Gunsights by Elmore Leonard

Author:Elmore Leonard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780061841019
Publisher: HarperCollins

2

Moon handed the glasses to Bo Catlett and picked up his Sharps rifle from the Y of the cliffrose branch in front of him.

“They all got suits on,” Bo Catlett said, with the field glasses to his face. “Coming with their hands in the air. They surrendering?”

“You see the white flag?” Moon said.

“Man moving out of the way.”

“I saw him do it once before,” Moon said. “Something like this. What would you say's the range?”

From this position, where Moon and Bo Catlett, Red and three of his Mimbres crouched in the outcropping of rock and flowering cliffrose—high up on a slope of scrub pine—they had a long downview of the red-tile postage-stamp roof of the house and the tiny dark figures coming down to the yard, approaching the tiny figures in white coming out of the house.

Bo Catlett continued to study the scene through the field glasses, saying now, “You got…three hundred fifty yards' tween us and them.”

“Close,” Moon said, “but more like four hundred,” and sighted down the barrel of the Sharps. “It looks shorter aiming down.” He lowered the big-bore rifle to adjust the rear sight and put it to his shoulder again to aim, both eyes open.

“Wearing suits,” Bo Catlett was saying. “All dressed up to pay a visit, huh?”

Moon said something in slow Spanish, as though explaining carefully, and the Mimbres raised their Springfields and Spencers. He waited a moment and then said, “Listo?”

The Mimbres were ready. Bo Catlett continued to watch through the glasses.

“The one with the silver belt buckles,” Moon said.

“His holster's empty,” Bo Catlett said. “None of them appear armed.”

“Come up here with their coats on,” Moon said, “account of it's so cold. Only about ninety degrees out. Watch Sundeen, he'll do something. Take off his hat, something to give 'em a sign.”

“Talking,” Bo Catlett said. “Moving around some…Mexicans standing there listening to him, Armando, shit, look at him with his big hat on, arms folded, standing there…Sundeen looking up at the sky now, looking around…looking back at Armando…hey, yelling something…they drawing guns! He going for the Mexican!”

Moon fired.

The Mimbres fired.

The sounds hitting hard and flat in the stillness, echoing…the hard sounds hitting again, almost covering the popping sounds of pistol fire coming from the yard, where tiny dark figures and tiny white figures were left lying on the ground as the lines of figures began to come apart and scatter. The rifles echoed again, cracking the hot air hard, and in a moment the yard was empty but for the figures lying motionless: three dark figures, four white figures. A single white figure was being dragged, carried off by a crowd of dark figures.

Bo Catlett followed them through the glasses until they were out of sight, beyond a rise and a line of brush. He wasn't sure which one they'd dragged off until his gaze inched back to the yard, past the figures lying there, and saw the big Mexican hat on the ground.

“They got Armando,” Bo Catlett said.

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