They were staying just out of range.
That was alright. She wouldn't have to hit them with the whips.
They wanted a whip display? She'd give 'em one.
Margo began to utilize her supple wrists, flicking and dancing the leather tails through the air, making whip music, faster and faster, lashing, cutting, singing...
Some of the five were licking their lips, eyes darting nervously... Time to strike -
Both whips streaked out at head height, straight for the men -
Though pulling up short a decent distance from the faces of the gunfighters, the sonic booms that the cracking whips created in the air travelled on to connect with the men.
Again she struck, and again, and again, the stunning waves blinding and disorientating the gunmen. Three of them fell to the ground unconscious, one blindly firing a shot which thumped at an angle into the dirt closer to himself than Margo.
Dropping the larger whip again she drew rapidly and shot the remaining two addled men. They crumpled down with their colleagues.
Standing there she looked all about the quiet street, standing in a hushed stillness, as if the series of sound barrier breaching cracks had opened up a silent layer of existence.
Reloading and holstering the Walker she picked up the bullwhip grip and re-rolled it, quickly as its length lay open, twirling it in a circular wind as easily as a cowhand whirls a lariat. The black serpent length moved with silky ease, almost like an obedient, living thing. She recalled that several of the whips in her collection had been supplied by Stoodark. Some of them were 'special' he had said. A couple were supposed to have strands from an Indian (not the North American kind) fakir's magical climbing rope wound into their core bellies. She hooked the whip on a customised belt pommel on her left, speedily rewound the shorter whip and cautiously walked on, getting off the open street.
Using whips in combat required a clear, sharp mind. It was a bit like high speed chess at times. So far, Margo's mind had proven equal to the task.
She came to a timber frame two storey frontage, looked like a boarding house maybe?
Her senses were telling her that there was another Big C killer in the vicinity.
There was something odd about the building... She moved to one end of the frontage, looked around the corner, then walked back there, frowning. The building was a facade only, nothing behind it save timber support struts angling back to the ground where they were sturdily pegged. Odd, she thought, then stepped back as the main door of the building facade swung open and a man dressed in a gambler's dark clothing stepped through from the other side.
As he came through, pistol in hand, she slunk around the corner to the front again, still watching him with one eye from the building's edge. He was handsome, clean shaven save for a pencil-thin mo, spotlessly clean, but with cruel eyes.
Once the cautious man was all the way through and clear of the door she threw the longer of the two furled whips out into the air high to her right - the man swivelled and fanned three shots from the hip at the uncoiling whip - she stepped out fully then, and snap-flicked it through the sliced air --
It struck fast around the gunman's hand lashing him to one of the timber supports, at the end of its wrap the double-edged knife lodged itself in the wooden strut. Having dropped his gun the man quickly reached down to his ankle, through the split trouser cuff and came up with a razored Bowie blade which he instantly slashed through the restraining whip end. He still had to free his coil wrapped hand though.
He watched Margo as he tried to hurriedly do this, gave up, flipped the Bowie in his free hand and expertly threw it at her.
As she lunged to the right she felt the blade handle graze her left arm - better that than the point finding her left of centre mass, which it had been bound for. She closed the distance between herself and her attacker with a quick shuffle and, left handed, she threw the other, shorter whip length out over her right arm then snapped it back with a sharp, echoing crack, whirled it about her head once - hissing through cut air like a wielded serpent - then struck downwards with it.
This second loaded whip had a five and a half inch, unfired machine gun cartridge, bullet head to the fore, worked into its end. It struck the man in the left eye at close to super sonic speed. The whip fired cartridge left almost as much damage as if its bullet had been shot from a gun. The man in black quietly slumped down dead, obliterated eye and socket briefly streaming out liquids, terminally damaged contents of his brain pan uniquely shot by an unfired bullet. Still tethered one handed to the strut, his head jerked and his body rocked briefly as Margo plucked the whip free from fourteen feet away.
All that practice flicking flies out of the air with a whip tip had paid off, yet again.
With a single whirl of the longer, Bowie curtailed, whip, arms up, she allowed it to swiftly wrap around her waist in a snug embrace.
She strolled off, behind the town, to see what other trouble she could whip up.
