Luke knew how good Deke and Zeke were with their six-shooters. But were they good enough to take on the Rhoades gang and best them? He knew how treacherously evil Rhoades and Benedict and the rest were and doubted the bounty hunters had a chance unless it involved back shooting or cutting throats in the middle of the night. Worse, Zeke and Deke had to kill Sarah and Marta, too, if they intended to steal the loot. No witnesses.
That included Luke Hadley.
“Audrey.” The name slipped out as his mind raced.
“How’s that, old son? You say something?”
“I remarked on how close to sundown it is. We ought to camp for the night and get an early start. If we’re within a few hours of finding the single rider, we can spot him by noon.”
From the way the two exchanged knowing looks, he anticipated what they’d say. He wasn’t disappointed.
“You go on and pitch camp. You got to make better coffee than Deke. We’ll just scout a ways ahead to be sure this is a safe place to spend the night.”
“Yeah, safe,” Zeke said. Luke wanted to play poker with this man. His face told every thought running through his treacherous brain.
He stepped down and stretched. As he pulled off the saddlebags containing what gear he had and the food the farmer had sold him, he said, “I swear, you two better not take long. I’m hungry enough to eat a wolf, growl and all.”
“Make up a real good fire. Over there, against that rock so’s it is out of sight from farther along the trail.” Deke inclined his head to his partner. They wheeled about and trotted off.
Luke forced himself to count to one hundred to give them enough of a head start. Quickly slinging his saddlebags back over the plow horse’s rump, he mounted again. Before he followed the bounty hunters, he checked the load in his six-gun. He snapped it shut and tucked it into his holster. He wished he had ammunition for the derringer, too, but if he had a wish to burn, he’d ask for a full troop of cavalry to back him up. Whatever happened, he was on his own.
The trail had grown indistinct, but he caught enough trace of Marta’s passage to know she had slowed considerably. If she was a mile ahead, he’d be surprised. While he lacked the sharp tracking skills of Zeke and Deke, he had learned a great deal since setting out on Benedict’s trail.
As he rode, finally glad the horse picked its way so carefully, not making much sound as it walked, he worried that any gunfire would alert Rhoades and his men. From all the times he had looked along their back trail, the posse was nowhere to be seen. Since leaving the lake, he and the bounty hunters had traveled more than five miles. Even if the posse heard the gunfire, a hard gallop meant they were an hour away unless they killed their horses.
The twilight made the going even more hazardous. Keeping his eyes peeled for the two gunmen ahead, he kept heading in the direction they had ridden. Any chance of seeing their hoofprints—or Marta’s—was gone in the dying light of day.
His heart leaped into his throat when he heard Deke drawl, “All righty, little lady, you just keep that hand off your iron.”
“My partner’s right about that,” chimed in Zeke. “It’d be a plumb shame if you did anything stupid and ended up ventilated.”
Marta’s reply was garbled, but the tone came through loud and clear. She understood what surrendering to the bounty hunters without a fight meant. It would be a long, tortured night for her and eventually they would kill her. Better to shoot it out here and now.
Luke put his heels to the horse’s flanks. It kept moving along at the same maddeningly slow gait. A quick exchange of shots echoed back along the trail. He kept raking his heels against the horse’s flanks and got a reluctant burst of speed from the animal. It wasn’t much but he rounded the rocky prominence and came out on a small pond surrounded by a few cottonwoods. The muzzle flash from ahead showed where Marta made her stand.
But he couldn’t find either of the bounty hunters. Unless he did, riding ahead only put him in the cross fire. Ending up dead did nothing to help Marta Shearing or bring any of the Rhoades gang to justice.
Worse, he had no hankering to go knocking on the Pearly Gates. Not yet.
He drew his pistol and looked around. A shadow moving across darkness drew his fire. Whatever he aimed at wasn’t human. Twin tongues of flame lanced at him from directions completely unexpected. Luke fell off his horse, which kept on moving at its own pace, leaving him on his back and exposed to hot lead from both the bounty hunters and the Pinkerton agent.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
LUKE WINCED AS a slug tore past his leg. Another ripped a hunk of leather from his boot. With a powerful kick, he rolled over and kept rolling. Dirt danced in tiny tornadoes around him until he fetched up hard against a fallen, rotted log. This protected him from bullets aimed at him from one direction. He got his bearings and trained his gun on a spot where the muzzle flash momentarily revealed Deke all crouched down and intent on killing something. Three quick shots rewarded him with a yelp. He doubted Deke was seriously wounded, but he had forced him out of the fight for a few seconds.
Flopping onto the other side of the log opened him to attack from where he believed Marta Shearing had taken cover.
“It’s me, Miss Shearing. Luke Hadley!”
He propped his gun hand on the log and bided his time. Patience paid off. Zeke tried to make a dash for where Deke moaned and cursed in pain. Luke emptied his gun. Over the past few months he had developed a sense of when he hit a target and when he missed. The emptiness in his gut warned him he had done nothing more than add wings to Zeke’s feet. The bounty hunter reached his partner without paying a penalty in flesh and blood.
Luke broke open the action, ejected the spent cartridges and began reloading.
“Get over here. You’re exposed. They’ve circled!” Marta Shearing’s urgent warning carried a hint of fear along with it. He snapped shut the Schofield and started rolling, hands over his head.
Rocks tore at his body and a twig poked into his leg with as much intensity as if he had been knifed. Heeding Marta’s warning proved a smart move. Two streams of bullets blasted hunks of the fallen tree into the air. If he’d stayed, at least one round would have found him.
He wiggled and slithered and finally dug his toes into the ground to get some purchase. A mighty lunge carried him forward to land in a grassy patch beside a cottonwood. He located the Pinkerton agent by smell before he saw her.
“That’s a mighty fine perfume you’re wearing,” he said.
She cursed under her breath before saying, “I haven’t had time to take a bath. It’s the only way I can stand myself when I’m on the trail.”
“I can’t object.” He got his feet under him and crouched on the other side of the rugged tree trunk. She fired now and then. He gauged the direction, moved closer to her and added his fire to hers.
“Stop shooting,” she said testily. “Unless you’ve got a box of ammo in your coat pocket.”
“All I have is in my gun belt.” He ran his fingers along the tiny cases and made a quick estimate. “A dozen rounds, plus what I have in my pistol.” He remembered he hadn’t reloaded fully. “Fifteen shots. That’s all I have.”
“Do you have a rifle?”
He shook his head, then realized she couldn’t see him too well.
“My six-shooter is all I have.”
“Do you have any idea who we’re up against? Are they stragglers from Rhoades’s gang?”
He quickly explained how Zeke and Deke were bounty hunters intent on stealing the gold from Rhoades—and leaving anyone who got in their way stretched out on the prairie as buzzard bait.
“You rode with them?” Astonishment filled her words. “Why’d you do a stupid thing like that? You had to know they were going to kill you, too.”
“I needed their tracking skills. You didn’t leave much of a trail.”
“It rained a couple times. Tha
t slowed me down finding the gang.” She slid back behind the cottonwood and reloaded. “So you expect me to believe you used them?”
“Something like that. I knew when they told me to pitch camp they’d found you.”
“So you blundered into the middle of a gunfight to save me?”
“You don’t have to be so sarcastic. It looks as if I have come to your aid.” He got off a couple shots where he saw a shadow move. From the way the bushes moved, he had been decoyed into wasting the rounds. Whatever else he thought of the two men out there, they were cunning and vicious.
“If you had a worry on that score, you should have brought the Crossroads posse along with you.”
“I wouldn’t want to get you in even deeper trouble.”
“Why do you say that?” Marta fired a couple more times, then sank back to let the bounty hunters waste some of their ammunition.
“Who helped me break out of jail by slipping me a derringer? Or have you forgotten that?”
Luke heard her grumble and had to smile, in spite of their predicament. She might have used him just as she had tried with Nelson. Get a crook out and watch where he ran. Only he wasn’t one of the gang, and Nelson had been used by Benedict and eventually murdered in a blast that sent blood and body parts sky-high.
“I wish I had a couple sticks of dynamite right now,” Luke said.
“Are you letting Rollie Rhoades influence you? Another box or two of cartridges would go better.” She chanced a quick look. Neither Deke nor Zeke shot at her. She turned to him. “They’re coming around to get us in a cross fire. They think the stream will keep us pinned here so they will attack from each flank.”
Luke considered this for a moment, then said, “The way for us to get out is to head that way.” He pointed toward where the bounty hunters had initially attacked. If they moved to the right and the left, that meant the center was undefended.
“If I’m wrong, we’ll run smack into their guns.” Marta looked hard at him. She was mostly cloaked in shadow, but he saw her brown eyes gleaming in the dark.
“Are you wrong?”
“I could be.”
“But you don’t think so. You’re a Pinkerton agent. You know things like this.”
“Hold on,” she said. “The horses. If we take our horses and get across to theirs, we’ve got them pinned here.”
“Where are they? The horses?”
“Closer to the stream. Cover me.”
Before Luke objected, she lit out. He stood and fired off to his right flank, where one bounty hunter might be hiding. The response he produced with his wild shooting warmed him. Zeke cried out in real pain. He had winged the man by shooting at shadows. Luke spun around in a crouch and emptied his six-gun in the other direction. Deke was luckier. He hadn’t made it as far around as his partner, causing Luke to guess wrong as to his location.
The thudding of hooves warned him that Marta had fetched the horses. He swung up into the saddle, glad she hadn’t taken time to drop the tack to the ground to let the horses rest. Leaning forward, his head near his mare’s, he galloped fast and hard to get away. It felt good having a powerful, fleet steed under him again after the plodding draft horse.
Exultation lasted only a few yards. His horse stumbled and fell forward onto its knees, sending him flying over its head. He landed hard. A loud scream while he flew like a bird exhausted the air from his lungs so he wasn’t badly stunned when he landed. Every bone in his body ached, but the air hadn’t been knocked out of him. He was learning all the tricks needed to keep from taking himself out of a fight. Luke rolled onto his belly and saw that everything had gone wrong with the attempted escape.
His horse had been shot from the rear. The bullet had ripped the length of the horse, killing it instantly. Worse than this, Marta’s horse had also been cut out from under her. It screamed and kicked and thrashed about. A back leg had been broken by the bounty hunters’ fire.
Luke rose to lay down covering fire for the Pinkerton agent. His hammer fell on empty chambers, one after another as he kept pulling the trigger.
“Run, run!” Marta waved for him to keep going. If they reached the far side of the clearing they could claim the gunmen’s horses and strand Deke and Zeke.
“What’re you doing?” He almost went to her. She tugged hard to get the saddlebags free from her panicked gelding. “Leave it. There’s nothing you got in there worth dying for.”
“I told you to run. Decoy their fire!”
Luke realized this was the only course of action left to him. There wasn’t time to reload and dying to save Marta Shearing gave him his only possible satisfaction now. Standing and being gunned down served no purpose.
“Here, here I am!” He stood upright and waved his arms, then began dodging. With a lurch to the right, he drew both men’s fire. A feint the other way caused them to waste more bullets. But then they figured out his pattern. Twice the sharp, hot bite of lead tore through him. The first grazed his side, leaving a shallow, oozing wound. The other proved more embarrassing than dangerous. It tore a chunk of meat from his left buttock. He stumbled and fell. The wound prevented his legs from moving smoothly—or at all.
He began crawling and found a shallow depression that afforded some cover. Flopping into it, he reloaded his pistol and looked back, praying Marta had eluded the deadly fusillade. She was on her knees halfway to him. He shouted to her, but she ignored him. Leaning forward, she dug like a gopher, throwing dirt into the air.
He had no idea what she hunted for, but he took a couple measured shots past her, hoping to drive the bounty hunters out where he had better targets. The answering orange tongues of flame from their six-shooters were nowhere near where he expected them. He shifted aim but held his fire. Marta was in the way.
“Get down!”
“Get their horses,” she ordered. “We can strand them if you get their horses!” She slung the saddlebags over her shoulder and finally ran to join him.
There wasn’t room in the shallow earthen bowl for both of them. She dodged and then raced past, shouting, “Cover me!”
He did his best, but his six-gun came up empty too fast. His sense of hitting his target told him he needed more practice. After the first couple times he winged Deke, every shot had been a clean miss.
She dodged and ducked and came back to lie beside Luke. A bump of her hip moved him a little out of the cavity. Neither of them had total protection from the steady rain of lead coming at them. Twisting around, she dumped the saddlebags in front and rested her gun hand on top. Twin holes in the leather showed that the saddlebags had already stopped bullets intended to kill her.
“I’ll run to the left and draw their fire. You get to the horses.” Luke stared back at his dead horse. It had served him well. Marta’s horse still thrashed about, in pain from its shattered back leg. He ran his fingers over the hot barrel of his Schofield, wishing he had one final bullet to put the horse out of its misery.
“You’d shoot the horse instead of saving yourself?”
He looked at her and nodded.
“I’d rather plug those owlhoots.” She scooted forward and pressed against the saddlebags, aiming down the barrel of her pistol.
“You looking to tend to your horse?”
“I’ve got one round left. I ran through my ammunition about the same time you did.”
“You don’t have more in your saddlebags?” Luke deflated. She had risked her life to retrieve the twin pouches. He expected more from that wild act of bravery.
She didn’t answer. Like a statue, she held her position. Her concentration was total and blanked him out of the world. One shot remained. Luke wondered if Deke or Zeke would be on the receiving end.
Even in his nightmares, he had never expected his life to end this way in a wild shootout. Luke decided it could be worse, but great regret weighed him down. Rhoades and his gang d
eserved nooses around their necks for all they had done, during the war and after. Sarah Youngblood might be crazy as a loon, but she didn’t deserve her fate at the hands of the outlaws.
And his biggest regret came from not facing Crazy Water Benedict. The man deserved personal justice, not that meted out by some judge and an executioner. Luke wanted to see the man’s face as he shot him down. It wouldn’t be a killing like Benedict had expected at the wedding ceremony. His last thought would be seeing Luke Hadley pulling the trigger and thinking he had made the mistake of his life trying to kill a helpless groom and kidnap the bride.
“You have any ammo left at all?”
Luke checked a final time. He came up dry.
“If we both make a break, that’ll force them to divide their fire,” he said.
“They’ve had plenty of time to get the range. And from the way you’re bleeding, how fast can you run?”
Luke winced as he touched his buttocks. The grazing wound on his side burned like fire but wasn’t too serious. Trying to run was out of the question. With half his ham all shot up, walking proved chancy. Blood already caked his pants and made movement painful.
“I’m not going anywhere. You save yourself.”
“Do you have a death wish?” She scowled. “Never give up. Ever. There’s always hope.”
“You expect the pair of them to come at us single file so you can drill both of them with one shot?”
She laughed, and it was an ugly sound.
“Something like that. Yeah, exactly like that.” She pressed forward even more and held her six-gun with both hands to steady it. When she cocked it, Luke peered over the lip of dirt to see what the bounty hunters were up to.
Deke waved a bandanna and called, “A truce! We want to parley.”
“Say what’s on your mind.” Marta tensed even more.
Deke stepped out, still waving his red-and-white truce flag. Zeke joined his partner. They exchanged a quick whisper, then walked slowly forward.
Tin Star Page 14
