There were three 9 mm bullet holes in a straight line, perfectly spaced out.
Jim caught the faint rustle of a sound from a large clump of dead sagebrush to their right. The woman also heard it.
“Got him,” she said very quietly.
Despite her height and age she moved with an uncanny balance and elegance, cat-footing her way toward the noise.
Jim Hilton started in to follow her, but she waved him back with a peremptory gesture of the Port Royale.
He stood in the stillness of the night, holding the Ruger loosely down at his side. Behind him the rest of their small group of survivors were waiting, and his mind began to tussle with the overwhelming problem of what they might do next. Where they might go.
But the adrenaline rush from the firefight was still flooding through him, and Jim found himself unable to look logically toward any sort of future. It was all too uncertain.
“Jim?”
“Yeah?”
“Here.”
“He still alive?”
“Only just. Got his ticket for the last train west and one foot already aboard the caboose.”
Mesquite crackled as he pushed through, finding the woman kneeling by a dark figure.
The man was on his back, moaning in a soft, bubbling voice. It was only just possible to make out an occasional mumbled word. Blood, black in the moonlight, was frothing around his lips, dappling the stark pallor of his face.
“Lungs,” said Nanci. “And a couple of bullets through the guts.” She laughed. “Think it was Carrie’s popgun did the damage. Just shows that it’s not the size but where you put it that really makes the difference.”
“Any chance of finding out who he is? Who the rest of them are?”
“No. I’d work on him if I thought it was worth it. But his mind’s locked away into his own passing. Too late.”
Jim filed the casual, thrown-away reference to being ready to “work on him.”
“Cold…feet frozen…can’t any…didn’t say guns ready…”
Nanci straightened. She swung her right foot back and kicked the dying man with surgical precision, the toe of her boot cracking into his head just below and behind the right ear.
The impact made a surprisingly quiet, moist thudding sound.
“That it?” asked Jim.
“Sure. That’s it. I think we should go and rejoin the others now. Nothing more out here for any of us. He carried no identification at all.”
“Think he was one of those… what did you call them, Nanci?”
“Hunters of the Sun? Very possible. I don’t know enough about them to be certain of this sort of modus operandi. Trained men, well armed, clothed in a sort of uniform. Paramilitary grouping.” She nodded, her pale blue eyes seeming almost white in the silvered light. “Would make sense. Think we were lucky, Jim. They didn’t expect us to be well armed and ready for them. They won’t be so careless next time.”
THE SOUND OF A TRUCK and several motorbikes came roaring out of the blackness roughly a half mile north of Calico.
Jim and Nanci Simms had only just rejoined the others, and they all stood, silent, listening.
“Going away,” said Sly Romero, quickly recovered from the shock of what had gone down less than a half hour earlier.
“Right.” His father nodded. “Good boy. They’re going away, all right.”
“How many dead?” asked Carrie.
“Seven. All of them that tried to sneak in and back-stab us. All dead.” Realizing that he was still holding the heavy pistol, Jim slid it quickly into the oiled leather holster.
Heather was looking at him, and he took a hesitant step toward her, but the young girl turned away from him.
The sound of the engines was fading off to the north.
“Think they’re really going, Nanci?” Jeff Thomas was shuffling from foot to foot, like a little boy bursting to go to the rest room.
“Yeah. And stop hopping around, will you. Look like you have to take a leak.”
Carrie brushed dust off her hands. “If we keep a guard, we could maybe go back to bed.”
“Sure,” agreed Jim.
“Then what?” said Steve.
Jim didn’t have any answer for that one.
Chapter Seven