Slip Gun (2 page)

‘
Use
that empty stall,’ Derham answered stiffly. Age ought to carry
certain privileges and command some respect. His tone showed that
he resented the curt response. Tut him in, happen it suits
you.’

Just how it happened, Derham
could not say; but his last words had been addressed to the
stranger
’s
back. Footsteps thudded outside, coming towards the barn. In a
swift, silent movement, Smith had dropped the gelding’s reins and
moved to face the open double doors. He stood so that he could look
across the back of his horse at whoever entered. While looking, he
began to peel off his gloves.

Being wise in such matters,
Derham realized that the stranger
’s actions had not been made as a further
snub to him. They were merely the kind of precautions, like
removing the gloves, that a gun fighter would take.

The young men strolled into the barn as if
they owned it. Tall, bulky, they wore a hybrid mixture of town and
range clothes, with Colts in low-hanging, tied-down holsters. Going
by their swaggering attitudes, they considered themselves to be
important citizens.

‘
Hey,
you. Hostler there,’ called the taller of the pair. ‘Try “hostling”
some and get our hosses ready.’

‘
Right
sharp, too,’ the second new arrival went on, darting a challenging
look Smith’s way. ‘We ain’t got all day.’

‘
I’m
tending to this gent,’ Derham objected.

‘
He
don’t mind waiting,’ declared the first speaker.

Smith
’s cold, unfriendly eyes studied the
pair and he assessed their quality like a rancher picking culls out
of a herd.

They did not need much deep thought to
classify them. No matter where one rode west of the Mississippi
River, their kind could be found. Small-town loafers, would-be
hard-cases, reared on tales of the old-time gun fighters and
desperate to prove themselves in that same magic-handed category.
Given the right conditions, they could be as dangerous as a
stick-teased diamond back rattlesnake. Let them take an inch of
liberty with you and they would grab for a mile. Wanting no trouble
with them, Smith acted accordingly.

‘
I
do
mind waiting,’ he stated, dropping the gloves into his
jacket’s side pockets and stepping clear of the horse.

‘
Yeah?’
grunted the taller hard case. ‘Well, he’ll get ’round to you when
he’s through with us.’

‘’
Cepting I don’t figure on waiting that long,’ Smith
replied. ‘I’ll be needing grain, water and hay, mister.’

Watching the by-play, Derham felt uneasy and
a mite disappointed. He had decided that the newcomer was a gun
fighter and felt that the other was trying to spoil his summation.
Instead of unbuttoning his jacket, the man had thrust his hands
deep into its pockets. Glancing down, the old timer failed to
detect any bulge that would hint that either pocket held a weapon.
A man ought not to go up against Billy and Angus McCobb unless he
was full ready to protect himself.

Taking in
Smith
’s
posture, Billy McCobb flashed a knowing wink at his smaller,
younger brother. Like Derham, Billy had looked carefully for signs
of the stranger holding a gun concealed in one pocket. Billy felt
sure there was not. Maybe that feller figured to look hard and
ornery, but he missed impressing Billy by a good country mile. He
needed teaching a lesson in Sweetwater County manners, which the
brothers would be right pleasured to give him.

‘
I’m
saying the hostler sees to us first,’ Billy announced, advancing
slightly ahead and to the right of Angus. ‘So you can just set back
and wait on your betters, feller.’

‘
Counting there was any such,’ Smith drawled, keeping his
hands in his pockets. ‘I don’t see any of ’em around.’

‘
Maybe
you need something to open your eyes!’ Billy barked. ‘Like a crack
’tween ’em with a Colt’s barrel.’

‘
You’d
have to take it out afore you could do that,’ Smith pointed
out.

‘
Which’s easy enough done!’ Billy
snapped, right hand dropping towards the holstered revolver as he
strode into range for carrying out the threat.

Smith moved while Billy was
declaring his intentions. Unlike the young
hard case, who had telegraphed every
move, the Texan gave no hint of what he meant to do. Leaving his
hands where they were, Smith bent his right knee slightly. Up swung
his left leg until its knee almost touched his chest and the foot
was vertical to the ground. All in the same flashing motion, the
foot stamped foot. The sole of Smith’s boot caught Billy on the
chest and shoved hard. Taken by surprise, Billy staggered by his
brother and landed on his rump with a solid thud.

From delivering the attack,
Smith dropped the boot to the floor and used it as a pivot. Seeing
the Texan apparently turning away, Angus lunged at him. If the
younger brother believed that he was coming unexpectedly, he
received rapid disillusionment. Balancing on his left leg, Smith
swung his right around and stabbed it rearwards. It rammed with
speed, accuracy and considerable force against
Angus
’ solar
plexus. Letting out a croaking yelp of pain, Angus changed his
advance into a retreat. Stumbling backwards, he tripped over
Billy’s feet and fell on top of his brother. They subsided in a
heap, to Derham’s undisguised delight.

Foul language billowed up from
the McCobb boys as they rolled apart. Still seated on the
hard-packed dirt floor, they directed their thoughts to wiping out
the insult piled upon their family
’s honor. With hands grabbing towards
holsters, they turned angry eyes in search of their assailant.
Doing so proved to be one of the few sensible acts in two otherwise
mis-spent lives.

From heaving Angus after Billy,
Smith brought his left leg down in the first of three strides which
carried him to his horse
’s near flank. His hands, stripped of their
gloves, left the pockets. The right flashed forward to close around
the wrist of the rifle’s butt. At the same moment, the left slapped
the gelding on the rump. Snaking its head aside, to avoid stepping
on the trailing reins, the horse walked into the empty stall. By
doing so, it drew the boot away from the rifle. As soon as the
barrel cleared leather, Smith spun on his heel in the brothers’
direction. Swinging the rifle around, he caught its fore grip in
his left palm. He halted with his weapon dangling before him in
both fists.

Admiration and satisfaction
flickered on Derham
’s seamed old features as he watched Smith hand the McCobb
boys their needings. Every move had clearly been planned in advance
and carried out with commendable precision. Putting his hands in
his pockets had been smart, not foolish, lulling the brothers into
a sense of false security. Derham had never seen a feller who could
handle his feet in such a fancy, effective manner.

Glancing at the rifle, the
hostler felt puzzled. At first sight it looked like an old Henry,
with the barrel-long tubular magazine completely exposed. Its
excellent condition suggested that it had been made long after
Oliver Winchester stopped production on the Henry in
favor of the more
advanced models. Closer observation showed that it lacked the usual
Winchester’s lever and had a fore grip, shortened to a piece of
wood just large enough to be grasped by its user’s left hand.
Derham might have noticed other things, but the McCobbs’ behavior
attracted his attention.

‘
Get
the—!’ Billy was saying.

‘
If you
try to pull those guns,’ Smith put in and the rifle’s muzzle tilted
into line between the brothers, ready to turn either way, ‘I’ll
kill you both.’

There was no bombast in the
words, only a plain statement of fact. With a cold, chilling
sensation, Billy realized that he had gone in when the water ran
high over the willows. A quick glimpse of his
brother
’s
face told him that Angus shared his sentiments. Taking their hands
away from the guns, they came slowly to their feet. Still the rifle
remained pointing in their direction. The situation called for
tact, not muscle.

‘
You’d
best tell him who we are, old man,’ Billy ordered, trying to retain
his habitual tough tone.

‘
They’re Sheriff McCobb’s nephews, mister,’ Derham
introduced.

‘
Deputies!’
Billy corrected coldly. ‘Nephews’ did not carry a
sufficiently impressive connotation at that moment. Turning what he
hoped to be an officially threatening eye on Smith, he continued,
‘And we’re on law business, stranger.’

‘
Which
nobody’s stopping you doing,’ Smith pointed out. ‘I’ll take the
water and grain for starters, friend.’

‘
That’s
im—imp—im—!’ Angus spluttered, trying to remember an imposing legal
term he had heard used by his uncle.

‘
Impeding an officer in the right and lawful execution of
his sworn duty’s what you mean,’ Smith supplied. ‘And, afore you
tell me I’m doing that, you pair’s near on been guilty of felonious
assault on a law-abiding citizen, threatening behavior and
malabusement of civic authority as covered in Amendment Eleven,
Twenty-Three, Sixty-One of the Constitution.’

Although the rifle had turned
away from them while Smith was speaking, the brothers refrained
from further hostilities. They were impressed by his quick and
thorough command of legal phraseology. Whatever that
‘malabusement of
civic authority’ might be, it sounded important—and liable to make
bad trouble for lawmen caught doing it. The brothers eyed Smith
with renewed interest and some concern, wondering who the hell he
might be. He knew the law and handled that rifle real good. Maybe
he was a peace officer in transit between jobs. Or, worse still, he
might be a U.S. marshal touring Wyoming Territory to find out how
it stacked up for State-hood.

Whoever the stranger might be,
he exhibited no concern over what the brothers might do next, nor
for their uncle
’s, the sheriff’s, possible wrath. If he should be a U.S.
marshal, he packed a whole heap more political say-so than any
sheriff and Uncle Horace would not want him riled. It might be
smarter to let the matter drop, cut their losses and depart before
worse happened to them.

‘
Come
on, Angus,’ Billy snapped, sounding briskly and artificially
efficient as he made his second wise decision in one day; a record
which he would probably never again equal. ‘Let’s get moving, we
don’t have time to waste here.’

‘
We
sure don’t,’ the younger McCobb agreed. ‘Unc— The sheriff’s
counting on us to see the stage comes in safe.’

Having convinced
themselves
—if
nobody else—that they were withdrawing from the unpleasantness by
their own choice, the brothers slouched across to the inverted
V-shaped wooden burro erected along the left side wall. They
collected their saddles, went to and entered their horses’
stalls.

‘
You
can lend them a hand,’ the Texan told Derham. ‘If you’re so
minded.’

‘
I
ain’t,’ answered the old timer. ‘Boss’d charge my time to the
county if I did. Which, being a tax-paying citizen, I ain’t fixing
to see my hard-earned money wasted a-pampering the sheriff’s
shirt-tail kin. What can I get for you?’

‘
Nothing,’ grinned Smith and joined the gelding in the
stall. ‘But the horse here can use some grain, hay and
water.’

Cackling appreciatively, Derham
ambled away. Smith slid the rifle back into its boot, removed his
jacket and hung it over the dividing wall. At the other end of the
line of stalls, the McCobbs kept up a too-loud conversation and
acted as if they had intended doing their own saddling from the
beginning. Clearly they had no intention of making more trouble.
The gist of their conversation
—designed, Smith guessed, to mollify him—was that
any owlhoot stupid enough to try robbing a stagecoach under their
protection would rapidly and permanently learn the error of his
ways. While Smith harbored considerable doubts on that subject, he
kept his comments to himself.

Derham had been sufficiently
impressed by Smith to overlook the other
’s earlier brusque conduct. So he
took a bucket and filled it with fresh-pumped water, then mixed a
meal in a new feedbag. By the time he returned, carrying the bucket
in one hand and bag in the other, the McCobbs were leading their
horses from the barn.

Going towards the stall where
Smith stood rubbing the gelding
’s back with a fist-full of straw, the hostler
satisfied some more of his curiosity and gave himself another
puzzle. Removing the jacket had exposed Smith’s calfskin vest. It
also presented the old timer with the first view of his gunbelt. As
when Smith had faced the McCobbs with hands in pockets, Derham felt
a sense of anticlimax. The belt was higher on Smith’s waist than
favored by real fast men. Carrying a Colt Civilian Model Peacemaker
with its staghorn butt reversed, an excellently-made,
contour-fitting Missouri Skintite-style holster rode at an extreme
forward tilt just behind his right hip.