Bloody Season Read Free Page B

cane high in his right hand, looking like a giant shepherd in town clothes. “Throw up your hands!”
    Doc and Morgan rolled back the hammers on their pistols, the double-crunch dry and loud in the silence.
    “Hold on, I don’t want that!” Virgil said, pushing his free hand behind him. Simultaneously Tom McLaury threw open his vest and said, “I have nothing!” Both exclamations were lost in the broken bark of two pistols discharging at almost the same instant. Frank McLaury staggered, clawing at his belly with blood showing black between his fingers. His Colt’s came out in his other hand. Billy Clanton, a hole in his chest, hunched and threw his pistol above his head, turning to clutch at the edge of Harwood’s window with the hand holding the weapon. He began to slide. His horse reared, wheeled, pawed the air, and bolted for the street.
    Frank McLaury’s horse was plunging and whinnying, its eyes rolling white. Tom, attempting to use the animal for cover, lunged for the bit chain and missed. Ike fled from the raking hooves and found himself heading straight for Wyatt. He stumbled, caught his balance on the run, and grasped Wyatt’s left arm in both hands, trying to turn him. His breath was raw with whiskey.
    Wyatt flung him back. “This fight has commenced. Get to fighting or get away.”
    Behan was motioning from the door to the gallery. Ike wheeled with the momentum of the shove and sprinted through the opening. Doc rapped off two quick shots at his heels, chucking dirt and splintering the doorsill.
    “Why didn’t you cut the son of a bitch down?” Doc shouted.
    “He wouldn’t jerk a pistol.”
    When the firing started Virgil had switched hands on the cane again and drawn his Army. He sent a ball at Billy Clanton, already reeling from the wound in his chest, and shattered his right wrist. Billy border-shifted on his way down and fired wild.
    There was a lull.
    Shots coughed from the direction of the gallery. Wyatt and Doe returned fire through clouds of spent powder. Morgan spun and fell. “I’ve got it!”
    “Get behind me and keep quiet!” Wyatt said.
    The lot was filled with thick gray smoke like soiled batting, hanging on a doldrum between gusts. Doe backed out into the street, his eyes stinging. Inside the lot the screaming roan bucked and plunged through haze, concealing Frank McLaury momentarily as he tried for the Winchester in the boot but exposing his brother Tom, who jerked his head right and left like a deer caught between hunters and made a dash for the street.
    Doe scabbarded his pistol and swung the shotgun level with his hip, palming back the hammers and squeezing both triggers. The muzzles roared. Tom slipped, then recovered himself and swept in a crouch past Doc, who said, “Mother-fucking—” and hurled away the shotgun to redraw his Colt’s. But by then Tom had rounded the corner of Harwood’s house and was lost to sight.
    Billy Clanton was sitting cross-legged on the ground with his back against the wall of the house, steadying his pistol across his broken right arm. His shirt was soaked through with blood. A ball slapped Virgil in the calf and he went down, releasing Doc’s cane at last. He rolled onto his left elbow and, using his right knee to support his Army, shot Billy in the abdomen.
    The rest of the fight had spilled into the street. Frank McLaury’s horse had dragged him out of the lot with one hand grasping the saddle latigo and the other clawing frantically for the carbine in the scabbard. Wyatt threw a shot at him that missed and branded a slash across the horse’s rump. It shrieked, threw its head, and hauled hooves toward Fifth Street, tearing loose its master’s grip. Frank landed running and made for the other side of Fremont, rebel-yelling and spraying pistol lead across his left arm at Morgan Earp, who had regained his feet and was bleeding down the back of his mackinaw from a ball behind his right shoulder. He returned fire. Doc wheeled from the path of