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  Dahlquist popped out long enough to reach around one end of the tank and snap off two shots, shooting blindly into the inkiness of the alley.

  “Stretch out like that again, you old bastard, and see what it gets you,” the ambusher mocked.

  Having crept to the end of the balcony, Buckhorn eased forward to peer over the railing. It took his vision a moment to adjust, but then, in the murkiness below, he could make out the man shooting at the marshal. He was hunkering behind an enormous rain barrel, an angular specimen clad in a pair of one-strap overalls, lace-up work shoes, and a slouch hat. He was doing his shooting with a long-barreled rifle, a modified Spencer carbine turned into a buffalo gun, probably .56 caliber.

  Ordinarily, Buckhorn made it a point never to stick his nose in a situation unless his life was in danger or he had been hired to get involved. But there were times, like now, when a fella had to make exceptions. Elmer Dahlquist had gone out of his way to be fair and friendly, something a half-breed rarely ran into. On top of that, Buckhorn loathed ambushers and back shooters.

  Another exchange of shots crackled back and forth across the street. Once again the water trough took a hit, and its contents sloshed and slopped over the edges. Many more impacts like that from the buffalo gun and the tank was liable to rupture wide open, Buckhorn knew.

  “Mighty good shootin’ to be able to hit this big ol’ tank from clear across the street. You must’ve been target practicin’ for those seven years,” Dahlquist taunted. Then: “Wait a minute. Seven years? And a brother named Varliss . . . Is that you over there, Clyde Byerby?”

  “Give the man a great big see-gar!” crowed the shooter in the alley. “Too bad you ain’t never gonna get the chance to enjoy it, Dahlquist, ’cause I’m gonna blow apart your smoke puffer like a melon dropped from a church steeple.”

  Buckhorn could have easily leaned over the balcony and fired down on the ambusher before the man ever knew he was there. Could have killed him with one shot. But the varmint’s own words about dropping a melon from on high gave Buckhorn another idea—one he had a hunch Marshal Dahlquist would be far more approving of.

  “You blamed fool, Clyde,” Dahlquist called. “You couldn’t have got out of prison more’n a couple weeks ago. So now you’re gonna shoot me and land yourself right back in?”

  “They’ll never put me in the pen again,” Clyde said. “If I can’t make it across the border after I’ve done for you, they’ll have to cut me down. But no matter, however it turns out, at least I’ll have squared things with you!”

  While this exchange was taking place, Buckhorn was silently on the move. A row of brightly painted clay pots holding cactus rose plants sat along the railing of the balcony. Buckhorn hefted the nearest of these and found it to have what he judged to be sufficient weight.

  Setting his Colt aside, he picked up the potted cactus and carried it over to the end of the balcony. Held at arm’s length, it was almost directly above Clyde Byerby. When the man snugged the buffalo gun to his shoulder again and braced very still, getting ready to trigger another round, Buckhorn released the pot.

  He scored a direct hit.

  The pot struck the top of the target’s head with a dull clunk! and, mashing flat the slouch hat, broke apart like flower petals opening. Clay shards fell away, spilling clumps of dirt and pieces of cactus down over the ambusher’s shoulders and back. Byerby went limp, arms falling loosely to his sides, rifle slipping from his grasp, body sagging against the big rain barrel like a pile of soiled laundry.

  When Buckhorn was satisfied he had knocked the man cold, he straightened up behind the railing and called across the street to Dahlquist, “War’s over, Marshal. You can come claim your prisoner now.”

  Dahlquist peeked cautiously above the edge of the water trough, and then he, too, stood up. He still held his pistol at the ready. The front of his clothes were soaked and there was a smudge of mud on one cheek. Lifting his chin to gaze up at the hotel balcony, he said, “Is that you, Buckhorn?”

  “None other.”

  Now that the shooting had stopped, lights started appearing in the windows of living quarters over some of the businesses lining the street. Two or three men emerged tentatively from the front of the saloon down in the next block, and Buckhorn thought he could hear a sudden scurry of activity downstairs in the lobby of the hotel.

  “What did you do to Byerby?” Dahlquist wanted to know.

  “He found out he was allergic to cactus rose plants. You’d better get over here and slap some cuffs on him before he regains consciousness. I’ll be down as soon as I get some pants on.”

  * * *

  By the time Buckhorn made it down through the lobby and out to the street—after donning not only his pants but also his boots and gunbelt—quite a crowd had gathered in front of the alley next to the hotel. There was an edge of annoyance in Elmer Dahlquist’s normally mild tone as he tried to answer jabbering questions as politely as he could while alternately barking orders in an attempt to keep the scene under control.

  When he spotted Buckhorn shouldering his way through the crowd, the marshal’s frown fell away. Smiling, he said, “Here’s the man of the hour now. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Joe Buckhorn—not only a hired gun of wide renown, but well on his way to becoming one of the most feared potted plant-slingers in the West.”

  There was actually a smattering of applause from some of those present, thinking the marshal was truly being serious. Most of the others just looked a bit puzzled.

  Unruffled by the good-natured rib, Buckhorn came to stand before the marshal and said, “I may quit carrying a six-gun altogether, soon as I’ve perfected a brace of holsters so’s I can pack a potted plant on each hip.”

  Dahlquist’s expression turned serious.

  “Well, you sure got the job done with one tonight,” he said for everybody to hear. “And you just may have saved my life in the process. For that I’m mighty grateful.”

  “Trouble is,” Buckhorn said, gesturing to the shredded Stetson Dahlquist had retrieved from the middle of the street and now stood fidgeting with, “I wasn’t in time to save that fancy hat of yours.”

  “This old thing?” Dahlquist said, continuing to worry the Stetson between his hands. “It was a gift from my late wife, just before she passed on. Special ordered from some fancy haberdashery in Dallas.” A lingering sadness touched his face for a moment before he realized it, and he quickly covered it with a wry twist of his mouth. “Anybody could see the blamed thing was a mile too big, but I didn’t have the heart to hurt her feelings by not wearing it. And after she was gone, well, I just kept on wearing it. Reckon I’ve got cause to buy one that fits proper now.”

  “Reckon so,” Buckhorn agreed in a somber tone. “The right hat’s a serious thing for a man.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Shortly past noon on the following day, Buckhorn rode out of Forbes and headed southwest toward Barkley County and the Danvers ranch that reportedly occupied a large percentage of it.

  In an exchange of telegrams earlier that morning, he had gotten the basic details of the job he was being offered, what it would pay, and a sweetener in the form of a promise for a healthy up-front fee that would be waiting for him if he could come right away. Buckhorn had wired back his acceptance of the job and his assurance that he was on his way.

  Elmer Dahlquist, wearing a new hat that fit much better but unfortunately did nothing to hide his jug ears, had shown up at the livery stable to see him off.

  “Still don’t see why you don’t wait and start out fresh in the morning,” he’d said. “You ain’t gonna make it all that far before sundown catches you.”

  “You said Barkley County is about a day-and-a-half ride,” Buckhorn reminded him. “I knock off the half part today, I’ve got a chance of being there by tomorrow night. You read the sense of urgency in those wires from Danvers. Sounded like time was pretty important.”

  Dahlquist sighed and said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

&nb
sp; “Besides, speaking of time—yesterday you were pushing for me to make my time here as short as possible. Now you’re suggesting I stay extra.” Buckhorn smiled. “Make up your doggone mind.”

  “Havin’ somebody save your life changes a fella’s outlook considerable.”

  “Aw, come on,” Buckhorn said, starting to feel more than a little uncomfortable from all the praise that had been heaped on him by that point. “I helped you out of a tight, yeah. But there’s no way of knowing that I saved your life. Hell, you would have figured out a way to handle that Byerby character.”

  “Not if he’d’ve blasted apart that blamed water trough—which he was on the verge of doin’ with that big old buffalo gun, and you know it.”

  “The only thing I know for sure,” Buckhorn said, “is that all that shootin’ was keeping me from getting a good night’s sleep. So I was able to help quiet things down. By the way, what are you gonna do with that varmint?”

  “Byerby? Send his ass back to prison if I have any say in the matter,” Dahlquist huffed. “I tried to help the blamed fool the first time around. I couldn’t keep his brother Varliss from being hanged, but I spoke up at Clyde’s trial and he served prison time instead. Look what it got me!”

  “More important,” Buckhorn said solemnly, “look what it damn near got you. Don’t go soft and speak up for him no more. Let the ungrateful dog rot behind bars.”

  “Don’t worry. I might be a sentimental old fool sometimes,” the marshal assured him, “but never twice over the same thing.”

  “Once can be enough to get you killed. Best to tighten up all the way around,” Buckhorn advised him as he swung into the saddle and pointed his steeldust to the west and some south.

  “I’ll work on that. Wishin’ you luck on your job over in Barkley. You ever come back around these parts, stop by. You’ll always be welcome in my town.”

  Words like those were damn seldom handed out to somebody in Buckhorn’s line of work, and a half-breed to boot. Hearing them made the gunman feel strange inside. But then he remembered his own advice.

  “See? Right there,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re too damn sentimental for your own good.”

  “Don’t worry,” Dahlquist called after him. “I see you comin’, I’ll hide all the potted plants.”

  CHAPTER 4

  He held the steeldust to a steady pace throughout the balance of the day, across rolling, treeless plains interrupted occasionally by lonely, flat-topped buttes or sudden, twisting canyons that made Buckhorn think of gouges torn in the earth by a giant, ragged fingernail.

  As darkness descended, Buckhorn stopped and made camp near the base of one of the buttes where a row of stubborn pines had taken root. After seeing to his horse’s needs, he got a small fire going and boiled a pot of coffee. Along with a cup of the bitter brew, he ate the two beef sandwiches he’d purchased from the hotel restaurant before leaving Forbes.

  When he was done eating, he poured himself a second cup of coffee, liberally doctoring this one with sugar. Then he set the pot off the coals and left the fire to fade as he stretched out on his bedroll with the sweetened coffee and willed himself into a relaxed state that would eventually allow sleep to come.

  He thought about the job he was headed to take on. It sounded a bit more complex and intriguing than most of the work that had been coming his way of late. Usually he found himself hiring out to serve as a menacing presence on one side (ordinarily the most aggressive one, sometimes the most desperate) in a range war or land grab, or to body-guard some rich individual who’d gained his wealth by ruthless means but then didn’t have the guts to face retaliation from those he’d stomped all over to get it.

  In the past, Buckhorn hadn’t given much thought to the rightness or wrongness of which side he was on, or what those he represented might have done to get to a point where they needed his services. All he cared about was the money. And that included doing whatever it took to earn it.

  More recently, however, after a failed, tragic love affair and a brush with death, he’d done some reevaluating of the kind of man he had become—and didn’t particularly like what he saw.

  He’d done some things that had almost certainly taken him past the point of redemption, Buckhorn figured. One of the reasons he loathed ambushers and back shooters so much—like that ungrateful Byerby cur back in Forbes—was because, at the bottom of the low things he had done in his past dealings, was to once or twice take part in those kinds of tactics himself.

  But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still make a try at cleaning up his act from here on out. Yet he also had to face the reality that he was really only qualified to do one thing: gun work. So that meant setting his sights on taking jobs where he was on the right side of a dispute . . . as best as he could tell. Sometimes that wasn’t as clear-cut as a body might figure.

  This situation he was heading into down Barkley way, though, seemed straightforward enough. The telegrams from P. Danvers, the man who was hiring him, spoke of being “plagued” by rustlers. What was more, there was mention of Danvers’s youngest son having “gone missing.” That figured in as the real clincher for Buckhorn and was cemented by the final line of Danvers’s last telegram: My son’s life may hang in the balance. Please hurry.

  Feeling good about the rightness of what he was about to take on, Buckhorn drifted into as deep and untroubled a sleep as he’d experienced in a long time.

  * * *

  A hot, dry wind blew up early the next morning and nudged Buckhorn and his steeldust along through much of the day. It caked them with dust and grit and parched their throats, but they kept on at the same steady pace as the previous day.

  The wind became gustier in the afternoon, interrupted partly by the land becoming more broken, rockier. This was primarily due to the tail end of a low, brownish mountain range reaching down from the north. The buttes and canyons became more frequent, sometimes connected by stony ridges. Clumps of cottonwood, pine, and ash dotted the slopes here and there and they crossed a couple of narrow streams, also running down out of the mountains.

  Buckhorn saw the way ahead of them rising on a gradual slope, and he somehow sensed that before too long it was going to drop off into a low valley or bowl where they would find the town of Barkley. He patted the steeldust’s neck and muttered, “Not much farther, boy . . . I don’t think.”

  The words were barely past his lips before the first bullet sizzled through the air scant inches from the tip of his nose, close enough so that Buckhorn felt the heat of the passing slug. The delayed crack! of a distant rifle came a moment later, and then more bullets were whining all around him.

  One of the slugs thudded high into the steeldust’s neck, and the stricken beast went down almost instantly. Buckhorn kicked out of his stirrups and rolled free as the horse collapsed. He stayed close enough to use the big body for cover as he skinned his Winchester out of its saddle scabbard and hunkered down to make a fight of it.

  More bullets pounded into the horse’s carcass.

  Buckhorn snatched his canteen from the saddle and put it down where it wouldn’t be at risk for getting hit. With water and plenty of ammunition he figured he could hold out until nightfall if he had to. For the time being, he just stayed low and let the bushwhackers blast away while he tried to make a better assessment of his predicament.

  He was being fired on by two riflemen. They were concealed on a jagged spine of rock to his north, positioned on either side of the spine’s peak about twenty yards apart. The elongated rock formation was the tail of a higher, more solid mass, reaching down and tapering off completely near where Buckhorn had been riding when the first shot cut through the air. In back of and to either side of the intended target was all open space, nothing but gravel and short prairie grass. No back door.

  Buckhorn swore under his breath.

  The gunsmoke haze from the two shooters, seen by him as he’d pitched from his falling horse, indicated where they were. But that didn’t gain him a hell of a
lot, not when it failed to reveal the shooters themselves. What’s more, in those jagged rocks there looked to be plenty of other places for them to shift to. Firing back at the smoke haze where they had been was likely just a waste of ammo.

  Not to mention the fact that—since his position was fixed and they already had it sighted in—any attempt to return fire on his part would mean dangerously exposing himself.

  Buckhorn swore again.

  The shooting became sporadic and then stopped altogether. Everything turned quiet, except for intermittent gusts of that hot wind, blowing dust and softly rattling grains of sand.

  Buckhorn stayed very still. His ambushers were undoubtedly reloading, but what about after that? Was there a chance they might think one or more of their rounds had hit him? That he was lying here wounded . . . or maybe even dead?

  In his mind, he replayed his reactions after that first bullet had nearly snipped off the end of his nose. The way he’d grabbed his rifle as the horse went down was an instinctive act that could mean anything or nothing. And plenty more rounds had slammed in after that. When he grabbed the canteen it had been dangling down within easy reach, so there was a good chance that movement had gone unnoticed.

  After that, he’d just burrowed in tight against the dead horse and let them blaze away.

  True, he’d hit the dirt with every intention of blazing back the first chance he got . . . but he hadn’t. Not yet. And now he was glad he hadn’t. Because he was beginning to think that his best chance to make it out of this might be for his would-be assassins to think they already had him dead or gravely wounded. That would leave them two choices: they could elect to simply ride off and assume their job was done, or they could come closer to investigate, make certain.

  Buckhorn continued to stay very still, except for the way his grip tightened on the Winchester and how his teeth became bared in a wolflike smile. He’d settle for his ambushers making either decision . . .