Man with No Name- Top Of Wagon Shooting

The hunter crabbed across to the opposite side, stepped up on the wheel and barked, “Boo! Now I’m on this side, dummies.”

He was back under the wagon when the rush of pounding feet tore back. This time there was no clashing of rifle barrels on armor. Instead, peering out from beneath, he saw an arm poked out, the hand holding a cocked forty-five. The arm swung the pistol back and forth and he could visualize a brutish face pressed against the slit in an effort to see directly below.

He tilted his forty-four up and squeezed the trigger. The crash of the shot merged with the spang of lead on steel. The outlaw’s gun went screaming off. There was a howl of anguish and the compartment overhead was filled with a tumult of lurid profanity. The hunter grinned faintly and moved at a leisurely pace, replacing the empty shell.

Up above one voice, apparently that of a leader of sorts, finally beat down the competing voices to roar, “You stupid sonsabitches! You’re lettin’ him haul you around like he’s got a ring in your nose. Use your dumb heads and split up, part of you watchin’ for him on each side at the same time, lame-brains!”

The hunter waited for the scrabble of boots to quiet, then popped up at the front slit to call, “Boo! Now I’m up here.” This time the tumult was stilled to a degree by the dominant voice bawling, “Goddammit, how much longer do we let that bastard make monkeys outa us? We’re four to his one …”

“Whaddayuh mean, four?” a new voice yelled indignantly. “What the hell am I—a crack in the floor?”

“You’re the one stays inside to watch these two cute big-brain boys while we take care of that buzzard outside. Leave our rifles This is strictly a handgun job. Moke, open the hatch and we go out, shoulder to shoulder, with our guns ready to blast him on sight. Ready?”

Across the rear of the wagon a sheet of steel flopped down, exposing an opening the width of the vehicle. The four peered cautiously around, then came scrambling out, cocked guns ready. They stared around both sides of the wagon, squatted to peek beneath it, scowled at one another in bafflement.

The one whose voice had over-ridden the others, roared, “The sonuvabitch’s prob’ly hangin’ on the front of the wagon with his legs pulled up so’s they don’t show underneath. Two of you go around that side and us two’ll take this one. We’ll catch him between up front, but for crissake be careful we don’t put slugs in each other.”

With exaggerated caution they tiptoed up each side. At the front they hesitated, then darted around, skidding to a stop, gaping at each other. The bounty hunter was nowhere to be seen, either on or in front of the wagon.

“Yoo-hoo!” His voice wafted down to them, with a lilt of suppressed mirth. He had been lying flat on top of the wagon, out of sight of those on the ground close by. Now he was standing feet wide apart, empty hands hanging loosely at his sides. The poncho was tossed over his shoulder, clearing the deadly forty-four in its high-slung holster.

“If you’re ready to start the bang-bang part,” he said, pleasantly, “go right ahead.”

They were good and they were fast, but his deliberate buffoonery had already thrown them badly off-stride. Now his sudden appearance over their heads and his nonchalant air left them momentarily stunned. They were still trying belatedly to bring their weapons up to bear on him when the hunter’s gun was flat against his hip, his left hand slapping the hammer in a blur of motion. The four collapsed in an untidy heap on the ground.

The hunter made a mental note to add another twenty-four hundred dollars to his growing bounty list.

- Blood for a Dirty Dollar, chapter 22