.45-Caliber Desperado by Peter Brandvold Page A

flipped the flap of White-Eye’s coat away from his side, revealing a broad patch of thick blood on the man’s shabby white shirt that was ruffled down the front, like the shirt of some fancy tinhorn gambler or southern plantation owner.
    â€œOh, shit,” Mateo clucked, frowning and shaking his head. “White-Eye, they got you good, eh?”
    â€œWhat? You mean that?” White-Eye laughed a little desperately. “Looks much worse than it is, Mateo. Really. The bullet just clipped my side there, went all the way through.”
    Cuno stood tensely beside Renegade and near Camilla as he watched Mateo’s expression slowly change from a bemused smile to a baleful stare. White-Eye stared at the outlaw leader, and fear blazed in his blue eye. “Mateo. My brother,” the man said, groveling and taking a step back. “It’s just a flesh wound. Really. I won’t slow us down—I promise. Shit, I can’t wait to eat some of the deer and get back in the saddle again!”
    He laughed again but there was only desperation in it. His blue eye watered as he continued to laugh, his mouth stretching and twisting bizarrely, making a terrified mask of his large, brown, unshaven face. “Mateo, goddamnit!” he yelled suddenly, the blue eye flashing with rage, the other one rolling unmoored in its socket.
    â€œYou know the rules,” the outlaw leader said reasonably. “We all agreed to the rules before our first ride. Right, White-Eye? Right, Wade?” he asked a gringo rider who was slowly, distractedly unsaddling his buckskin.
    â€œThat’s right,” the stocky Wade agreed, nodding, his fleshy, shaven face somber as he turned away from the two men who had become the focus of everyone’s attention. “We all agreed, White-Eye. I seen that fella shoot you from three, four feet away. Preacher with a white collar.” He shook his head at the irony of White-Eye’s fate. “If that don’t beat all,” he muttered and walked away toward the trees with his saddle on a shoulder.
    â€œBut I killed him good, didn’t I?” White-Eye called after Wade, who did not look back at him. “I got that sky pilot good—didn’t I, Wade?”
    â€œLet’s take a walk,” Mateo said to White-Eye.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCome on, my brother. Let’s don’t make this hard.”
    â€œNo!” White-Eye took another step back and shucked a long-barreled, black-handled Russian from his shoulder holster. He hadn’t gotten the barrel pointed forward yet before Mateo grabbed it out of his hand and smacked him hard across the face with it.
    White-Eye screamed and staggered.
    â€œDon’t you ever pull a pistol on me, you half-breed son of a bitch!”
    Mateo drew one of his own pistols, shoved the barrel against the bloody stain on White-Eye’s coat. The gun’s roar was muffled slightly by the half-breed’s gangly body. The man screamed shrilly as his shirt around the fresh wound burst into flame. As he staggered backward and sideways, grabbing for another pistol, Mateo shot him twice in the chest.
    He hit the ground and lay shuddering.
    Silence except for the warily nickering horses.
    Cuno stared down at the dead man, feeling a curious lack of emotion.
    â€œNo!” a voice screamed along the creek.
    Cuno turned, as did the others in the group, toward where Ignacio was breaking brush toward a heavy thicket of cottonwoods. Behind him, Brouschard aimed a long-barreled pistol. The gun whanged. Red licked from the barrel, smoke rising.
    Ignacio dove forward as blood and brains spewed from his forehead. He hit the ground, rolled, spraying rocks and gravel, and lay still against a fallen branch.
    â€œHey, Ignacio was just my size.” This from Frank Skinner, standing next to the horse he’d just unsaddled—a beefy bay.
    Cuno had lost sight of his fellow escapee amongst the group. Skinner was still