“West of here a couple miles,” Turpin groaned. “Hiding out in Mercy Ridge.” He cursed Toole’s name. “Kill him. He’s the one who started everything. He got me into this mess.” His facetwisted with surprise. “Sullivan, I reckon maybe you done killed me.”
“Yeah,” Conn said, “I did.”
And just like that, as if Conn had granted him permission, Turpin died.
Six down, five to go.
Conn faced the silent saloon.
People looked at him with awe and terror.
“You men heard everything,” Conn said, opening the cylinder of his Remington, dropping empty casings onto the corpse, and thumbing new cartridges into the empty chambers. “He murdered my brother. So I killed him. Now, I’m gonna kill these other men. Where’s Mercy Ridge?”
“Like he said, a couple miles west,” a frightened-looking, bearded man said.
“Take the old wagon road into the mountains,” another man said.
“It’s a ghost town on Coldwater Creek,” another volunteered. “You can’t miss it. There’s a sign and everything. At least there used to be.”
Others nodded.
“Who will ride with me?” Conn asked.
His question hung in the air. He scanned the saloon and was met only by silence and faces slack with fear.
He would find no help here.
Not bothering to ask again, he marched out of the saloon and into the street, where he intended to question folks and learn which horse Turpin had ridden.
But when he got out there, he didn’t need to ask any questions.
“Hello, old friend,” Conn said, running a hand over the smooth jaw of his gelding.
48
Mayfield never heard the gunshots.
He was in a crowded saloon down the street, trying to understand the words of a big Swede who seemed to think he’d just seen someone who fit the description of Jesse Turpin.
Mayfield had squinted and tilted his ear toward the man’s strange voice, struggling to understand what he was saying, especially with the shouting and laughter and stomping and the violin music, and in this way, he missed the gunfire.
But in a town like Leadville, news of a shootout traveled almost as fast as the bullets themselves, and a short time later, an excited man with enormous buck teeth burst through the doors and shouted, “Fight at the Dusty Nugget! It’s a shootout!”
That cleared the place.
Mayfield was one of the first out the door. He hit the street too late to see the winner of the fight riding off but in plenty of time to see onlookers standing there, pointing after him.
Mayfield followed the others across the street, moving with purpose and getting to the front of the pack.
When he pushed through the doors and saw the man lying dead on the floor, he realized he had, indeed, seen Conn Sullivan earlier.
It hadn’t seemed possible.
But it was.
Somehow, Conn Sullivan had survived the blast in the mine. Survived and dug out and learned Toole’s destination and gotten here already.
And he hadn’t just gotten here. He’d come all that way, tracked down Jesse Turpin, and killed him.
