Boone Nesbitt

Kraft’s roan was a better horse than the piebald and Murdock was ten rods ahead when we cleared the trees and Crucifixion River came into view. But I had only a peripheral look at the crumbling ghost camp and Shock’s wagon stopped in the open meadow. What caught and held my attention was the girl staggering across open ground between the shell of a large building and a cluster of decaying shacks squatting among the trees.

“Annabelle!”

It was Murdock who yelled her name. We both veered sharply in her direction, guns already filling our hands. She heard us coming, twisted her head in our direction, but she had the sense not to slow up any. Shock was chasing her; in the next second, he came busting through a hole in the sagging back wall of the large building, brandishing a shotgun.

He spied us before he’d taken half a dozen steps. He swung around, crouching, as Murdock bore down on him. I pulled up hard just as Murdock fired—a wild shot, like most from the back of a running horse. Shock didn’t even flinch. He let go with one barrel of the Greener, and the spray of buckshot knocked Murdock off the roan’s back and sent him rolling through the grass.

I swung out of leather. If the ground hadn’t been wet and slick, I would’ve been able to set myself for a quick, clear shot at Shock. As it was, my boots slid out from under me and I went down hard enough on my backside to jar the Colt loose from my grip. It landed a few feet away, and by the time I located it and started to scrabble toward it, Shock was up and moving my way with that Greener leveled.

I heard him say—“All right, you son of a bitch.”—as I got my hand on the Colt, and I was cold sure it was too late, I was a dead man.

Only it didn’t happen that way.

It was Shock who died in that next second.

Murdock was hurt, but the buckshot hadn’t done him enough damage to keep him out of the play. He’d struggled up onto one knee and he put a slug clean through Shock’s head at thirty paces. The Greener’s second barrel emptied with a roar, but the buckshot went straight down as he was falling. Dead and on his way to hell before he hit the ground.

I got up slowly, went over to him for a quick look to make sure, then holstered my weapon, and went to Murdock’s side. He squinted up at me, his jaw clenched tightly. There was blood and buckshot holes on his left arm and shoulder and the side of his neck, but he wasn’t torn up as badly as he might’ve been.

“Dad! Dad!”

Annabelle. She’d seen it happen, and, now that it was finished, she’d come running. She dropped down beside him, weeping, and he hugged her and crooned a little the way a relieved father does when he sees his child is unharmed.

There were some things I wanted to say to Murdock, but this wasn’t the time or place. I turned away from them and went to where the peddler’s wagon stood in the meadow, to see what I could find to treat Murdock’s wounds.