Duff heard the bark of a rifle. Then he saw someone tumbling forward off the roof of the dress shop. The man had had a bead on Duff, and Duff hadn’t seen him. Looking toward the sound of the rifle shot, Duff saw Biff Johnson. Smiling, Biff waved at him, then stepped back behind the corner of Curly Latham’s Barber Shop.
There was someone behind the false front of Fiddler’s Green, and he fired at Duff. Duff returned fire, but the man had slipped back behind the false front, so he missed. But he kept his eye peeled on the false front and when the man appeared to take another shot at Duff, Duff fired first. The man dropped his gun to the street as he pitched back.
“I’m gettin’ out of here!” someone shouted.
“Me too.”
Duff saw two more men abandon their hiding places behind the corners of buildings. As they ran across the street, they started shooting toward Duff. He fired back. His bullet caught one of the men high in the chest, and he pitched forward, halfway across the street, falling across Peggy’s body. He missed the second man with his first shot, but the next one brought him down.
“Malcolm!” someone shouted. “Malcolm, they’s five of us down! There’s only three of us left! Hey, wait a minute! He’s shot six times! Ha! He’s out of bullets!”
The person who was shouting suddenly appeared from the corner of another building, running across the street toward Duff, shooting as he ran.
“MacCallister!” a voice shouted from behind Duff. Turning toward the voice he saw Fred Matthews. Fred tossed a revolver toward him.
Duff caught the revolver, then turned it around and shot his adversary at point-blank range.
“What the hell? Where did you . . . ?” He fell forward, facedown into the watering trough.
The man’s shout that there were only three of them left corresponded with Biff’s report that there had been eight of them. That meant that now there were only two. He knew that Malcolm was in the saloon, but he had no idea where the other one was.
“MacCallister, look over here!” Malcolm called.
Looking toward the front door of the saloon, Duff saw Malcolm coming outside. Another man was with him and this man was holding Lucy in front of him. Duff couldn’t see that much of him, just about half of his head as he was peeking around Lucy’s shoulder.
“Now, Mr. MacCallister, here is how we are going to play this little drama,” Malcolm said. “You and I will both raise our pistols toward each other. I will count to three, then we will fire. If you fire before I get to three, Mr. Pogue, here, is going to kill this lady. But”—Malcolm smiled, as he held up a finger—“here is what makes the game even more interesting. When I get to three, Mr. Pogue is going to kill the girl, anyway. That means you are going to have to make up your mind as to whether you want to try and save the whore or shoot me. Not fair I know, but those are my rules.”
Duff raised his pistol and shot Pogue, the bullet whizzing cleanly past Lucy and hitting Pogue in the forehead. He dropped like a poleaxed mule.
“No!” Malcolm shouted, shocked at how quickly and cleanly Duff had killed Pogue.
“I’ll make my own rules,” Duff said.
Malcolm had turned his pistol toward Lucy, but realized, at once, that he had made a big mistake. He tried to bring his pistol back to bear on Duff, but it was too late.
Duff’s bullet hit Malcolm between his eyes.
Before he headed back home, the entire town of Chugwater turned out to hail Duff as a hero. Duff had a few people of his own to thank, Biff Johnson for shooting the man off the roof who had a bead on him, Fred Matthews for tossing him a loaded revolver just in time, and Megan Parker, who reminded Duff that Chugwater held a dance, once a month, in the ballroom of the Dunn Hotel.
It was about a ten-minute ride back home, and as he approached, he saw a strange horse tied out front. Dismounting, he was examining the horse when Elmer Gleason stepped out onto the front porch.
“Mr. MacCallister, you have a visitor inside. He is a friend from Scotland.”
Duff smiled broadly. Could it be Ian McGregor? He stepped up onto the front porch, then went inside. “Ian?” he called.
It wasn’t Ian, it was Angus Somerled. Somerled was standing by the stove, holding a pistol that was leveled at Duff.
“Somerled,” Duff said.
“Ye’ve been a hard man to put down, Duff Tavish MacCallister, but the job is done now.”
Duff said nothing.
“Here now, lad, and has cat got your tongue?”
“I didn’t expect to see you,” Duff said.
“Nae, I dinna think you would. Would you be tellin’ me where I might find my deputy?”
“Malcolm is dead.”
“Aye, I thought as much. Killed him, did ye?”
“It seemed the thing to do.”
“There is an old adage: If you want something done right, do it yourself. I should have come after you a long time ago, instead of getting my sons and my deputies killed.”
“That night on Donuum Road, I was coming to give myself up,” Duff said. “None of this need have happened. Your sons would still be alive, Skye would still be alive. But you were too blinded by hate.”
“We’ve talked enough, Duff MacCallister,” Somerled said. He cocked the pistol and Duff steeled himself.
Suddenly the room filled with the roar of a gunshot—but it wasn’t Somerled’s pistol. It was a shotgun in the hands of Elmer Gleason. Gleason had shot through the window, and the double load of 12-gauge shot knocked Somerled halfway across the room.
“Are you all right, Mr. MacCallister?” Gleason shouted through the open window. Smoke was still curling up from the two barrels.
“Aye, I’m fine,” Duff said. “My gratitude to ye, Mr. Gleason.”
Gleason came around to the front of the cabin and stepped in through the front door.
“Seein’ as how I saved your life, don’t you think me ’n you might start callin’ each other by our Christian names?”
“Aye, Elmer. Your point is well taken.”
“Sorry ’bout tellin’ you he was your friend. But that’s what he told me, and I believed him.”
“And yet, you were waiting outside the window with a loaded shotgun.”
“Yes, sir. Well, considerin’ that the fella you went to meet in Chugwater was from Scotland, and wasn’t your friend, I just got to figurin’ maybe I ought to stand by, just in case.”
“Aye. I’m glad you did.”
Gleason leaned the shotgun against the wall and looked at the blood that was on the floor of the cabin.
“I reckon I’d better get this mess cleaned up for you,” he said.
“Elmer, I’m sure you don’t realize it, but you just did,” Duff said.
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THE LONER: RATTLESNAKE VALLEY
by J. A. Johnstone
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Chapter One
Kid Morgan reined his horse to a halt and looked at the bleached white skull on the ground in front of him. He rested his hands on the saddlehorn and leaned forward to study not only the grotesquely grinning skull but also the two long bones laid across each other that accompanied it.
“Skull and crossbones,” The Kid muttered. “Pirates.”
More than a dozen years earlier, in what seemed now like a previous, half-forgotten lifetime when he had still been known as Conrad Browning, The Kid had read a novel called Treasure Island, so he knew about pirates and the symbol from the flags they flew on their ships.
The question was, what was that ominous symbol doing here in the mostly arid landscape of West Texas, hundreds of miles from the sea?
The Kid lifted his head. Keen eyes gazed at his surroundings. A broad valley bordered by ranges of low, brush-covered hills fell away to his left and right and stretched in front of him for at least twenty miles to the east before the hills closed in sharply and pinched it off, leaving only a narrow opening for the trail. Beyond the hills, what appeared to be an endless stretch of sandy wasteland was visible through the gap. Behind The Kid was the pass through which he had just ridden in the rugged gray mountains that closed off the western end of the valley.