The first bullet hit one of the half-clothed men in the center of the chest, kicking him backward, arms spread, his pants falling to his ankles, tripping him as he went down.
The second round smashed into the shoulder of the third slaver, spinning him. He started to scream, falling into a crouch, trying to hold the wrecked joint together with his other hand.
Doc knew there wasn’t time to fiddle with the gold-engraved Le Mat and change the hammer over to the revolver’s chamber with its nine rounds of .44s.
He holstered the blaster and drew the slim rapier blade from its ebony hiding place, dropping the cane in the grass as he ran to the fourth man.
The slaver saw his doom upon him and he reached for the stained revolver in his belt. His mouth sagged open in the beginning of a yell of terror.
Doc straightened his right arm and lunged at the slaver’s face, aiming for the gaping mouth with its stained teeth like tumbled tombstones. The point found its target with a perfect swordsman’s skill.
The Toledo steel drilled through the slaver’s tongue, pinning it to the roof of his mouth, then drove back, through the top of the throat, severing the spinal cord beneath the skull, cutting all the neural links between the brain and the body.
Doc twisted his wrist, freeing the rapier, watching with an obsidian stare as the man fell dying at his feet, eyes rolling in their sockets, blood pouring from mouth and nose.
“Touch,” he said grimly.
Three were dead or dying and one was wounded.
The man with the shattered shoulder was rolling back and forth, mewing like a kitten, tears flooding down his pock-scarred cheeks.
“Help me, help mefor the love of God, seor”
“You should not have waged your war against women and children,” Doc said, his voice colder than Arctic pack ice. “A fatal mistake.”
Jak stood by him, holding the Colt Python at his side. “Done them good, Doc,” he said.
“We were too late, my boy.” Doc was weeping, soundless tears running off his stubbled chin. “We arrived only to exact vengeance for the dead innocents.”
“Better than nothing.” The albino looked around the clearing. “Four scouts sent out by Bivar. We got all four. Make the son of a bitch wonder some.”
“Please The pain”
“I don’t want to bother with the Le Mat, nor do I wish to sully my steel with his foul blood. Would you do me the honor of allowing me the brief loan of your revolver, Master Lauren?”
“Gladly, Doc.” He handed the heavy blaster to the old man, who had holstered the Le Mat and sheathed his rapier, having wiped it clean in the grass.
“I tell you things about Rodrigo,” the wounded man yelped, kneeling in front of Doc.
“Like what?” Jak asked, gesturing to Doc to hold off with the blaster.
“He going attack village.”
“Which village?”
“One with big-point building.”
“When?”
The man grinned, showing a single gold tooth, carved to a point, at the front of his mouth. “You mebbe let me go? I don’t do nothin’. Men like you and me, we don’t fall out over few children and old sluts.”
Doc pushed Jak aside. “Men like you and me?” he repeated unbelievingly. “You dare to link your depraved and vile person with us? As you would say adios.”
He leveled the big gun and squeezed the trigger, blowing the man’s face away into a mask of blood and slick bone. Aiming at the twitching corpse, he put an-other bullet into the pulped skull, stilling the movement.
“First one did it,” Jak said reproachfully.
“Second one felt even better,” the old man replied, handing back the Colt Python.
“Might’ve talked more.”
Doc shook his head. “No, Jak. I don’t believe so. He would have lied to try to save his worthless skin. And that’s all. There is nothing he could have told us that we don’t already know. We have merely left the world a slightly cleaner place.”
“Now what?”
Doc swung his swordstick in an arc about the place of death. “We go tell the mothers and the fathers that there is some burying to be done.”