Gunlaw

Gunlaw 23

"Let 'em come again. See what they get." Ed lifted his shotgun. Sally didn't need hunska blood to hear his body tell her the exact opposite to his words.

"It's just one," Ronson said. "A killer. Sweet Water's seen worse before."

"Sect got in at Bains Town." Henry Walker stood and dusted his knees.

"And Red Gulch." Larrs nodded.

"And all them little gold camps round the Dust Rift." A smile twitched on Purbright's lips.

"Hell if I know what I'm doing out here." Ed stamped the cold off and hurried away back toward the Horn. "Sally!"

Sally stayed put but Rallon followed on after Ed, even though he hadn't the coin for good whiskey, or even Ed's come to that.

"Sect-mind got in and poisoned those places before the killers moved in to clean house." Ronson watched Ed's back then looked to Sally, holding her ground. "Sweet Water's got itself a chunk of pillar stone. P'raps you seen it when you boys rode in? Where the brook bubbles up and the tracks end? Kept this place safe enough since the rush brought everyone out here."

"Should we move him?" The stockhand, still decorated with Gorren's blood.

"Drag him out near the tar pit. Build a cairn on him. The herd will come get him soon enough," Ronson said. "Hitch up Hanja's dray, but show some respect. The herd always know."

The stockhand and three of the hangers-on from the bar set to it.

Ronson tipped his hat up and watched as the men looped rope around the base of Gorren's horns and under his remaining arm. "Good time to talk about what brought you three boys to Sweet Water?" He turned toward the free-fighters and let his arms fall to his sides. A low-level violence always boiled off the man, however soft his words, however measured his actions, even in bed. Especially in bed. Now it charged the air and set the hairs standing on Sally's forearms.

The stockhand slapped the dray and started to drag Gorren off, another man followed, hefting the arm, others with pitchforks hoisting coils of dusty guts. Several among the thinning crowd melted into the morning shadows, Ruben Twist among them. The four or five citizens remaining backed toward the barn, daring a stray bullet in hope of some kind of show. Sally slipped in between Joe Hall and a tall gambler that had followed them from the Seven Wheels. The barn's boards pressed against her shoulders, rough through her thin dress.

Henry Walker laughed, a narrow sound among long shadows. He lifted that bowler from his head and ran fingers through the lank strands of his hair before settling it again. "You got us wrong 'slinger. Heard about a strike up in Rust. We're heading out 'cross the Dry soon as we get us a string of mules and such."

Eldreth Larrs held his hands up, palm out. "We ain't lookin' for trouble. It's a thirsty haul out from the Six-oh-Two. Sweet Water sounded like a place a parched man might want to stop a night."

"No sir, not here for trouble." Purbright, lying through his teeth. Ronson had to hear it too. You don't get to be old in his game without hearing the lie.

Henry Walker smiled his grey smile. "Tell truth, we'd best be getting back to our rooms, catch a little shut eye before we start the day's dickering for what we need." He put out his hand, offering the shake, stepped forward. "I heard a lot about you, Mister Greeves, a lot of good stories. Wished I'd have seen one of your fights. It's good to have met you." He held out his open hand, close enough to clasp now. "You can bet I'll spin a tale worth a whiskey or two out of this night's business."

Ronson nodded, a brisk thing. Eyes on Purbright. He took Walker's hand. And in that moment, with Ronson's gun hand gripped tight in his own, Walker pulled the gunslinger close, reaching forward with his left hand. The thin blade that sliced Ronson's throat must have been projected from Walker's wrist by a spring, nothing else could explain the speed of it.

Still holding Ronson's gun hand Walker threw himself back, laughing, spinning the gunslinger round as if they were playing a game, the bright arterial blood arcing from his neck. Grey Mister Walker on whom a smile had seemed less likely than horns, cawed with an unholy joy, somehow childish and pure and all the more sickening for it. Two rotations and he let the slinger go, staggering, tripping over his own feet to fall in the stain that Gorren left behind. Eldreth Larrs followed Ronson as he fell and stepped on the hand that reached even now for the silver handle of his gun.

"No." Larrs shook his head.

The mirth left Walker's face as quickly as it had arrived. He turned toward the watchers back against the barn, Ronson of no interest now.

Sally fell at Purbright's first shot. The bullet smashed through Joe Hall's jaw. Walker joined in, the heavy gun barking in his hand, and splinters flying from the barn wall, but Sally already lay face down in the dirt, sprawled like she was broken, just how it looked in Purbright's bloodstained imagining as the young man advanced, still firing.

In the silence after the last shot there was only the faint bubble and wheeze of Ronson's final breaths fluttering through the slit in his throat, that and the twitching of Joe Hall's foot against the boards of Henja's barn. Sally lay still, tasting the dirt beneath her lips. She'd been wrong about the free-fighters: they hadn't come to Sweet Water to build reputation. They'd come for something simpler and more easy. Murder.

"Well, sir." Henry Walker stowed his smoking revolver and went to stand over Ronson with Larrs. "Well, sir, I may have missed your other fights, but I'm glad I got to see your last one." Larrs laughed at that and Walker bent to take Ronson's guns, two silver-handled seven shooters. "Why thankee." He shoved both into his belt. "Nice pieces o' work."

"We can go now?" Larrs asked.

"We're not done." Walker rapped his teeth. "Purbright! Keep an eye out for any local boys who might find their balls." Walker shook his head and rested one dust-gray boot on Ronson's chest. "We ain't earned our pay yet, Mister Larrs. Ain't that chunk of rock that keeps this place tight against the sect. According to a certain dark gentleman of my acquaintance that rock's been here forever, and the sect came and went as they pleased before this town went up. They don't like it, but it won't keep them out when they want in."

"And it wasn't bull-boy?" Larrs traced a line in the gory dust with his heel.

"Nope."

"We could just keep a-killing people until that dark gentleman of yours lets you know the job's done," Purbright called over his shoulder, a gun in each hand.

Walker shook his head. "Pop enough of these dirt-scrapers and one of them's gonna bring you down with a rifle from a barn window. Scared is good, desperate can be dangerous."

"Guess we're gonna have to sniff around a bit more then." Larrs ran a finger down his scar, an act of memory perhaps. And the three of them walked away, out toward the crip shack.

Sally lay still, claws in the dirt, the smell of blood and foulness in her nose. She watched the men leave, watched through slitted lids and slitted irises as the three blurred and converged against the rising sun. A domen or taur would die before selling out pack or herd, a hunska always had a price, but only a human would sell their kind out for as little as money.