Lords of the Plains Read online

  ‘I told you what I’d do if I ever saw you again,’ I reminded him through bared teeth. ‘Killing my friend only made that even more of a certainty.’

  Although drenched with blood and twitching uncontrollably, he still managed to summon a belligerent response. ‘Go to hell, you tarnal cockchafer!’

  Allowing Dix’s redundant cadaver to slip from my grasp, I placed the LeMat’s muzzle mere inches from my victim’s forehead and muttered, ‘Very possibly, but you first.’ That said, I squeezed the trigger again.

  Even as the ball pierced his skull, flame from the flash seared his brutalised features. His shattered head jerked back and then rapidly forward, before his whole body collapsed irrevocably into the dust.

  ‘He had some hard bark on him,’ I remarked, knowing full well that since I was still alive, then so Dan must also be.

  Anxiously turning around, I beheld a scene of pure carnage. Both Elijah and his stoop shouldered assailant were unquestionably dead. Dan was white-faced, but standing without support. His left arm hung loose, with blood dripping from his fingertips, but he still managed a wan smile as he saw my horrified expression.

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself, Josiah. It’s a flesh wound, is all. Just a pure shame that the same ain’t true of Elijah.’

  I nodded bleakly. ‘He might have strayed into bad ways for a time, but he sure didn’t deserve this . . . unlike all these other sons of bitches!’

  Dan indicated Dix’s blood-soaked corpse. ‘Looks like I’m gonna be taking his place at the sawbones. Dodge ain’t gonna like this outcome a whole lot.’

  I grunted. ‘It is what it is. What you might call a turn of events, and one that he’ll just have to accept. After all, he’s got the company’s gold back, the gunrunners are dead, and we even killed a few Sioux for him. That’s got to be worth ten dollars a day and found.’

  Dan eyes blinked rapidly, as though he was absorbing some unsettling information. ‘How much?’

  ‘Oh, shit!’