Free Rough Justice by Lyle Brandt Page A

wagon wheel, but didn’t think he’d need to. Panic swept the room, men’s voices shouting, “Fire!” as if nobody else could see the spreading smoke and flames. A woman screamed, one of the upstairs girls, and Ryder hoped she’d make it out all right, but couldn’t turn the fight into a rescue mission. He was focused on escape now, tracking Truscott and—
    â€œCaptain!” one of the shooters cried, over the din of general confusion.
    And another, right behind him, hollered, “Cap’n! You come back!”
    â€œDiscretion,” Truscott’s deep voice answered, “dictates we evacuate this place.”
    â€œWe got ’im cornered, though,” a third man said. “If we can root ’im out real quick—”
    â€œIndeed,” Truscott replied, cutting his soldier off. “We cannot leave an enemy to possibly escape, then harm us further on another day.”
    That earned a rousing cheer, over the crackling of the fire, and Ryder braced himself for what he knew was coming. They would charge en masse and overrun him, kill himwhere he stood—or crouched, more like—and that would be the end of it. If he tried bolting out the back, they’d shoot him as he ran.
    Unless . . .
    He still had thirteen rounds left in the Henry, six more in his Colt without reloading. If he fought back hard enough, there was a chance that he could rout them. Not a
good
chance, but it beat his odds if he did nothing. And if he could turn the charge, there was a chance that he might reach the back door with a slim head start.
    And Truscott?
    Drop him if you can,
he told himself.
    It took another smoky moment, even with the place in flames, for Ryder’s enemies to rally, summon up their nerve, and rush the point where they had seen him last. By then, he’d edged further behind the bar, gaining more cover for himself, and when he rose, his Henry shouldered, several of his would-be killers gaped at him in stark surprise.
    Log them as drunk
and
stupid.
    Ryder rapid-fired into the charging crowd, dropping two men in the front rank before he spotted Truscott, swung around, and nailed him with his third shot. Ryder saw his .44 slug drill through Truscott’s cheek, then had no time to watch him fall or see if he was trampled by the others rushing up behind him. Blazing at his human targets like a madman, Ryder barely had to aim. The wall of angry flesh before him made a wasted shot impossible.
    His fusillade tore through the ranks, causing a ripple that became a rout, the men he hadn’t killed or wounded yet changing their minds about the wisdom of hurling themselves at a repeating rifle, while the building that contained them filled with smoke and threatened to collapse.
    Their mass retreat began when someone cried, “The cap’n’shit!” More voices joined the lamentation, and the charge broke ten feet short of a collision with the bar. To keep them moving, Ryder started lobbing whiskey bottles after them, each one exploding into bright flames as it shattered, setting fire to trousers, bodies, furniture—whatever was nearby.
    Ryder took advantage of his adversaries fleeing toward the street, a couple of them smashing windows to leap through them when the flapping doors seemed too congested. No one noticed as he scuttled down the hallway to the back door, bursting through it, bleary-eyed and coughing from the dense smoke roiling through the Southern Cross.
    The place was done, cooking away with Truscott and a number of his people still inside it. Ryder didn’t plan to stay and watch it all fall down, particularly since that meant police, the fire brigade, and far too many other witnesses to suit him. Starting on the trek back to his boardinghouse, slapping his clothes to shed some of the smoky odor, he began to think about his next report to Washington.
    What would he write?
Got tired of waiting, so shot up the place and burned it