BAWA'S LAW

Chapter 5-2

With three Spencer brothers still standing alive!

Uncle Chad almost smiled with the grim irony of it.

How many times had he told young Chris Bawa never to rush into battle half-c****d? How many times had he drummed into Chris to push rage aside and do the level-headed checks on his gun, to judge a gun by its weight?

On countless occasions, he had loaded a gun with two, three and even one bullet and told Chris Bawa to judge how many bullets were in the gun.

 And yet here he was, finding out rather too late that the gun he had taken from the dead Phil Mortimer to dispense justice had only contained two bullets in the chambers instead of six!

Actually, Phil Mortimer had won the shooting contest, of course, and being a man who always loved to show off his skills with a gun, he had been engaged in a little fun sport with the cowboys. They had been throwing guava fruits into the air, and Mortimer had drawn and shot the fruits in mid-air before they began their descent.

It was during this time when he had reloaded and used four bullets, that word had reached him that five killers were brewing up trouble on the Circle T stand.

So used was he in taking care of bullies in Little Rock that he had immediately swung into action without stopping to reload his gun, so much unlike him.

 There was no way Phil Mortimer could have known that this single action of carelessness would put a gentleman like Uncle Chad in danger.

Tate Spencer, youngest of the three brothers, was immobile with fear. He had barely moved, and his eyes were fixed on the strange man they had come to kill.

He had always felt safe and protected in his older brother’s gang. Nothing had ever come close to harming him. His mother’s cries as she tried to stop him from joining his two brothers on a revenge trip were now a distant past, unlike the beginning when he had heard her almost every night before he slept.

At that particular moment, however, he realized that except for the fact that there appeared to be only two bullets in the old man’s gun, he and his two brothers would have died.

 This old man could have killed them all!

Actually, Tate flinched when the hammer fell on the empty chambers.

With a little cry of horror, he drew his gun and fired.

Billy and Sandy Spencer came out of their momentary immobility and also drew and fired rapidly.

Six bullets hit Uncle Chad’s chest, knocking him down to sprawl on the legs of Phil Mortimer. His eyes bore into his killers for a moment, and they were filled with steel, still unrelenting, still superior and still defiant.

The Spencer brothers reloaded quickly.

 “Let’s get outta here,” Billy Spencer said desperately as the crowd moved toward the fallen old man.

Taking advantage of the confusion and shock of the people, the Spencer brothers quickly left the park.

Of course, the citizens were cowed by the brutal violence they had witnessed, but Billy knew that they had committed murder, short and simple.

Folks had heard the sounds of empty chambers, and everybody present knew that Uncle Chad had had only two bullets in the gun.

Out here in the New Territories, justice was funny; no one cared about the fact that if there had been enough bullets in the Colt, the Spencer brothers would have been dead.

 They would be branded as murderers because they had evidently killed a defenceless man.

The rule of the gun was that they should have allowed Uncle Chad to reload and faced them again.

But they knew they were no match for the old man. They had to shoot him down!

If the citizens had not been so shocked, Billy knew that nothing could have stopped them from hanging him and his brothers right there in the park before Tiny and the others knew what was happening!

Ted Bawa was the first to reach Uncle Chad.

Not a man who showed much emotion, he knelt beside the dying man with a stony expression on his face at first, and then the lines of his face suddenly softened, and a little horror seeped into it.

He was still shocked, still could not believe that save for some fault with Phil Mortimer’s gun, this old man could have killed five men.

Uncle Chad was not dead yet.

 In fact, it seemed as if he desperately wanted to speak. Ted Bawa leaned close, and in spite of himself, he felt the first stings of tears in his eyes. Suddenly there were anguished screams, and Mrs Francine Bawa was on the ground, gathering Uncle Chad into her arms, her tears falling on him.

The old man’s glazed eyes fixed vacuously on the woman for a moment, and then with a tremendous effort, he focused, screwing up his face with the pain the effort brought him. He reached out and grasped the woman’s hand tightly.

“T-tell Ch-Ch…Chris!” he gasped painfully. “Th-this…is n-not his fight. He should let it go!”

The last words were spoken succinctly, almost shouted, so that those nearby heard it clearly.

 The old man went rigid, a spasm passed through his frail body, and then he went limp.

He was dead.

The sweet, graceful Uncle Chad was gone!

Murdered by the three Spencer brothers!

And at that particular moment, there was another commotion.

 People were being flung aside as if they were dolls. There were frenzied protestations, but they were still being shoved aside roughly, almost violently. Pretty soon space was created, and the person who had been doing all the shoving and cursing appeared.