White Lightning by Lyle Brandt Page A

Naylor answered. “I was fast asleep up here until I heard you all bumblin’ around out there. You woke me up. The hell am I supposed to know where anybody went or what they did while I’m in dreamland?”
    “Marshal, if you’re prone to jokin’, I can promise you this ain’t the time,” the mouthpiece of the quartet said.
    “Four guns to none,” said Naylor, “doesn’t put me in a joking mood.”
    “Best tell us where your partner is, then, hadn’t you?”
    Naylor figured his right hand was at least twelve inches from the nearest of his pistols, too far to be useful if the strangers cut loose from their present range. The only thing that he could think of was to stall for time and hope Slade reappeared from wherever in hell he’d gone.
    “I’ll say it one more time,” he offered. “I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” And with that, he hollered out, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”
    “No need to shout,” a voice said from the darkness.
    Then all hell broke loose.
    Slade had barely finished buttoning his fly when he heard voices from the camp. Luke Naylor’s first, and then a voice he didn’t recognize. The words eluded him at first, but Slade assumed they represented trouble in the making. With Bill Tanner’s grim example fresh in mind, he didn’t feel like giving strangers in the night the benefit of any doubt.
    He doubled back to camp, Peacemaker drawn and cocked, his sense of urgency and caution vying for control as he advanced. Long strides, but careful not to make a misstep and announce himself to whoever had dropped in for a chat. Behind him, Slade’s roan and his partner’s snowflake Appaloosa both stood silently, watching him and waiting to see what would happen next.
    Slade reached the last bur oak before the fire, staying inshadow as he counted four new faces in the camp. Naylor was sitting upright with his blanket thrown aside, his twin Colts visible but too far out of hand to do him any good right now. He’d need a suitable diversion if he planned on reaching them, and even then he would require a healthy dose of luck.
    Slade got in on the tail end of the conversation, Naylor telling the four guns, “I’ll say it one more time. I was sleeping when you made the noise that roused me. If you want to find my partner, best thing for you all to do is call him.” Suiting words to action then, he yelled, “Hey, Jack! You wanna get your ass back here to camp?”
    “No need to shout,” Slade answered, leveling his Peacemaker.
    The shooters spun to face him, couldn’t help themselves under the circumstances, and it wasn’t a negotiating situation. Slade squeezed off a round that struck the nearest of his targets in the chest and dropped him thrashing on the grass, then ducked back out of sight behind the oak as other guns cut loose.
    He didn’t bother counting, couldn’t tell if Naylor’d reached his Colts or been cut down while he was trying. Slade rolled to his right, around the bur oak’s trunk and out the other side from where he’d fired a moment earlier. Two of the four intruders still were on their feet and moving, one looking for him, the other fanning shots in Naylor’s general direction while the younger marshal ducked and rolled to save his skin, returning fire without a chance to aim.
    Slade nailed the pistolero who was stalking him, a gut shot, but it wasn’t good enough. The wounded man dropped to his knees, cursing, but braced his six-gun in a firm two-handed grip and sent a bullet whistling past Slade’s head. Thumbs drawing back the hammer, and he might get luckier this time unless—
    Slade’s next shot drilled the target’s forehead, blew out through the back somewhere, and sent his slouch hat sailing. Gunfire hammered from his right, and Slade twisted in that direction, ready with his Colt, but Naylor didn’t need him. Rapid-firing from a