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The surviving Moriarty brother was on his way to Bakerstown with his gang of robbers, heading here straight from Dynamo and would be here in a day. (Telegraph’s got nothing on whore gossip, and for that God bless the ladies.)
Didn’t need to be a fortune-teller to know Moriarty had his sights set on Sheriff Lock and Doc both. (When one man stops your crime gang in its tracks, and the other one guns down your brother, your partner and your right hand in twenty seconds, you don’t exactly harbor warm and tender feelings about either chap.) Rather than skin out or hide and let the town take the brunt of Moriarty’s anger, our resident law agreed to go meet the man and give him what he wanted right off.
We had an ally in the arroyo that served as a dirt road on the east end of town; easy enough to hide a few armed men in the brush and pinons along the top and wait for the gang. Sheriff Lock nodded, but had some other men fan out at both ends of the town: “If Moriarty’s so dumb-mad to get us he ain’t thinking straight, he’ll use the arroyo as the fastest route. If he’s smart, and he usually is, he won’t.” Doc grinned like a wolf: “Lock, if most bank robbers were smart they could hold down a regular job.”
The women and kids were holed up in their homes. Most of the men, too. Gustav shut the Red Circle but some of the meaner whores joined the men in guarding the town entrances.
Some gangs, like the Cowboys over in Arizona, could number a hundred men or more. Seems we were lucky; judging from the dust coming our way, Moriarty had only about forty with him. Big goddamn gang to take out two men, but Moriarty knew what kind of men Lock and Doc were. The James brothers must have had a stash from their previous jobs to hire so many.
They traveled through the arroyo like the best-trained herd of longhorns in Texas headed to market. The feller in front held the reins looped over his right arm; his left hand was on his gun. Once we had them surrounded we could …
Any general can tell you that you can plan all day long for the perfect battlefield moves, and there’ll still be some damn idiots who just start yelling and shooting and give everything away. Some of the men were former soldiers, but they were so spooked by liquor or their memories they started firing before the gang could be surrounded. Moriarty started and his horse spooked at the first shots. The others in the gang shouted and pulled out their own irons, and they started firing even as Moriarty bolted out of the arroyo.
Sheriff Lock cussed and threw a leg over his own bay, galloping after the gang leader. Both were gone and every gunman was too busy with the gang to aid Lock.
A cylinder flew through the air from one gang member and landed near some of the armed townsmen atop the arroyo, one end sputtering. Oh shit –
“DYNAMITE!” Doc screamed and the men fled as the explosion blew chunks of rocks and earth out of the canyon wall.
Then there was a thump and I stared at another dynamite stick at my feet, and without thinking I kicked it back down into the arroyo.
BOOM. A mass of horses and men hit the dirt – many of them in pieces. I still dream about them some nights.
I didn’t save the day, but that sure discouraged those idiots from throwing any more dynamite at us.
From then on it wasn’t an assault by a gang on the town, nor a battle; it was a goddamn shooting match between a lot of panicked men. Some ran – but the gang members ran too, galloping back where they’d come from. Seems Moriarty had paid for a big number of men but not many good ones, and the loss of their leader right off the top had cut the head off the snake well enough. Dead or fled or caught, that gang was split.
But Doc left me to deal with our prisoners – soon as the shooting had stopped he’d mounted and raced in the same direction Lock and Moriarty had gone.
To Riker’s Butte.