Boon by Ed Kurtz (top 100 books to read .txt) 📕

The deputies settled down, but the horses got more anxious second by second, the way they tended to when a storm was brewing. Indeed, I supposed there was one on its way, and that the little spattering of fire we’d taken so far wasn’t but a sprinkle compared to the downpour to come. The marshal and his men arranged themselves in a triangular formation, back to back to back, eyes wide and white and rolling like spooked broncs. Chances were mine were, too. It was a spooky place to be.

“We are well armed,” said Willocks, as if to himself. “We will survive.”

Paddy was shaking. I did not think he believed the marshal. He said, “What are they waiting for?”

“It’s a God damned stand-off,” said the Brute.

“No, it ain’t,” I said. “They can see us but we can’t see them. Ain’t any kind of stand-off when they hold all the cards.”

“Shut the hell up,” the Brute said.

“What the fuck are they waiting for?” Paddy said, as though no one had answered him the first time. He was getting hot and afraid, sweating and trembling. Then he screamed like a maniac and when I looked to see if he had gone crazy with fear I saw that there was an arrow sticking out of his chest.

He shrieked and clawed at the shaft and fletching, tearing his shirt and the flesh beneath so that the blood gushed down his front.

“Redskin whore’s sons,” he bellowed. He jumped up to his feet, the shaft bouncing in his breast, and fired wildly into the darkness. Three shots came in response, closer than before, striking the trees and kicking up the dust at his feet. “Burns like hell-fire, you bastards.”

He made to shoot again and Willocks hunched up to stop him, but the next shot came from behind and took a considerable portion off the top of his skull. A flap of gruesome red skin and hair dropped down over one eye as the gray-red mass of brains and skull shards above spurted and oozed, and the Irishman tottered on his feet with one wide eye for a long, horrible second with his mouth flapping and one hand grasping at something that wasn’t there. He dropped his rifle to the ground. The arrow shaft trembled in his heaving chest until his chest fell still. The deputy fell forward, breaking the shaft and smashing his face against a jagged rock. Both Willocks and the Brute scrambled away from the corpse.

“They are on both sides of us, God damn it,” said the Brute. He levered another round into the chamber of his rifle and swept the escarpment, ready to fire.

He didn’t find the assailant in time. The next shot slammed into his heart. The Brute wheezed with surprise and squeezed the trigger, firing at nothing, as he dropped backward. Willocks spun around, his own repeater at the ready, but when Boon stepped out into the firelight with her Colt .44 aimed at his eyes, she said, “I wouldn’t.”

I said, “Howdy, Boon.”

“How’re you doing, Edward,” she said without looking at me.

“Fair to middlin’.”

“Looks like you gained a gap in your grin.”

I nodded.

“Right glad you could make it,” I said.

“More breed friends of yours?” Willocks hissed. He hadn’t fired, but he didn’t lower the rifle, either.

“Kiowa raiding party,” she said. “Passed a couple of dead buffalo hunters yesterday. Probably they reckon you’re with them, or one of them.”

“Buffalo hunting’s been outlawed in these parts,” he said, as though he honestly believed anyone paid mind to it.

Boon shrugged. “Guess they got what was coming to ’em.”

“And my men?”

“I only claim three and a half of them. Arrow wasn’t mine.”

“Then they’re close.”

“They’re right up your nose.”

“Yours, too,” he said.

“Seems like,” she said. “Edward, how about you get some metal in your hands.”

I glanced from the rifle closest to me, which was Paddy’s, to the one strapped over Boon’s shoulder, which was mine.

“You get that in Revelation?” I asked her.

She nodded.

Willocks said, “And the sheriff there?”

She shook her head. “Didn’t want me to take it.”

“Poor Earl,” I said.

“Poor Earl,” said Boon.

She shifted her shoulder a little, just to let me know I could come get my gun. I did.

“You get my knife, too?”

“I ain’t your getting-things lady,” she said.

I levered a cartridge into the chamber and ran one hand down the smooth barrel. It felt good to have her back again.

“So now you cut me down like you do everybody else vexes you,” Willocks said.

“Edward vexes me all the time,” she said. “He’s doing fine.”

“There’s I don’t know how many Indians out there.”

“Five,” she said. “Maybe six, but I only counted five.”

“So I shoot you,” he said, “and both you and your fat man shoot me. I’m dead, you’re probably dead, and then it’s just him and the Kiowa. Poor odds.”

“Poor odds,” she agreed.

“Seems like maybe you and me ought to put aside our differences for the time being,” Willocks said, “given the circumstances.”

“Seems like.”

“What,” I said, “we all friendly now?”

“You got to learn to adapt, Edward,” she said.

She and Willocks still drew upon one another as they spoke. They might as well have been statues for all they’d moved. When at last she lowered her gun hand, I was like to pass right out from the shock of it. Willocks would have had her dead to rights, never mind how fast she was. But he dropped his barrel, too. The horses nickered in the remuda. Someone—or a bunch of someones—was fussing around near to them.

“Adapt,” I said, like I was just trying the word out.

Marshal Willocks said, “It is time.”

Boon nodded once and thumbed back the hammer on her Colt. It was time, indeed.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Looking back, wasn’t any of it their fault. Not really. I knew as well as anybody else you could only push a man so far before he got to pushing back, even if he was tiny and the one he was pushing was ten feet tall and as big around as a barrel. Did a great bunch of those