The Killing Shot. Johnny D. Boggs

      Pardo pulled back as if he had been struck by a diamondback, blinked away his amazement. She shoved his hand away, scrambled to her feet, grunting, gasping, and headed back to the burning wreckage. Pardo followed, angry, shocked by the kid’s language, but she was fast. He barely caught her before she disappeared into the twisted metal and thickening smoke, had to pull the girl away, kicking, screaming, trying to claw his eyes out.

      Somewhere, Wade Chaucer laughed.

      “My mother!” the girl screamed when Pardo dropped her on the dirt again. “My mother’s in there, you damned fool!”

      Her yells stabbed at his heart. He wasn’t aware he was moving until he heard Duke’s shouts, warning him not to go, that he’d burn to death, but Pardo was already climbing into the scorching destruction. Coughing, gagging, blinded, he felt his way, cut his left hand on something, saw the red dress, the disheveled blond hair—just like the girl’s—and tossed a stovepipe off her leg.

      He felt a presence, tried to blink away the tears welling in his eyes. It was Phil. Good old Phil.

      “Help me get her out of here,” Pardo said, choking on the smoke. He could feel hell at his back.

      Pardo took the arms of the unconscious, maybe dead, woman. Phil gripped her feet. They moved, coughing; then Phil was staggering into the daylight. Someone came to help, and Pardo cleared the smoke, leaped off the coach.

      His mother beamed as they carried the woman away from the burning mess.

      “Plunder’s gettin’ better,” Duke said.

      They laid her on the ground, and Pardo backed away, rubbing his eyes. His mother came to him. “You all right, Jim?”

      He coughed again, slightly waved off her concern. “Be fine. Let me catch my breath.”

      “That was a brave thing you done, son.”

      “It was nothing, Ma.”

      “Get me some water,” the girl demanded.

      Harrah spit at the unconscious woman’s head. “There,” he said.

      Pardo took a step past his mother, watched the girl manage to stand and face Harrah. “My mother needs water,” she said, her voice cold, firm.

      “You got balls, girl, but I ain’t wasting precious water on no woman who’ll be dead in ten minutes,” Harrah said.

      Pardo saw the little Sharps in her waistband, saw her pull it, long before Harrah did, and grinned at the girl’s spunk. It was a four-barreled .32 Triumph, and the kid jammed it into Harrah’s crotch.

      “You don’t get some water, you’ll not have any balls to speak of,” she told him, and thumbed back the tiny hammer.

      The Greek laughed.

      “What the hell’s the matter with you people?” Pardo snapped. “That’s a lady lying there, and she needs water.” He went to Harrah and the girl, jerked the .32 from her hand, and gave Harrah a savage shove. “Fetch a canteen. Phil, I reckon we’ll need the buckboard after all.”

      “We’re takin’ ’em with us, boss man?” Duke asked.

      “Yes. Of course we are. Ain’t that right, Ma?”

      “Whatever you say, Jim.”

      Chaucer shook his head. “This whole thing has been a bust.”

      “You think so, Wade?” Pardo dropped to a knee, put the back of his left hand against the woman’s cheek. If not for the blood, the busted nose, she’d probably be a fine-looking woman, and her breasts put Three-Fingers Lacy’s to shame. He grinned. Lacy would be almighty pissed to have this woman tagging along with them. She might strangle the woman in her sleep.

      Harrah handed him a canteen, and he wet down his bandana, put it on the woman’s forehead. She stirred slightly, shivered, and went still again. Pardo bit his lip until he detected her chest rising and falling.

      “I don’t think it was a bust, Wade,” he said again, washing the blood off her pale face. “Not at all.”

      “We didn’t get that money,” Duke reminded him.

      “And the Army ain’t, neither. Blue-bellies can’t spend ashes, and that’s all that’ll be left of that damned Yankee payroll.” He looked up at Harrah. “What’d you collect off the people inside?”

      “Not much,” Harrah said timidly.

      “What?” Pardo demanded.

      “A couple of watches and a money belt. And a broach.”

      “Too busy looting the dead to notice a kid and her ma, I reckon.”

      “You told us to—” Harrah stopped himself.

      “Give your plunder to Phil. Have him put it in the wagon. We’ll split it up when we get back to the Dragoons. Like we always do.” He handed Harrah the canteen, checked the woman’s ribs, her arms, her legs. “I don’t think she broke anything except the nose and some ribs,” he told the girl. “And I can fix the nose.” He winked at the kid. “I’m right experienced with busted noses.”

      The kid lifted her mother’s head, and let Harrah give her a sip from the canteen. Most of it ran down her face and into the dust.

      “She might be bleeding inside,” the girl said.

      “Can’t do nothing about that,” Pardo said, “except bury her when the time comes.”

      Somewhere from the bowels of the wreckage, a scream suddenly sliced through the morning air. The whippersnapper of a girl went rigid, and Harrah dropped the canteen.

      “Careful with that water, you damned fool,” Pardo barked.

      Another scream. Then nothing but the roar of the inferno.

      “Poor bastard,” Pardo muttered. He looked at the girl again. “What’s your name, kid?”

      She glared at him. “I don’t have to tell you damned bushwhackers anything.”

      He backhanded her and stuck a finger under her trembling lip. “And I can throw you and your ma back inside that coach, and you can burn like that poor, dumb, screaming bastard just did. I like grit, kid, but just a little of it for flavor. What’s your name?”

      Her lips still quavered. But she was too damned stubborn to cry. “Blanche,” she answered at last.

      “How old are you?”

      “Ten.”

      Ten, and a mouth like that. He stared at the unconscious woman. That would make the woman thirty, perhaps younger. Didn’t look much older, even with her face and body all beat to hell.

      “And your ma? What’s her name?”

      “Dagmar.”

      “Dagmar what?”

      “Dagmar Wilhelm.”

      “All right, Blanche Wilhelm, we’re going—”

      “I’m not Wilhelm. My name’s Blanche Gottschalk.”

      Pardo blinked.

      “My father died,” the girl had to explain. “My mother remarried.”

      “Gottschalk. Wilhelm. I don’t know which name’s ornerier on the tongue.”

      “Gottschalk,” Chaucer said. “It means ‘God’s servant.’”

      “I wouldn’t know nothing about that,” the kid said, which got a laugh out of Chaucer.

      “Where were you bound?” Pardo asked.

      “Tucson,” she said.

      “That where your pa, your new pa, lives?” Pardo asked. He was thinking that a husband might pay