Dead Trouble Read Free Page B

its grip and Doctor Farraday is afraid the infection will turn to pneumonia.’
    Beattie frowned. ‘We heard he was bad hit – but he’s been here a month or so now, ain’t that right?’
    ‘Yes. But the doctor will explain. You eat up and I’ll fetch him.’
    Doc Farraday shook hands briefly with Beattie as his wife poured him a cup of coffee and left the room. He told the Ranger about Cutler’s wounds.
    ‘By rights, ought to be dead. ’Bout the toughest man I’ve ever seen and I used to work the Cherry Creek goldfields in Colorado.’
    ‘He is gonna make it though, Doc?’
    Farraday obviously didn’t want to commit himself and the Ranger grew impatient as he hedged.
    ‘All right. What happened to him?’
    ‘Brought in by some of the men from Red Flats. They were very eager to stress that they found him lying beside the trail from Big Hat here to their town, but I rather think Deke Cutler was … injured in Red Flats.’
    Dal Beattie’s mouth was taut now as he accepted a fresh cup of coffee from the doctor.
    ‘Red Flats. We been lookin’ at that dump for a long time. Deke must’ve gotten a lead. He was after Kel McKittrick …’ He stood abruptly. ‘I reckon it’s time we closed down that damn outlaw nest.’
    ‘I am surprised it hasn’t been done before, Ranger.’ There was censure in the medic’s voice.
    ‘Well, Doc, it suited us to know of a place where outlaws gathered. We could keep an eye on ’em, but it’s been gettin’ too damn big lately. There a telegraph office in town?’
    Farraday told him how to get to it, wondered why Beattie hadn’t asked to see Cutler. The Ranger merely said he didn’t want to disturb him.
    He sent off his wire and by noon the eight Rangers who had been waiting at the Butterfield way station on Mad Dog Mesa drifted into Big Hat one by one during the course of the afternoon, a couple arriving after dusk.
    By midnight they were in position around Red Flats, and by sun-up the first fires were started.
    The heavily armed Rangers waited in their hiding-places. They didn’t have to wait long before the raw-eyed men below, nursing rotgut hangovers, began coming out of the trash-built shanties and lean-tos. The smoke made them cough and when they saw how many fires were burning – ten in all – it even pentrated theirhangovers that this day brought big trouble, About the same time, the Rangers opened up, shooting to kill, aiming to put Red Flats off the map for ever. The outlaws fell and scattered, running for horses, but found the livery almost totally consumed by now, the horses having been driven out and up the slope to spread out amongst the timber.
    They could only turn and flee.
    It was brief and bloody – and complete. Two Rangers went down, one never to rise again, the other with a leg wound. Longhair seemed to survive right to the end and finally it was he and Dal Beattie who confronted each other behind the charred and still-blazing ruins of the saloon.
    Longhair was bleeding from two minor bullet wounds, one a scalp crease, and his face was streaked with blood as the big Ranger stepped out from behind a charred, sagging door.
    ‘Been a long time since Fort Kelso, Long, you son of a bitch!’
    ‘Not long enough for you, Beattie!’ Longhair triggered his shotgun and Beattie jumped back behind the door. But buckshot chewed a large hunk out of the woodwork and some of the balls took him in the neck and upper body. He stepped out, working lever and trigger on his rifle with the butt jammed against his hip.
    Longhair reeled, trying to reload, snapped the Greener closed too soon, jamming the cartridge. Three slugs stitched across his chest and he went down. Beattie took a step forward and became aware that he was soaked with his own blood. He put up a hand andfelt the wounds in his neck. One had torn some kind of artery and he knew he wasn’t going to make it. He’d just had his last gunfight and there was nothing he could do about it – except lie down