The outlaws 5, p.12
The Outlaws 5, page 12
“You’ve burned it up, isn’t that it? Without that will, the whole ranch falls to Vera. You couldn’t afford to have my will lying around where somebody someday might find it. No, you had to destroy it. But you can’t deny I made the will. It’s been witnessed. You’ve hung yourself, Ford.”
“Maybe I just misplaced it,” Cooke said with a show of glassy bravado. “People lose things, you know.”
“That fact, on top of Ramirez’s testimony, will send both of you to the gallows,” Chris said levelly. “Probably you figured to bribe those two downstairs—the ones who witnessed the will—never to say anything about its existence to Johanna. But it didn’t work out. Your scheme’s tumbled down around your ears, Ford. We all know what you’ve done. Why keep pretending?”
“If you think I’m going to admit anything,” Cooke said, “then you’re loco. You seem to forget I’m a lawyer, Chris. I’ll run rings around you two baboons in a courtroom. You haven’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to concrete proof against me. About all you’ve got, Boyd, is grounds for a divorce, and I’m sure Vera won’t stand in your way if that’s what you want.”
There was a rasp as Boyd cocked his revolver. Chris’ left hand whipped out, his thumb dropping under the hammer of Boyd’s gun, rendering it useless; Chris said, “Back off, Boyd. You can’t shoot them down in cold blood. That’d make us as bad as they are.”
Boyd was opening his mouth to speak when a single gunshot went off somewhere outside.
Chris stiffened. “Clete,” he murmured, and wheeled to the window.
From this angle, he could see nothing. He said, “Boyd, that may have been Carson Denver. Get out on the landing and see if he’s in sight.”
Confused, enraged, Boyd obeyed as though he were a child, swinging out onto the landing with his gun raised.
Vera’s hand had gone to her mouth; her eyes were bulging. All the beauty in her face was distorted into an ugly mask.
A sudden flurry of shots sounded from outside, some of them issuing from Boyd’s gun on the landing. The commotion diverted Chris’ attention, but out of the corner of his eye he detected a flash of motion, and swung back to face the room in time to see a wicked little nickel-plated gun coming up fast in Ford Cooke’s hand.
Light raced fragmentarily along its barrel. Swinging his gun to bear, Chris shot.
The bullet took Cooke high in the chest, spinning him half around; his gun went off, and Vera uttered a little cry as she lurched backward.
Boyd’s bellow rang through the air, coming in through the broken door. Ford Cooke was crumpling to his knees, turning, the gun still in his fist; Vera was sagging back across the desk. Cooke’s eyes gleamed and his gun came up, and Chris was forced to pull trigger again.
The shot echoed around the room, deafening. It slammed Cooke back against the corner of the room; his head hit the wall, flopped forward loosely. The gun dropped from his lifeless fingers.
Vera slowly collapsed over the desk, sliding to the floor. Boyd swung in through the door. “Denver’s dead, but he took Clete with him—Vera? Vera? My God!”
Boyd knelt by her, cradled her head against him. She was not dead, but she said nothing, and died in Boyd’s arms. Boyd’s head dropped over his chest, and he wept in great heaving gasps.
Unable to look, Chris turned away.
In the red-yellow wash of the dawn, twenty-four hours later, Chris dismounted stiffly before the Fuller house.
Johanna came out on the porch. Her eyes were rimmed with red. “Chris—I’ve looked everywhere!”
“I had to ride it out,” he mumbled. “Had to think, get it all straightened out inside.”
“You’re dead tired, Chris.”
She helped him inside. He let himself go slack in her grasp, lowered himself into a chair. Johanna said softly, “I’m glad you came to me, Chris.”
“I’ll always come to you,” he said, “if that’s the way you want it.”
“Yes,” she murmured.
Her eyes were shining when he pulled her down and sought her kiss
By BRIAN GARFIELD
Available from Piccadilly Publishing
JEREMY SIX [series]
FORT DRAGOON [series]
THE LAWBRINGERS [series]
THE CATTLEMEN [series]
THE OUTLAWS [series]
About the Author
The author of more than seventy books, Brian Garfield was one of USA’s most prolific writes of thrillers, westerns and other genre fiction. Raised in Arizona, Garfield found success at an early age, publishing his first novel when he was only eighteen – which, at the time, made him one of the youngest writers of Western novels in print.
A former ranch-hand, he was a student of Western and Southwestern history, an expert on guns, and a sports car enthusiast. After time in the Army, a few years touring with a jazz band, and a Master's Degree from the University of Arizona, he settled into writing full time.
Garfield is a past president of the Mystery Writers of America and the Western Writers of America, and the only author to have held both offices. Nineteen of his novels have been made into films, including Death Wish (1972), The Last Hard Men (1976) and Hopscotch (1975), for which he wrote the screenplay. To date, his novels have sold over twenty million copies worldwide.
Brian Garfield died on December 29 2018.
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Brian Garfield, The Outlaws 5
