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

softly and moved away to where I could no longer see him. I thought I’d probably be able to sit up if I tried, but I wasn’t too interested in another bonk on the melon from the Irishman’s lackey. Instead I let my eyes wander over what little I could see from my position in the wagon, the tops of the buildings higher than a single story, mostly, and that was when I spied the gun atop the Handsome Frank Hotel.

A big gun. A spring-loaded, rapid-fire, hand-cranked by God Gatling gun.

I didn’t think for a minute that it had been left behind when the town got left to rot. This was brought along by Stanley and his friends. Which meant this time, he was a hell of a lot better prepared for when—and if—Boonsri came after him again.

And, of course, after me.

As much as I hated to admit it, I hoped to heaven she wouldn’t.

Before long, Bill himself took up position on the roof, behind the massive gun. Only then did I risk sitting up, whereupon I saw two of the Irishman’s crew positioned on the hotel’s drooping front porch. The third man was several paces on the other side of the wagon, patrolling the roadway. The mule driver slumped against the front door of the farrier, a bottle to his mouth. Stanley was nowhere in sight.

I managed to get my back against the wagon’s latched tailgate where I whiled away the quiet day the same as everyone else—waiting. My wound had long since bled through the bandage, but no one was going to take notice or do anything about it. The doctoring that had been done was only ever intended to be temporary.

And the more I looked and figured, I was right in the line of fire of that damned Irishman’s Gatling, anyway. Now I knew why the rest of the men tied up close to the hotel while the mule driver left the wagon in the middle of the road. I supposed old Stanley was no great lover of muleflesh. Their driver didn’t seem to much care, either.

I scratched at my cheeks where the hair I’d shaved off before our big night in San Francisco was growing back. I swatted at blackflies that were growing interested in my sweat as well as my bullet wound. I longed for a smoke and a pull of anything so long as it was liquor. Mostly, I just waited, and as I waited, the afternoon melted slowly into evening like a cake left out in the heat.

One of the men guarding the front of the hotel set to lighting lanterns both inside and out when the sun vanished behind the foothills and the sky turned yellowish in the haze of dusk. I could then see Stanley in the lobby, pacing before the shattered windows, keeping watch. I wondered if he was nervous. I also wondered if he really gave a tinker’s damn about Monty, who he’d not breathed a word about since right after I shot the poor son of a bitch. Knowing what I knew about the man, I gravely doubted it.

After full dark, the man who’d lighted the lanterns went over to the muleskinner, slapped the hat off of his head, and took his bottle. He then returned to his post on the hotel porch and drank deeply, his free hand resting on the butt of one pistol. His partner didn’t move at all. I could no longer make out the man patrolling the road, but Stanley remained inside, moving intently from one end of the lobby to the other, then back again. He smoked and seemed to be talking to himself. I was right. He was nervous.

Then my eyes wandered back up to the tremendous gun on the roof. I had to squint one eye almost shut just to barely make out Bill’s silhouette in the sparse moonlight, but it was enough to see the second shape rise up behind him with a long blade that gleamed as it was drawn across the Irishman’s throat. He never made a sound. Just a broad, dark jet of blood that spurted from his neck before the killer caught him by the armpits and lowered him gently to the roof.

She came.

Howdy, Boon, I thought.

See ya, Bill.

She did not so much as look my way. But I knew she’d seen me there. At least, I was pert near for sure and certain she had, until she moved up behind the gun and reached for the crank.

I then revised my assumption to one of two camps: either she saw me and hoped I’d move out of the way in time, or she hadn’t, and I hoped I’d move out of the way in time. Given the nature of my injury and the fact that I’d been laid out so long my legs were tingly and weak, my quick escape was not assured. Even so, I tried to kill a pair of grackles with one hefty rock when I hollered, “I’m burning to take a dump and I’ll be damned if I do it in this wagon.”

“Mr. Stanley,” one of the hotel guards called into the lobby. “Prisoner needs to shit.”

“Let him shit his trousers,” the Englishman said.

“Christ Jesus, Stanley,” I shouted, hauling myself up with no little agony. “These here trousers are store-bought.”

“You’ll be buried in ’em, anyhow,” said the guard.

The other guard had a good laugh about that and said, “Fuck me if I’m digging that hole.”

“Fuck you either way,” I said, and I tumbled over the side of the wagon and collapsed into the dust and crabgrass. My intention had been more graceful, but it was what it was.

“Hey,” the first guard yelled. He drew a Navy Colt from his right-side holster and bore it down on me as he stepped off the porch. “Get your ass back in that wagon, damn you.”

My side was on fire but I pushed up to my knees anyway, feeling the wound ooze through the bandage