung them over his shoulder. The question crossed his mind again, What was anybody doing with so much cash on hand? Even with a big steel safe to keep it in, a night watchman looking over it?
He turned at the sound of a weak choking cough and saw Macon Ray raise himself from the dirt on both palms and turn over on his elbows. Blood ran freely down his chest and from his lips.
“Did I ask… who are you?” Ray managed to say.
“Yes, you did,” said Rochenbach, seeing the man was on his last few breaths. “I’m Avrial Rochenbach.” He reached out, loosened the cinch on Fackler’s horse and dropped its saddle to the ground.
“That Pinkerton detective… who came over?” said Ray.
“That’s me,” said Rock. He loosened the cinch on Macon Ray’s horse’s saddle and dropped it to the dirt.
Ray saw his horse standing bareback. He sighed, knowing what that meant.
“Of all the sumbitches I could have robbed…,” he said, and he lay back down on the ground and closed his eyes.
Hearing the firing stop in the clearing below, Rock loaded the bodies over their horses’ backs and tied them wrists to boots under the horses’ bellies with rope he’d taken from Fackler’s saddle horn. He stepped back into his saddle with the three horses’ reins in hand, turned them to the trail and led them down.
Chapter 12
In front of the shack, the Stillwater Giant stood drinking water from a canteen, watching as Rochenbach approached, leading the three horses and their grisly loads behind him. On the ground beside the Giant, Pres Casings sat stooped over Latner Karr, holding a bottle of whiskey to the wounded old outlaw’s lips.
“Dang,” said the Giant in his deep voice. “It looks like Rock kilt all three of them.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Casings. He looked out at Rochenbach for a moment, then back to Karr, who lay sprawled in the dirt in his long johns, leaning back against the porch, his chest covered with blood.
“Want me to take a look at it?” Casings asked, nodding at the blood-soaked, wadded bandanna Karr held against a gaping exit wound in his chest.
“You never… seen one?” Karr asked in a strained voice.
“I thought I might help you some way,” Casings said.
“Just keep that whiskey bottle close… ’til I fade on out of here,” said Karr. Still, he raised the bandanna for a second and let Casings get a look at the bleeding fist-sized hole in his chest.