Luke looked around some more and asked, “Where is everyone else?”
“Mr. and Mrs. Langston are inside the coach. Far as I’m concerned, the ground’s just about as comfortable as them seats, but I reckon folks like them are used to havin’ a roof of some sort over their head when they sleep. Miss Wheeler’s over there behind them rocks. Hobie made her a bedroll there so’s she’d have some privacy. As for the young fella hisself, he’s taken a pasear out to the canyon mouth to have a look around.”
“I hope he’s being careful not to show himself,” Luke said as he picked up his rifle. “I wouldn’t put it past those men to try sniping at him.”
“Neither would I. If you want to go get him, I got Arbuckle’s boilin’. Stuff’s a real eye-opener, the way I make it.”
“I’ll fetch him,” Luke said with a smile.
He walked the fifty yards or so to the canyon mouth, staying close to the wall so he wouldn’t present much of a target in the pre-dawn gloom. When he had nearly reached the opening, he called softly, “Hobie?”
“Right here,” the young man replied from a thick patch of shadow behind a jutting rock.
“Everything quiet out there?”
“Too dang quiet, if you ask me. I think those varmints are up to something.”
“They might try to sneak up on us, all right,” Luke agreed. “But I think they’re more likely to wait until we’re out of here to make their move.”
“We’re leaving the canyon?”
“We can’t stay here indefinitely. We don’t have enough food, water, and ammunition for a long siege. We’re less than half a day’s journey from Moss City, so I think we ought to make a run for it.”
“Taking Dietrich with us as a hostage,” Hobie said.
Luke nodded. “That’s right.”
“They’ll try to stop us,” Hobie warned. “If there’s any law in Moss City, they can’t afford to let us get there or they’ll have murder charges hangin’ over their heads. They’d probably rather see Dietrich dead than let that happen.”
“On the other hand,” Luke said, “they probably don’t have the advantage in numbers anymore. There’s a chance they’ll decide to cut their losses and light a shuck.”
“If they do, that’ll be just fine with me,” Hobie declared fervently.
The two men went back to camp. Stephen and Edna Langston were standing beside the fire, and Jessica came out from behind the rocks a few minutes later, carrying the bedroll Hobie had put together for her.
“Were you able to get any sleep?” he asked her.
Jessica smiled. “Some. The bedroll was actually pretty comfortable, Hobie.”
“Aw, you don’t have to say that. I know it wasn’t.”
“No, really, I mean it,” she insisted.
“Maybe you can spend tonight in an actual bed. I sure wouldn’t mind if I did, too.” Hobie started to get red in the face. “I mean . . . not the same bed. A different bed. In a different building. I never meant—”
“That’s all right, Hobie,” she told him with a smile. “You don’t have to explain.”
“That’s good. My tongue seems to get all tangled up mighty easy these days.”
And everyone knew the reason for that, Luke thought with a smile as he bent to pick up the coffeepot.
The bleeding edge of the sun had just peeked over the eastern horizon by the time everyone had eaten and the team was hitched to the stagecoach again. The horses still weren’t exactly fresh, according to Pierce, but they had rested enough overnight that they could make the rest of the trip to Moss City.
“We better hope we don’t have to run ’em too hard, though,” the jehu said. “I don’t know how much they got in ’em at top speed. A mile or so, at most.”
“Maybe it won’t come to that.” Luke swung up into his saddle. “I’ll scout ahead a ways. Everyone’s guns are fully loaded?”
A chorus of assent came from the travelers.
Hobie added with a worried frown, “We’re running a mite low on cartridges, though, Luke.”
“I figured as much. If there’s trouble, make every shot count.”
From the top of the coach, where he sat with his wrists bound in front of him and his ankles tied together, Milton Dietrich said, “It’s not too late to make a deal, Jensen. Leave Jessica and me here so my men can pick us up, and the rest of you can leave. You won’t be harmed and no one will try to stop you. I give you my word on that.”
“Your word doesn’t mean a damned thing to me, Dietrich,” Luke said. “Putting you up there in plain sight, where a stray bullet is just as likely to hit you as any of us, is just about the only value you’ve got right now.”
Dietrich glared at him, but didn’t say anything else. The man’s gray hair was askew, and his face had grown haggard. Fear still lurked in his eyes, but hatred and arrogance had the upper hand at the moment.
Pierce whipped up the team and got them moving. Luke rode ahead of the coach. His eyes scanned the landscape outside the canyon.
He didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but that didn’t mean much. The terrain might look pretty flat from a distance, but close up that wasn’t exactly the case. There were plenty of places where a group of horsemen could hide, ranging from arroyos to small mesas.
Luke waved Pierce ahead, and the stagecoach rolled into the open. Pierce kept the horses moving at a brisk pace, although not at an actual run.
Luke slid his Winchester from its sheath and rode with the rifle across the saddle in front of him. His eyes never stopped moving as he swept his gaze over the landscape, searching for any sign of impending trouble.
Nothing. He spotted some buzzards wheeling around in the pale blue sky in the distance, but that was all.
Pierce had left the trail between Harkerville and Moss City to reach the canyon the night before. He drove back to the stagecoach’s usual route and swung the vehicle to the west, toward the Arizona border.
Hobie turned to look at Dietrich. “Looks like your hired killers don’t think highly enough of you to come to your rescue after all.”
Dietrich sneered at him. “You want Jessica for yourself, but I can promise you, you’ll never have her. Never.”
“Go to hell,” Hobie grumbled.
“You’ll be there before me,” Dietrich said.
Luke heard that exchange and didn’t care for the confidence he heard in Dietrich’s voice. The man was mighty sure of himself, considering the situation he was in, and that confidence seemed to grow with every turn of the stagecoach’s wheels.
Luke wasn’t sure what Dietrich expected to happen. It seemed to him that if the surviving gunnies were going to try anything, it would have been an ambush at the mouth of the canyon or at least somewhere close to there.
That uneasy feeling stuck with Luke, even after Pierce announced that they were getting close to the Arizona border. “We’ll be outta New Mexico Territory soon. He pointed. “See those hills up ahead? They’re across the line in Arizona. Of course, it don’t really matter all that much. One flat, dry, dusty stretch of ground is pretty much like any other flat, dry, dusty stretch of ground, I reckon.”
He was right about that. A stone marker beside the trail indicated the spot where they entered Arizona, but to Luke the surrounding countryside all looked the same, at least right along the boundary.
A short time later, though, they entered the low, rocky hills Pierce had pointed out. The trail followed a fairly deep cut between two of those hills.
Luke’s instincts kicked in. The location was perfect for an ambush. He was about to ask Pierce if there was another way around the hills when Hobie called out an alarm. “Luke! Behind us!”
Luke twisted in the saddle and looked back the way they had come. Seven or eight riders had appeared seemingly from nowhere, although Luke knew they must have been hidden in a gully. The horsemen thundered after them.
Pierce looked back and saw the pursuers, too. He ripped out a curse and slashed at the horses with his
whip. They surged ahead in a gallop.
And that was the wrong thing to do, Luke realized. He shouted, “Jim, no!” but it was too late. The stagecoach careened into the cut between the hills at high speed, tossing the passengers around inside.
Puffs of powder smoke appeared on the slopes on both sides as hidden riflemen opened fire on the racing coach. Luke’s worry about Dietrich having more men had just come true.
It was too late to turn back or go around. Luke knew all they could do was fight their way through. He flung the rifle to his shoulder and started raking the near hillside with lead, hoping to distract the bushwhackers at the very least.
Hobie twisted back and forth on the seat next to Pierce and fired his rifle at both slopes, squeezing off rounds as fast as he could work the Winchester’s lever. Pistol shots cracked from inside the coach as Jessica and Langston put up a fight, too. Pierce had his hands full just keeping the team under control. Puffs of dust kicked up from the trail as bullets struck around the flashing hooves of the team.
If one of those horses went down, the others probably would, too, and then the coach would pile up. When Luke saw the way the gunmen were shooting at the team, he knew they didn’t really care about saving Dietrich’s life anymore. They just wanted to stop the coach from getting to Moss City.
Dietrich yelled in alarm as he was thrown back and forth on top of the stage. He twisted to his side and grabbed the brass rail around the edge of the roof to keep from being thrown off.
From the corner of his eye, Luke saw Dietrich raise his legs and lash out with them. He slammed his feet into Hobie’s back.
The unexpected blow sent Hobie flying forward off the seat and his rifle crashing to the ground. The young man seemed to hang in mid-air above the team, a split second away from falling under the slashing steel-shod hooves of the galloping horses.
CHAPTER 23
There was nothing Luke could do to save his young partner. It was all up to Hobie’s own instincts and quick reactions.
With both hands free, Hobie made a desperate grab for the harness on the horses on either side of him. His right hand caught and held, but his legs dropped toward the ground.
One foot hit the singletree. He scrambled for purchase on it and lunged, wrapping his left hand around the same harness. Holding on with two hands, he managed to get his other foot on the singletree. His position was still perilous, but better than it had been a few seconds earlier.
Up on the top of the stagecoach, Dietrich pushed himself to his knees and faced forward. He raised his arms, spread them as much as he could with his wrists tied, and brought them down around Jim Pierce’s neck. Dietrich yanked back, choking the jehu.
The attack made Pierce drop the reins. They coiled around loosely on the floorboard like crazed snakes, allowing the team to run wild.
Luke couldn’t risk a shot at Dietrich while the man was locked in such a close struggle with Pierce. He still had the rest of the gunmen to deal with, too. Seeing one man rise from his hiding place behind some brush on the slope, Luke snapped a shot at him and was rewarded by the sight of the would-be killer doubling over and then tumbling down the hillside.
Luke levered the Winchester and swung the rifle to the side as he triggered another shot, but couldn’t tell if he hit anything.
Hobie carefully worked his way along the singletree back toward the coach as Pierce and Dietrich continued their battle. Pierce’s whiskery face was turning bright red as Dietrich’s brutal hold on his throat cut off his air. Pierce jammed an elbow into Dietrich’s body, but the man’s grip didn’t loosen.
Luke realized he had underestimated how much of a threat Milton Dietrich really was. The man was fighting with the crazed strength of a lunatic.
Hobie reached up and grabbed the floorboard. He hooked a foot over it and hauled himself up as the coach careened along the trail. If it had hit a big bump just then, he would have been flung loose and fallen under the team, the fate he had narrowly avoided a moment earlier.
He managed to reach the floorboard and surged up to throw a punch over Pierce’s shoulder that caught Dietrich in the face. Dietrich’s head rocked back. Hobie caught hold of the businessman’s arms and fought to wrench them free from Pierce’s throat.
Somehow, they were past the bushwhackers. They had run that deadly gauntlet without anyone getting killed. The gunmen on horseback were still coming up quickly from behind, however. Luke twisted in the saddle to throw another shot at them, but the Winchester’s hammer just clicked when it fell.
Empty.
He jammed the rifle back in its scabbard and hauled his mount around. He took the reins in his teeth and filled both hands with the Remingtons. Using his heels, he sent the horse charging straight at the group of gunmen.
It was a damned fool play, and he knew it. But he also knew that doing the unexpected was sometimes a man’s most effective weapon, and charging into the face of such odds was certainly unexpected.
He bent low and cut loose with the revolvers, trading shots from hand to hand as he guided the horse with his knees. He had another small advantage in that he had plenty of targets to choose from, while his enemies had to concentrate their fire on him. The horse veered back and forth at slight angles in response to Luke’s urging. Bullets sang past him, but failed to find the mark.
He saw two of the gunmen rock back as his slugs smashed into them, and another man threw up his arms and pitched out of the saddle in a limp sprawl that signified death.
That broke the nerve of two of the other gunmen. They whirled their horses to flee, ignoring the shouted curses of their companions. With that, the odds against Luke suddenly dropped to two to one.
He almost felt like he had them outnumbered.
The distance between Luke and his enemies had dwindled to almost nothing. He aimed for the gap between their horses and flashed through it, firing to both sides as he did so. They twisted in their saddles and tried to bring their guns to bear on him. The air around Luke’s head buzzed like a hornet’s nest as bullets fanned past his ears.
Still untouched, he leaned back and clamped his teeth down hard on the reins, slowing his horse. He dropped the reins and turned his head in time to see both gunmen topple off their mounts. He didn’t know if he had hit them or if each had accidentally shot the other, but it didn’t matter. He was still alive.
And the stagecoach was still a runaway. Luke holstered the left-hand Remington, grabbed his horse’s reins, and wheeled the animal so he could race after the coach.
Up ahead, Hobie had succeeded in pulling Dietrich’s arms away from Pierce. The jehu slumped on the seat, gasping for breath.
Dietrich clubbed his bound hands together and swung them at Hobie’s head. Hobie ducked under the sweeping blow and hooked a punch into Dietrich’s ribs. In the frenzy of hate that gripped him, Dietrich didn’t even seem to notice the blow. He lunged at Hobie, rammed into him, and knocked the young man off the seat onto the floorboard. Dietrich fell on top of him, landing with his knees in Hobie’s stomach. His fingers locked like iron bands around Hobie’s throat.
From Luke’s position galloping up behind the coach, he couldn’t see the two of them anymore, only Jim Pierce’s hunched form as the jehu tried to draw life-giving air through his bruised throat.
Hobie lifted a knee into Dietrich’s groin. Even in his berserk state, Dietrich couldn’t ignore that. His hands slipped a little on Hobie’s throat as he curled his body around the pain.
Hobie got a flailing hand on Dietrich’s face and clawed for the man’s eyes. Dietrich flung his head back to get away. He let go of Hobie’s throat and dived for the Colt still on the young man’s hip. The thong over the hammer had held it in the holster despite Hobie’s near-fall under the galloping team.
Dietrich got his hand on the gun and ripped it free. At the same time, Pierce, barely recovered, made a grab at Dietrich’s shoulder. Dietrich twisted and swung the gun at Pierce’s head. The barrel raked the jehu’s jaw and made him fall back agains
t the seat, momentarily stunned again.
Using both hands, Dietrich pointed the gun at Hobie and pulled back the hammer. “I told you you’d never have her!” he yelled triumphantly.
Almost even with the stagecoach again, Luke heard Dietrich’s shout, and knew he had to act. The Remington in his right hand came up and blasted a shot. The .36 caliber slug struck Dietrich in the back of the head, bored through his brain, and exploded out between his eyes. Already dead, the man with the ruined face flopped forward, somersaulting over the horses and dropping among them.
The hooves did their gruesome work, followed by the wheels of the stagecoach. They chopped Milton Dietrich’s body into something that barely resembled a human being.
Luke urged his horse alongside the team and leaned over to grab the harness. He hauled back on it, yelling, “Whoa! Whoa, damn it!”
Gradually the horses slowed, and after another hundred yards or so, the coach lurched to a halt. Before he did anything else, Luke yanked out the Winchester and reloaded as he scanned the trail behind them.
He saw several sprawled bodies and riderless horses, but nobody was coming after them. The rest of Dietrich’s men appeared to have given up.
If they had seen what was left of their employer, they knew they wouldn’t collect any more blood money from him. No one ever would. They must have decided to take their chances with the law coming after them for the killings at the way station. Men like that often had murder charges hanging over their heads to start with.
With the coach no longer moving, Hobie dropped to the ground and jerked the door open. “Jessica!” he cried. “Jess, are you all right?”
She practically threw herself out of the coach and into his arms. “Hobie! Oh, Hobie, I thought you must be dead!”
“It was pretty dang close,” he told her as he held her tightly. “But I was lucky, and then Luke saved my life.”
Luke rode over to the coach so he could look in one of the windows. Stephen and Edna Langston were huddled together on the rear seat, but appeared to be unhurt.
“Are you folks all right?” Luke asked.
Luke Jensen Bounty Hunter Dead Shot Page 18
