Massacre Canyon by William W. Johnstone Page B

three cowboys pointing revolvers at him, and dived for cover just as flame spurted from gun muzzles and shots began to crash like thunder.

Chapter 9
    Bullets smashed into the bar and sent splinters flying where Luke had been standing a hairsbreadth of time earlier. He sprawled full length on the sawdust-littered floor, which stunk of spilled beer and rotgut and vomit. A quick roll carried him against the legs of the nearest table as more slugs chewed into the floorboards next to him.
    He grabbed the table legs and heaved. The table overturned and provided a little cover for him as he yanked one of the Remingtons from its holster. He had no idea why the three cowboys from the Block K were trying to kill him, nor did he care.
    As more bullets thudded into the overturned table, he thrust the Remington around the side of it and triggered two shots. He couldn’t tell if he hit any of the cowboys, but the flying lead was enough to make them scatter.
    One man headed for the nearest potbellied stove which would have made good cover if he had reached it. He was a little too slow. Luke snapped a shot at him and drilled him through the thigh.
    The wound made the cowboy lose his balance and pitch forward as his leg folded up under him. His arms went out instinctively and wrapped around the stove, embracing it as a man would a lover. His face rammed against it, and he screamed as the heat cooked and blistered the skin of his face and hands.
    The other two men had turned over a table of their own and crouched behind it as they hammered shots at Luke. The table he was using for cover had taken a lot of damage. As it began to splinter and come apart, several slugs punched all the way through the wood and whistled perilously close to Luke’s head.
    He holstered his gun, grabbed a couple of the table legs, and surged to his feet. Holding the table in front of him like a battering ram and yelling at the top of his lungs, he charged across the room toward the men trying to kill him. The unexpected attack startled them enough that they stopped shooting for a second.
    That gave Luke enough time to crash his table into the other one and knock it back against the two men, who sprawled on the floor from the impact as wood snapped and cracked. They wound up lying on their backs with the wreckage of two tables on top of them, along with Luke’s weight.
    He rolled off and drew both guns as he came away to his feet. A quick step and a swift kick knocked the gun out of one man’s hand. Luke pointed a Remington at the other man’s face and eared back the hammer.
    â€œThrow it away!” he rasped. “Now!”
    The man did so, sliding the gun a good ten feet across the dirty floor. Luke was breathing hard, and he was mad. The cowboy must have realized he was only a slight pressure on the trigger away from getting his brains blown out.
    Luke backed off. His left-hand gun covered the two men lying in the debris of the broken tables; the right-hand gun pointed toward the cowboy lying beside the stove, moaning in agony from his burns.
    â€œCrawl out of that mess,” Luke told the two men he had just disarmed. “Stay away from your guns. Make a move I don’t like and I’ll kill you.”
    â€œSure you will,” one of the men said as his face twisted with hate. “That’s just what a damn, no-good bounty hunter would do!”
    â€œI’m going to ignore that for the moment, as long as one of you tells me what the hell is going on here!”
    â€œAin’t you figured it out by now?” asked the man who had spoken up. He and his companion stood together, their arms half-raised. “We’re wanted.”
    Luke narrowed his eyes and stared at them. He didn’t recall ever seeing either man before, or their likeness on a wanted poster, either.
    â€œSo that’s why you tried to kill me? You thought I was after you?”
    â€œYou come in here, pistol-whip Harvey, haul out a wanted