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

and my shirt both. The guard thumbed back the hammer and straightened his arm out in front of him.

“I have nervous bowels and it is going to be an awful mess,” I said, getting shakily to my feet. “Shoot me in the back like a devilish coward if you got to, but this man has got to shit.”

The guard crinkled up his brow, turned his head to look at his partner. The partner shrugged. I grasped the edge of the wagon and worked my around it, moving slowly into the street. The further I got from the lanterns in and around the hotel, the better my eyes adjusted to the darkness blanketing the rest of the Great Republic of Handsome Frank—well enough to see the third man, the patrol guard, emerging from the side of an adobe dwelling with a carbine in both hands.

“Who’s that?” he said.

“Abraham Lincoln,” I responded, and I rushed him.

I had my hands on the barrel and stock before he could gather his wits enough to aim, and we began to struggle over the rifle as he bellowed, “Boys! God damn it, boys!”

I wished he hadn’t done that. I slammed my forehead against his face as hard as I could. My skin shredded against his teeth, some of which I felt give and fall back into his mouth. He gurgled and I won the carbine. A single shot erupted behind me. I turned the rifle on the patrolman and shot him in the chest. He hit the ground but I didn’t check to see if he was dead. There was someone pounding the dust behind me.

I spun around in time to find the guard who’d pointed that Colt at me coming fast up the road from the hotel. His pal wasn’t far behind. I pumped another cartridge into the breech and took aim, but I hadn’t needed to. The Gatling gun atop the Handsome Frank Hotel erupted then, flashing white-hot and spitting rounds that chewed up the wagon, the street, and the lead guard in a matter of seconds. He must have caught close to a dozen of those massive rounds that exploded his skull and tore his trunk to pieces before what was left of him splashed wet to the street. I froze momentarily, stricken by the grisly sight of it, and the other guard dove for the cluster of huts from which the patrolman had come.

“God fucking damn you, Bill,” he cried all the while. “You shot Bez all to hell, you crazy Mick bastard.”

“Weren’t Bill,” I said. I triggered a round in his direction, knowing I’d miss. He’d already skittered into one hidey-hole or another. “Didn’t really need to shit, neither.”

Two down, and not counting the drunken muleskinner, that was half already. My throbbing, bleeding side notwithstanding, I reckoned we weren’t doing too poorly. Emboldened, I gave chase toward the adobe huts to find the son of a bitch.

I barely made it five paces before six men came out of them.

“Well, shit,” I said.

Some had repeaters. Most carried revolvers. They were as surprised as I was. My sole advantage was that I knew exactly what was going on and they, I hoped, did not.

I ran back for the hotel.

“More coming!” I shouted.

Shots rang out behind me and the men yelled over one another, stumbling out into the street. I weaved as best I could. My lungs ached and my legs threatened to buckle. Even if I didn’t get shot again, I was beginning to think I’d never live to see another sunrise.

When I got within pissing distance of the wagon, I dropped and skidded through the dirt and stones and weeds the rest of the way and clambered underneath it as Boon let loose with the Gatling once again. Each shot sounded like a cannon and there were a hell a lot of them coming fast and hot right over my head as she cut Stanley’s secret contingent of gunmen down all at once. From where I cowered beneath the wagon, I watched as they managed to get off another five or six shots that all went wild, the superior firepower from above ripping them apart so horribly their own mothers would never be able to identify what remained. I’d dodged conscription over a decade earlier for a lot of reasons, but a big one was never wanting to have to witness something like that. Fate had a laugh at my expense that night.

“The lanterns!” Boon hollered from the roof. My ears were still ringing so badly from the last deluge I couldn’t be sure I heard her right at first. “The lanterns, Edward! Like I done that night in Texas!”

I almost smiled. She’d finally taken the blame for that foofaraw. About damn time, too, seeing as I was more convinced than ever my time was very near its end.

Something like glass shattered close by and there was shouting inside the hotel. If Stanley had stationed men ahead of us in Handsome Frank, there was no telling how many more he had at his disposal. I crawled on my belly through a mess of mule shit and got clear of the wagon, where I rose to one knee and fired at one of the lanterns on the porch. The chimney exploded and the oil splattered the dry-rotted porch for the flames to eat up and grow, spreading quickly over the splintered wood.

Next I beaded down on one of the lanterns inside, which I could just see through the developing blaze and the broken windows. It, too, burst like a bomb and spit fire over everything near to it. Two shots, and the Handsome Frank Hotel was ablaze.

The muleskinner was clean passed out in front of the farrier’s, but I decided I didn’t have a whole lot of sympathy in my heart for the old boy, so I let him alone. The heat grew with the bright light of the inferno, so I scrambled away and into the street. From that vantage point, I