Boon Ed Kurtz (the little red hen read aloud txt) 📖

the next building and the one after that. Like I said, there wasn’t much to that town other than what got thrown together there on that muddy street, and it was all pushed up on top of each other like they were hurting for room when they did it.

Boon went down the steps first, cargo in hand, with me just behind her. She drew the Colt .44 about halfway down. The smoke was so bad I couldn’t see anything anymore, and I cursed myself for not having looked around for my rifle. Had the judge or his men taken it inside when he decided on that idiotic trial? I couldn’t remember. Mayhap it was still lashed to the cantle of my saddle on the horse out of doors. Mayhap the horses had run away already, or been let loose by Dejasu, or killed by him. Mayhap he ate the damn beasts. I didn’t know.

Until that moment I didn’t think I could hate Red Foot more than I already did, but I was wrong. I still had some hate for it left to come out.

“Had a paper on you,” Boon shouted through the smoke and fire. “Guess it’s ashes now.”

“Wasn’t worth dog shit, anyways,” Dejasu called back. It sounded to me like he was laughing, but he might have been coughing, too. I sure was.

“Dead or alive, Dejasu,” she told him, alighting at the bottom of the stairs and raising an arm to shield her face. “Your call. Don’t matter to me.”

Instead of replying to that, he fired another shot into the saloon. It went wild, smashing something glass, maybe a bottle or a lantern. He couldn’t see us through the smoke, but we couldn’t see him, either. Boon moved faster to the front in spite of this, since there wasn’t really any other choice unless we just wanted to give up and die right then and there. I didn’t want that, as it happened, and neither did Boon.

Dejasu fired again, and then again in quick succession. For the first time it occurred to me that he might not have been alone out there. He seemed the type to run with a gang, and it was conceivable that he had one with him, which made our poor chances a hell of a lot poorer. Could have been there were a dozen guns out there instead of just the one. I was starting to rethink the wisdom of just sitting down and taking in all that smoke.

But Boon didn’t hesitate. Not for a second. She bolted for the batwings before the second shot ever got off, raising the shirt-sack with one hand and jutting the pistol out with the other. Dejasu shouted something more, but I couldn’t hear it on account of the bottles behind the bar were starting to burst from the heat, and the rotgut liquor inside them only fed the hungry flames. She was gone, out of the saloon, and I was starting to flinch and cower at all the destruction around me, so I thought I might as well run for it, too. On the way to the doors, I almost tripped right over my Winchester, which was laying on the ground like a gift from God. Or more probably, Satan.

Only one round in the breech, as I recalled. The rest of the cartridges were still among my sundries. I thought about that Butternut sniper and wished I had a scope, not that it would have done me any good. I was going closer to my target, not farther away.

I busted through the batwings in a plume of choking smoke, my eyes pouring tears like I just heard news my dog died, and there in the street stood two men, side by side. One was bald-headed, no hat, the hair on his face reaching clear up to his eyes. The other man was tall, his hair a curly mop of black that dangled down over dark eyes. This one wore a menacing expression, but I couldn’t get over just how boyish he looked. He worked hard on that sneer to make up for it.

“Which one of you killed my brother?” said the boyish one. I could hardly believe this pretty-faced man came from the same womb as Selwyn Dejasu. “Which of you God damned sons of fucking bitches do I kill first?”

Boon hurled the shirt-sack at him. He hadn’t expected that, and neither had I. The cloth fell away in mid-arc, revealing the gray, bloody head of Judge Dejasu as it rose and fell in Barry’s general direction. Barry let out an awful, low moan and put his hands up to catch it. The head landed right in his hands and he pulled it in close to his chest like he was going to rock it to sleep.

“Christ,” he bellowed. “Oh, Christ.”

His friend wasn’t half as shocked by Boon’s trick. He filled his hand with a Remington Navy pistol, his face cool as winter. I shot him with my lone cartridge, square in the chest. The bald man never got his shot off, and he didn’t make a sound. He just dropped to the mud like a sack of grain and lay still. At the same time, Barry Dejasu started to scream.

Barry’s gun still hung on one finger, swaying back and forth as the rest of his fingers clutched the head of his kinsman and he bawled until his face turned purple. It was an ugly thing to see, so I turned away. I didn’t have another shot, anyway, so it didn’t seem to matter if I was looking at him or not. Up the street, in the direction we’d come into Red Foot, I saw Pim, Boon’s palomino, loping idly around the undertaker’s I’d robbed the night before. My mount was nowhere in evidence.

Above our heads, the windows of the Red Foot Saloon began shattering. The fire had reached the second story. I seemed to be the only one to notice.

Boon said, “You’re coming back down to