Wanted! Belle Starr! by J.T. Edson Page B

he
received his fair share if this proved to be the case. “It won’t do
any harm to look if he is.”
    “ Good God in heaven!”
Forey ejaculated, turning the body over so that the features were
revealed. His agitation was aroused less by the discovery of the
victim’s identity than through thoughts of how the man who had
found them the job might regard their error. “What the hell’s he
doing here?”
    “ I dunno,” Potter
admitted, also staring at the lifeless features of the employer he
had known only as ‘Mr. Wilson’. “But we’d best light a shuck the
hell from here and wonder about it later.”
    Leaving the shack, still holding their
revolvers, the pair saw three men running towards them. Noticing
the badges worn by the newcomers and the way they were armed,
Potter, snarling a profanity, did not wait to be challenged.
Raising his weapon, he fired and, equally perturbed by the sight,
Forey duplicated his action. Neither achieved the success they had
had in the building. Missing their intended marks proved to be a
mistake as bad as that made by their late employer when
inadvertently bursting in on them.
    Each one of the approaching trio was a
trained and competent peace officer, supplementing a holstered
revolver with a double barreled shotgun. Given such provocation,
they retaliated swiftly. Their main armament boomed, the red flare
of multiple muzzle blasts momentarily lighting the area. The
discharged loads flew far more lethally than had those of the whip
it gun belonging to Icke. Engulfed in the spraying cloud of .32
caliber buckshot balls, Forey was killed outright and Potter died
of his wounds a few seconds later.
    ~*~
    After having left the receiver, the tall,
lean and Indian-dark informant did not go far. Having passed only
two buildings, he was confronted by three people. Two were men clad
after the fashion of working cowhands. Although no longer a blonde,
and now dressed more cheaply, in a style suited to the district,
the other was the beautiful young woman he had claimed was the
conjuneero, ‘Gold-Brick Annie O’Toole’. There was, however, no sign
of the less attractive sister, ‘Winnie’, attributed to her.
    “ Howdy, Blue,” greeted the
female member of the trio, her voice still that of ‘Darlene-Mae
Abernathy’ except that it had lost its querulous and naive quality.
“Looks like you pulled off your end all right,”
    “ He took the bait like a
big ole bass snapping a frog offen a lily pad, Belle,” the
Oklahoman asserted. “How’d your end of it go down,
Sammy?”
    “ Forey ’n’ Potter’re
waiting for him in the shack,” replied the man to whom the question
was directed. His speech and appearance indicated he too came from
Oklahoma Territory and had an admixture of Indian blood. “What I
told ’em, I reckon they won’t wait to do any talking when he busts
in on ’em.”
    “ They haven’t, I’d say!”
declared the remaining cowhand, although his accent was that of a
well educated Bostonian, as the sound of shooting came from the
shack. “But there was a shotgun after the revolvers. Shall we go
and see if he’s escaped?”
    “ I don’t think there’ll be
any need for that,” Belle Starr estimated. “Forey and Potter might
not be what I’d call top grade stock at gunfighting, but they know
enough to be able to put down anybody who was up as close as he’d
be to them when they cut loose on him.”
    “ Yet the shotgun was fired
after the revolvers,” Geoffrey Crayne insisted, having no wish for
the man he had such good reason to hate to survive the trap which
had been laid by his companions.
    “ It was only the one
barrel and neither of them have fired again, which they’d be too
slick to be standing close enough for them both to be hit,” the
lady outlaw answered, being much more experienced in such matters
than the man she was addressing. “If we were betting, I’d put my
money on him having squeezed off when their lead hit him and didn’t
get either