Rash alighted from Jenny at the head of the draw that opened onto Dandy’s property. She didn’t plan on surviving the coming fight and would be damned if she took the old nag down with her. According to Tolliver’s handbill, bands of wild horses roamed the nearby foothills. Jenny’d find them. Hell, she’d probably be leading them in a week’s time.
After stripping the horse bare at the base of the rugged pinyon pine, Rash stuffed the backup Colt into her waistband and mouthed the last of her cloves, luxuriating in the spreading numbness. Then she made her unsteady way to the foot of the draw.
The dilapidated cottage stood a ways off, partially screened by a scattershot of unkempt outbuildings and workstations. There was no sign of Dandy or Lila. Just a lone man in a confident pose blocking the way beside a pile of lazily stacked firewood.
Briggs.
Holding a Winchester.
Rash approached him, testing her fickle hands as she walked. Killing her would be a simple matter with the rifle, but Briggs appeared disinclined to do so. At about fifteen yards, he tossed the Winchester aside and exposed his pistol with a shrug of his coat.
“I reckon what we got ourselves here is a—”
Rash snapped her Colt from its holster and pulled the trigger the second her aim met his groin. Twenty grains of powder threw a thirty-six caliber ball into the gunslinger’s rib cage and dropped him to the dirt. When she reached his groaning body, she quieted him with a second blast and took cover behind the wood pile.
“Thirty-two,” she mumbled to the wind.
A quick movement beyond the far side of the pile drew her Colt. It was Dandy, popping out from a parched horse waterer like a man in desperate need of an eighth hole. He still wore his ratty silk housecoat.
“They got Lila inside,” he shouted over. “There’s two of ’em.”
His eyes shifted to one side. Someone had a gun on him.
That meant three at the very least, she figured.
Rash sighed. This was it then. Oh well. Better to die in a thunderstorm of lead than shitting her pants in some forgotten rocking chair.
She cleared the powder remnants from her pistol with a heavy breath and loaded another two balls and caps as she surveyed her surroundings. Fifty paces ahead, the front door of the farmhouse hung an irresistible few inches ajar. She knew what would be waiting behind it: ambush. Dandy’s side of the wood pile didn’t look much better, bristling as it was with menacing blinds and a hidden gunman. If she wanted to save Lila, she’d have to brave both.
She drew the second Colt and stepped into the open.
To her surprise, no bullets awaited her exit. Whoever had the gun on Dandy appeared content to let her reach the house unimpeded.
Even so, she scrambled for the porch at speed, doing her best to split pistols between Dandy’s horse waterer and the front of the house, expecting the report of hungry gunfire at any moment. Halfway across and fully exposed, she spotted a pair of eyes peering from the bottom of one of two front windows. A single shot from her Colt sent them scurrying back to safety.
When she finally reached the first step, she pushed out a long, calming breath. The thirsty wood creaked beneath her. She knelt down, her knees duplicating the sound, and snuck a peek at Dandy. His chaperone remained hidden.
The wind swirled around her, kicking up devils from the buckling planks. Insects screamed. A blackbird called.
Then, battle.
Shadows flashed behind both front windows at once and she brought her guns to bear on them, forsaking Dandy’s horse waterer. Almost immediately, a cry over her shoulder drew her attention back to the old man.
To her surprise, Fouch had appeared at his side, grappling with him over control of a rifle. The armless codger had his stumps wrapped around the barrel, holding the length of it fast against his neck. It was a valiant effort, but it was over before Rash could have a say in the outcome.
In one quick motion, Fouch disarmed Dandy, stunned him with the butt of the rifle, and turned the weapon on her. She had no place to hide. She was done.
Dandy, however, was not. He regained his footing and threw himself against Fouch, knocking the Sheriff’s aim awry as he fired.
The round missed Rash, punching into the front door above her and kicking it open. Two volleys of gunfire responded from inside, one from either side of the door, as the waiting gunman no doubt assumed Rash was breaching their little fortress. Wood splintered, holes appeared, until finally the door fell from its hinges and the reports of the weapons diminished into distant echoes.
She could hear the shooters shuffling inside, but would have to take on faith that they had emptied their guns fully. It was now or never.
Without wasting a glance on Fouch and Dandy, she tried to rise to her feet, but her body refused to cooperate, as if all the strength had abandoned her legs. She cackled at the absurdity of it all and boosted her way to a standing position on the barrels of her pistols.
Two men she didn’t recognize, posted in opposing doorways and swept up in the process of reloading, greeted her as she entered the house. She put them down with two shots apiece.
There was no further movement, so she lowered her pistols to her sides, wondering if this brave new Dandy had been telling the truth about the number of targets inside.
While she pondered his veracity, Fremont stepped from behind the repositioned akevitt cabinet, leveled gun in one hand and Lila in the other, shielding his body.
“Howdy,” he said.
As Rash brought her Colts to bear on the bastard, his pistol fired. Then her barrels were up and pointed at Lila’s throat. She pulled their triggers, counting on the Pocket Navy’s tendency to shoot high.
Fremont fired again, then tumbled to the floor, taking Lila with him.
Rash hobbled over and rolled him off of the girl with the tip of her boot.
Lila glanced up at her, linen dress stained in dead man’s blood. She smiled. There were cloves in her teeth.
Rash checked herself for holes. Nothing. She’d survived.
“Shit,” she muttered.
“How’d he miss you?” Lila asked.
Rash shrugged. “Nerves. Bad aim. Don’t matter. He’s deader than Honest Abe.”
She put a bullet in each of the men’s heads, emptying her cylinders.
“Better to start clean.”
Lila cleared her throat.
“What?” Rash asked, charging one of the chambers of her cylinder with powder.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
Rash furrowed her brow.
“Thirty-five,” the kid said with a smile.
Rash gave her an affectionate cuff on the cheek and finished reloading.
“Lila?” Dandy called out from the horse waterer. “You still with me, honey?”
“We’re here,” the kid shouted back. “Rash killed them all. You should’ve seen it. She came in and—”
“Glad to hear you two are okay,” Fouch’s voice interjected. “Everyone out here is still breathing as well.” A pause. “Well, maybe not Briggs, but he don’t matter. What kind of man ain’t heard of Bill Hickok?”
Rash slid up to the broken front window and peered out. “What do you want, Fouch?”
The Sheriff and his chin were still at the horse waterer, shielded from the wrath of Rash’s Colts by Dandy’s bloody face.
“A trade,” he replied. “You for them. A woman like you’s worth a cripple and a Coolie, I reckon.”
“You’ll let them live? Debt free?”
“Surely. It’s a cheap ante for a shot at your head.”
“Fine. Send him over.”
“I’ll send him halfway. Then you show yourself.”
“Well, stop talking and start doing.”
Fouch prompted Dandy with the rifle and the old cripple walked out from behind the horse waterer. Step by shuffled step, he made his way toward the porch.
“That’s far enough,” Fouch said when he’d reached the halfway point.
Dandy stopped. Fear gripped his sweaty, pale face. But there was something else too. Courage, perhaps. And not the heroic, hill-storming type either—just your basic, run-of-the-mill, pushing on through the terror variety. After all these years, Dandy had finally found his war face again.
Rash almost felt proud to be saving his life.
“All right,” Fouch shouted. “Your turn.”
Rash swallowed the last of her cheeked cloves and turned to Lila.
“When I pass through the doorway, I expect one of two outcomes,” she said. “Either Fouch dies or I do. Should it be the former, you won’t have nothing to worry about. And if it be the latter, we’ve got an ace up our sleeve: Fouch is a man. He won’t be able to resist gloating over my body. That’s when you shoot him. Aim at the waist. Just like I showed you. Got it?”
Lila nodded, but her eyes were glazed over, overwhelmed.
Rash passed one of her pistols into the kid’s shaking hands.
“Remember, the gun does all the work. It don’t care if you’re a kid or Samson of the Israelites. All it wants is a finger. You got a finger?”
Lila nodded again.
“Then use it.”
Rash stood up and squinted out the open door. Fouch was out there, chomping at the bit. On any other day, she’d wait him out inside. Men like Fouch weren’t known for their patience. He’d grow agitated and do something stupid, like bust in on her as had happened so many times before with so many different men. But a move like that would cost Dandy his life and perhaps Lila’s as well.
So she’d be doing the dumb thing today.
