“I don’t know the taller one,” Denny said, “but the other man . . . I’m acquainted with him, all right. You’re not far off the mark, Sheriff. If anybody ever deserved to be shot, or at least horsewhipped, it’s—”
She didn’t get to finish what she was about to say, because at that moment, exactly the sort of thing Denny had just been talking about happened. Five rough-looking men in range clothes who had drifted onto the platform yanked pistols from their holsters and opened fire on the two well-dressed newcomers to Big Rock.
CHAPTER 2
The black-haired man’s cocky grin and casual attitude vanished in a fraction of a second. In the time it took the gunmen to draw their weapons and start shooting, the man dived at Arturo and tackled him. The carpetbags went flying.
Both men sprawled on the platform as guns blasted and bullets sizzled through the space where they had been standing only a heartbeat earlier. Some of the slugs smacked into the side of the railroad car; others whined dangerously off the car’s metal undercarriage.
The would-be killers had spread out as they approached, so they had their intended victims almost surrounded. Most of the people on the platform screamed or shouted in alarm and scattered when the shooting started. With so much open area around them and no place to take cover, the intended victims were doomed.
Or they would have been if Denny and Sheriff Carson hadn’t been there. Denny’s right hand dropped to the pistol on her hip and swooped back up, gripping the gun. The draw was almost too fast for the eye to follow. Flame spouted from the muzzle as Denny triggered the double-action revolver.
The .38 caliber slug from Denny’s Lightning ripped into the back of a gunman’s left shoulder and knocked him halfway around. He howled a curse and stumbled to the side but stayed on his feet. His head jerked from side to side as he tried to figure out who had shot him.
His eyes widened as his gaze lit on Denny. He still had his gun in his right hand. He lifted it to take aim at her.
Denny didn’t let him get the shot off. She had waited a second to see if the man would collapse or drop his weapon, but it was obvious he wasn’t going to do either of those things. She had already drawn a bead on him, so she shot him between the eyes before he could pull the trigger. His head snapped back as the bullet bored into his brain, leaving a red-rimmed hole that looked like a third eye peering out from between the other two.
Monte Carson, who had been a hired gun as a young man before setting out on a long career on the right side of the law, still possessed a fighter’s instincts. As soon as gunplay erupted, he moved swiftly to his left, away from Denny. He pulled his gun smoothly from its holster, pointed it at the nearest of the would-be assassins, and shouted, “Drop it!”
The man had turned partially around, probably in response to the sound of Denny’s gun, and caught sight of the sheriff. He threw a fast shot at Monte but missed. As the bullet whipped past his head, Monte fired. His shot ripped a gash along the gunman’s forearm and caused the man to yelp and drop his revolver.
A few yards away, Denny wheeled behind the roof-support pillar as one of the other gunmen fired at her. The bullet struck the post and chewed splinters from it, only inches from Denny’s head. This wasn’t the first gunfight she’d been in, so she appeared cool and calm, no matter what might be going on inside her, as she dropped to a knee, leaned to her right, and triggered the Lightning again. She grimaced as the shot missed and struck one of the train’s wheels instead.
With the gunmen having to defend themselves from Denny and Monte Carson, that gave the two newcomers a chance to get out of the line of fire. The black-haired man scrambled to his feet and lunged for the steps leading up to the platform at the back of the railroad car, where he had disembarked only moments earlier. He reached the platform in a couple of bounds and disappeared through the open door into the car.
Arturo wasn’t as fast on his feet. Flustered and afraid, he managed to stand up but then froze, standing there whipping his head back and forth in wild-eyed panic. Behind him, one of the killers aimed at him.
Denny saw the man about to gun down Arturo, but Arturo was between her and the would-be assassin and she didn’t have a clear shot at him. She was about to shout a warning, even though it probably wouldn’t do any good, when another shot rang out and the man who was about to blast Arturo staggered under a bullet’s impact instead.
He caught his balance and turned, his face twisting in hate, and fired toward a man who had just emerged from the depot building. This man crouched and triggered his weapon again as the killer’s bullet plowed into the platform only a few feet in front of him.
The second shot punched into the gunman’s belly and tore through his guts. He dropped his gun, doubled over, and collapsed. Agony made him writhe on the platform and leave a crimson smear of blood on the planks.
Three of the hard cases were still on their feet, although one of them was wounded and had dropped his gun. Clutching his bleeding arm, he shouted, “Let’s get out of here!” and followed his own advice, leaping off the platform and running alongside the train until he reached a spot where he could duck between cars and flee on the other side of the tracks.
The other two scattered as well, heading in different directions. Denny lined up a shot on one of them, intending to knock his legs out from under him, but before she could pull the trigger, he ducked behind a stack of bags that had been unloaded from the baggage car, and then he darted through the door into the station lobby. Denny lowered her gun and made a face because she hadn’t had a good shot at him.
She looked around to see if the other man had gotten away. It appeared that he had. Monte Carson had a disgusted expression on his face as he thumbed fresh cartridges into his gun’s cylinder.
“Three of the varmints lit a shuck out of here,” he told Denny, then snapped the Colt’s loading gate closed. “But at least they didn’t kill anybody. That’s a miracle, the way they had those two hombres dead to rights. Instead, it looks like a couple of them were the only ones to cross the divide.”
One of the targets, the tall, slender man named Arturo, still stood on the platform near the railroad car, pale and shaken from his close brush with death. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He swallowed hard, pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket, and wiped it over his face.
The man who had saved Arturo from being shot from behind approached the gut-shot assassin. He hooked a boot toe under the man’s shoulder and rolled him onto his back. The way the gunman’s arms flopped loosely was mute testimony that he was dead. So was the large pool of blood he had left on the platform.
For a moment, Deputy United States Marshal Brice Rogers stood gun in hand and looked down at the man he had shot. Then, evidently satisfied that the hard case was no longer a threat, he pouched his iron and turned toward Denny and Monte Carson.
“I’m not sure what was going on here, Sheriff,” Brice said, “but I’m glad I came along when I did. When I saw that fella about to gun somebody down from behind, I figured I had better try to stop him.”
“I don’t have any idea what it’s all about, either, Brice,” Monte said, “but you did the right thing. Those hombres were trying to commit cold-blooded murder.”
Denny was reloading, too. When she finished, she holstered the Lightning and studied the face of the man she had shot in the head. He had fallen on his back, and other than the neat bullet hole between his eyes, his features were unmarked and looked oddly puzzled, as if he couldn’t quite figure out why he was dead. Denny didn’t recognize his hard-planed, beard-stubbled face, but she had seen plenty like it belonging to other ruthless gunmen she had encountered.
She called over to Monte and Brice, “Do either of you know these men?”
“Never saw them before, as far as I recall,”