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

“No,” she said. “Our people are dead. Incinerated or shot or both.”

“What if some of theirs is breathing?”

“They can wait their turn. Our horses come first.”

The old boy had no argument with that.

But he did say, “I best at least gather their weapons.”

She nodded. “Do that. Pile them over by the house.”

The wrangler started in on that, and Willa and Harmon moved quickly into the barn, where the horses were stirring, their neighs and whinnies as hysterical as their wild-eyed faces. They calmed the animals as best they could, and she and the cook swiftly began a one-at-a-time exodus. Morgan joined in a few minutes later, and the barn indeed did start to burn, but the last animal was conveyed out of there before the whole place and all the hay in it went up with a bellow like a wounded beast behind them. The bigger size of the structure, easily three times what the bunkhouse had been, illuminated the world of carnage around them—black corpses, bloodied corpses—making a terrible day out of what had begun a gentle night.

For one endless moment, the three survivors stood there facing the burning barn with their pale flesh echoing by way of flickery reflections the blaze before them.

“More to do,” she told the two men.

Next the mistress of the ranch and her two remaining hands gathered the milling horses from which the dead invaders had fallen. Some of the raiders’ animals had run off into the dark, but the rest—half a dozen—the trio rounded up and put in the corral, saddles and all.

Over by the house, Morgan’s pile of weapons—handguns and rifles—was an impressive reminder of the extent of the onslaught. That the three of them had survived it seemed a small miracle. Maybe not so small. But the truth was even Harmon had held his own and both Willa and Morgan were damn good shots.

And men on horseback, however used to battle or gunplay a steed might be, were subject to controlling the animal conveying them, and had reins to deal with as well as weapons. No easy task.

Willa gathered her troops—both of them, the fat cook and the old cowboy.

“Let’s haul their dead over there,” she said, pointing to where black human timbers lay smoking, some still sizzling. “We’ll want to keep the area around the corral clear.”

Harmon looked a little queasy at the suggestion, which of course was not a suggestion at all, but an order. Morgan didn’t mind. He’d fought Rebs and Indians in his day. So they went around taking the dead men by the wrists and dragging them like bags of seed that fell off a wagon.

Willa paused in her work only twice. First, to look with a certain sadness at the boy in buckskin. No, not a boy—probably going on thirty, but pale and soft and with hands that had never seen a day of real work. She could hardly have hated Victoria Hammond more, yet she still felt a brief pang of pity for the woman, losing a second son in a few days, and again to violence.

But just a pang. And brief.

As for taking this young man’s life, Willa felt nothing much—certainly not guilt, only a sadness that the Hammond offspring had been subjected to an upbringing by such a monstrous mother, who had set him on a path that had led him here, to lie dead on the ground among the charred remains and bullet-ridden bodies of others who had died in service of a woman seeking wealth and power.

The second time she paused was to kneel next to the dead Bill Jackson and pray for his soul. Before she stood, she kissed his forehead. This man shot and killed, that was a loss. You could rebuild a barn or a bunkhouse, but a dead man was gone forever.

She was surprised to discover that, among the fallen, no Indian lay. Nor had she seen one among the fleeing raiders. Not the Chiricahua Kid nor any other. She’d felt certain those flaming arrows were the work of that hostile brave, corrupted by white men. Unless some veteran of the Indian wars had picked up the skill needed to craft and dispatch those fiery missiles. But she doubted it.

Again, the hoarse howl of flames, interspersed with snaps and an insistent crackling, muted the sound of others approaching. Morgan noticed it first and came over and pointed out the buckboard coming down the lane, two men in the seat. They seemed in no hurry.

“Recognize them?” she asked the old wrangler.

“Can’t say I do. Must be somebody saw the fire and smoke in the sky, and come to see if we need help.”

The driver slowed and both men offered mild smiles and nodded at Willa and Morgan, who were out in the midst of the hard-dirt area between burning buildings and the ranch house and corral. The driver had a mustache that overwhelmed his face and looked to be forty at least, while the rider was a good ten years younger, also mustached but not so full, kind of dumb looking, with close-set eyes hugging his nose.

“My lord,” the driver said, frowning around at the grisly scene, “this here is more than just a damn fire. What happened, anyways?”

Willa said, “Raiders from a rival ranch hit us.”

“Hell you say. You need any help?”

“No, we’ll be riding into town for that.”

The rider said, “Maybe we could help carry buckets over from the water tower, and try to put out that blaze ’fore it claims any other buildings.”

“Not enough water in that tower,” she said, “to give my flower garden a drink. No, but we appreciate your offer.”

“Okay, then,” the driver said. “I’ll just turn this buggy around.”

The heavily mustached driver guided the two horses hauling the four-wheeled wagon into a half circle, but then paused. A tarp covering something in the back—no, not something, someone—got flipped aside and a figure rose to what seemed a towering height .