By the Horns Read online

  “What do you think it is?” Luke rejoined, and nodded at Big Blue. “That there is my ticket to California.”

  Bronk wagged his Winchester. “Let’s get it over with. Someone might have heard the shot.”

  “Don’t wet yourself. People shoot all the time,” Luke said. “The nearest trail herd is five miles back, remember? We have these gents all to ourselves, and I aim to do it nice and slow.” He smirked at Owen. “I’ve been waitin’ for such a long time, I can’t deprive myself, now can I?”

  “So it’s come to this,” Owen said.

  “Admit it. You always knew it would.” Luke Deal grinned and gave a little shiver. “Damn, this feels good! Almost as good as sleepin’ with Carmody.”

  Owen began to rise but stopped when Bronk swung a rifle toward him. “Don’t mention her again. You only dallied with her to spite me.”

  “True,” Luke admitted, and laughed. “She was so mad at you takin’ up with the schoolmarm, she was easy to fool.”

  Instead of Owen growing madder, his features softened. “I’ll never understand where you went wrong. When you were younger you were the best of us. I always looked up to you.”

  Luke Deal stepped back as if he had been punched. “Don’t you dare play that card!” he spat. “It’s a little late to be bringin’ up the good old days.”

  “Ride out,” Owen said. “Leave now and we’ll give you an hour’s start. You have my word.”

  “You’ll give us—?” Luke stopped and snorted and shook his head. “You amaze me sometimes. We’re holdin’ guns on you and you act as if it’s the other way around.”

  Bronk nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “What is the point of all this jabberin’? We should get it over with.”

  “Are you cross at me?” Luke Deal asked.

  “No. Never. Of course not,” Bronk timidly answered. “I’m sorry. If you want to jabber, you go right ahead.”

  “I’m glad I have your permission.” Luke moved to the left and a step nearer to the fire but still stayed well out of reach. “I suppose you have a point, though. We shouldn’t take all night.” He trained his Remington on Benedito Chavez. “You there. The Mex. On your feet.”

  “Sí, señor.” His hands in the air, Benedito slowly stood. “I am unarmed, señor, so I hope you will not shoot me.”

  “You’re a liar, Mex,” Luke Deal said. “I saw the machete under your serape when we were lyin’ out in the grass spyin’ on you. You used it to chop the head off the grouse.”

  Grutt sneered savagely and sighted down his rifle. “Let me do him, Luke. You know how I hate greasers.”

  “Be my guest.”

  The rifle cracked and Benedito was whipped partway around. He crumpled without a sound, lying so close to the fire that the flames threatened to engulf his clothes.

  Cackling gleefully, Grutt worked the Winchester’s lever, ejecting the spent cartridge. “One less chili pepper!” he crowed.

  Lon Chalmers was quaking with fury. He did not appear to care that the muzzle of Grutt’s rifle had now swung toward him. Glancing at Owen, he rasped, “It ends here, it ends now.”

  “That it does,” Luke Deal said, and pointed his Remington at Alfred Pitney. “Shuck your hardware, gents, or the foreigner is next.”

  “He’s under our care,” Owen said.

  “I figured,” Luke said. “And I know how your mind works. You won’t let anything happen to him if you can help it. So if you want him to go on breathin’ a while yet, you best do as I say.” His tone hardened. “Shed the six-shooters. Use two fingers, and pretend you’re molasses.”

  “No!” Pitney cried. “Don’t disarm on my account! They plan to kill us anyway, don’t they?”

  Owen lowered two fingers toward his Colt but suddenly stopped and turned toward Lon Chalmers, who was coiled like a rattler. “Lon?”

  “No.”

  “They’ll shoot him.”

  “No.”

  “We gave our word to Mr. Bartholomew. The Englishman’s welfare above our own, remember?”

  “If I’m to go down, I go down shootin’,” Lon Chalmers vowed, and locked eyes with Grutt. “Start the ball, you son of a bitch, and let’s dance.”

  Grutt’s pockmarked cheek was pressed to his rifle’s stock and his dark eyes glittered with bloodlust. “It will be a pleasure to put windows in your skull.”

  Tension crackled like invisible lightning. The two cowboys did not stand a prayer. They knew it, and Alfred Pitney knew it, and so did Luke Deal and his two curly wolves. In another moment Lon would flash for his Colt and rifles would crash and revolvers would crack and it would be over.

  But in the few heartbeats before that crucial moment, Big Blue sniffed and rumbled deep in his barrel chest and moved toward the prone form of Slim and the pool of blood forming around Slim’s body. In doing so, the tip of the bull’s horn brushed Bronk, who yelped and sprang aside, afraid the longhorn was about to gore him.

  For a fleeting instant, Luke Deal and Grutt took their eyes off Lon Chalmers and Owen. It was just the distraction the cowboys needed. In that instant, Lon Chalmers streaked his right hand to his Colt. Owen, slower but just as quick-witted, went for his own.

  To Alfred Pitney everything that happened next was a blur of thunder and blood. He saw Lon’s Colt flash into Lon’s hand, saw the top of Grutt’s head explode in a rain of hair and brains. Bronk, rushing his shot, fired and missed. Lon Chalmers whirled. Bronk’s rifle and Lon’s Colt cracked simultaneously. Bronk staggered. Swift as thought, Lon fired again, and Bronk’s legs started to go.

  “Luke! Help me!”

  Lon let his Colt answer the strangled bellow, not once but twice. No more were needed.

  Half of Bronk’s face was blown away.

  At the very split second that Lon shot Grutt, Luke Deal had snapped a shot at Owen, and backpedaled. Owen jerked, tucked his elbow to his side, and fired back. It was Luke’s turn to jerk; he fired once more, spun, and ran.

  Owen ran after him.

  So did Pitney, much to Pitney’s surprise. He was up off the grass and racing in their wake before his mind realized what his legs were doing. He could just make out Owen. Luke Deal had been swallowed by the darkness.

  The night spat flame and Owen responded in kind.

  It dawned on Pitney that he might be hit by a stray bullet. He slowed, and almost immediately lost of sight of Owen. He slowed even more, his eyes straining. Another shot rolled off across the prairie. Once more Owen answered.

  A curse rent the air.

  Not wanting to miss the outcome, Pitney discarded caution and sped toward the voice. Then he saw them.

  Luke Deal was on his back in the grass, an inky stain spreading across his shirt. Owen stood over him, his Colt angled down.

  “Do it, damn you!”

  Owen did not respond.

  “What are you waitin’ for?” Luke Deal spat. “If you expect me to beg, I won’t. If you expect me to cry and whine, I won’t. I don’t regret a single thing I’ve done. Do you hear me? Not a single thing.”

  “You strayed too far,” Owen said.

  Alfred Pitney stopped well back. He did not understand the cowboy’s hesitation. Were it him, he would shoot Deal dead and be done with it.

  “Listen to you,” Luke snarled. “Always on the straight and narrow. Always his favorite.”

  “That’s not true. He was as fond of you as he was of me. Why do you think he said it was all right for those men to stay for supper? He didn’t trust them. I could see it in his eyes. But you were so excited.”

  In a small voice, a tiny voice, the voice of a little boy, Luke Deal said, “I liked their uniforms. I always liked soldiers. I wanted to be one when I grew up.”

  “And you’ve been blamin’ yourself ever since.”

  Luke Deal’s voice grew husky with emotion. “I can’t stand it, anymore, Owen. I can’t stand me. Just squeeze, will you?”

  Owen extended the Colt and curled his thumb around the hammer. “It
didn’t have to come to this.”

  “Yes it did. Don’t you remember? The night we shot those Rebs? You bawled and said as how you never wanted to kill another person as long as you lived.”

  “So?”

  “I liked it, Owen. God help me, but I liked blowin’ those bastards to hell and back. I liked the killin’. I’ve liked it ever since.”

  “That’s loco. No one can enjoy something like that.”

  Luke Deal coughed and dark flecks appeared at both corners of his mouth. “I don’t want another of your lectures. Get it over with.”

  Owen thumbed back the hammer and took precise aim. Seconds went by. Then a whole minute. Owen slowly lowered the Colt and slid it into his holster. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

  Something brushed Alfred Pitney’s sleeve.

  Lon Chalmers strode past. Without saying a word, he walked up to Luke Deal and shot him four times in the chest, one shot right after the other, crack, crack, crack, crack. Without looking at Owen, he said gently, “Benedito needs you, pard. They only winged him.”

  The Bar 40 foreman numbly nodded and moved woodenly toward their camp.

  Lon finished reloading and twirled the Colt into his holster. He raised his boot as if to stomp it down on Luke Deal’s face, then slowly lowered it, and sighed, and glanced at Alfred Pitney. “It had to be me.”

  “I know.”

  “No one should have to kill their own brother.”