Ain't Talkin'
Chapter 33 - art o

There were enough bodies moving along the streets of Stateline that Roche quickly slipped into nothing, an ether of human beings. The white noise of their conversations drowned out the world for a moment, but was not loud enough that Roche did not hear the copper cry out from the entrance of the alley.

“Help! Help! Officer down! It’s the hunter, he’s here! Help, officer down!”

Roche skimmed a glance over his shoulder. The copper was leaning on the brick wall for support, his broken wrist hanging useless at his side and the idiot had managed to retrieve at least one half of his gun before he got back to the street. The fool ought to have stayed down, but now he was scanning the streets, looking for Roche.

The hunter melted back two more steps into the crowd, and had turned to make a break for his horse when the copper raised his voice again.

“He’s there! The hunter, in the hat! Stop him, stop him!”

The hat? Apparently that was all the description the people of Stateline needed. The static echo of the crowd went silent and people backed away from the hunter. Men put their arms protectively across the breasts of their women, and a mother turned her shoulder over the swaddled mass of an infant protectively.

“Oh, fuck all of you.” Roche said under his breath and backed three quick steps to his horse.

Coppers came out of the woodwork. Two burst out the front doors of the Place, another pushed civilians out of his way and emerged from the crowd and a fourth stepped and turned to fetch more from wherever their station was at a run.

First policy always was not to kill anyone who wasn’t going to kill you if you didn’t, second often was to keep the peace with local law enforcement because they had a nasty habit of remembering faces and causing headaches and hiccups later in life. Seemed to Roche that these two policies were at odds at the moment.

“Look! I don’t want to have to kill any of y’all! I’m on the job much as any of you! I don’t know what the bounty is on my head but I promise you there will be other hunters coming that you’d rather collect a bounty on than me.” Roche held one gloved hand at chest height, open, hoping to stall the drawing of guns. His other hand had inched to the sawed-off holstered under his coat at his thigh.

“Hold! Don’t you move!” The two coppers from the Place had drawn their handguns. Little peashooter snubnoses but when bullets started flying from all directions it didn’t always matter how big the gun firing them was.

“Yeah, yeah. Look fellas I get it. Lemme go and I’ll be on my way and never, ever come back to Stateline. Okey dokey?” There was a layer of sarcasm there.

“Don’t you move.”

“Why do all of you say the same recorded lines? Is there a copper script out there I’m unaware of?” Roche’s fingertip was on the trigger of the sawed off. Flipping a glance left the hunter saw that Lucky was looking at him with a horse look that said we-going-or-are-we-staying-what’s-up.

“Show me your hands! Don’t move!" The coppers from the Place edged down off the sidewalk into the street with little, measured steps. The one who’d come from the crowd had also now drawn a gun and was inching forward. The one Roche had left in the alley hitched himself to a nearby lamppost and fidgeted with his gun, trying to put it back together one-handed. Apparently he’d found both pieces and the clip after all. Smart boy he was not.

“You don’t wanna see both hands, fella. Let me get on my horse and be on my way. Don’t be stupid.” That was about as reasonable as Roche got.

“Show me those hands, get on the ground!” Gun hammers clicked back for effect.

Roche spun right and drew the sawed-off with one hand and a revolver with the other, quick as a striking snake. The white was in the space between his eyes and his eyelids, and it was beneath his fingernails.

The first blast from the sawed off peppered open a copper’s uniform jacket with little holes and flung his arms wide, by the time he hit the dust little red pools were expanding from all of those holes and his eyes had rolled back into his skull with shock until he bled out.

The revolver’s trigger pulled like a hairpin and a bullet ripped a neat circle in the side of another copper’s neck. The officer gripped at the blood and squeezed off a shot into the air before he fell against the lip of the sidewalk.

The copper from the crowd went to one knee and pulled the trigger of his gun in a tight three cluster. In the space of time they’d been speaking, the street had cleared of civilians for the most part, and the shots rang off down the street where they broke the glass of a storefront. Roche had moved to the right and towards his horse some more steps between gunshots, and by the time the kneeling copper realized he hadn’t hit the hunter there was a mushroomed ball of lead resting in his brain and he had hit the ground, courtesy of Roche’s revolver.

Those folk who hadn’t gone to ground when the gunslingers had started jawing had all screamed bloody hell and gotten back into their respective holes right quick. The street emptied in the space of three seconds and Roche had a leg over his horse while he slipped the knot in her reins.

A clatter of metal drew the hunter’s eyes, and the copper from the alley flung himself down to retrieve the half of his gun he’d dropped.

Roche leaned on the pommel of his saddle and stuffed the sawed-off back in his leg hostler. “Didn’t I tell you not to say anything, dipshit?”

“F-f-fuck you.” The copper scrambled after the half of his gun he’d dropped but every time he grabbed at it he knocked it further from himself, and crawling on a broken wrist he looked like a three-legged dog who’d been kicked too much for one day.

“Yeah, fuck me. Listen, I’m gonna be taking off outta here right now. You’re not gonna be sending more of you after me are you?”

“Gonna, gonna, gonna get you.”

“That’s what I thought.”

The copper grabbed finally at the broken piece of his gun along the concrete and looked up at the hunter. Their eyes met for a portion of a moment and Roche shot him through the bridge of his nose.

The walker spurred his horse in the sides and Lucky took off down the paved road west out of Stateline while people watched from the windows.

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