This Calder Range (Calder Saga 1)

“They were in a fight.” At that point it had become impossible to wait patiently at the ranch until Benteen returned—if he returned. She had to be there when it was over. “I’m going into town.” Her announcement hadn’t come as any surprise to Rusty. “Can you manage?”

“I can manage, but you ain’t goin’ in alone. Benteen would have our hides for that. Barnie will hitch up the wagon and ride into town with you.”

“Can I go, too?” Webb had pleaded.

“No.”

She had lost one son in a shooting fray. She would not now risk the life of her only child.

Loman Janes threw the money on the bar for his drinks and pushed away from the rail. His pointed glance prompted the other three members of the Ten Bar outfit to follow suit. “Reckon it’s late.”

There was a reluctant shuffling of boots and rattling spurs as they trailed after him to leave the saloon. Janes paused on the board sidewalk outside to instinctively take in the activity on the street. As he was hitching up his gunbelt to a more comfortable position on his narrow hips, he saw the four riders coming down the street slow and easy-like. There was no mistaking Bull Giles’s broad hulk or the tall, loose-riding form of Benteen Calder.

Janes stepped out of the light spilling from the saloon and into the shadows close by the wall, hissing to his men to come away from the door. The sight of the two men together seemed to confirm Boston’s fearful suspicions, Janes realized. With Boston running scared, it was time to take matters into his own hands. Calder had come into town hunting trouble, but what he didn’t know—Janes smiled coldly to himself—was that trouble had found him first.

“Hank, get across that street into the side alley by the land office. Young, get to a window upstairs.” Janes began dispersing his men with whispers. “Reynolds, you take that next doorway. It’s Giles and Calder we want. Concentrate on them.”

It was cut and dried to Loman Janes. When you wanted a man dead, you killed him. Only a gunslick looking for a reputation walked out on the street and challenged a man. Most gunfights came two ways—either with pistols drawn in the heat of an argument or with a planned attack on your enemy.

Benteen’s gaze, always restless, traveled over both sides of the street. A cowboy entered a saloon ahead of them on the right. At the end of the block, a man crossed the street. Figures moved in the shadows outside the saloon, but all the activity seemed normal. Benteen was thinking ahead—to the bank and Judd Boston, if that’s where he was. There was no sign of Woolie yet.

The curly-haired blond cowboy turned his horse up the side alley that would bring him onto the street by the land office. The buggy had been parked behind the bank, and a light had been burning in a rear window.

Woolie noticed the cowboy leaning against the corner of the building at the head of the alley. He didn’t think much of it at first. The cowboy could have stepped into the alley to take a leak before riding home, but his stance was all wrong and he seemed to be watching the street. The ground was soft under his horse’s feet, so it made little sound. A furrow of unease ran across Woolie’s forehead. What was the man hanging around for if he wasn’t taking a leak or havin’ a smoke? As he came closer, he saw the glint of a gun barrel and had enough of a look at the man’s face to recognize him for a Ten Bar rider.

With a yelled warning, Woolie drove his spurs into the horse’s flanks and charged straight for the cowboy. He saw the man jerk his head around in surprise, then try to turn and bring his gun around, but Woolie’s horse was shouldering into him and knocking him against the building. Woolie fired his gun at the man as the horse raced past him, and cursed when he missed.

When the yell came from the alley, Benteen yanked on the reins. A coldness went through him in quick, successive waves. Suddenly all the sounds were loud, all the smells were strong, and all the images on the street became sharp. In the split second of reaction time, he was swinging his horse out of the center of the street just as a shot cracked the air. Then all hell broke loose.

On horseback, they made high-placed targets for the men in the shadows. Lead was whining all around him as Woolie broke into the street with his gun blazing to answer the fire from sidewalk areas outside the saloon. Benteen’s horse staggered as he peeled from the saddle. A bullet slammed into his left shoulder, spinning him into the shadows of a building’s front. He scrambled behind a wooden barrel, his left arm hanging limp.

His pulse was striking hard in his neck, his breath coming short and fast as Benteen scanned the opposite side of the street and tried to locate his own men. There was a lull in the firing, no more shooting blindly. Riderless horses cantered down the street to escape the noisy fracas. His left arm was useless, so he tucked his hand inside the waistband of his pants.

Jessie was sprawled flat on the ground between a horse trough and the raised board sidewalk. There was the scrape of a boot behind him. Benteen sent a short look to the sound. Bull Giles was dragging a leg as he tried to sit up in a recessed doorway. He couldn’t see Woolie or Bob Vernon, but there weren’t any bodies in the street.

If Woolie hadn’t warned them, they would have been caught flat-footed. Chances are they’d all be lying in the street now. Benteen’s gaze returned to the buildings on the opposite side of the street, searching for shapes in the night. He noticed a strange thing. All the windows in the second story of the saloon had lights in them—all but one. It was dark, and the window was open. Benteen could see the curtain blowing out. He fired three rounds into it and saw a man slump over the sill, a gun falling from his hand.

But he’d also given away his own position. Bullets whacked into the barrel and sprayed the building just above his head, pinning him down. Then Bull opened fire along with Jessie, aiming for those bursts of flame across the street. Benteen made a break for the alley, crouching low against the building. There’d been a man waiting there to ambush them, so he came around the corner, expecting to be met. The cowboy was slumped forward on his knees, a hand holding the back of his bare head as he groaned and made an uncoordinated attempt to rise.

“My head …” he moaned, “I feel funny,” and slithered to the ground, unconscious.

There was the rattle of a buggy coming down the street. Benteen flattened himself against the alley wall. Confusion traveled through him when he recognized the man in the bowler hat and business suit driving the buggy. Judd Boston.

From across the street, Loman Janes’s voice called, “Get out of the way! We got Calder pinned down!”

Boston stopped the buggy in the middle of the street, sawing on the reins to hold his nervous horse. “You fool! You imbecilic fool!” Then he stood up in the buggy and faced the other side of the street. “Calder! This is not my doing! Janes is acting on his own! I had nothing to do with this—or anything else!” He proclaimed his innocence for all to hear.

“You yellow bastard!” Janes growled from the shadows.

Two shots were fired, one on top of the other, and Boston fell back onto the buggy seat, the horse bolting. Benteen took advantage of the runaway vehicle’s distraction to make a dash across the street. He reached the other side and ducked down behind a rain barrel.

His shoulder was throbbing, wetness trickling down his arm. Licking his dry lips, he remained poised and listening to pinpoint the location of his adversaries by sound.

Boston was either dead or out of it, but it wasn’t over. As much as he disliked Loman Janes, Benteen felt a certain degree of respect for the man. He had his standards and he’d stick by them to the end. He’d brought the fight to Benteen, and it wouldn’t be over until one of them was dead.

A wave of dizziness washed over him and he shook it off. There was a scurry of movement. Benteen swung away from the barrel, squared toward the sound, and fired. He quickly moved to the left toward the building. His shots had missed, but they had driven a man away from the protection of a wide door frame. It was the gunhand Reynolds. He fired from the hip at Benteen’s moving target. One sliced a hot iron along his thigh. His leg started to buckle as Benteen fired at the man’s shape, briefly outlined. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber, but Reynolds was falling.

A cold smile of satisfaction had curved Janes’s lips when the rig with Judd Boston had bolted down the street. The bastard had been putting all the blame on him to save his own skin, and he got what he deserved.