Rather than waste ammunition with wild shooting, Clint pulled on Eclipse’s reins and sent the Darley Arabian into a sharp turn that pointed his nose directly at one of the masked riders. Any other animal might have fought the command or simply ignored it, but Eclipse kept his faith in Clint and charged.
Fortunately, Eclipse was fast enough to put a scare into the other horse as he rushed toward it. The other horse didn’t rear, but it turned in the opposite direction its masked rider had wanted to go. The masked man went from agitated to downright panicked when a few shots aimed at Clint hissed dangerously close to his own head.
“Ease up, god dammit!” the masked rider shouted as Clint passed alongside of him. Before he could say or do anything else, the rider felt Clint’s elbow catch him square in the chest. The blow didn’t do much damage, but it knocked the rider over the side of his horse, where he dangled less than an inch from the ground thanks to one stubborn foot caught in a stirrup.
Clint steered in another direction as he tried to think of a way to get everyone stopped so he could decide if he’d just made a big mistake. The masked men were thinking along those same lines, but took less time to decide on a course of action.
After a few hand signals passed between the two masked men still in their saddles, both of them turned their guns on the woman and opened fire. She did a fine job of clinging to her horse and giving the men a smaller target, but there was nowhere for the horse to hide.
Bullets slapped into the animal’s flesh, tore through muscle and bone and then brought the horse screaming to its knees.
Clint gritted his teeth at the sight of the animal dropping to the ground. Despite the wounds it had been given, the horse still fought to remain upright, as if to give its rider as big a chance as possible to jump clear. She did exactly that and landed in a ball well away from the fallen horse.
Her landing knocked the wind from her lungs and rattled her pretty badly, but she still managed to get to her feet. She hadn’t been able to hold onto her gun and started running the moment she realized that both of her hands were now empty. By the time she looked up from those hands, the woman was being picked off her feet and swept away.
“Good Lord!” she shouted as she instinctively grabbed onto the arm that was wrapped around her waist.
Clint held onto her and swung her onto the saddle in front of him. It was a little awkward steering Eclipse that way, but all he needed to do was bring the stallion to a halt. “Just a moment,” Clint said as he straightened his arm and sighted along the barrel of his Colt. “We’ll get this cleared up soon.”
After saying that, Clint squeezed his trigger and sent a round toward the head of the closest masked man’s horse. Unlike the shots that had brought the woman’s animal down, Clint’s bullet was perfectly aimed and not fatal. It buzzed past the horse’s head so closely, that it burned away the last of the animal’s composure.
Just as the masked man was about to fire, his horse reared up and nearly threw him off its back.
The third masked man saw Clint aiming his Colt at him next. Rather than try his own luck where the other two had failed, he lowered his gun and pulled back on his reins.
“This ain’t none of your business, mister,” the third man said from behind his bandanna.
“That’s why I thought we could take a breath before anyone got killed.”
The horse with the man dangling from its stirrup had slowed to a halt and now moved in a slow circle as its rider struggled to pull himself free. When he finally did get his foot loose, he dropped onto his back with a pained grunt.
The second rider’s horse was still fussing and resisting the reins, leaving the third to do most of the talking.
As soon as Eclipse came to a stop, the woman jumped down and ran toward her own fallen animal. By the time she got to its side, it was barely moving.
Clint saw two of the riders eyeing her as if she was the last piece of steak on an otherwise empty plate. Feeling those men’s anxiousness as if it was a wave of heat in the air, he positioned himself between them and her. “What’s going on here?” he asked. “Why’d you open fire on her?”
None of the men were answering, although they were all now back in their saddles.
“Explain how I’ve overstepped my bounds and I’ll be glad to leave,” Clint told the masked men.
The three men didn’t speak with words. Instead, they swapped a few quick glances and then acted as one.
Lifting their arms, two of them aimed at the woman while one aimed at Clint.
Clint’s reaction was quick and instinctual as he picked out one target and fired. His bullet went right where he’d wanted it to go and drilled a messy hole through one rider’s shoulder. His second shot was intended to knock another rider from his saddle, but missed since that man was already on the move.
Clint’s finger was relaxed upon his trigger as the third rider prepared to fire another shot. Just then, a gunshot blasted from Clint’s right. He turned to find the woman standing beside her horse with a smoking pistol in her hands.
Her bullet caught the third rider in the chest.
The other two masked men rode away as if their tails were on fire.
FOUR
Clint could have chased those two men down.
With Eclipse warmed up and raring to go, Clint knew he wouldn’t have had any trouble catching up to those men and running a few circles around them before figuring out what to do next. But even a fleeting glimpse of those men’s eyes told Clint all he needed to know. They meant to get the hell away from there, and they would do anything to cover themselves along the way.
A cornered animal was never something to fool with, so Clint let them go and shifted his attention back to the ones who were left behind.
When he’d heard the shot, his hand immediately brought up the Colt. Clint lowered the pistol back into its holster when he saw the woman standing over her horse.
She still held her own gun in hand as she looked into the animal’s eyes before they glazed over. “God damm it,” she said as tears rolled down her cheek.
“You didn’t have a choice,” Clint told her. Reaching out with one hand, he pushed her hand down so she was no longer pointing the gun at the wounded horse’s head.
When she turned her eyes to him, the fire in them was unmistakable. “I know I didn’t have a choice,” she snapped. “Thanks to those cowardly assholes.”
“Who were they?” Clint asked. “Then again, you could also tell me who you are. Start with either one, but be quick about it.”
“Why? Are you going to try and rob me, too?”
“Actually, I’m still not sure if I let the wrong ones go.”
The fire in the woman’s eyes flared up a bit, but then quickly died away. She looked at her own hand as if she’d forgotten about the gun she was holding. “Sorry about that,” she told him in a softer voice. “After I found this pistol, I should have helped you follow them. I just couldn’t bear to see Harriet in so much pain.”
“I’m not talking about that. I’d like to know how things could go to hell so damn fast. I’ve had you in my sight for miles and those men rode up on you from out of nowhere.”
“You were following me?” she asked.
Clint shook his head as he walked over to the body of the rider who’d been shot in the chest. Just to make sure, he checked the man’s shirt and vest. There wasn’t a badge pinned anywhere, so that put his mind a bit more at ease.
“I wasn’t exactly following you,” he told her. “Just heading the same direction.”
She nodded and looked down at the dead man. Seeing those vacant eyes staring up toward the sky seemed to hit her at that moment. Suddenly, she barely seemed able to stand up. Her gun slipped from her fingers and she pressed both hands to her face. “Good Lord,” she said through her fingers. “Is he . . . ?”
“As a doornail,” Clint replied.
“Oh God. Those others were going to kill me, too. They were shooting at me. Shooting at both
of us.”
“You’re just now realizing this?”
“It’s not exactly every day that men like this shoot at me.” Her eyes remained fixed upon Clint as she walked toward him. “You saved my life.”
“Actually, things seemed to get bad right about when I rode in.”
“No,” she said while shaking her head. “You saved my life. They were going to kill me. They’ve been following me ever since I left Amarillo.”
“Do you have any notion of why they’d be after you?” Clint asked.
She nodded and walked over to where her horse was lying. Kneeling down, she reached beneath the saddle and struggled to open the flap of the saddlebag that was pinned between the horse and the ground. She held a small leather pouch, but the pouch had been pulled halfway open as she’d taken it from the crushed bag.
At first, Clint thought he was mistaken. Then again, it would have been pretty difficult to confuse a thick stack of money for anything else. “Damn,” Clint said. “How much is that?”
“Twenty-five thousand,” she replied. “Those men knew I had it on me and they knew I’d be riding alone with it.”
Clint glanced from the woman to the trail that had just been used by the surviving attackers. Neither sight brought him a bit of comfort. “If those men know about that money, we should get the hell out of here.”
“You think there’s more of them?”
“I think they’ll be awfully quick to get more of whatever they need to get their hands on that kind of cash. Take whatever you need and come with me.”
The first thing she did was walk back to the horse and dig around in the same saddlebag.
“Actually,” Clint said, “just come along with me now. We may not have enough time to collect all of your things.”
She kept digging around, but pulled her hands free before Clint could become too anxious. In her grasp, there was another stack of bills. This one was slightly smaller than the first one, but was still impressive. “This is the rest of what they were probably after,” she said.
“Is there any more in there?” Clint asked.
“No.” After stuffing the money into the pockets of her denim jacket, she unbuckled the saddlebag on the top side of the horse and handed it to Clint. “This is most of my clothes. If I need anything else, I can always get it later.”
“Where are you headed?”
“The Misty Morning,” she replied. “It’s a boat docked along the—”
“Yeah,” Clint interrupted. “I know where it’s docked.”
FIVE
Her name was Mia Hayley. They didn’t introduce themselves to each other until after they’d put the spot of the ambush well behind them. Even for a while after that, Mia sat behind Clint with her head resting on his shoulder as if she’d fallen asleep. Just to stay on the safe side, Clint kept his Colt strapped into its holster and kept one hand resting upon the grip at all times.
Once the scenery around them changed, so did the feeling between Clint and Mia. The land on either side of the trail was getting greener by the minute, and the smell of the river grew thicker in the air. Mia introduced herself in a chipper voice. Clint thought she might have gotten some sleep after all.
“How did you hear about the Misty Morning?” she asked.
“I got an invitation.”
“Was it like this one?”
Clint felt her hand brush over his shoulder and turned to see the same fancy lettering on a similar piece of paper. Even though he could see the similarities right away, Clint took the invitation and read it over. His eyes spent most of their time lingering over the spot where the address was inscribed.
“That’s the one,” he said while handing it back to her.
“Do you know who’s running this whole thing?”
“No.”
“Aren’t you curious as to how you got invited?” she asked.
Clint shifted so he could look over his shoulder and found Mia grinning mischievously back at him. She was a slender woman with a strong grip. Even though her arms were fairly skinny, they held onto him as though a hurricane wasn’t about to shake her loose. Her face was thin as well, with high cheekbones, a pert nose and lips shaped like a small bow. Black hair hung to her shoulders and was held back by a simple strip of leather.
“You seem pretty anxious to tell me, so why don’t you start with your ideas,” Clint said.
“I’ll bet a gambler got tired of riding the circuit, so he arranged to have all the players brought to him. He may have even set up a few crooked games to make sure he came out ahead.”
“I was expecting something more sinister, considering how we met up.”
“You mean those men who attacked me?”
Clint could feel her shrug as she cinched her arms around his waist a bit more.
“They had their eye on me at the bank,” she replied. “They followed me out of Amarillo and I thought I’d lost them along the way. I guess I didn’t.” After a few seconds, she perked up again and asked, “What about you? What’s your theory on the mysterious invitation?”
“Actually, I’d say yours sounds pretty good. It’s definitely not as exciting as mine.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“I play a lot of cards wherever I go,” Clint explained. “Gamblers keep track of every little detail where the games and players are concerned, so I thought someone kept me in mind for something like this. Besides, I usually get roped into something else while I’m at things like these.”
Mia laughed. “Something like guarding the money or chasing down the cheats, I’d guess.”
“Usually something like that.”
“Are you a lawman?”
Clint looked farther up the trail, silently hoping to see the riverboat so he could point Mia’s curiosity in another direction. Since there wasn’t anything particularly interesting in sight, Clint replied, “Not exactly.”
“You sure acted like a lawman.”
“A lawman wouldn’t have charged headfirst into that much lead like I did.”
“No,” she said as she squeezed him a bit tighter. “He wouldn’t.”
“Well, don’t be too impressed,” Clint said. “I just hope my luck holds as well as it did when those men were shooting at us.”
“Luck is only important for folks who don’t know what they’re doing. I’ll bet you don’t need one bit of luck . . .” Mia’s hand drifted over Clint’s stomach and quickly brushed along the inside of his thigh. “No matter what you do.”
SIX
The riverboat came into view at the same time as the rest of the dock. Clint rode over the top of a hill, looked down and saw it all spread in front of him like a painting. Next to the dock itself, there was a strip of small buildings with people moving among them like busy ants.
“Is that the Misty Morning?” Mia asked.
Looking at the riverboat, Clint shrugged and replied, “I hope so. There aren’t any other boats docked nearby.”
“What about the rest of it? Are those all shipping offices? Do you think I could buy some nicer clothes? I had to leave some of my dresses behind.”
Instead of trying to answer Mia’s excited questions, Clint snapped his reins and told her to hang on. Eclipse started running as if he was just as anxious to get a closer look at the dock. Before Mia could catch her breath long enough to ask any more questions, they were close enough to start reading the signs painted over the buildings near the dock. Clint steered toward the clothing store before Mia even had a chance to ask about it.
The buildings alongside the dock looked like a section of street had been plucked out of a good-sized town and dropped in its current spot. There was one of just about anything a man could want, ranging from a saloon to a furniture shop. But Clint wasn’t interested in getting first crack at merchandise that had been loaded off a boat. Instead, he went to the shipping office in the middle of the street.
“Excuse me,” Clint asked the tall man behind the counter.
The man st
ooped down with his elbows resting on the counter. His skinny nose looked like it had been stolen from a snowman’s face, and his clothes looked as if they’d been donated by a scarecrow. When he spoke, it was in a low, rumbling grunt. “Can I help you?”
“Is that the Misty Morning out there?”
“Can’t you see for yourself?”
Clint waited for a few seconds, until it became clear that the man wasn’t going to say anything else. Letting out a sigh, Clint turned to look out the window where the riverboat could be seen. Actually, Clint had to step to another spot since the riverboat was so close that he couldn’t see the name of it right away.
“That one says Red River Runner,” Clint said.
The clerk had already gotten back to whatever he’d been doing before. Shrugging, he grunted, “There you go.”
“Isn’t the Misty Morning supposed to be docking here?”
“Were you supposed to meet it here?”
“Yes,” Clint said.
“There you go.”
Tensing his fist for a moment and then forcing himself to let it go, Clint said, “I rode all the way from Labyrinth to get here. I’m tired. I’m hungry. I’m also about one second away from reaching over this counter, dragging you over it and tossing you out that window.”
Hearing that, the clerk snapped his head back up as if he’d only just noticed Clint was standing there.
Clint smiled at him and said, “There you go.”
The clerk sputtered a few times to himself and turned around to the wall behind him. There were several boards hanging from nails on that wall, and each of those boards had papers attached to it by twine. After picking out one of the boards, the clerk flipped through the papers and tapped it with his finger. “The Misty Morning’s supposed to be here, but it got delayed.”
“For how long?”
“I just got word about it over the wire and it didn’t mention how long. It just said it was going to be delayed. Usually, if a boat’s going to be more than a few hours late, they mention it. Otherwise, they just pass on word that they’re gonna be . . .”
Red River Showdown Page 2
