Blood Duel (30 page)

The batwings were flapping. The rest of the posse was hurrying from the saloon.

Seamus eased up high enough to sit on the edge of the water trough. Several men were keeping an eye on the store window and the doorway.

“Men,” Seamus began when they were all gathered, “I have good reason to suspect that Jeeter Frost is holed up in that store. We are going to rush him. Or,
rather, you are, since I can’t hardly rush anything in the shape I am in.”

From out of the group came a muttered “How come only us? Your legs still work fine.”

“Who said that?” Seamus demanded, and when no one responded, he swore. “Where is your sense of duty? Of civic pride? You are sworn to uphold the law, and that should count for something.”

“Only if the upholding doesn’t get me killed,” another man said.

“As a posse, you would make a fine sewing circle,” Seamus chastised them.

“We fought the Hasletts, didn’t we?” Winston retorted. “You could at least give us our due.”

Seamus slowly rose, his shoulder a welter of pain. “What I would like to give you is a good swift kick in the britches. But if you won’t do this without me, then by God I will show you that one of us has sand!”

That was when a revolver boomed over by the saloon, followed by a whoop and a holler. Jack Coombs came from under the overhang, a nearly empty whiskey bottle in one hand, a smoking revolver in the other. “Where is he? Where is the coyote we are after?”

“Oh, hell,” Seamus said.

The old scout staggered toward them, swaying as if he were on the pitching deck of a sea-tossed ship. “I am a hellion born and bred! I can lick my weight in wildcats and spit my weight in nails!”

Winston’s brow puckered. “Did he just say spit his weight in nails? What does that mean? I have never heard it before.”

“I doubt he knows,” Seamus said. At the scout he
snapped, “Jack! Go back inside the saloon. Your help isn’t needed.”

Coombs chugged another mouthful of red-eye, then let loose with a remarkable imitation of a Comanche war whoop. “You need killing done, I am your man! I have killed Apaches! I have killed Sioux! I have killed Crows!”

“Aren’t the Crows friendly?” someone asked.

“I have killed a few white men, too,” Coombs boasted. “Scalawags like this Jeeter Frost. Outcasts and ruffians. Riffraff and vermin. Scum and then some.”

“He is almost poetical when he is drunk,” Winston said.

Lafferty was running out of paper. He flipped a sheet to write on the other side, and glanced at the general store as he flipped. He noticed that everyone was staring at Jack Coombs. Not one person was watching the store. Which explained why he was the one who blurted in astonishment, “Will you look at that!”

Everyone turned.

Chester Luce was framed in the doorway. He had a long-barreled revolver in each hand and a dark stain on his shirt that could only be one thing. His pudgy frame was perfectly still except for the quivering of his thick lips.

“Mayor Luce?” Seamus said.

Jack Coombs was almost to the water trough. “What has gotten into that ball of butter?”

“Butter, am I?” Chester yelled shrilly. “My wife never thought I was butter! She called me her little hamster!”

Seamus needed a drink. He needed a drink badly. “If I am not dreaming, I should be.”

“You are butter, all right,” Jack Coombs said to Luce. “A bufflehead, too, or you would not be standing there holding pistols I wager you do not know how to use.”

“Oh, don’t I?” Chester said, and shot the scout in the chest. Pivoting, he shot a second posse member and then a third, both too stunned to react in time.

“He is killing everyone!” Winston the dishwasher cried, and was jarred onto his heels by a slug that removed most of his left eye and part of his nose.

Lafferty, scribbling in a frenzy, bawled, “Somebody do something!”

Chester pointed both revolvers at the water trough. “Do you know what I hate more than Dodge? Nothing. And all of you are from Dodge, so I hate all of you more than I hate nothing.”

“He has gone plumb crazy!” the butcher’s helper exclaimed.

Seamus thought so, too. A wild gleam lit the mayor’s eyes. But there was little he could do, unarmed and wounded. “Drop those pistols, Mayor Luce!”

Chester did no such thing. He walked out into the sunlight, firing with each step. It was true he had never handled a revolver before, but he did not need to be a marksman to hit the posse. They were packed close together and only a few yards away and they could not scramble fast enough to avoid the lead he flung at them. Shot after shot after shot, until he came to the trough, and Seamus Glickman. Smiling, he pointed a revolver at Glickman’s face. “You are the one I
want to kill the most. You are the one to blame for Adolphina.”

“What in hell are you talking about?” Seamus demanded. “I didn’t shoot your wife. Those Larns did.”

“You are from Dodge,” Chester said, and squeezed the trigger. The metallic click brought a frown. “Damn. This one is empty. I had better try the other.” He raised his other pistol.

Seamus stared his demise in the muzzle. He should do something, he should defend himself, but his limbs would not work. All he could do was blurt, “Damn you, Luce. You are a pitiful excuse for a mayor.”

That was when Jack Coombs reared up off the ground with a bowie knife in his hand. His chest was covered with blood and blood was trickling from both corners of his mouth, but he had enough life in him to bury the bowie to the hilt in Chester Luce’s ribs. More blood bubbled from the old scout’s mouth as he gurgled, “You killed me and now I have killed you!” Cackling, he expired in a limp heap.

Chester had never felt such pain. But it was only for an instant. Then his chest seemed to explode, and his last sight as his legs gave way was Adolphina, lying so close that he flung out an arm and clasped her lifeless fingers in his. “I am coming to join you, my love. We are shed of Dodge at last.” He gasped once and was still.

Lafferty jumped up from behind the trough. “Did you see? Wasn’t it glorious? My readers will eat it up.”

“Someone hand me my revolver,” Seamus Glickman said, “so I can shoot me a journalist.”

Jeeter Frost was never caught.

Dodge City hired a new schoolmarm. As for the old one, about six years after her disappearance, a rumor spread that Ernestine Prescott had been spotted in California, and was happily married to a small man who ran a tavern.

Seamus Glickman quit his job as undersheriff. He went back East, to Philadelphia, and lived with his sister for a while before opening a shop that specialized in the finest of clothes for men.

Sheriff Hinkle was reelected but did not go on to become a federal marshal. He made no mention of Jeeter Frost or the schoolmarm in his campaign speeches.

Frank Lafferty worked first in Denver and later in San Francisco. He was a leading journalist of his day, even if, as his critics pointed out, his journalism pandered to those with prurient interests. He also wrote penny dreadfuls, his most popular entitled
Chester Luce, Shootist Supreme
.

As for Coffin Varnish, within a year it was just another ghost town.

The Andersons, Dolph and Filippa, moved to Minnesota.
They loved the bitter cold and deep snow. It reminded them of home.

The Giorgios received a letter from Italy and sailed for Naples, never to be heard from again.

Placido and Arturo returned to their village in Mexico. They were happy to be back among people who, as Placido put it, were not loco.

Winifred Curry saw to it that Chester and Adolphina were properly buried. He even paid for headstones—small headstones—from the money he made when he put their bodies on display. A dead mayor was a novelty. A dead woman was a sensation. He estimated three-fourths of the county came to view them, at a dollar a view.