Incident at Gunn Point Read online

  He laid two bits for the hay in a small wooden box beside the hay bin. Turning out the lantern, he gathered the string and his dapple gray and started toward the barn door. But before he and the animals reached the door, it swung open quickly and he stared down the barrel of a cocked Remington pointed straight at him. In reflex he grabbed the butt of his big Colt; then his hand stopped as he heard the sobbing and recognized the saloon girl he had seen earlier on the street.

  “You—you killed him, you rotten son of a—” Her words stopped short as she pulled the Remington’s trigger.

  Summers braced for the shot, knowing there was no way for her to miss, not standing this close. He flinched when, instead of a hearing and seeing a blazing gunshot in the evening darkness, he heard the metal on metal click of a misfire.

  “Damn this thing!” the girl cursed through a face full of tears. She struggled to recock the big revolver, but Summers wasn’t giving her a second chance. In two steps he was upon her. Grabbing the gun barrel and shoving it away from him with one hand, he spun her around with his other hand, wrapped his arm around from behind and held her up on her tiptoes while she struggled against him. The dapple and the three-horse string shied back a step, away from the struggling humans.

  “Whoa. Easy, ma’am,” Summers said.

  But she would have none of it. She sobbed, twisted and squirmed and kicked backward, battering his shins with the heels of her shoes. Summers ignored the kicking and concentrated on shaking the big Remington from her hand. When the weight of it finally broke free from her grip and fell to the floor, Summers let her down but kept his arm around her, his free hand clutching her wrist.

  Her crying increased; her struggle stopped. He was too strong for her, and he wasn’t turning her loose until she settled down.

  “Go ahead, then, shoot me too!” she said, collapsing against him, sobbing uncontrollably. “You shot the man I love.”

  “Easy, ma’am,” Summers said. “I’m going to turn you loose, but you’ve got to calm down.”

  She made no reply. She continued sobbing violently.

  Jesus…. He’d never seen anyone cry with such total abandon.

  He turned her loose anyway and stepped over quickly, picked up the Remington and looked at it closely. There were only three bullets in its cylinder, none of them close to the hammer. Still, he opened the cylinder and dropped each bullet onto the floor. He laid the gun over on a small table beside the hay bin.

  “That was a fool thing to do, ma’am,” he said. “You could have gotten yourself killed.” He didn’t mention that she could have very well also killed him had she checked the gun first.

  She choked down the crying and let out a tight breath. “I don’t care if I had gotten killed. I’ve got nothing to live for, not anymore.”

  “You and Jackie Warren…?” He let his question trail.

  “We were in love,” she said, finishing his words for him. “He was taking me away from Gunn Point.” Her voice started to crack and tremble again.

  Here we go…, Summers thought, seeing tears well in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry for you, ma’am,” he said, “and I’m sorry I had to kill your beau. But he shot at me…twice. I had no choice but to shoot back.”

  “Oh, you had a choice,” she disputed him. Her crying stopped short. “You didn’t have to shoot back. He would still be alive if you hadn’t.”

  Summers didn’t answer. He knew she was speaking in a state of mindless grief. It was the sort of thing he’d heard people say when they hoped for some mystical change in the face of unyielding reality.

  “He’s dead,” Summers said with finality. “Killing me would not have brought him back. It would only make you a killer. Is that what you want?”

  She didn’t answer; she didn’t have to. They stood in silence for a moment.

  Good, he told himself, she was starting to settle down. She was no fool, he thought. She knew the kind of man Jackie Warren was. She had to let better reasoning set in.

  After a pause, Summers looked her up and down in the shadowy evening light through the open barn door.

  “You look familiar, ma’am,” he said. “Have I seen you before?”

  “No,” she said bluntly, in a hoarse, grudging tone. She crossed her arms and stared down. But Summers could see she had settled a little.

  “Did you ever work in Denton…a place called Dowdy’s Fair Shake Saloon?”

  She gave him a sullen look, turned her eyes up to him without raising her head.

  “Maybe,” she finally said. “Did you and me…?”

  “No,” said Summers, “nothing like that. It’s just that I recognize you from there…maybe three years ago?”

  “Could be,” she said, studying his face closely in the shadowy evening darkness. “That’s where I started working.”

  Summers nodded, considering it. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen at that time—just a child.

  She uncrossed her arms, reached a hand slowly inside her overcoat and took out a bag of chopped fixings.

  “I was fifteen,” she said, as if having read his mind. As she spoke she deftly filled a cigarette paper with fixings, rolled it into a smoke and ran it in and out of her mouth. She held it in the scissors of her fingers, produced a large match, struck it with her thumbnail and lit the cigarette. She let go a long stream of smoke. “It seems like a hundred years,” she reflected.

  Summers nodded, as if he understood. That was all she needed.

  “Do I…” She hesitated, then said, “Do I look much different now?”

  Summers knew the perils of answering such a question. He looked her up and down.

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said tactfully. “You were a pretty woman then. You’re a pretty woman now, Miss…?” He let his words hang.

  “Cherry,” she said, “Cherry Atmore.” She reflected for a second, then said, “I don’t remember what my name was then, but it wasn’t Cherry…. It might have been Lily.” She gave a slight shrug. “Anyway, obliged.” She drew a deep lungful of smoke, held it for a second and then blew it out. Summers smelled the musty sweet aroma of Indian tobacco—setas de mayan, he reminded himself, a powerful mix of chopped tobacco spiked with ceremonial mushrooms used by the Mayans.

  “Well, Miss Atmore,” Summers said, “my name is Will—”

  “I don’t know who you are. I don’t care who you are,” she said, cutting him off. Her voice took on its surly tone again. “I didn’t come here to make friends. I came here to kill you, remember?”

  Summers shut up as he stepped over to his three-horse string and picked up the lead rope.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. “I mean it for both our sakes.”

  Cherry just looked at him, holding a breath of smoke for a second, then letting it drift out of her mouth. Her eyes shifted over to the big Remington revolver lying on the table, then back to him.

  “Killing doesn’t leave a good taste in the mouth,” he said as he turned to his dapple gray and checked his saddle and tested it with both hands.

  “How do you know I haven’t already killed somebody? What makes you think you’d be my first?” she said.

  “I can just tell, that’s all,” Summers said, looking back at her. “And I’d just as soon you not find out how it feels by killing me.”

  “The way you killed Little Jackie?” she said, still with a bitter twist to her words.

  “Yeah, the way I killed Little Jackie,” Summers said. He wouldn’t tell her again that killing Jackie Warren was justified, self-defense. If she didn’t know by now, she wasn’t going to.

  Through the open door, Summers heard a horse chuff quietly and stamp its hoof on the ground. He swung toward the door, his Colt out, up and cocked. Cherry noted the speed with which he’d made the move.

  “Who’s there?” Summer demanded. When no answer came, he gave Cherry a hard glance. “Who’s with you?”

  “Nobody’s with me,” Cherry replied calmly, letting out a languid
stream of smoke. “It’s my horse. Soon as I heard Jackie was the dead bank robber, I got my horse and went looking for you.”

  “How’d you hear it was Jackie Warren?” Summers asked, knowing the posse and Deputy Stiles were trying to keep the fact hidden for as long as they could.

  “One of the posse men came in the saloon and told me,” she said. “He knew about Jackie and me.”

  “Horace Dewitt…,” said Summers, having seen the engineer leaving the saloon.

  “Yes,” said Cherry.

  “And you rode a horse here?” Summers said dubiously.

  “That’s right,” Cherry said, holding a drawn breath of smoke. “See for yourself…if you don’t believe me.” She exhaled slowly and started to take a step forward.

  “Stay right there,” Summers ordered her, stopping her in her tracks.

  He took a cautious step to the open door and looked out. A brown and white paint horse stood staring at him from five feet away. Seeing Summers, the horse sawed his head slightly and let out a low nicker.

  “Easy, fellow,” Summers said soothingly. He stepped forward and touched his hand to the horse’s muzzle. He looked all around the evening gloom until satisfied there was no one there. Then he uncocked the Colt and slipped it into his holster. The horse blew out a breath and nudged his hand.

  “See, I told you,” said Cherry, having walked to the door behind him in spite of him telling her to stay were she was. “I’m alone.”

  Summers looked the paint horse over, seeing the carpetbag tied down behind its saddle. He got the picture; her plan had been to kill him and leave town. She had put some thought into it. She hadn’t just grabbed a gun and come after him in a hysterical rage. It dawned on him, had she checked the gun first, odds were he would be lying dead in the livery barn.

  “You were leaving town?” Summers said, not letting her know how much he read in all this.

  “Were, and still am,” Cherry replied, her voice sounding calmer now, a little bit dreamy from the effects of the strong smoke. “Jackie and I were leaving together. He was going to get lots of money and come by and take me way. I didn’t realize the money was coming from robbing the bank.”

  Summer stood staring at her, his silence inducing her to keep talking.

  “Look, mister,” she said finally. “This was a mistake, coming here to kill you. I mean—I’m no murderer. I lost my head when I heard you killed Jackie Warren. I did love him. That is, I suppose I did, sort of.” She took another draw from the cigarette, held the smoke for a second, then let it drift out of her mouth reflectively. Then she gave a short cough and shook her head. “Damn, I don’t know….”

  Summers only stared, letting her get everything off her chest.

  “I’ve got to get out of this life,” she said. “It’s killing me.” She looked at the cigarette in her fingers; it was shorter now and she held it pinched between her thumb and fingertip.

  Summer watched.

  “Little Jackie was the only young man I ever met who had money—I mean real money. It came from his pa, but still it was there all the time.”

  “All that money, yet he robs his own father’s bank,” Summer commented.

  “Yeah, I know,” Cherry said. “If you ever figure that out, tell me why.” She paused, then said, “He was my ticket out of here—the life, I mean. He said he was coming to get me. We’d go see the world together.” She shook her head. “Instead…” She left the word dangling.

  Summers looked her up and down again. He saw the cigarette had burned down dangerously close to her fingertips. She didn’t seem to notice. He took the small stub from her, dropped it and stepped on it.

  “Where are you headed?” he asked, realizing she had no business on a dark trail, alone, half knocked out on Indian tobacco.

  “Whiskey Flats,” she said.

  “So am I,” said Summers. He paused, then asked, “Want to ride with me?”

  “No strings?” she asked in reply. “Because I’m sick of men crawling up my belly every time I lie down.”

  “No strings,” Summers said, and he meant it. Although he was interested in finding out whatever she might tell him about the Warrens—maybe give him an idea of what to expect.

  Cherry considered it for moment, then let out a sigh that Summers was not able to read one way or the other.

  “Sure,” she said, “why not? It’s probably safer.”

  Chapter 6

  The three outlaws had slipped into an abandoned relay station on the edge of Gunn Point and walked their horses inside the debris-littered stone-and-timber building that had once accommodated stagecoach passengers on their way across the high plains headed for points north. The advantage of the dusty sun-bleached ruins was a rickety thirty-foot lookout tower that had been built up one side of the building and provided a good view of the flatlands. It also provided an even better view of the streets and storefronts of Gunn Point.

  Less than an hour after the three had settled in and Cole Langler had built a small fire in a wide stone hearth, Lewis Fallon stepped down the tower ladder and though a trapdoor on the station roof.

  “Summers just took on supplies,” he said. “Now he’s led horses around the corner of an alley, into the livery barn.”

  “Damn it,” said Grayson, “looks like he’s settling in for the night.” He sat in a broken wooden chair with his elbow on top of a dusty desk, cupping his bandanna to the side of his head.

  “Then so have we,” Langler said. “If he was stupid enough to turn that money in, we’re going to rob that damn bank all over again come morning, while they’re not expecting it—get our money back.”

  “Our money?” Fallon said with short grin.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it is,” said Langler. “What do you say, Henry?”

  “Yeah, I agree,” Grayson said, clearly in misery. “But if we stay here I’ve got to have something for the pain in my head.”

  “It’s not your head that got shot off, Henry. It’s your ear,” Langler said.

  Grayson said testily, “I think I know it was my ear, Cole. But it’s got my head pounding like a war drum. I’ve got to have something to relieve it.”

  “Ordinarily I carry a full supply of herbs, medicines, laudanum and whatnot, Henry,” Langler said, taunting him, “but it appears you’ve caught me short.”

  “I need whiskey,” Grayson said, ignoring Langler’s remarks. “I can’t go into town with an ear missing—”

  “Forget it,” Langler said, cutting him off. “I don’t know about you two, but I’m busted belly up. I needed the money from this job.”

  Fallon put in, “I’ve got half a dollar.”

  “That’s a drink, Lewis, Grayson said. “I need a bottle, at least. I am hurting something awful.”

  “Tough knuckles,” said Langler. “Bite down on a stick.”

  A pause; then, “I’ve got some money,” Grayson said hesitantly.

  The other two noted something guarded in his tone of voice and looked at him.

  “Oh, you do?” Fallon said. “Day before yesterday you didn’t have a dime, I happen to know.”

  “I’ve got some money—a little,” Grayson said, lowering his hand from the side of his head and examining the bloody bandanna idly as he spoke.

  Fallon and Langler looked at each other, then back at Grayson.

  “All right,” said Fallon, “now tell us, how did you come by it?”

  “Yeah,” said Langler, half rising from a dusty wooden stool, “we’d both like to hear it.”

  “Okay,” said Grayson with a sigh. “Don’t judge me harshly, fellows. When we filled the bags with money, somehow one of the stacks got stuck inside my coat.”

  The two stared at him. He gave a slight shrug as if to play down the incident. But the two outlaws weren’t going to let it go.

  “Somehow got stuck?” said Fallon.

  “See, I knew you’d take it this way,” Grayson said. “That’s why I hated telling you.” He looked back and forth betw
een them for understanding, but detected none. “I don’t know how it happened, all right? I know it sounds suspect, but it’s true.”

  “How much is it?” Fallon demanded.

  “I believe it’s a thousand dollars,” Grayson said. “That’s how it comes bound, you know…a hundred, a thousand and so on.”

  “We know how it comes,” said Fallon.

  “Get it out,” said Langler.

  “It’s in my saddlebags,” said Grayson.

  “I’m going to get it,” Fallon said. He started to take a step toward the door.

  Grayson’s big Dance Brothers revolver swung up from atop the dusty desk, cocked and ready to fire. “Do not lay hands on my stuff,” he warned.

  Fallon froze, but Langler wasn’t the least put off by the cocked pistol, since it wasn’t pointed at him.

  “To hell with your stuff,” he said. “It’s bank money. That means it’s our money too.”

  Fallon just stood listening, waiting for the big Dance Brothers pistol to relax in Grayson’s hand.

  Finally Grayson relented, but the big revolver didn’t. He kept it straight and ready to fire.

  “All right,” he said, “it is partly yours. I would have mentioned it anyway, sooner or later.”

  “No doubt,” Langler said in a stiff, sarcastic tone.

  “I’ll get it,” said Grayson. He stood up before lowering the gun. When he slipped it into his holster, Fallon decided not to go for his own gun. Instead he watched the wounded outlaw sidestep to the door and walk out to where they had hidden their horses from sight inside a half-fallen stock barn.

  “A thousand dollars…” Langler considered it.

  Both outlaws walked to the door themselves and stopped outside, staring toward the barn.

  “You going for the whiskey, or am I?” Fallon said, their eyes toward the barn as he spoke.

  “You go. I’ll keep an eye on what the horse trader’s up to,” said Langler.

  “We’ve got to kill Summers, after all he’s done to ruin this job,” said Fallon.