Legion of Fire

by William W. Johnstone

  Chapter 22

  As Elmer Pride had predicted, when the Legion broke camp and rode away from the wedge of high rocks, they did split into two separate groups. Pride and Wymer, Kelson’s two lieutenants, took seven men with them. Kelson took the remainder. Three raiders were left behind, assigned to hold positions of concealment for a minimum of three days in order to watch for anyone who showed up on the trail of the gang. In that event, their job was to ambush the pursuers and stop them permanently from continuing their chase.

  The day had dawned clear and bright, but the low wind that had come in the night was still up and the air was chilly. The group headed by Pride and Wymer veered off in a swing to the west; Kelson and those riding with him continued on due north, though on a somewhat serpentine route.

  As part of all this, Millie Burnett found herself included with Kelson’s group, once again riding with Ben Craddock. To her shock, she found herself strangely relieved by this. Much as she loathed the outlaw for his initial abduction of her and the way he’d savagely, possibly fatally beaten Russell Quaid and Jules Mycroft, she somehow felt better off in his presence than she would have if they’d been separated.

  Some of these feelings, she knew, were due to the leader, Sam Kelson. Back in the draw, she hadn’t missed the way his eyes had devoured her from the very first. Not to mention the numerous times she’d caught him looking at her since. Craddock made her skin crawl, it was true. With him, it was nothing but raw, crude lust. With Kelson, she sensed something deeper, more sinister. It chilled her blood. The look in his eyes said he would want a woman for more than just her body. He wouldn’t be satisfied, Millie somehow knew, until he possessed her, body and soul.

  Craddock might stand as a barrier to that. Millie guessed that was why she felt marginally safer in his presence. But, God, what a desperately small amount of solace there was in that. Her only real chance was to escape both of them, to break away from the whole nightmarish ordeal. With all her might, she wanted to believe her father was on his way at the head of a posse, riding to save her and the other women and deliver retribution to the Legion of Fire. She wanted that, but with a heart-aching stab of reality, her mind’s eye kept replaying what she had last seen as she and Craddock rode away from Arapaho Springs—the town in flames, the street filled with shooting and killing. Who would be left out of that hellfire and devastation to form a posse? Was her father even still alive to lead them?

  Such thoughts could have crushed Millie’s spirit if she’d let them, but she refused to allow that. She would hold out hope that help was on the way, but she wouldn’t cling futilely to merely waiting. She would look for her own chance to make something happen and seize any opportunity that presented itself.

  Her mind drifted to conversation she’d had during the night while huddled with the other abducted women.

  In hushed whispers, she had some chances to discuss her thoughts on dealing with their captors. Unfortunately, she got very little in the way of encouraging responses. Some of the women were widows who’d watched their men savagely cut down by the raiders. Two of them were girls even younger than her, not yet out of their teens. In a state of shock, all were still stunned, moving about woodenly and staring with dull, defeated eyes as she urged them to stay strong and work together to resist as much as possible rather than meekly accepting their fate.

  Only Lucinda Davis, her father’s betrothed, showed the kind of response Millie was hoping for. “I’ll resist, all right,” she said with a fierceness to match her flaming red hair. “I’ll scratch the eyes out of any foul-smelling bastard who tries to haul me off ‘for a romp’—to use the words of their black-hearted leader. I have faith that it’s just a matter of time, lass, before your own father comes riding in to save us and put a bullet in that black heart, along with those of all the rest.”

  Millie didn’t share her reservations about that possibility. She fought hard to keep believing it herself, but at the same time she vowed internally not to hold out only for precarious hope. If the rest wouldn’t join her, she’d still make her move at the first chance she got.

  Millie was glad to see Lucinda Davis was among those who remained in the group Millie was part of. Being at least peripherally in the presence of someone she knew and liked made these wretched circumstances somehow more bearable. What was more, if the rest of the women remained too cowed to try and save themselves, at least she would have one ally thinking the same as her, willing to join in an escape attempt. If it came to leaving the others behind because they refused to be involved, Millie knew she would feel some measure of guilt, but she was ready to accept that rather than curb her intentions to find a way to make a break for it.

  It was those determined thoughts and constant vigilance for something that might give her a chance for escape that helped her endure another day. When night came once again, her brave front was strained by anticipation of what treatment she and the other women might receive.

  Once again, however, Kelson ordered them to be kept separate and left untouched by all. The difference on the second night was that, recognizing he had fewer men to stand guard over them, Kelson ordered their feet and hands bound inside their bedrolls and he himself slept close enough to make sure no one bothered them. That not only inhibited the two women from talking freely and possibly doing further plotting, it also kept Millie extremely ill at ease and allowed her just fitful snatches of sleep as she imagined she could feel Kelson’s eyes on her all during the dark hours.

  Throughout the long, cold day and the murky, nearly sleepless span of night, one other thought kept winding in and out of Millie’s mind. She kept remembering the icy, calm resolve on the face of the bounty hunter, Luke Jensen, as he’d quit the jail building to circle around and deal with the shooters who were keeping him and her father pinned down. He’d succeeded in that much, she knew, because the two men had then gone on to work their way up the street toward the main body of raiders who were attacking the town. She was convinced that if any man—even more so than her own father—had survived the encounter with the Legion, it would be Luke Jensen.

  If she was right about that, it meant he would be coming in pursuit of the raiders. It made her feel ashamed to admit having more faith in him than in her father or the other townsmen, but thinking Luke Jensen possibly was part of a posse on their trail gave Millie an additional small measure of hope and comfort that she sorely needed.

  The problem was, it might require an army of Luke Jensens to defeat the Legion of Fire.

  Chapter 23

  The posse started out at the first grayish wash of light in the eastern sky, taking no time for a campfire or coffee or any breakfast other than leftover biscuits and jerky that they ate once underway. The few hours of sleep were helpful, but those unaccustomed to long hours in the saddle still moved stiffly and with obvious discomfort as they’d climbed out of their bedrolls and onto the backs of their horses. Nevertheless, grim-faced and aching though they were, none complained as they fell in line behind Luke’s distance-eating pace.

  Despite a bright sun in a mostly clear sky, the air remained chilly and a low, steady wind bit into the riders as they moved along. The landscape changed, hills growing steeper and choppier, irregular rock outcroppings thrusting up with increased frequency. As the trail passed near some of them, Luke eyed them warily, thinking how they would make good spots from which to spring an ambush.

  He reminded himself of the Legion of Fire’s reputation for leaving the towns they hit so devastated that in many cases there weren’t enough able-bodied, willing men to form a posse to go after them. In a town as small as Arapaho Springs, especially, they might have good reason to expect that. And if the raiders hadn’t made the mistake of taking women as part of their plunder, it very possibly could have gone that way.

  Still, it was a common enough tactic for an outlaw gang to peel off some men and leave them positioned to guard their back trail against pursuit, aiming to turn away a posse via an ambush intended to cut down eno
ugh of its members to discourage the rest from continuing on.

  With an outfit as large, well organized, and successful as the Legion of Fire, Luke told himself it didn’t seem unreasonable to think they might take such a precaution. Though he said nothing to the others, he continued to cautiously regard each of the rocky outcrops as they approached them.

  It was past noon when the posse approached a wedge of high, ragged rocks. A heightened sense of precaution bordering on alarm suddenly coursed through Luke. For one thing, the Legion’s trail led directly toward the rocks, where previously it had skirted past other outcrops. Also, it was the largest of the formations they’d come to so far. Two flat-faced, jagged-topped buttes rose between thirty and forty feet high, angled together like the open pages of a book standing on end, with each side stretching out roughly fifty yards. The gap between the inner edges of the two halves looked only a few feet wide.

  Luke slowed his horse to a near halt.

  Moving up alongside him, Burnett said, “What’s wrong?”

  Luke gestured. “Those rocks up ahead, the way the trail leads straight into them . . . it gives me an itchy feeling right between my shoulder blades.”

  “How so?” Burnett said. Then after only a moment’s consideration, he added, “You thinking it’s a good spot for an ambush?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m thinking.”

  Burnett frowned. “With the big lead they’ve got on us, you think the Legion might still resort to something like that?”

  “You tell me. You know more about them than I do. What do you think?”

  Burnett’s frown deepened. “There’ve been so few posses who ever got close to ’em . . . I don’t know. If they were going to set up an ambush, this would be a damn good spot for one, no denying that.”

  “It would also be a good spot for a night camp, using those walls of rock for a windbreak,” Luke mused. “That would be good news, meaning we’ve narrowed the gap on their lead considerably.”

  The other men had caught up and were gathering around them.

  “So what do you suggest?” Burnett asked. “We could circle wide around, pick up the trail on the other side.”

  “But if this is where they spent the night,” Luke said, “they might have left sign that could be worthwhile for us to pick up. I say we fan out and go on in. Everybody stay sharp, keep an eye on the high rocks.”

  “You heard him, men,” Burnett said to the others. “Fan out and keep your eyes peeled for any sign of movement in those rocks.”

  The posse did as instructed, settling into a wedge formation of their own and advancing slowly. Luke rode at the point, with Burnett to his right and Whitey Mason to his left. Strung out to one side and slightly behind Burnett came Russell, then Harry Barlow the bartender, then Pete Hennesy the cook. On Whitey Mason’s wing was his son Keith followed by Swede Norsky.

  Luke slipped the keeper thongs off the hammers of his Remingtons and checked to make sure his Winchester was riding loose in its scabbard. His eyes were in constant motion, scanning high and low and sweeping along the base of the rocks. As they got closer, the wind passing over the jagged peaks made a low moaning sound.

  Closer still, Luke could see where the spacing of the Legion’s tracks grew tighter, indicating the riders had slowed their horses to a walk and then a complete halt. Soon he could see boot prints mingled with those of the horses as men had dismounted and began walking around and then the circles of gray ash where the campfires had been.

  Yes, the Legion had made their night camp there. Luke felt a measure of satisfaction at the confirmation that the grueling pace and short night he’d held the posse to had paid off by closing the gap on their quarry by maybe as much as a third of a day.

  A moment later, however, his satisfied feeling was shattered by the sudden roar of rifle blasts issuing from high up in the rocks.

  Chapter 24

  “Take cover!” Burnett bellowed.

  “The rocks! Get in the rocks!” Luke shouted as he heeled his horse hard, urging the animal forward so he could follow his own advice. A moment later he was springing from his saddle, taking time to grab his Winchester, and then making a running dive in behind some toppled boulders.

  The rifle blasts continued in rapid succession. Bullets filled the air, whining menacingly close, kicking up spouts of dust and spanging off rocks. A horse screamed somewhere behind Luke. Somebody hurled a curse and then there was the sound of a body—horse or man, Luke couldn’t be sure—thudding heavily to the ground.

  The black-clad bounty hunter squirmed in behind the boulders and rolled onto his back so that he was facing up toward where the ambushers were firing from. He spotted a telltale haze of smoke that marked where shots had recently been taken and, a dozen yards to the left of that, a rifle barrel poked into view as the man behind it was getting ready to lay down some more lead.

  Luke beat him to it, triggering his Winchester and sending a bullet digging into a rim of rock just inches from the exposed barrel. The latter jerked back instantly, but Luke rapidly levered another round into the chamber and fired again and then once more. Following that, he swung his sights to the smoke that marked where the other shooter had been and sent a pair of slugs sizzling to that spot for good measure.

  The other posse members were firing back, too, as they dismounted and clambered in behind various-sized boulders that had fallen and tumbled away from the butte faces. Rifles cracked, pistols popped. Bullets sizzled back and forth from on high and from the hastily acquired low cover.

  Luke righted himself and scrambled inward, finding a deep, rough-edged seam at the base of the easternmost butte into which he was able to squeeze himself. A couple of bullets chased him, but the closer he got to the base the more the shooters higher up had to lean out and expose themselves in order to aim down at him. Cover fire from the other posse members as well as Luke himself helped restrain them from doing that.

  Once in place, Luke took a second to assess the situation as far as the men riding with him. To his dismay he saw the bodies of both Harry Barlow and his horse lying dead about twenty yards out. Off to the west, to Luke’s right as he faced out from his present position, another horse lay dead. Luke recognized it as the one Swede Norsky had been riding; he was somewhat relieved not to also see the sprawled body of the big Swede, but the fact he couldn’t see any sign of him at all was worrisome.

  It appeared that the rest of the men—except for the fallen Barlow and the missing Swede—were giving a good account of themselves and doing okay so far. The remaining horses, including Luke’s own mount, were scattered and on the run. Trouble was, the boulders and piles of broken rocks the men had been forced to take shelter behind were several yards out away from the buttes, making the men still dangerously exposed to the elevated shooters. And the latter continued to pour it on thick and hot.

  Luke shifted his gaze, sweeping it along the ragged rim of the rocks over his head. He was quickly able to determine there were three riflemen at work up there. Two fairly close together atop the eastern butte; a third quite a ways off, alone on the ragged rim of the western one. Three against eight—seven now, with Barlow down. Luke and the men riding with him had the advantage in numbers, but not in position. The rest of the posse, as far as he could tell, were at high risk where they were and unable to move to better spots without exposing themselves even more. If they stayed where they were, though, they stood a good chance of getting picked off one by one. As long as the ambushers had ammunition, that was—and the way they were burning it up they didn’t seem too worried about running out any time soon.

  Demonstrating how his thoughts were running along those same lines, Burnett called out from where he squatted low behind a flat-topped boulder. “This is getting to be a miserable damned habit, Jensen. Every time I’m involved in a shoot-out with you, I find myself pinned down.”

  A wry grin tugged at Luke’s mouth. “Maybe Doc Whitney will show up to help us out with another distraction,” he called bac
k.

  “If he did, I—” the marshal started to say. But his words were cut off by a pair of slugs slamming down onto the top of the boulder he was behind, splattering dust and rock chips. Bellowing a curse, Burnett popped up momentarily and returned fire with two wildly aimed shots from his handgun. Then, dropping back down, he finished his statement, saying somewhat breathily, “If Doc Whitney showed up about now, I sure wouldn’t scold him for not staying put. Unfortunately, I’m afraid we can’t count very much on that happening again.”

  There was an abrupt lull in the shooting. Men reloading, Luke guessed.

  Before he had time to contemplate on it at any length, Keith Mason called out from somewhere over to the west. “We could use Doc Whitney more than you know, Marshal. My pa’s taken a bullet and it’s bleeding pretty bad.”

  As he spoke, Luke was able to identify he was nestled in behind a low spine of jagged rocks eighteen to twenty yards out.

  “Is he there with you?” Burnett responded.

  “Yeah, he’s right here beside me.” Keith’s voice cracked a little, even though he was clearly trying to hold it steady.

  “You be sure and keep your head down and stay calm. You’ve got to put pressure on that wound and slow the bleeding as much as you can,” Burnett called back. “Tear off a piece of your shirt or something if you have to, and tie it tight over the bullet hole.”

  “For cryin’ out loud,” came a new voice, that of Whitey Mason. “We know how to stop bleedin’, Marshal. You don’t have to worry about me drainin’ out on you. I didn’t ride clear the hell out here for that. We’ll take care of this blasted pumper. You just concentrate on returnin’ the favor to those dry-gulchin’ skunks that plugged me!”