Gut-Shot Read Free

foot.”
    The old man’s store-bought teeth gleamed in the darkness.
    â€œBringing your Hawken?”
    â€œHell no. I only shoot her on Sundays.”
    â€œThis is Sunday.”
    â€œThen it’s every other Sunday.”
    Flintlock swung out of the saddle and slid his Winchester from the boot.
    â€œThis is your kind of business, Sammy,” Glover said. “How do we play it?”
    â€œTake them alive if we can, kill them if we can’t.”
    â€œYou ain’t a man who gives out too many options, Sam.”
    â€œNo, I ain’t.” Then, suddenly irritable, “Let’s get the damned thing over with. Shooting scrapes in the middle of the night don’t set well with me.”
    Flintlock and Glover made their way through the pines, following the orange glimmer of the robbers’ campfire.
    The moon had drawn a veil of gray cloud across its face like a mournful ghost and in the distance a hunting pair of coyotes called to each other. The air was cool and thin and smelled of dust. Lime green frogs plopped into a nearby rain pond and old Glover jumped and swung his rifle on them. Then he muttered to himself and walked on.
    When Flintlock was close enough to the camp to make out three men lying close to the fire under blankets, he motioned Glover to separate from him. When the old man got ten yards away he held up a hand and stopped him.
    Flintlock had no worries about the old-timer holding up his end of the bargain. He’d stand firm and get his work in and he’d killed more than his share back in the olden days when Billy was still above ground.
    Gun-savvy geezers like Dave Glover were always dangerous men in a fight. They knew they were too old for a knock-down-drag-out, so they just killed you.
    Straightening from his crouch, Flintlock waved Glover forward and walked into the camp, a fire-splashed clearing in the trees where a nearby stream babbled as it bubbled over a pebbled bottom. Somewhere a startled owl questioned the night and rustled a tree branch with restless wings.
    â€œOn yer feet, you thieving scum!” Glover yelled, his rifle at the ready.
    Flintlock swore. It was a way, but it wasn’t his way. He’d planned on getting closer to give the robbers no chance of drawing iron. But Glover had gifted them a margin and the three men took advantage of it.
    All at once all hell broke loose.
    As men who live their lives on the scout do, the thieves woke instantly. They tangled out of their blankets and jumped to their feet, cursing, guns in hand. But there was a split second delay as the outlaws sought targets in the amber gloom.
    It was enough time when killing was to be done. Flintlock’s and Glover’s rifles roared at the same time, shots aimed from the shoulder.
    But they’d both picked the same man, a big fellow with a black, spade-shaped beard who cried out as he went down, sudden red roses blossoming on the front of his shirt.
    â€œSam Flintlock!”
    Peering through a veil of smoke, Flintlock saw Jake Ruskin standing at a distance, his hand away from his gun.
    â€œI’m out,” Ruskin said. He was a medium-sized man who affected the elegant dress and manners of the frontier gambler.
    A bullet tugged at the sleeve of Flintlock’s buckskin shirt and beside him he heard the thud of lead hitting bone and Glover gasped and went down on one knee.
    â€œThis man’s getting married to a fat young gal!” Flintlock yelled, outraged. “You can’t shoot him like that.”
    The third robber, a lanky towheaded kid with the eyes of a carrion eater, advanced on Flintlock, triggering two Colts held high at eye level.
    He’d heard of such before, but Flintlock had never met a two-gun man face-to-face.
    Henry Brown, the famed Missouri gunfighter, once told him that shooting two hard-bucking revolvers at the same time was a grandstand play calculated to get a man killed.
    â€œOnly Hickok ever pulled it off with any