Shoot-Out at Sugar Creek (A Caleb York Western Book 6) - Mickey Spillane (classic novels .TXT) 📗

his fingers off on a rag. Finally, from a pile of arrows next to the bowl, he plucked the head off one and dragged the wooden shaft through the black powder, tipping the bowl to do so. He never spilled a drop.

The gunpowder was soon coating the wood, as thick as a quarter of an inch around, save for a few bare inches at the bottom of the shaft, which he held on to. With his free hand, the Kid took a strip of bark from the remaining bowl and bit off a bite, as if it were beef jerky. He chewed. He chewed some more. Then he removed the wad of masticated bark from his mouth and dipped it in the remaining gunpowder. He fastened the result to the tip of the stick.

Transfixed, Pierce said, “So then you set that nubbin on fire?”

The Kid nodded.

“How?” Pierce wondered.

“How,” the Indian said, puzzled.

“I mean, do you, uh, rub some sticks together and—”

“No. Kitchen match.”

The Kid repeated the process, making himself half a dozen such arrows. He handed one each to the men at the table to hold by the shaft’s uncoated end and allow the result to dry for a while. Soon Bassett and Carson and Victoria’s son were each holding an arrow in a fist. The Kid was holding up one himself. It looked a little absurd, Victoria had to admit. Like some secret ceremony, or like diners waiting for food to be served and then speared.

Eyes narrowed as he glanced around the table, Bassett asked, “Six? That’s all? Don’t you want a few more?”

The Kid seemed to be thinking about blinking, but didn’t. “Why?”

“In case you miss.”

“Billy, what a lucky man.”

“Who, me?”

The Kid nodded. “You. Kid don’t kill friends.”

Victoria laughed. But was he kidding? Either way, she liked the Apache. With Colman gone, she was getting ideas that went beyond the festivities planned for the evening.

The Kid turned to Pierce. “Could use your help.”

Pierce’s eyes were big. “Me? Help from me?”

The Kid nodded.

“Right now?”

“No. On hilltop.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I put arrow on bowstring. Aim. Then lower bow with arrow not shot yet, and you light up tip. I raise bow and let fly. Shoot high. Give time for flame to grow. Arrow comes down and hits where I aim . . . and then, time for another arrow.”

Pierce smiled like Christmas morning. “You trust me with this, Kid?”

“If your mama do, I do.”

His eyes sought her approval. “Do you, Mother?”

She took one of the drying arrows from him and pressed the box of kitchen matches in his hand by way of reply.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

When her foreman got back, Willa Cullen was still sitting on the porch, taking in the quiet of a moon-swept, star-flung night, enjoying the caress of a cool breeze from the south. Shortly after Caleb had ridden off, she had summoned Jackson to take Frank Duffy and Buck O’Fallon, the two remaining shootists from the Las Vegas hiring, to get a clandestine look at the Sugar Creek shoreline.

Now Jackson stood next to his seated employer, hat in hand, and reported.

“York was truth tellin’,” Jackson said, looking like he wished what he was saying weren’t gospel. “There’s two campsites, two Circle G men at each one. Well spread apart. Could be others are posted in the pines, but we couldn’t spot ’em. And with the moon makin’ noon out of the night, I think we likely would.”

She nodded, agreeing with that assessment. “You left Duffy and O’Fallon behind, I take it?”

“Positioned in those woods, each with a view on a campsite. Any activity, they’ll report back.”

“Good.”

Neither said anything for a while.

Then Willa looked up at him and asked, “Can we afford to give this a few days, d’you think?”

He drew a breath, exhaled, then shrugged. “Water tower’s damn near dry. They’s a water hole to the north that may let us stretch things out a bit. This fellow Parker that York talks about—is he an ally?”

She nodded again. “He’s a good man. He and my papa and another man built the Bar-O. If anybody can find a way around this . . . a way out of it . . . it’s Raymond L. Parker.”

Jackson’s half smile was sour. “Well, York only knows one thing—that .44 on his hip.”

She knew that wasn’t true, but said nothing.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” she said wryly, “but maybe we should take that Hammond woman at her word.”

They mulled it a while, and then—as if evidence were being presented in the matter—a burst of flame flared out of the darkness, above the bunkhouse, like low-hanging Fourth of July fireworks. She didn’t see it, but Jackson did.

“What the hell . . .” he began.

She turned toward where he was looking. The second burst of flame she saw all right, and then the oversized shack that was the bunkhouse took another hit from what was now apparently a flame-tipped arrow.

In seconds the building’s flat roof was ablaze.

She got to her feet, but Jackson was already on the run, slamming on his hat, heading off the porch and down the steps, and charging across the open hard-dirt apron, his .38 Colt Lightning revolver in hand.

Her first thought was: Does he think he can fight fire with bullets? But her second thought was more apt: We’re under attack!

Here at the far end of the porch, facing the bunkhouse—enough distance between it and the ranch house to make the fire spreading here not an immediate danger—she positioned herself with the .22 Colt handgun her father had given her, years ago.

Apparently more arrows had struck the back of the bunkhouse, because fiery fingers were reaching around both sides of the wooden structure, as if to take it in a terrible searing grip. Jackson was at the door of the shack, struggling to remove a thick branch that had been jammed in through the door handle to block entry . . . or, more importantly, exit.

Someone had managed to sneak around and insert that thing without her seeing it,