The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard - Elmore Leonard [157]
Rintoon checked his timepiece. The regular run was due here at five o’clock. He was surprised to see that it was only ten minutes after four. He remembered then, his mind picturing Willard Mims as he chartered the special coach.
Brennan said, “I’m getting off here at Sasabe.”
“How’ll you get over to your place?”
“Hank’ll lend me a horse.”
As they drew nearer, Rintoon was squinting, studying the three adobe houses and the corral in back. “I don’t see anybody,” he said. “Hank’s usually out in the yard. Him or his boy.”
Brennan said, “They don’t expect you for an hour. That’s it.”
“Man, we make enough noise for somebody to come out.”
Rintoon swung the teams toward the adobes, slowing them as Brennan pushed his boot against the brake lever, and they came to a stop exactly even with the front of the main adobe.
“Hank!”
Rintoon looked from the door of the adobe out over the yard. He called the name again, but there was no answer. He frowned. “The damn place sounds deserted,” he said.
Brennan saw the driver’s eyes drop to the sawed-off shotgun and Brennan’s Henry on the floor of the boot, and then he was looking over the yard again.
“Where in hell would Hank’ve gone to?”
A sound came from the adobe. A boot scraping—that or something like it—and the next moment a man was standing in the open doorway. He was bearded, a dark beard faintly streaked with gray and in need of a trim. He was watching them calmly, almost indifferently, and leveling a Colt at them at the same time.
He moved out into the yard and now another man, armed with a shotgun, came out of the adobe. The bearded one held his gun on the door of the coach. The shotgun was leveled at Brennan and Rintoon.
“You-all drop your guns and come on down.” He wore range clothes, soiled and sun bleached, and he held the shotgun calmly as if doing this was not something new. He was younger than the bearded one by at least ten years.
Brennan raised his revolver from its holster and the one with the shotgun said, “Gently, now,” and grinned as Brennan dropped it over the wheel.
Rintoon, not wearing a handgun, had not moved.
“If you got something down in that boot,” the one with the shotgun said to him, “haul it out.”
Rintoon muttered something under his breath. He reached down and took hold of Brennan’s Henry rifle lying next to the sawed-off shotgun, his finger slipping through the trigger guard. He came up with it hesitantly, and Brennan whispered, barely moving his lips, “Don’t be crazy.”
Standing up, turning, Rintoon hesitated again, then let the rifle fall. “That all you got?”
Rintoon nodded. “That’s all.”
“Then come on down.”
Rintoon turned his back. He bent over to climb down, his foot reaching for the wheel below, and his hand closed on the sawed-off shotgun. Brennan whispered, “Don’t do it!”
Rintoon mumbled something that came out as a growl. Brennan leaned toward him as if to give him a hand down. “You got two shots. What if there’re more than two of them?”
Rintoon grunted, “Look out, Pat!” His hand gripped the shotgun firmly.
Then he was turning, jumping from the wheel, the stubby scatter- gun flashing head-high—and at the same moment a single revolver shot blasted the stillness. Brennan saw Rintoon crumple to the ground, the shotgun falling next to him, and he was suddenly aware of powder smoke and a man framed in the window of the adobe.
The one with the shotgun said, “Well, that just saves some time,” and he glanced around as the third man came out of the adobe. “Chink, I swear you hit him in midair.”
“I was waiting for that old man to pull something,” said the one called Chink. He wore two low-slung, crossed cartridge belts and his second Colt was still in its holster.
Brennan jumped down and rolled Rintoon over gently, holding his head off the ground. He looked at the motionless form and then at Chink. “He’s dead.”
Chink stood with his legs apart and looked down at Brennan indifferently. “Sure he is.”
“You didn